I agree. It could be the case that Rey registered WS as a client for tactical reasons to 'discredit WS' to benefit timber interests, or Rey could have registered WS as a client in anticipation of a contract, or because he was soliciting work from WS. The website that publish the public records is considered by google to be a valid source of news.drm wrote:When I do a web search on Rey and the Wilderness Society, mostly I find cases where the WS has sued him. Then there is one link in which on one line he lists the WS as a client. That's odd, but I wouldn't really know what to make of it without further info.
I agree. But being friends means there is a much lower hurdle to a financial relationship than if they were not on speaking terms.drm wrote:And I don't care if he is friends with somebody in the environmental movement. Agreement on politics is not a mandatory requirement for my friends, and I think it is healthy to have friends who you disagree with.
Just as our national Senators and Representatives ought to be responsive to the citizens, the national environmental groups, such as WS, ought to be responsive to the grassroots groups. Wolke claimed they are not. Parker's article on the Collaborative Environmental Campaign says as much. That is not enough for a conviction, but it warrants a closer look.drm wrote: The split between many grassroots environmental groups and the national lobbying groups has been around for decades and much debated.
Agreed. The Wilderness Act itself was an exercise in compromise.drm wrote:Nonetheless I come back to what I said above: deciding when compromise is appropriate is not a simple decision, IMHO.
Agreed. But again, Wolke claimed, and the Parker article substantiated, that the national environmental groups are exclusionary.drm wrote:Despite their problems, the national groups do have accomplishments to their names. That they decide to have a private group to consult with each other is no big deal. If there was no group, they would still call each other on the phone and talk, just like the smaller groups do all the time. That it has no internet presence might just mean that it is a pretty thin grouping and not very significant, not some hidden conspiracy.
I agree, videos eat up time. Yet, you and I can skip ahead in a video by clicking on the time bar that is at the bottom of the 'viewer'. That works on youtube and vimeo. Presentation videos ought to have transcripts, and the transcripts ought to have links that advance the video to that point. This is quite feasible. The playlist in this video contains such links.drm wrote:I'm sorry that I don't have the time to watch multiple videos. I don't much watch videos on trip reports here either. I find that videos take up too much time - when reading text I can scan and skip as I want. With a video, you don't know what you're missing if you do that. In this case, I watched the first half - 17 minutes! and the stuff I needed to see was on the second half? If it had been a transcript, I would have skipped forward and found it. I know that many people prefer videos these days, but I don't.
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You seem to me to be quite reasonable and experienced in politics, more so than me anyway. From what I understand of your posts here, I agree with you in a general way. The Wilderness Society has a long and respectable history. Wolke's claims and the little I've dug up definitely is not a sound basis for blacklisting WS. But it does suggest that some investigative journalism would reveal such a basis. Past performance is not a sufficient predictor of any organization's future. Anointment has too long of a half-life relative to the changes in players.
I just know that I'm not going to be donating money to a wilderness organization whose president is paid $400k, and whose executive compensation totals $1.2 million dollars: The Wilderness Society.. Heck, given their annual revenue, that means 5% of every dollar I'd contribute would go straight into the pockets of executives. Yeah, right.