Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis on Thursday stopped in Pueblo to tout his campaign plank of job creation and to criticize incumbent Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat. Among his criticisms of Ritter, those involving the U.S. Army's proposed expansion of Fort Carson's Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in Las Animas County were the harshest. McInnis said the law Ritter signed barring land transfers to the Army there was unnecessary, as expansion wasn't imminent. The governor's actions only served to stir the pot of a controversy that McInnis perceived to be mild, he said. McInnis, of Grand Junction, gave little credence to the group Not 1 More Acre, which has vocally opposed Pinon Canyon expansion and has accused the Army of cover-ups and deceit in its effort to grow the site. He said while just one formal “willing seller” has been identified among ranchers in the affected area, others have approached him privately and said their land isn't actively for sale, but that they'd entertain offers. “(Not 1 More Acre's) point of view is one of many down there,” McInnis said. “It's not the majority point of view.” Asked to respond to criticisms that he is pandering to the larger voter base in Colorado Springs, where Fort Carson is based, McInnis fired back that Ritter pandered by signing the bill banning land transfers into law. McInnis claimed he has been steadfast in his support of willing sellers having the right to cash in on their land...read more
Another Republican with a death wish. Sides with military over ranchers, federal over private ownership of land, larger vs. smaller government.
3 comments:
Where do you suggest they go?
I find your opposition to expansion of the Army facility for Ft. Carson to be puzzling. One of my best friends will soon be on his way to Afghanistan as a USMC rifleman. He tells me that because of shortages of equipment, their tactical practices are being changed so the need for the equipment is "speced out." The firearms they are issued are worn out. The list goes on. Even recongizing the universal right of every infantry soldier or marine to complain about things, there has to be something too this. Now, to add to the list people want to deny our armed forces training areas? The services are getting squeezed out of many areas by enviro (Robert Kennedy and the Navy firing range in PR, for example). They are hemmed in at the desert warfare training center in California's high desert. I recall about 10 years ago the enviros in Monterey prevented the Navy from holding amphibious exercizes in that area. Seems to be a fusion of interests on this issue between the smaller and bigger government crowd. I always thought national defense was a bi-partisan issue. I guess the response to my question as to where do they go is "on the job training in Afghanistan, just so long as it ain't here."
From a previous post:
"The Base Structure Report(pdf) for FY 2008 contains the land profile for the Department of Defense. The introduction to the report states, "The Depart of Defense remains one of the world's largest 'landlords' with a physical plant consisting of more than 545,700 facilities (buildings, structures and linear structures) located on more than 5400 sites, on approximately 30 million acres."
The land profile further refines that to 29.8 million acres owned or controlled by DOD. More than 98% of the land is in the US, with the Army managing 52% and the Air Force 33%.
29.8 million acres equals 46,562.5 square miles. How do you put that in perspective? Let's try this: Of the Thirteen Original Colonies, six of them (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire & Massachusetts) would fit into the land mass controlled by DOD, with 8359 square miles or 5.3 million acres left over. In other words, you could add another New Jersey.
29.8 million acres and they don't have enough land to practice? They may have a turf problem or a setting of priorities problem, but they don't have a lack of land problem."
The shortage of equipment and the substandard equipment and supplies provided our troops has been a travesty during the entire Iraq-Afghanistan episode. I'll never understand how 2 Presidents and the Congress could send our troops in harms way and then fail them like this.
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