Ryan Zinke, the new Interior Secretary, is on his way next week to visit national monuments in the state of Utah, with the mission from neo-fascist sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump to "review" (i.e., scuttle) national monument designations. The "review" is intended to identify those designated national monuments that interfere with "energy independence," mining, and other commercial interests and to roll-back the designations to allow those private interests to exploit our national public treasures. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act in 1906, giving Presidents the authority to designate national monuments to protect our natural treasures. He must be rolling in his grave to see this disgrace of a man in the office that he once held.
Facilitating Rump with regard to Utah is perennial villain Rep. Jason "Clouseau" Chaffetz, who strongly objected to designation of land in Utah as national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. As to be expected, what's good for the extraction/pollution industry is bad for tourism: since the designation of the national monuments in Utah, tourism has grown, pumping needed money into the local economies. Alas, those local economies aren't as generous with campaign contribution to Chaffetz, et al, as the extraction/pollution industries.
Besides the usual Rethuglican kowtowing to their extraction/pollution industry patrons, there's another motivation, Rump's vindictiveness:
"When it comes the undoing accomplishments of his predecessors, few presidents have been exhibited the raw vindictiveness of Donald Trump. Protecting the rights of minorities, preserving the environment, encouraging conservation and supporting new industries to replace dying ones have never been high on the president’s agenda. Critics continue to disagree over the specifics of the constraints on presidents on national monument questions. But the fact that no president has ever made such a move is just the kind of perverse incentive that Trump needs to strip away national monument designations from sea to shining sea. In Trump’s world, photo ops of his horseback-riding Interior Secretary serve his primary mission of obliterating Barack Obama’s legacy. Teddy Roosevelt is just collateral damage." (emphasis added)As are we all.
