My name is Ted Miller. I am an elected trustee of Local 75, a part of PACE International Union representing about 700 millworkers in the pulp and paper mills of Berlin and Gorham, NH. I am also active in the Pulp and Paperworkers Resource Council, an organization representing labor in over 100 wood product mills throughout the country. I have run for public office in the past as a Democrat, and I will be doing so again. I am requesting that the article below, which I wrote as an editorial for a local paper be placed on the record regarding the CARA hearing to be held on Wednesday, May 24, 2000. Thank you for your time and this opportunity. TM

The Government vs rural Americans

"There can be no permanent democracy. A democracy can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the nations treasury. From that time on, the majority of the voters will always vote for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury. The eventual result is a collapse of the democracy due to a loose fiscal policy. This is always followed by a dictatorship." - Alexander Tyler

Item: 1989. Federal judge rules the spotted owl must be protected, places over 20 million acres government land in the northwest off-limits to timber harvesting despite there being no scientific need demonstrated for this action. Ten years later, over 300 mills have closed, among the 100,000 jobs lost besides millworkers and loggers, are teachers, firemen, and law enforcement.

In Catron County, New Mexico, which was dependent on federal timber, the spotted owl claimed more victims, the people who once used to work for the county's largest sawmill. After the mill closure, families were forced to leave, the communities declined. With the families, went the children. In the town of Reserve, NM, the graduating class size shrank from as many as 25 down to 9 students.

In 1998, Liberty County, Florida saw their paper mill close as their timber industry had its access to timber from the Apalachicoala National Forest severely reduced. The cutback on timber harvesting came in the name of protecting the red-cockaded woodpecker. In two years, their school system lost 175 students. Many of the 6700 people remaining in Liberty County still dependent on the forest for living, have annual incomes of just over $19,000. No wonder the most popular bumper sticker reads "Save a logger. Eat a woodpecker".

Item: Wolves reintroduced into Arizona by the US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1998, have migrated into blew Mexico where they have killed family pets and scores of ranchers' cattle. After a pack of wolves killed a bull two miles away from the Glenwood Elementary School, a lone male wolf began hanging around a bus stop in tiny Alma, New Mexico. Fearful for their children's safety towns people kept their children inside until the USFWS trapped the pack and removed the lone wolf away from the community. USFWS wants to introduce more wolves into New Mexico. USFWS also intends to introduce wolves to Maine, upstate New York. and possibly Vermont.

Item: Trinity County, Northern California, 1999 The Bureau of Land Management starts a series of controlled bums that quickly burn out of control, consuming thousands of acres and several houses over a period of weeks.

Item: May, 200(). National Park Service sets a fire at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico that quickly goes out of control, burns hundreds of homes in the town of Los Alamos, forces the evacuation of 30,000 people, and threatens a government nuclear testing lab. A Grand Canyon fire set by the UPS also rages out of control.

For over 900 years, generations of hard working rural Americans have provided food, oil, minerals, and forest products for the people of this country. Ranchers have proven that well-managed working grasslands are healthier than those that are set aside as preserves. Since 1920, forests have been growing faster than they have been harvested.

So why has our government declared war on rural Americans? The government cannot take care of the third of the country it already owns, now it wants even more land.

It is ironic that on the same day the NPS set the fire that destroyed Los Alamos, Congress passed the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, a bill that allows the government to spend three bill~on dollars a year on more land for parks and recreation programs. In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, hundreds~ of thousands of acres have already been bought by the Nature Conservancy and~ the Conservation Fund in a~nticip~ation of a massive government~ pre~serve.

As the goverr~ient buys more land, the tax base of commununities and counties shrinks. Local economies are stifled, and rural people are forced to move elsewhere to look for work. The only hope for many rural ~~Americans is that ~CAR~A (Senate Bill 25) will fail in the Senate. Yet, the pressure is on from the people who are standing in line waiting for money from the public treasury. Senator Judd Gregg supports S. 25, and Senator Bob Smith is wavering toward also supporting that bill, which could go before the Senate anytime. If this bill is to be defeated, they need to hear you tell them to vote no on Senate Bill 95, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act. If this bill passes, we will surely be one step closer to the collapse of democracy envisioned by Alexander Tyler.