Sunday, August 14, 2011

remember tim dechristopher?

the university student who went to a BLM land aution and decided to bid on a bunch of properties to keep them out of the hands of oil and gas companies?

he's been sentenced to two years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine
. his entire sentencing statement is truly worth reading:

Mr Huber [the prosecutor] claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.” But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding. I know you’ve heard another case about some of the irregularities for which the auction was overturned. But that case did not involve the BLM’s blatant violation of Secretarial Order 3226, which was a law that went into effect in 2001 and required the BLM to weigh the impacts on climate change for all its major decisions, particularly resource development. A federal judge in Montana ruled last year that the BLM was in constant violation of this law throughout the Bush administration. In all the proceedings and debates about this auction, no apologist for the government or the BLM has ever even tried to claim that the BLM followed this law. In both the December 2008 auction and the creation of the Resource Management Plan on which this auction was based, the BLM did not even attempt to follow this law.

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