This blog is just a supplement (a bibliography) to watchpaul - to see what this is about, click on over to watchpaul, see what is wrong with Richard Salzman and his phony organizations... he's not asking for money on this one - YET...
In a message dated 1/26/2007 1:03:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, aeb@inreach.com writes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/pirates-north-of-the-klam_b_39274.html
Pirates North [sic] of the Klamath
Scotia, CA -- The announcement that Pacific Lumber (PL) would attempt to escape the regulatory authority of the State of California by heading for bankruptcy court http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/16502865.htm brought back bitter memories.
PL was paid enormous sums by the federal government for the protection of the Headwaters Forest but never accepted the fact that being a good environmental steward was part of the deal.
Indeed, the purchase almost fell apart at the last minute when PL and then-Governor Pete Wilson attempted to weaken this requirement. Fortunately, the Majority Leader of the California Senate, John Burton, held firm and, in the last hour of the legislative session, told PL that if it insisted on weakening environmental standards, it would have to kiss a half billion in federal and state tax dollars good-bye. PL blinked.
Now the outlaw is back, asking a federal bankruptcy court to release it from the requirement that it comply with California's water quality standards. The latest shenanigans comes as the company filed for, "Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it is 'facing a liquidity crisis arising from regulatory limitations on timber harvest.' In a release, the company said its annual timber harvest volumes and cash flows will be below the levels needed to meet its debt service obligations." The solution? Cut more timber, even at the expense of water quality and endangered salmon runs.
This is standard operating procedure for PL, Maxxam (the holding company that controls it), and Charles Hurwitz, (the Houston Financier who manipulates it). And it's personally painful for me, because I received a phone call from a distraught PL employee the afternoon when Hurwitz first made his hostile takeover bid for Pacific Lumber, which at the time was the model of sustainable forestry in the United States. The employee explained to me back in 1985 that Hurwitz was going to take the company over, plunge it into debt, and try to pay the debt off by liquidating the remaining old growth redwoods. She wanted to know if there was a way the company could fight Hurwitz off.
I thought there was. Pacific Lumber could take the water quality and conservation benefits of its sustainable timber practices, sign a permanent commitment to them, and receive in exchange a conservation easement worth hundreds of millions to its shareholders. This conservation easement would have been good for the company, but a poison pill for Hurwitz and his plan to clearcut the Redwoods. I approached sympathetic members of the Pacific Lumber Board. At first they were interested, but asked me not to go the press. Then, at the last minute, their lawyers told them that if they stood up to Hurwitz, he would sue them personally, and they could be bankrupted -- whereas if they went along with Hurtwitz, the lawyers said, he could and would legally indemnify them against the lawsuits which followed. Faced with personal ruin, the board gave in and allowed Hurwitz to take over. Only later did we learn that the lawyers, whether correct or not, had a conflict of interest http://mult
inationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1994/09/mm0994_07.html -- because they were also the lawyers for leveraged buy-out king Ivan Boesky, who was, secretly, Hurwitz's partner in the hostile takeover.
I've always wondered what would have happened if I had taken our idea to the press. But now even the modest protection we won in the Headwater Deal is at risk -- because federal bankruptcy judges have become the new court of last resort for crony capitalism of the sort that Hurwitz and his fellow pirates represent. Want out of an expensive underfunded pension plan? Follow the lead of the airlines who've gone to bankruptcy court to find a way to dodge their responsibilities. Want to raise electricity rates for your customers beyond the tolerable level? Just transfer your assets to a holding company, declare bankruptcy and leave the rate-payers with the liabilities, which is what happened in California's electricity crisis. Find it awkward to clean up your toxic waste? Use the same ploy: Declare bankruptcy and walk away from your obligations to communities as ASARCO is trying to do http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200605/goingforbroke/page1.asp .
And now the bankruptcy judges are being asked to rule that Pacific Lumber can cut trees because it needs to pay off its junk bond debt. Yes, this stands the concept of the rule of law on its head -- but we live in a topsy-turvy world. I'm not sure they can't get away with it -- unless Congress fixes federal bankruptcy law fast, as Senator Maria Cantwell proposed last year http://www.sierraclub.org/carlpope/2006/04/morally-bankrupt-bankruptcy-law.asp .
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