Get busy, Minnick

Congressman Minnick, I am your boss. I hired you to a well-paying, prestigious job. I would appreciate it if you did what you were hired to do. Your nice letter listed a multiple choice of things to work on – not one of which was debt reduction or job creation.

You touted streamlining the hiring of contractors in our forests. If I’m not mistaken, the U.S. Forest Service has announced it plans to use its share of the stimulus money to close 500 miles of roads and repair 50. How is that creating long-term employment?

There were more than two dozen large sawmills within 100 miles of my home 25 years ago. Now there are two, maybe three, and we are buying plywood from China. Can you name one new sawmill in the planning – just one? A leading nation can’t survive without heavy industry. It doesn’t cost a nickel to create timber jobs; just make the USFS get back to what they were designed for: resource management and not a working arm of the Park Service.

Get busy and quit having tea with Nancy Pelosi or I will fire you.

Herb Wiens

Sandpoint