Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

JI ~*********~*******.....*****...**************~*~ II Opinion i Is Executive Order 11644 l"l ho lid ays and emergencies as they were firs t in tended. " We can do it. Will you help? Lynn and Staci Heusinkveld r- :~ unconstitutional? c<') l-< V ..:c a Let's pull the rug out from under v ..... 0.v cr.J the environmental extremists. E xecu tive . Order 11644 is the source of, the nonsensical sixbureaucratic red tape slanted against the regulations within months limiting use of motorcycles on public lands. Issued on February 8, 1972 .. 32 by Presiden t Nixon, E.O. 11644 provided the BLM, Forestry Departmen t, Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies which manage the public lands specific di rections and unquestioned authority to draft the detailed regul at ion s which now control and hamstring us. E.O. 11644 also provides what sustance there is to the Sierra Club's claims that the California de ser t and other public lands have been closed to motorcyclists and are being opened by the BLM 's irresponsible and illegal actions in designating certain areas "open", others " designa ted roads and trails", etc. and no t sim ply closing all public lands to ORV use until appropriate st udies and protective measures can be completed. Executive Order II644 may have little more legitimacy than the Nixon administration's m ore obvious abuses of Presidential power. However, since the former administration has stepped down, we have been so p reoccupied with the uncovering of th e more obvious and crimina l abuses of executive p ower, the less patently anti-democratic adtivities have, until now, n ot rec eive d the public scrutiny an d rejecti on th ey deserve. Take a look at virtually any federal law concerning the admi nistration of public lan ds an d y ou11 fin d a law which is eve n -handed or mildly supportive of broad recreati onal use of p ublic lands. The National Environ mental Policy Act ce rtainly does no t m andate banishment of o ur dirt bikes to p riva tely owned cy cle p ar ts or retiremen t to our garages (any more than it p ermits us to confine those p e s k y Sierra Clu bbe rs to a privately owned hiking p ark) : "The C o ngr e ss . . . decl ares that it is the continui ng po li cy of the Federal Governmen t [to I . .. attain the widest range of beneficial uses of th e envir onment .. . [and to] main tain w he rever po ssib le, an environment which su pports diversity an d variety o f in divi dual choice ." With cha r a c t e r i stic heavy-han de dness, Richard Nixon, by Exe cutive O rde r I I 644, ch anged governmental policy from its p revious even-hande dness to o ne qui te clearly antagonistic to the use o f m o to rcy cles on th e public lan ds: " An estimate d 5 mi llion off-road vehicles . •. are in use in the United State s t oday, an d their populari ty contin ues to increase rap idl y. The widespread use of suc h vehicles on the public lands - oft en for legitimate purposes but also in fre quent conflict with wise land and r e s ou r c e management practices, environmental values and other types of recreational activity has dem onstrated the need for a unified Federal p olicy toward the use of such vehicles on the public lan ds. " (And since Congress hasn't given m e a law I can use , 111 enact one myself.) Fo llowing this preamb le t he Presiden t proceeded to direct each agency head to develop and _issue the use of off-road vehicles to specific areas and trails, establish operating conditions and arrange for enforcement. As agencies do, the federal agencies responded with the prodigious body of regulations which seem to grow in number and authority ea ch day. _The Order and regulations implement a subtle change in governmental attitude towards the American public. An attitude typified by Mr. Nixon's grand explanation of some of his more con troversial actions - "I am the Presiden to" More ominous is the changing vocabulary which exemplifies this attitude change - "puhlic lan ds " are now "National Resource Lands" (Motorcyclists keep out!) and our former public servants are now Ecologists, Rangers and Scien tists who are " experts " a whole lot smarter than we.are, _ joe L. Pecore, assistant counsel to the Senate judiciary Committee 's Subcommittee on Separation of Powers has this to say about E.O. 11644: "[NEPAl was designed to protect public park land, but it didn't incl ude any authority for police powers. Nevertheless, President Nixon, citing that bill as his authority , issued an Executive Order restricting snowmobiles and o t h e r off-the-road vehicles on public land - and that order incl uded police penal ties for violators ', President Nixon h ad no authority to issu e.. Executive Or der 11644. Ou r Constitution provides : "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which sh all consist of a Senate an d a House of Rep re sen tatives. " Article I No. I. Simple isn't it? The Constitution fu rther prohibits the appropriation of any money to finance gov ernmen t activi ties which are not authorized by law. In 1973, Representative john D. Dingle (D. Mich .) startled his colleagues in the House by successfully challenging th e e nt ire appropriation for the Vice-President's 40-me mber staff on th e grounds that it was never authorized by law , only by an Executive Or der issu ed years ago. Coun tIess m illions are being spen t by our federal agencies to issue and en fo rce the regulations which are driving us out of the public lands. A vocal m in o ri ty, operating under the banner o f ecology and environ men tal protection, relies u p on the dubious au thority of E.O. 11644 to de mand and compel closure of even more- public lands. If E.O. 11644 is unconstitutional, as we believe, this conduct is not only unwarranted but illegal. Our friends , Hildamae Voght of the California Out d o o r Recre ation League and Ray Moon of Outdoor Nation hope to get E. O. I 1644 repealed: "We pl an to flood the White House with m essages ab o ut it on November 6th. May not do any good but can't do any harm. If we co uld ge t so me Congressm en steamed up about the execu tive orders we migh t get some legislation going to restrict the m to The Motorcycle Safety Foundation formally opened its new two acre, $100,000, Research and Education Facility September 9, 1975. Officiat ing at the ceremonies were (L. to R.I Lester White, Chairman of the MSF Board of Trustees; Fred Vetter, Jr., Assoc iate Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Robert Aaronson, Maryland Avi.ation Administrator; and Dr. Charles Hartman, MSF President, One of only a few in the world, the MSF Research and Education Facility is the first in the nation constructed specifically for motorcycle safety instruction, demonstration, and research. Its address, 6755 Elkridge Landing Rd., Linthicum, MD 21090. No deals in the desert read the colu mns by Don Murch ie with mixed sentiments . I was glad to see an environmentalist, a Sierra Clubber, out among us trying to find out who we are and what we are. I was saddened, however, by his positive conviction that what he'd seen was irreparable damage to the desert. He saw the area with the un biased eyes of a man with his m in d already made up. He saw the damage being done, bu t since the area was already pretty well beat to death it di dn 't matter so m uch . Well, the reason these areas are beat to death is because environmentalists like him with th eir blinder-vision have very flatly refused to allow us to spread and rotate o ur eve nts as we have in the past. Perhaps it doesn 't m atter to the Sierra Clu b ber that the lan d was already beat to death, but it certainly m a tt e r s to t he motorcyclist ! His state men t that m o t orcy cli sts are oblivi ous to damage bei ng do ne t o t he desert is totally wr o n g. We are not o nly aware of it but are very concerned abo ut i t. We are co ncerned not o nly about damage to the desert bu t also about damage to the riders th emselves ; damage do ne by overused, o verridden _ land being beat to death, as he so aptly pu t it , because the environ mentalists have screamed that we should be cut down and confined to small dangero us areas th at kill moto rcy clists. All th is has been sai d be fore , but has fallen on deaf ears. I w ould ra th er, I think, criticize Cycle News for once again having fallen in to the trap that h as been laid and set by the enviro n mentalists. Eve ry one of us has fallen into it a time or tw o. The environmentalists are not run democratically . Th ey are a well-oiled, we ll-financed pro paganda mach in e which cre ates m an y sacrificial lambs su ch as Mr . Murchie. And the deser t is a great fun draiser, The best brains in the ORV lan d use fie ld h a ve b e e n tied up by the environmentali sts ' beautiful t ac tic of sitting do wn an d nego t ia tin g for da ys, weeks and m on th s, then at the en d of th e n ego ti ati o ns coming u p with, "We ll, th e p er so n who m ad e those agree ments had no autho rity to do so . Our position is n ow and has always been where it o riginally was. " If y ou doubt th is, as k Ron Sloan, Mike Henshaw , Bob Ham m, Ray Moon, Dick Moon , Ru ss Sanford, Bob Tarttar, All of us have bee n tied up a t one time or another, from the original ORVAC committees to p ublic land use hearin gs to testifying before co m mittees of the Congress of the United States. Environmentalists pretending that they are ready to be reasonable and negotiate are only using a delaying tac tic, tying up our best brains so we can't actively work against them. Don't let Cycle News fall in to the same traps. You can n ot deal with the Sierra Club! Bob Hayes

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