#public comment

hey! we thought this might be coming and here it is. and it sucks! mass vaccination is one of our best tools at preventing the spread of COVID. public comment is open until 11:59 PM EDT on the 23rd of May.

you can leave a comment here:

Hey, US folks--a large portion of the last of our old growth forests is about to be at increased risk of clearcutting. Long story short, the current administration is proposing that existing protections for old-growth forests and at-risk wildlife should be lifted on BLM lands in the Pacific Northwest so that these forests can be more quickly clearcut. Public comments are open through March 23 at the above link (click on the blue Participate Now button to leave your comment.) You don't have to say anything elaborate or technical. Simply saying that you disagree with the proposed changes and support continued protection of old growth forests is enough.

Among the forests that would be razed to the ground, leaving nothing but raw scars on the land and piles of burnt slash, would be the Valley of the Giants Outstanding Natural Area.

There is literally no reason to open these places to logging. We already have immense areas of younger-succession timber land available for harvest. Moreover, any claim that this would revitalize our sawmills is a lie--American sawmills are not equipped to handle such huge trees, which would have to be shipped overseas.

In fact, that brings up a sticking point that not enough people know about. In the 1980s, logging companies began increasing the amount of overseas milling and processing, which led to the shutdown of many domestic mills. This, of course, resulted in the loss of American jobs in the timber industry.

Remember how the 1990s saw huge conflicts over protecting old growth forests and the northern spotted owl? The owl, as it turns out, was the scapegoat blamed for the loss of jobs. It made for the perfect distraction while timber execs continued to save money by outsourcing more and more work overseas. While we argued over jobs vs. owls, the execs were getting away with making things worse for everyone.

The current situation seems to be more a case of sheer greed masquerading as "America First" and supposed reliance on domestic resources. One of the things that makes our country so incredible is that we have so much public land, including those places that are set aside simply for the enjoyment of the people, whether for hiking, hunting, camping, etc. More importantly, we recognize through decades of solid science that old-growth forests and other intact ecosystems are not only ecological treasures, but sources of significant tourism revenue as well.

There are only 14 days provided to give public comment on the Trump administration’s attempts to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This would allow millions of acres of protected wilderness to be developed and turned into general Americaslop that benefits nobody except for the wealthy. Yay!

The Federal Trade Commission of the US is currently accepting public comment on gender affirming care for minors until September 26 2025.

Specifically, the language from their website states: "the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing. On July 9, 2025, the FTC hosted a workshop on unfair or deceptive trade practices in “gender-affirming care” for minors. The FTC heard testimony from doctors, medical ethicists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, and parents of detransitioners. That testimony indicated that practitioners of “gender-affirming care” may be actively deceiving consumers."

BASICALLY the FTC is trying to portray affirming healthcare as a scam which has been pushed on families, harming minors, who were not given enough information ahead of time of the consequences of the care. The framing of this is all very biased. But we can comment with positive stories of care to try and destroy this framework.

Advocates for Trans Equality created a really good webpage explaining this situation. They also created a template to help you write up a comment. If you scroll down to the bottom of their webpage, there's a link where you can submit comments to them, and they will resubmit your comments to the FTC anonymously. If you do not care about anonymity, you can also submit your comment to the FTC directly here. This document lists a bunch of questions the FTC is asking, and I've seen some folks online say your comment will be taken more seriously if you directly address these questions. However, heads up, these questions are pretty transphobic and if you never had a bad experience with a trans affirming healthcare your answer to basically all of them will just be "no that didn't happen" or "not applicable."

Here is the comment I wrote and submitted:

"In an unprecedented step to preserve and maintain the most carbon-rich elements of U.S. forests in an era of climate change, President Joe Biden’s administration last week proposed to end commercially driven logging of old-growth trees in National Forests.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, issued a Notice of Intent to amend the land management plans of all 128 National Forests to prioritize old-growth conservation and recognize the oldest trees’ unique role in carbon storage. 

It would be the first nationwide amendment to forest plans in the 118-year history of the Forest Service, where local rangers typically have the final word on how to balance forests’ role in watershed, wildlife and recreation with the agency’s mandate to maintain a “sustained yield” of timber.

“Old-growth forests are a vital part of our ecosystems and a special cultural resource,” Vilsack said in a statement accompanying the notice. “This clear direction will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”

But initial responses from both environmentalists and the logging industry suggest that the plan does not resolve the conflict between the Forest Service’s traditional role of administering the “products and services” of public lands—especially timber—and the challenges the agency now faces due to climate change. National Forests hold most of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees, and therefore, its greatest stores of forest carbon, but that resource is under growing pressure from wildfire, insects, disease and other impacts of warming.

Views could not be more polarized on how the National Forests should be managed in light of the growing risks.

National and local environmental advocates have been urging the Biden administration to adopt a new policy emphasizing preservation in National Forests, treating them as a strategic reserve of carbon. Although they praised the old-growth proposal as an “historic” step, they want to see protection extended to “mature” forests, those dominated by trees roughly 80 to 150 years old, which are a far larger portion of the National Forests. As old-growth trees are lost, which can happen rapidly due to megafires and other assaults, they argue that the Forest Service should be ensuring there are fully developed trees on the landscape to take their place...

The Biden administration’s new proposal seeks to take a middle ground, establishing protection for the oldest trees under its stewardship while allowing exceptions to reduce fuel hazards, protect public health and safety and other purposes. And the Forest Service is seeking public comment through Feb. 2 (Note: That's the official page for the proposed rule, but for some reason you can only submit comments through the forest service website - so do that here!) on the proposal as well as other steps needed to manage its lands to retain mature and old-growth forests over time, particularly in light of climate change.

If the Forest Service were to put in place nationwide protections for both mature and old-growth forests, it would close off most of the National Forests to logging. In an inventory concluded earlier this year in response to a Biden executive order, the Forest Service found that 24.7 million acres, or 17 percent, of its 144.3 million acres of forest are old-growth, while 68.1 million acres, or 47 percent, are mature."

-via Inside Climate News, December 20, 2023

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Note: This proposed rule is current up for public comment! If you're in the US, you can go here to file an official comment telling the Biden administration how much you support this proposal - and that you think it should be extended to mature forests!

I've submitted my comment and I encourage urge every other creator, consumer, or service provider to do the same. At time of posting there are about 215 comments and we need every voice we can get in this fight. If financial service providers are allowed to cut us out of the economy just because they think our work is too woke, too weird, too religious, too perverse, too gay, not sufficiently deferential to power/patriarchy/god/banks, then they're sabotaging our right to participate in our own society. They can erase whoever they want and empower their own friends and interests just by controlling what can be paid for. That's a significant threat.

"Reputation Risk"

- infringes on our right to expression, association, use of our own property, and financial liberty

- weaponizes access to financial services by favoring/disfavoring specific businesses at the provider's whim

- has already been abused by 9 major banks (see OCC report)

It's also important to point out that it's especially harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, independent creators/contractors. This language is helpful to draw support from people who may only see this kind of policy as bad for people who sell porn, engage in sex work, or other traditionally "distasteful" nonsense. Anyone without the means to appeal, litigate, or adapt to the provider's demands can effectively be ejected from the economy if they get flagged as a reputation risk by every major service provider.

My main point is that it allows banks or fucking paypal to impose prior restraint and that's fucked but I'm not above appealing to the Capitalist in them by framing this as market manipulation and a threat to free trade.

In summation:

Oppose Offshore Arctic Drilling.

We only have to the 23rd to act!

Petition HERE: