This is almost as funny as the incident of the guy throwing his shoes at Bush!
For a little background, here’s Robert Redford’s two blogs on the auction:
Stand Up Against Bush’s Giveaway of America’s Redrock Wilderness
You can’t put a price on silence or solitude. You can’t quantify the beauty of wilderness. And yet that’s not going to stop the Bush administration from trying to sell off what should be the birthright of future generations.
In three days, this Friday, 110,000 acres of majestic Utah wild lands go on the auction block, to be sold to the highest bidders in the oil and gas industry. It’s a last-ditch effort by a corrupt administration to further enrich its friends in the dirty fuels business. If they succeed, they’ll leave a wasteland behind them.
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and
Stopping Bush’s Destruction of Our Environment
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Utah’s Red Rock country is one of America’s few remaining wilderness treasures. It’s our land, it’s our legacy, but will it still be here for our children and grandchildren?
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This is what happened at the auction…
Tim DeChristopher Throws Utah Oil And Gas Drilling Leases Auction Into Chaos
SALT LAKE CITY — An environmental activist tainted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases Friday by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars without any intention of paying for them, a federal official said.
The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million plus fees.
“He’s tainted the entire auction,” said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.
Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much.
Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old University of Utah economics student, said his plan was to disrupt the auction and he feels he accomplished his goal.
DeChristopher won the bidding on 13 parcels, auction records show, and drove up the price of several other pieces of land.
“I thought I could be effective by making bids, driving up prices for others and winning some bids myself,” the Salt Lake City man said.
Some bidders said they were forced to bid thousands of dollars more for their parcels, while others fumed that they lost their bids.
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DeChristopher snapped up 22,500 acres of land around Arches and Canyonlands parks but said he could afford to pay for only a few of those acres. He owes $1.7 million on all of his leases.
The sale of the leases has drawn complaints from environmental groups and scathing criticism from actor Robert Redford.
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Civil disobedience rules!
Well done. The Feds say he may be charged with something.
Yep, and may his wrist be slapped quite lightly.
The bidding got so out of control, that some bids were even approaching the actual market value of the leases. One outraged bidder was overheard complaining, “What the hell’s the point of cronyism if I end up paying market value for government land?”
Tripler
December 22, 2008, 2:24am
6
I hope he pays his bail/court fees in rolls of pennies!
Tripler
Maybe he could set up a payment schedule. Say a dollar a week for the next 32,692 years - with a promise not to start drilling until he’s finished paying.
Funny again!
I wonder if Redford and his buds will pony up to pay his leases, and lawyers/fees. I hope so. If he can pay then that nullifies his “tainting” the auction, right?
