Christy Goldfuss: President Obama Designates 3 New National Monuments, Protecting More than 1 Million Acres of Public Land
Today, we joined community members from California, Texas, and Nevada to celebrate the President’s announcement of three new national monuments. The new monuments include Berryessa Snow Mountain in California, Waco Mammoth in Texas, and Basin and Range in Nevada. Together, these striking places demonstrate the wide range of historic, cultural, and natural values that make America’s public lands so treasured. With these new designations, President Obama will have used the Antiquities Act to establish or expand 19 national monuments. Today’s addition of three national monuments will protect more than 1 million acres of public land, adding to the more than 260 million acres of public lands and waters President Obama has protected for future generations – more than any other President.
Protecting our lands is about more than just protecting our great outdoors. These designations provide a boost to the local economies of surrounding communities by attracting visitors and generating more revenue and jobs, building on an outdoor recreation industry that already generates $646 billion in consumer spending each year. The public lands President Obama designated today protect significant cultural and historical landmarks. Native Americans have inhabited the Berryessa Snow Mountain area for at least the last 11,000 years, leaving behind their cultural influences and artifacts, such as seasonal hunting camps and earth-covered round buildings.
President Barack Obama talks about the designation of three new national monuments; Berryessa Snow Mountain in California, Waco Mammoth in Texas, and the Basin and Range in Nevada, in the Oval Office of the White House. Behind him from left are Victor Knox, associate director of park planning, facilities and lands of the National Park Service; April Slayton, chief of public affairs and chief spokesperson of the National Park Service; Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell; U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell; Randy Moore, Forest Service; and Bureau of Land Management director Neil Kornze
We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, January 18, 2009
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Some of you have already had the pleasure of seeing a selection of my epic photos from the concert, but for anyone unlucky enough to have missed them…..
Okay, this isn’t actually one of mine:
But this is: 😎
Photographic proof I wasn’t right at the back, there were some – true, not many – behind me:
Denzil, looking me right in the eye, in a swoony kind of way:
Me and Bono:
Bruce serenading me:
A close-up of President Obama about to speak:
Another Pete Souza-esque photo of President Obama:
If you’re not careful, I’ll post more some time soon.
CBS: Legendary musician Bruce Springsteen has written a letter to his New Jersey hometown newspaper taking issue with the policies of New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie.
In his letter to the Asbury Park Press, Springsteen – identified only as a resident of the town of Colts Neck – takes issue with tax “cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions.”
While the New Jersey icon doesn’t mention Christie by name, he takes aim at the governor’s policies, writing that “the cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years.”
Christie … is a professed Spingsteen fan, as the Los Angeles Times notes, having claimed to have attended more than 120 Springsteen concerts in his lifetime and attempted (unsuccessfully) to get the man known as The Boss to perform at his inauguration.
The Obama Diary 
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