This did effect me recently. My wife and I spent a month looking for a new vehicle a short time ago. We narrowed it down to a new Ford Taurus. We liked the car, and our 1995 Taurus has been nothing but good to us.
Then I started reading all this business with Ford donating to tree huggers and what not. I take this stuff seriously, and this does not sit well with me. Well, guess what, we have a new Dodge sitting outside now instead of a Ford. I am sure I am not the only one that has abandoned Ford because of this.

 

I can understand conservation, without trees none of us would be breathing, come on it's only common sence that we need to maintain our nations forests. I'm thrilled to see ford a company with billions of dollars funding conservation groups to build back our forests and protect some of our more historical landmarks from incompident loggers.

ATVer's should be entitled to the trails that have been in use for years, but there has to some levway.

2000 SCRAMBLER 400 2X4

SCRAMDADDY400

 

Scramdaddy, I agree with you the forests do need to be protected, but not taken away or put off limits to "certain groups". The trails we do have to ride on, should not be taken away, but preserved so that we can continue to enjoy them without harrassment from the eco-*****.

 

as it goes with body styles, the other motor companies will probably do the same thing in time. to me i don't care what ford does as long as they continue to make trucks the way they do. chevy and dodge make good trucks but being 6'6" makes it hard to find a truck that i can fit in comfortably. i have driven the new dodge and chevy trucks and neither of them fit as well as my super duty. as far as riding on public lands go, i don't need to because i have over 1000 acres available to ride on and it is all privately owned.

texascat

 

Just a few points here....

I bought a '01 Ranger 4x4 Ext. Cab back at Christmas and have been really happy w/ it. Will I ever buy another one? No... not unless every other manufacturer does something equally stupid.

I agree we need to conserve some land with no access to OHV's, but more importantly we need to preserve land for OHV's that are managed and properly maintained. Otherwise OHV owners are just going to ride everywhere and destroy the land they aren't allowed on. You can only take so much away from people before it bites you in the ****.

As far as Ford's donation being legit... there is no such thing. True they may be able to show a paper trail that proves "their" donation wasn't used for closing parks and what-not to OHV's but that just frees up other money TO be used to closing them. If you give the dang right-hand tree hugging fanatics money they will do everything possible to make sure that OHV's are completely outlawed on ALL public land. Not to mention they will start paying bottom dollar prices to people living next to parks are taking over their land.

No stand at all is just like writing checks to the tree huggers.

 

What the 'greens' don't want you to know is there are more acres of trees in the US right now (most protected from everything but the squirrels and fire) than there were when the Pilgrims landed.
Also, why do the 'greens' always seem to think the government will take better care of things than anyone else? Their goal is to have all the undeveloped land off limits to everything (except maybe hikers). Well, who is gonna pay to take care of it all? The Clinton administration added millions of acres to the national forests, and 'protected' them by not allowing access to most of it, built very few roads, and even tore out some. Anyone remember the forest fires? You know, the ones no one could fight because there were no trails. I would think a fire does more damage than an ATV, but then again, I am not an enviro-nut. As for Ford's 'donation' they did so to quiet the greenies screaming about their poor mileage on their SUVs, from what I understand.

 

Here's the way this works...
Large polluting company {Firestone, Ford, etc. etc.} knows it needs to cut down on pollutants but they don't want to re-fit their factories or change their production proceeses or redesign their products so they think of ways to get around it.
To get the most bang for the buck they will want to achieve the minimum standards and if possible get some positive public relations out of it at the same time.
HMMMMMMMM how can they do that?...
Well everyone knows that trees convert polluted air into cleaner air so lets buy up some trees and donate that to the local municipality. By doing this they accomplish 2 things.
1- They get to make a FREE commercial for themselves because the papers and other media will be happy to say how great the big company is for buying the trees that were already there.
2- They will give the ignorant yuppies {read money making/spending, environmentally concerned individuals} that buy their products a warm and fuzzy feeling like the big company actually did something.

The big company can't lose because they have stipulated that no motor vehicle traffic be allowed there {can't have gas engines polluting their "clean air factory"} and in time the municipality can cut the trees down and put up a strip mall, a new high school for the yuppies kids, another factory, or a high end subdivision. So after it's all said and done, the big company actually saved money. No battles to fight here! No changes to make. Happiness all around.

I'll give you an example...
a few years ago there was a campaign by an oil company {forgot which one} to buy old cars from people since they probably didn't run that well anyway and a person could get 100 bucks or something for it.
You've got to wonder why an oil company would actually pay to take your old gas guzzler off of the road.
Answer...They were being forced to formulate cleaner fuels. The company told the government that since the goal was to cut down on over-all pollution if they could get a certain percentage of the old gas guzzlers off the road the same would be accomplished.
Who knows if they ever did reach their supposed goal.
One thing's for sure, they got plenty of warm and fuzzy from the media and the ignorant yuppies who are driving Escalades and Navigators are burning just as much gas as the guzzlers did. Yes the same old polluting gas.
The average person is being "pimped" by just about every company we deal with and it all shakes down to who is filling who's pockets with green.
That's the green they're worried about. It seems like there is some kind of connection with George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and his face being on the dollar. Makes you wonder.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

 

Ill be sticking with GM. I dont like GM because my parents do, they like it because I do. Whenever they are buying a new car, they ask my opinion first.

 

GO FORD FOR MAKING THE BEST VEHICLESbut not on the OHV thing.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

 

about the fire things. The Clinton Administration did an AWFUL JOB handling that. I'm going to say this. Last year listening to G. Gordon Liddy, he said that the fires can only stop when the winter comes with the snow. He was right. The Clinton administration hurled millions of dollars and lots of man power and use to fight a fire that couldn't be stopped because first the Clinton administration didn't stop at soon until it became too big to stop.

Yet, the media never covered this mistake. The media slyly just reported the fire and the fighting. But never once did I hear on a non-conservative show on the radio or television the information about Clinton's mishandling of such a devastating and costly fire.



AND LET'S NEVER FORGET THAT THE GOVERNMENT MANAGES MONEY IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY (let's not forget what I learned in Econ 101.

"that which governs least, governs best"