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Steven Rinella and Rob Bishop

And to be clear, I do know that Bishop has said and done things in the past to turn public land advocates against him - but I was mostly commenting on the content of the interview. As was said before, if someone came in to the Podcast with little knowledge of Bishop's history - then he probably came off pretty well.
 
Having listened to the entire thing I agree with those that have pointed out how unprepared Steve and Jani were. RB is a professional. They needed to be prepared to beat the pro at his own game. You don't go into that talk unless you know you have the upper hand. I know Steve had several facts ready, ones that he knew would be talked about. But he needed to be on a deeper and more in-depth level than RB. When Bishop said something misleading they needed to have the actual code quote to hold him to accountable. RB seems to love him some CODE, when it fits his motives.

Bishop came out the winner hands down. Causal listeners will think RB is the only logical voice of reason on natural resources. To me there's a line in the sand somewhere between a healthy discussion of opposing viewpoints, and debating whether the earth is flat. To me this felt more like that latter, and with the flat-earther winning at that!
 
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jmveverka said:
I'm not saying Rob Bishop was not guilty of politician speak and he is completely capable of saying what he thinks people want to hear--but lets be honest, as it was pointed out in the podcast, both sides of these issues are capable of inaccurate hyperbole. Bishop did make some sense on the LWCF - he never said he did not want to reauthorize it, but wants to reform it to ensure a balance of funds directed to state matching grants and other purposes. National monuments - he had the facts right about the history of the act and again wants to reform it, not repeal it - perhaps his proposal is too narrow (5,000 acres?), but the vagueness of the Antiquities act is something everyone can agree on. Same with reforms for ESA, does not have the answer, but knows it is not working as it should. On the "Access" definition being repurposed to mean "easy-access" ie the "elite hunter/wilderness" issue - I think Steve did a poor job of articulating what he was getting at and was unable to get Bishop to understand what his argument was.

State Transfer is the issue that Bishop was most concrete on and is one issue that you will not get him to budge on. He is a state transfer proponent - as are many in the GOP, considering it is in the party platform.

Overall Bishop did not say anything, other than the state transfer issue, that gives me heartburn. The interview was well done, with reasonable dialogue.

If only everyone on both sides of various issues kept an open mind and negotiated in good faith it would be easier to get things done in government. Certain issues are cold-dead-hands issues and they need to be, but when that applies to every issue we get what we have now--gridlock and widening partisan divides. How I long for the days of pork-barrell spending so we can actually get something accomplished.
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Bishop has not advanced any bill that would achieve these goals. His ability to say something nice, while instituting damaging provisions is legendary.

ESA reform has been an issue for years. Western Governors Association has done some good work over the last few years with a stakeholder group of conservation, ranching and energy people who have mostly recommended administrative changes. That's been ignored for legislation that would cripple the act, or simply ignore it all together.

Same for LWCF. There is an issue with the federal versus stateside split, but it's a manufactured issue since Bishop refuses to fully fund the act. If LWCF were fully funded, there wouldn't be the conflict between stateside and Federal.

Actions speak louder than words, and in Bishop's case, his actions do not match his rhetoric.
 
I think the real missed opportunity from Rinella's standpoint was on Bishop's argument about transfer to states "for public purpose." If the states own the land, close off all public access, and clear-cut everything but send the money to pay for a bridge, that's "for public purpose." Many states have significant restrictions on their state land that they still own for public purpose, and I wish Rinella had pushed back on that point.
 
I'm not anyone would have fared well in that room with RB. But thank you very much for the followup Joel and TRCP.
 
You did a great job Joel. Almost finished listening to the podcast now.

I don't think Steve did a bad job of running the podcast at all. He stated at the outset that the reasoning for the podcast was to give a voice to people that differ in opinion to him. He did a great job of that. You can tell that he tried very hard during it not to interrupt Bishop during his banter, which is tough to do, but was necessary to accomplish the goal of the podcast.
 
I’m not so sure Steve was unprepared. I think he took the approach of let RB hang himself. Steve’s no dummie and he knew before going into this that every word RB said would be heavily scrutinized.

Joel, thank your for the rebuttal. It help point out he truth and helped me understand the situation better.
 
I have no doubt that if Steve wanted to he could have confronted Bishop on many of those statements. I guess I was just hoping for more of a discussion as opposed to an hour long unchallenged campaign commercial.
 
Addicting said:
I’m not so sure Steve was unprepared. I think he took the approach of let RB hang himself. Steve’s no dummie and he knew before going into this that every word RB said would be heavily scrutinized.

Joel, thank your for the rebuttal. It help point out he truth and helped me understand the situation better.
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What good can come from this? I mean I don't see how letting the opposition snake oil salesman go on helps.
 
shoots-straight said:
What good can come from this? I mean I don't see how letting the opposition snake oil salesman go on helps.
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Helps to know more intimately what you're fighting, helps to spur on better discussion, creates more engagement in the issue. Circle jerking in a crowd of anti transfer folks does nothing.
 
What good can come from this? I mean I don't see how letting the opposition snake oil salesman go on helps.
Click to expand...
I agree. The dynamic with such widely broadcasted media is that the assertions, statements, misinformation or whatever is expressed by Bishop will gain traction with many listeners merely because they value the MeatEater Podcast, which gives any information inherent credibility. The only way RB would "hang himself" would have been with immediate feedback rebuttal to refute his assertions. I highly doubt many of the listeners have read Joel's TRCP rebuttal article. So I see it as a productive podcast for RB to air his points of view ... and sell a few more bottles of Utah snake oil.
 
... crowd of anti transfer folks ...
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That assumes the MeatEater Podcast audience is "anti transfer". I don't believe that is a valid assumption. The HuntTalk crowd is highly likely "anti transfer", but is the crowd of hunters who are MeatEater fans necessarily an "anti transfer" crowd or perhaps more hunters who really are not well informed regarding the PLT issue and are thus open to whatever they hear?
 
Straight Arrow said:
That assumes the MeatEater Podcast audience is "anti transfer". I don't believe that is a valid assumption. The HuntTalk crowd is highly likely "anti transfer", but is the crowd of hunters who are MeatEater fans necessarily an "anti transfer" crowd or perhaps more hunters who really are not well informed regarding the PLT issue and are thus open to whatever they hear?
Click to expand...

I would agree in that Huntalk is likely more anti transfer than Meateater. But perhaps it would be analogous to saying that 90% of Hunttalk listeners are anti transfer and 80% of meateater listeners are anti transfer. I don't think it's too far reaching to assume the meateater crowd is more than a simple majority against the transfer concept. They are similar audiences with different flavors. Rinella rants plenty about the public land issue and how he is staunchly against it. He rants so much, in fact, that he felt the need to better represent the larger debate occurring - further rolling out the opportunity to engage more broadly in the discussion, pick apart the other sides claims (after the fact), bring to light the reality of what is going on in some of these people heads.

I, for one - after hearing some of the things that came out of Bishops mouth and the way in which he uses his words - walked away from this podcast realizing I ought to be more scared of the Utah delegation than I originally was
 
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neffa3 said:
Having listened to the entire thing I agree with those that have pointed out how unprepared Steve and Jani were. RB is a professional. They needed to be prepared to beat the pro at his own game. You don't go into that talk unless you know you have the upper hand. I know Steve had several facts ready, ones that he knew would be talked about. But he needed to be on a deeper and more in-depth level than RB. When Bishop said something misleading they needed to have the actual code quote to hold him to accountable. RB seems to love him some CODE, when it fits his motives.

Bishop came out the winner hands down. Causal listeners will think RB is the only logical voice of reason on natural resources. To me there's a line in the sand somewhere between a healthy discussion of opposing viewpoints, and debating whether the earth is flat. To me this felt more like that latter, and with the flat-earther winning at that!
Click to expand...

What makes you think this was a debate with a winner and a looser. Rinnella expressed his desire to allow someone with a differing view point come on and explain themselves. He allowed just that. I would be very surprised if he didn't make some sort of rebuttal himself to some of Bishops erroneous ideas at some point but i really doubt Bishop would of agreed to an open debate on public lands on a obvious pro public land podcast. I personally thought it was really interesting to see the categorical differences between someone who shares my view of public lands and someone like Bishop who spouted off craziness like there's enough land to do everything we want with and my deck will eventually turn into wilderness if we leave it alone. It's valuable to see what we are up against in the public land battle and I think the podcast well illustrated the other side. Don't get me wrong I was angrily screaming BS at several things that bishop said and generally got the impression Rinnella bit his tounge but I don't think this means that there was nothing to gain. Bishop came out sounding even loonier than I had imagined far from "winner" status.
 
shoots-straight said:
What good can come from this? I mean I don't see how letting the opposition snake oil salesman go on helps.
Click to expand...

I would argue yes. I can imagine that there are tons of people that are big fans of Meateater as well as OYOA but are blindly on the far right side of every political argument. The reason for this interview, according to Steve, is that people have been complaining to the Meateater crew that he was one-sided on this issue. If you can educate people on the beliefs of those who they're actually supporting, it allows you to show them exactly where the problems are with the stance/argument of that person.

You can never win a debate if the person you're arguing against is arguing a vague belief instead of facts. The fact is that RB used vague terms and blew a bunch of smoke in order to sound like he was trying to do the exact opposite of what he's actually doing. Having it all laid out there for your everyday person to listen to as much as they want, and then doing a follow up podcast (hopefully), gives the Meateater crew an opportunity to show why their argument is better; instead of just throwing ideas at people and hoping that they stick.
 
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