I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatori… - Jimmy Carter

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I quickly learned that the congressional delegation from Alaska was deeply committed to the oil industry and other commercial interests, and senatorial courtesy prevented other members from disputing with Senators Ted Stevens (Republican) and Mike Gravel (Democrat) over a matter involving their home state. Former Idaho governor Cecil Andrus, my secretary of interior, and I began to study the history of the controversy and maps of the disputed areas, and I flew over some of them a few times. Environmental groups and most indigenous natives were my allies, but professional hunters, loggers, fishers, and the Chambers of Commerce were aligned with the oil companies. All the odds were against us until Cecil discovered an ancient law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted a president to set aside an area for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” such as Indian burial grounds, artifacts, or perhaps an ancient church building or the site of a famous battle. We decided to use this authority to set aside for preservation large areas of Alaska as national monuments, and eventually we had included more than 56 million acres (larger than the state of Minnesota). This gave me the bargaining chip I needed, and I was able to prevail in the subsequent debates. My efforts were extremely unpopular in Alaska, and I had to have extra security on my visits. I remember that there was a state fair where people threw baseballs at two targets to plunge a clown into a tank of water. My face was on one target and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s on the other, and few people threw at the Ayatollah’s.

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About Jimmy Carter

James Earl Carter, Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 1982 he established the Carter Center, as a base for promoting human rights, democracy, finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, and advancing economic and social development, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He was a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and has been noted for his criticism of Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: James Earl Carter Jr.
Alternative Names: James E. Carter James Carter James Earl Carter 39th President of the United States James E. Carter Jr. James Earl Carter, Jr. James E. Carter, Jr.
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Additional quotes by Jimmy Carter

You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.

One of the promises that I made to the farmers of this State and others during my campaign was there would be no more grain embargoes, and you can depend on that. There won't be as long as I'm in the White House. We're trying to establish, for instance, a noncommercial insurance program to make sure that farm product exporters are protected from losses that they can't anticipate. We're trying to expand Public Law 480 to increase the export of our farm products, food and fiber and feed, to nations that are destitute and hungry. We're trying to cut down artificial trade barriers in the multinational trade negotiations now going on in Europe. We're opening agricultural trade offices in places around the world where they haven't existed before. We're trying to make it possible for farmer-owned cooperatives to negotiate directly in the sale of feed grains and food grains. We're making sure that we bring together the different departments of our Federal Government in the common effort to sell agricultural products--the Labor Department, our Special Trade Representative, the Commerce Department, the State Department, as well as the Department of Agriculture. We're trying to establish a comprehensive world food policy to match the tremendous production that we have with the tremendous need among the hungry people of the world. And we're trying to explore new markets, not only in Western Europe and Japan but in Eastern Europe and other countries as well. So, in the export of food we're trying to increase the quality of service that the great farm areas of our Nation provide for the rest of the world. We've got a long way to go. We have to work out the problem with food reserves, and my promise to the farmers of this area was that when we did have high-yielding crops--and this is the greatest crop we have ever had in corn; it's the greatest crop we've ever had in soybeans that we would have reserves that would be not under the control of the Government, but supported and controlled by farmers so there can be no dumping on the market, artificially, to lower prices. And I promised you that we'd do the best I could to get the Government out of interference in the production, storage, and marketing of crops. These kinds of challenges are constantly on my mind. We have a long way to go in soil and water conservation efforts, and we've got a long way to go in providing a comprehensive disaster assistance program.

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