Free Republic

Attending two public political events is now a capital offense? That's a bit much.

I could see not wanting the guy near my candidate, but that's over the line until he's done something threatening.

When you look at the odds, you have to consider the downside. The last time the lake flooded, 2000 people died. I would imagine that the number would be much higher today, and the property damage would be immense.

Would you play Russian roulette if someone offered you $50,000 if you survived?

I just checked the Treasury website (http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm). We're spending $352 billion servicing our debt this year. That's a lot of government cheese.

I'm only getting in the lower 40's.

Then again, I did have a 6 ft. patio table and 6 chairs in there with me for part of the tank. And my fuel was grown and processed locally, so it's not too bad.

When I first heard of this this morning, it was announced as a new "major combat operation". That took me back well over a year, that's for sure.

I've been using biodiesel in various quantities (up to 100%) since I bought my Jetta Wagon last January. After 25k miles, I've averaged over 2/3 biodiesel. This gives me an effective 120MPG+ of petroleum (40MPG at 33% petro). At the moment, it's costing me about a penny a mile extra to use locally grown and processed fuel. That's a price I'm more than willing to pay for a cleaner, domestic and renewable source of fuel.

What strikes me the most about this is that the alleged violations are bits of code that have found their way into Linux. In other words, that very code is sitting on the hard drives of however many millions of machines which have downloaded a Linux kernel or have a copy of the source on CD. So why not make the violations public?

You are requesting something that will in fact never be provable. We don't retry cases of executed felons, and so will never have your stated level of proof.

You don't have to go farther than http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/882746/posts to find situations where the court system failed to protect defendants from false conviction, though. Obviously there is a greater level of review in capital cases, but I don't have enough faith in the infallibilty of man to assume the system has never made a mistake.

I took a look at the natural process website, and I do find it interesting. The general conception is actually not new to me, and I've been supportive of trying to inject externalities into the market for a long time (no books written, though ;).

I get disenchanted, however, by the fight many industries seem to put up against informing the consumer. As an example, manufactures of non genetically modified foods (let's not bother digging into that just now) have been prevented from labeling their products as such. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, consumers cannot take information into account when they don't have access to it. This distorts the market and prevents it from working efficiently. It is one thing to not require labels, it's quite another to prevent them from being included. HR3005 (the fast-track trade authority bill) included a section to 'eliminate practices that unfairly decrease United States market access opportunities...particularly with respect to import-sensitive products, including- ... (II) unjustified trade restrictions or commercial requirements, such as labeling, that affect new technologies, including biotechnology...'

Barring an omnipotent market and omnipotent consumers, I tend to take a conservative view. If we don't know, err on the side of leaving things as they are. This doesn't go the the point of stopping everything, by any means. It's just a bias to prefer 'natural' conditions over manufactured landscapes in the balancing process. Yes, this distorts the market, but I feel that if applied with the right amount of force (i.e. economic incentive) it can counteract the partial knowledge of the market and regulators and consumers. We can always cut a particular grove tomorrow if we are overly conservative; we can't get it back if we are overly aggressive.

I think I'll have to read the entire book to see how Carry_Okie handles this issue, though.

Now that some of the serious discussion (that I predicted was coming) has taken place...was it what you thought it would be? ; )

Would you believe me if I said yes? ;) I just hate for the discussion to not get started.

Earth first!...we'll map the other planets later.

That's *much* more like it :)

Admittedly my example was a bit glib. The replanting (and cutting) should replicate natural processes as much as possible. Logpole pines like clearcuts and so if you are managing them, it's reasonable to leave some clusters of seed trees but otherwise clear a decent sized area and burn the slash.

But the monoclonal plantings that are often used (maybe that's changed in the past decade) make for a forest that is much more susceptible to disease. Timber companies also have had a tendancy to replace a number of original species with a single, quicker growing one. Again, this leads to a more fragile forest.

Funny thing, them logging and harvesting folks that "ran off with the goods", last year they
planted some 400 NEW trees for every man, woman and child in the country. And believe me, last year
wasn't the beginning.


A couple of summers ago we had to take down the ~100 year old elm from in front of our house. We planted a sugar maple and a pear tree that were already a couple years old.

Strangely enough, we don't quite get the same shade from our 2 new trees as we got from the old one. At least we aren't housing as many squirrels, either.

Time to take your head out where you normally keep it and look at what 20 years of wacko forest
policy has brought.Instead of sense able forestry, the woods are closed, thousands of jobs are
lost, small, wonderful towns are dead, and the very forests you want to save, are destroyed by
wildfire. The tax base is devistated, schools are cut and people are leaving the NW. All
because of junk science


Nice to meet you too.

I agree with you that forest communities have suffered and disappeared. We probably disagree to a certain extent on why that's happened, but the reality we face today isn't what it was in the 70's and 80's. The question remains as to what to do about it.

I tend to agree with r9etb, with regard to pushing the time horizon for decision making to the truely long term. It's a bit cliched, but true; a forest isn't just a collection of trees. It takes decades and centuries to have a rich forest.

I also see a need for balancing issues outside of timber use. You speak derisively about fish in your tag line (It`s just for the fish and then the children), but if you made your living fishing salmon, or taking boat charters out you'd probably take a different view. It's not a matter of putting loggers and fishermen in a cage and letting them fight it out to see who's town gets to survive, but it definitely shouldn't be a matter of ignoring one over the other.

I obviously don't have the answer, but I think the USFS should have the roll of making a long-term plan taking into account it's mandated stake holders. It would then contract out specific portions of that plan to private industry and have strict guidelines on measuring the performance of the contractors. It would be great to have trained foresters wandering the woods marking individual trees for harvest, but I don't think the FS has the manpower to do this. I instead see the FS specifying stream buffers and requirements for seed trees, limits on erosion, specifications for roads, etc and then letting the potential contractors decide how best to get the cut while meeting those guidelines.

My gut feeling is that honest, local loggers who can do more of the manufacturing themselves will be able to extract the most value out of the forest and therefore should be able to win contract bidding. But maybe my faith in family businesses is mislayed.

Please come to our town and support our local businesses...buy a .... umm er... uhh.... rent .
. some videos!

Actually, I've done my part by supporting the towing business in Honeydew, CA. A friend rolled his truck on one of the dirt roads there so we supported the local economy. We also bought a bit of food and munchies there, too. That must have kept the town going for at least another 14 minutes.

"It is debatable whether Muir would issue such superlatives now. Heavily logged in the 1980s,
portions of the Sierra have grown thick with spindly trees and highly flammable brush. Key species,
such as the California spotted owl, are declining, according to some scientists. Meadows have been
degraded by grazing, recreational use and invasive plants."

It looks like we've already cut the big trees. We're stuck now trying to recover from the cut and run tactics of the past. Only by looking for a long-term, sustainable harvesting system which also maximizes the other forest benefits (recreation, wildlife habitat, clean water, soil retention, etc) are we going to get maximum value out of the forest. Shaving it off at ground level just isn't going to do it.

Many times people will claim that the loss of timber jobs is a result of environmental regulations and if we just didn't have any of those pesky things we'd be back in the boom days. That's a fallacy, however. The previous rapacious cutting of timber has greatly reduced the amount of large trees available. Mechanization has also drastically reduced the number of jobs provided by harvesting a given amount of forest.

Forest communities, like many others, really do need to broaden their economic base. The timber companies have already run off with the goods. Now we all need to figure out how to make a living with what's left, and chopping down the 'spindly trees and highly flammable brush' isn't really a long term solution.

Actually, it works rather differently.

If a stock in your 401k gives a dividend, that money goes in its entirety to the 401k account. It can be fully reinvested. Only when you want to withdraw money from the account will you face any taxes, at whatever rate all gains in that 401k account are taxed.

The problem with tax-free dividends in 401k accounts as proposed is that it will turn into an accounting nightmare. Maybe there is some other way around it, but as I see it you would have to keep a record of what dividends were issued during the course of your 401k's history. This total would then be free from tax as you withdraw from the account. But what if there are additional gains or losses from this tax-free money? Is it differently treated, thus causing a cascade of paperwork?

Personally, I'd rather see a reduction in payroll taxes. People who are working for a living could use a break. Everyone who works would get a tax reduction. If we were suffering from a lack of industrial capacity, I might reconsider. But right now, factories are not running at full tilt, so building more really won't help the economy. Increased consumer wealth will.