The Hayseeds blog, No. 114 for the week starting May 15, 2005.
May 1, 2005
Hayseeds No. 113
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Hayseeds No. 114
May 22, 2005
Hayseeds No. 114
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Much of what we are hearing is scare tatics by environmentalists who believe that state would poorly manage these forests. Let's take a deeper look at the reality of state control over forests.
New York already manages all of it's state forests, and most environmentalists are happy with it's choices. Most of NY's reforested and multiple use land is logged over a span of 30 years, and sold for profit. The state brings in roughly $6 million in revenue from timber sales on state land each year. In Allegany State Park, there are wells pumping out natural gas and oil.
Similiarly, The DEC doesn't follow a single master plan for the whole state, instead creating unit master plans for every major forested area. It gets local participation, and sets up regulations based on what the people want consistant with the laws, regulations, and state consitution. Also, states that have tougher or equalivent laws on air pollution or water pollution are allowed to enforce their own laws with little interference with the EPA. For the most part, these initatives have been sucessful and better tailored for the regions that they apply to.
There is also an economic argument to be made: both timber and oil are in need, and if we can get it in a sustainable way then that would be a good thing. Most timber and oil jobs are good ones. You can get both things without despoiling the land, if all due care is used in their extraction. A lot of federal land out west is similiar to the Multiple Use Areas / Reforested Areas in NYS, namely it is or should be working land that can be harvested / drilled with minimal long term effect with planning.
When you allow locals to participate in the process, you get people who know the land rather then bureaucrats in DC. Maybe it will lead to more drilling or logging, but the locations and plans will be more consistant with the realities of the area.
Sounds like fun. We've for years allowed people to recieve farm subsidies for land they've leased out, and recently allow people to transfer doe permits from hunter to another hunter. Now some people down in Texas are taking it one step farther—setting up a gun with an motorized trigger and a camera on top—so you can hunt online.
Sportsman, the NRA, and Animal Rights people don't like it. It's not surpising, as hunting on the internet is distinctively different from going out in the November woods with a gun or a bow, and using some skills to bag a deer, turkey, or bird. It's a lot warmer inside for one, and clicking is a lot nicer then the recoil of a black powder gun. We don't allow people to shoot deer from the cab of their pickup NOR do we allow people to chase after deer on an ATV and shoot at it.
On the other hand, we do allow canned shoots and hunting preserves of wild animals in lots of more then 10 acres in NYS. In someways, that is not unlike remote shooting except you their in this big fenced in lots. Some wanted to ban this pratice, but the farm bureau in cohoerts with Pataki killed it. If people want to spend their money and time doing this, and it's not doing any substantive damage to the environment or our civil liberties, then let them do it.
Sidebar: I guess I'm not as bothered by this as some of our society's other behavior. We go to the supermarket and buy meat from some massive factory farm in the midwest, wrapped in styrofoam. We toss it and the trash man takes it to a dump far, far, away. There is no accountablity in such a system, and in many ways is as tacky as internet hunting.
It's Tuesday so we all except the Capitol to be swarming with lobbyists for every imaginable cause from farmers to child molesters. Gotta love it.
For those who use high-preformance cars that need ultra-high octane gas (over 100 octane) for their high compression engines of the late '60s, the TU looks at their struggles with high prices ($5.50-6.50/gal) to lack of ability. Most of those fuels use nasty things like lead, so they are increasingly hard to get anywhere except race tracks.
Also, it should be noted that you don't need any octane higher gas then the minimum required for your car or truck. Higher octane gas doesn't improve preformance, it just keeps high compression engines which require the higher octanes to run without knocking.
The Senate has overriden the governor's veto of the budget consitutional admendment that would allow the legislature to change the governor's language on budget line items, and move the due date to May 1st. It was expected that it would be not be overriden in the Senate, with Senate Dems opposing it plus a few Republicans voting along with them (supporting the governor). It seems that it was overridden, and is now off to the Assembly where it seems very likely to pass.
So it looks like it will go to the voters in November. I am predicting it will pass with a fairly large margin, as it is neccessary check on the governor's power, but will gain some opposition from both Pataki and Spitizer's closest supporters who want to keep absolute budgetary power in the hands of the governor.If you don't understand what this all means, look at this fodder on Pataki v. Silver.
Since the TU article yesterday, the Senate has decided that we need a law, to stop NYers from hunting on the Internet. I guess that's not surpising that most NYers don't want this barbaric pratice to exist in NY. Without the farm bureau opposition to this bill (and the governor not registering any opposition), it seems inevitable to happen.
If we where to frame this bill in the question of gay marriage, people would have a vastly different reaction. I guess being gay is a preferred action, despite the fact that nobody gets hurt by shooting deer and elk over the Internet. Also, note the power of the Times Union to frame debate in Albany. One day this appears in the paper, and the next day everybody's lining up to ban the pratice.
Yum, I guess or maybe eww. The article about this in the Times Union was quite interesting about this form of unpasturized milk and how some people are claiming health benifits. It's an interesting trend, though it doesn't come without some risks.
Obviously pasturing milk kills off potentially harmful bacteria, a neccessary in dirty barns associated with larger operations. Some farmers take steps to prevent the growth of this nasty bacteria through contamination of manure and milk, but many don't. It's kind of the same thing we see in hospitals now with using anti-biotics instead of basic cleanliness. Not everybody can drink raw milk, right away as the article says. Without pasturization, the natural baceteria can be rather upsetting in a bad way to the stomack until people get use to it.
It's rather overpriced at about $4 bucks a gallon, versus the state ceiling of $2.78 for milk you'd buy mass-produced at a grocery store, and that your friendly local farmer only gets paid about $1.25 a gallon. Another 50-75¢ goes to transport that milk an average of 1,000 miles to the processor and to the store, about 25 goes to the processor, and the rest to the store.
It seems that while the bill in the legislature to allow sale of raw milk to consumers at farmers markets and other off-farm locations, is a good idea if the appropiate safe guards are in place. (Note: Could not locate bill on LRS.) Yet, the ultimate solution is probably to buy local from diaries that actually care about the quality of their milk, or at least from brands that have been rated as high quality. If you can't get milk delivered or get to farmer's markets, you can still get better milk at the supermarket. Things like Stewarts, Upstate Farms, or Crowley are suppostly better then Gaerelic Farms, or other non-brandname milk. With the state maximum price, getting better milk isn't that much more expensive.
Still, it's better to buy directly from the farmer, as it avoids transporation and processing costs all together. More and more farms are doing on-farm pasturization, although the start up costs are very high (sometimes off-set by selling development rights). Those farms tend to be more successful over a long period of time, compared to those who sell raw milk whole sale to corporate coglormates like agri-mark.
And if you want raw milk, it's probably best to produce it yourself for your own consumption. It's just too risky to allow others to potentially contaimante the milk and make you sick. Dairy goats aren't that much work (maybe a 1/2 hour a day), or if you insist on cow milk, a single jersey cow.
It's not very likely, but it looks like the Senate and Assembly will pass a medical marijuna bill, and the governor will most likely veto it, trying to impress the national Republican party. Supermajorities won't be able to be mustered on this bill. You have to love when your playing politics with very sick people's pain. Yeap, we want to take one more step closer to having a pack of joints next to the cigerettes at the store (even if it's not the same quality as the stuff grown by your friendly local dairy farmer).
The GLRC has an interesting article about sprawling parking lots taking up too much space. It's an interesting discussion of the space parking takes up vs. the trouble of finding spaces. Some have suggested hiking rates for parking or elimating free parking, but we all know that just creates new suburbs as people try to escape the cost of parking downtown.
The GLRC has another interesting article about more females taking up hunting. It is a good thing when we give more people outdoors experience, particularly groups that might historically not understand the experience. Too many people are afraid of the bang-bang of guns and the subsiquent recoil, in part because of the terrible violence we see on television every night. I wonder why anybody needs a TV when we have WAMC, which has a great deal of good entertainment and news programs.
It's the first one since August, and we're all going to try to be a little bit more careful, and make sure not to step into any cow dung or something worst on that day.
Yesterday, I was watching a goat destroy one of my neighboor's junk cars. He hopped on the Jeep's hood, left some dings in the hood and started eating away at the windshield wipers. Goats literally will eat almost anything, and probably are somewhat nicer garbage disposals then more smelly pigs. Plus most people don't drink pig milk.
You might need that if you live in Bennington County, which has announced as a red-flag burn ban, where they say people shouldn't have any kind of fire outside as it's so dry up there (campfire on up). That seems a bit excessive at least for the perspective of somebody from Albany County, where it's rapidly becoming green out here. Some rain wouldn't be bad on Saturday, but it's been a very wet spring for the most part.
Following the Disconnect: II was watching governor George Pataki's plane return to Albany from the window up here in Commerece Plaza. It's pretty neat to see how the helicopter can park in such a little place.
Aileen Gunther and Kevin Cahill of downstate NY are sponsoring a bill that would allow towns to reasest properties destroyed by floods, so that owners get a tax break for properties that have a reduced value now that they've been destroyed. Seems reasonable, as asking people to pay the full-tax value pre-disaster might be more of a burden then neccessary.
It's also Friday the 12-A. We generally avoid the notation of the next number around these parts as it scares me. Great grammar, Andy! At any rate, gotta stay out of that Friday 13th cow dung. See my experiences with Dead Battery on My Pickup Truck this morning. Yes, I messed up the posting date so it appears under March until I fix it. Gotta love the 12-Ath!
Yesterday, in the continuing south end stories of where my parents work at the Center for the Disabled, there was a high speed chase by the State Police. They where chasing a drug dealer that was driving up South Pearl Street towards I-787. Apparently the car was exceeding 100 MPH on South Pearl and tossing drugs and guns out the windows. Some of the paraphenila hit and damaged cars and vechicles at the Center for the Disabled. The car crashed on the on-ramp of 787. It's amazing the nobody picked this story up.
In other words, Moody called Ford stock one step above Junk Bond (BB) and S&P called it Junk. Apparently Clay Ford couldn't pull a Hugh Carey, and beg or more like threaten S&P to keep the rating higher. Being a governor, you can threaten to arrest officals/investigate/make your company's life hell. Like NYS, it's a real bad thing to have such a bad credit rating as it drastically raises the costs of borrowing.
I don't think Ford is going anywhere, being the world's second largest automaker after the General. I sure hope not, as I want to be able to get parts for my Ranger. Clay says he's forsaking his salary until he can figure out how to build better and more competive Fords. If you ask me, Ford needs to build better cars as all the Ford F-Series Pickups won't bring enough money in to keep the Ford empire going. In other words, a Mercury Sable needs to be as good of as car as Honda Civic or Toyota Accord. More then a quarter of Ford's sales are those pickups, though most of the profit comes from financing but as interest rates go up it will cut further into profits.
The man who waved his appeals, is now the first man killed in New England by a state. I think he got all the due process he needed and desired, and it's good to put a final chapter on his life. I tend to think as an alternative to life in prison, execution is an excellent alternative. In some ways, there is too many appeals and too much scruitiny as we hold up life over freedom. Blame it on our Christian-Judo beliefs. Rest in Peace, and let's move on.
One quick point I would like to note. I didn't cry that much when I got my pickup and took my Sundance off-the-road probably for good (effectively killing the car). It didn't have any right to appeal to keep it on the road. While some of the steel and other parts will inevitably be melted down and recycled, a lot of it will probably exist far longer then the body of Micheal Ross. In similar vien was trash that went to the burn barrel. Some of those persistant-organic toxics will probably be for around for a while in the air. But we didn't really make it that big of deal. Materials are just that, and the material of life is only special as expressed through the autonomous individual's freedom.
Nothing like another blue-ribbon study of dredging to waste money. It looks like GE lobbyists got it, and maybe we will learn something new. The good news is that the dredging of the Hudson is going to happen regardless, and whatever we learn should help the project out further in the future.
It looks like BBL found it to be too much of a risk for a project that looks like it might be a flop, without residental support for the eminent domain to make it happen. It's unfortunate that citizen activism of a few local citizens has the possibility to block such a major program of redevelopment. Let's hope Albany does the right thing and cleans up the neighboorhood with new hopes and new business.
The people at the TU seem to think that's a real possibility with him traveling around the state in political activism. Certainly he is one of the most famous Republicans in the NY Assembly, and at 6' 11" he makes me look short at only 6' 5". He probably weights less, being a skinny little guy. Again, how does he fit in that Toyota Prisus he drives from his farm in Hopewell Junction? See his website at standtallnewyork.org. He's campaigning for referendum and initative, and non-partisan redistricting. Not a hell of a chance of those things happening.
Returning back to the story, it should be interesting to see what he does, but I hope he doesn't commit sucide against Hillary Clinton. He's too good of a Republican for that, and his voice as the Ranker on the Assembly EnCon committee is invaluable. Not to mention his work on the ever so-important Assembly Republican Dairy Day with his friend Eric Ooms of the Young Farmers (all two of them).
