Whitepine

2011-09-29T03:40:00.000-07:00

Another sign of their decay.

Like anyone who views the world as no more than an exploitable commodity, we have this fantasy of "potential value". Of course, their concept of potential value is the imaginary value if its used for some imaginary purpose. Therein lies the problem; they will destroy everything to keep the machine running, despite its sputtering. Until its recognized that we cannot run our infrastructure and schools while borrowing the landscape from the future, we will continue destroying the very places we live. But its what I've come to expect out of any colonial culture...

2011-07-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

For decades, voting for the lesser evil has been normal. Northeastern Minnesota’s DFL, however, was and has always appeared the last bastion for ordinary people’s needs. In many ways, that remains true, but in others, it is now so utterly destructive that to vote for them is to destroy the very place we live.

The peculiar history of Northeastern Minnesota and the Range in particular has, after five generations, made destroying the communities and the natural world the norm. While southern Minnesota was first to be destroyed, settlement was dominated by agriculture and by its very essence, was very different than the ecocide of the north. The north was not settled at first; after the conquest, native lands were legally stolen and turned over to land speculators and railroad men. The first exploitative assault was to denude the forests of its most ecologically and financially valuable timber; the forests were not “cleared”, but instead demolished. Hapless American and European peasants were shipped in, railroads built, the finest timber removed, and the land covered with the remaining debris. Genocide and the catastrophic Hinckley and Cloquet fires were the first children of the rape; the second were the mineral prospectors. In the brute exploitation of both human and nature that was 19^th century capitalism, gold wasn’t found, but iron ore was. I will not glorify the destructive history of earlier times, for the history sits all around us in a demolished landscape, tainted water and desperate communities.

This history, however, is constantly refrained and built into monuments honoring destruction; these show how the extreme becomes the normal and the thinking of the exploiter becomes the thinking of the exploited. And this is where I need to break with those I used to support.

Recently, Range Dfler’s joined the state’s Republicans in rewriting the state’s environmental review rules. The complaints justifying the need all spoke of timeliness and jobs, but none dealt with the actual results. They added their own special privilege: Any Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) project is exempt from the environmental review process. This, of course, means the taxpayers are now forced to give the Polymet project money despite its potential destructive effects. In short, the public is now forced to hand over land, cash and profits to private investors, many of them foreign, in hopes that several hundred desperate people might hopefully be employed for 20 years. The refrain is always “jobs” and “community” while two concepts are never mentioned; the mysterious word “profits” and the always ignored fact that any community built completely for exploiting a finite resource is doomed from the very beginning. That the Range DFLer’s don’t recognize this shows they are now as much of the problem as the former land barons and “iron men” now honored in ridiculous murals and statues. Now, as part of the local elite, they assist the destroyers with endless subsidies; the DNR’s mineral research, infrastructure funding, education, and finally, handing over our land, water and the very resources we sit on. The communities and employees, trapped in the hapless modern equivalent of the company town, their incomes bound to the corporations, hand over their very lives and landscapes. That they are comparatively well paid only leads to more co-option; the endless supply of over-size trucks, ATV’s and bound mortgages colors the thinking of everyone. The desperation that is the modern United States surrounds us; we work for corporate investors so we can pay debts to corporate investors so we can buy plastic toys from corporate investors who use slave labor to build them overseas. Mysteriously, this is called the zenith of civilization.

The Range’s problems are complex yet simply defined; the communities, despite any booster’s glorification’s, are graveyards next to wastelands. The people are beholden to their corporate master's, a truth fully evident yet never spoken; it as if saying “the sky is sometimes blue”. No one mentions it so they do not have to acknowledge the drudgery that is modern life for most. We have toys, yes, but we do not have what matters most, and that is community. And now we watch helplessly as the one group who used to define something different be the group willing to hand over the most; our land, our water and more of our community.

In a rational world, albeit imaginary, we might ask of ourselves 'We have this resource, perhaps of wealth, perhaps of trouble, but what do we do with it and how will it benefit us? What do we charge the corporation for exploiting our land? What do we get in return? What will be left? How do we assure our grandchildren will still want to or be able to live here?

This is, of course, not the case.

The mining laws of Minnesota, like most dealing with “Natural Resources”, sets the state's role as promoter of exploitation, or truly, the mother of destruction. We pay for research, we pay for infrastructure, we pay for what little of reclamation occurs and then we finally pay for destroyed communities and dysfunctional lives left over when the profit takers “downsize” or walk away. No matter what, it's a temporary fix and a devil's bargain.

The two communities most affected by the Polymet project have problems deriving from their very origins; they were both built specifically for mining only, standing at road’s end, miles from anything, surrounded by a scavenged landscape or forest. The project’s proponents want to resolve this by destroying more public forest for private profit, supported by countless subsidies, in exchange that a few will get paid for 20 years. Their aim, of course, is to start more projects on the same ore bodies, to destroy more land, to destroy more water, it all at public expense for private profit.

When I think of where I'm from, I think of the earliest labor organizers, some of whom I met and knew. Despite their so called ignorance, they knew one fundamental fact: the owners were exploiters, and nothing more. They were not our friends, and not to be trusted. They would sacrifice anything , including their worker's lives for a few dollars more profit. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the labor fights and unions brought us better conditions and a share of the profits., but they also co-opted us. Now, many are slaves bought and paid for, their lives a collection of mortgages, four wheel drive trucks and other toys. Like Orwell's well trained dog, they roll over without the masters watching. Anyone who questions the constant cycle of destruction and subsidy is labeled treehugger. No one sees the fundamental truth behind what is done; we borrow from the future to keep it all going, ignoring the mess we make in exchange for a big screen tv, burgers at the bar and a boat at the inherited lake property.

To end, there is one question that needs to be answered by those arguing for any extraction project: What will be left when it's done? Until the Range DFL answers that question, they are nothing more than puppets who want to sweep the crumbs off the table to the public's mouths.

Considering the results we see now, with emptying communities, rampant social problems and addiction, aging infrastructure we can't afford and environmental destruction all around us, the experiment's results are obvious; we simple need a better way.

2010-07-14T20:58:00.001-07:00

Having just watched Part 1 of Adam Curtis' "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom" to be viewed here; his "Power of Nightmares" is also worth viewing. Curtis argues that right wing political doctrine is derived from two main ideas; the war justifying selfish game theory of John Nash, and the lunatic selfish economics of Frederick Hayek. These ideas and their assumptions underlie much of Anglo-American political thought. Curtis traces the variations through our two countries, ending with the lunacy of the Bush Presidency and the empty ending of the Tony Brown ministry. What is fascinating to me is noone in mainstream thought asked a very simple question: Maybe those who argue that human beings are nothing more than self serving paranoid sociopaths do so because that is what they are?

2009-06-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

In a late night daze, my friend and I hopped over to Hibbing for the Jubilee street dance to wander around. Since he is from here, and I am not, I always end up being an observer. I am always stunned by one thing on the range; almost entire missing age groups. Now at my age, I do not expect thousands of raving near middle age people roaming around as we usually have children, jobs that actually require us to show up and perform and other categories under that evil responsibility word. But one thing is always a shock...the age group between 25 and 45 seems to almost not exist. It seems that beyond 22 or so and after mid baby-boomers, the lack of compatriots is obvious; you feel as if an alien. So, is my perception correct? The best data we have is now 9 years old, but it can tell us something:

From Hibbing, the first is the table;

22 to 24 years	254	2.9	285	3.1	539	2.97
25 to 29 years	438	5.0	426	4.6	864	4.77
30 to 34 years	461	5.2	498	5.3	959	5.29
35 to 39 years	570	6.5	629	6.7	1,199	6.61
40 to 44 years	708	8.1	722	7.7	1,430	7.89
45 to 49 years	823	9.4	750	8.0	1,573	8.68
50 to 54 years	634	7.2	594	6.4	1,228	6.77
55 to 59 years	436	5.0	476	5.1	912	5.03
60 and 61 years	140	1.6	152	1.6	292	1.61
62 to 64 years	192	2.2	237	2.5	429	2.37
65 and 66 years	115	1.3	168	1.8	283	1.56
67 to 69 years	199	2.3	275	2.9	474	2.61
70 to 74 years	368	4.2	484	5.2	852	4.70

And this table includes projections:

2000 Population*	17,071
1990 Population*	18,046
Percent change from 1990 population*	-5.4
2007 population estimate***	16,170
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	530
Urban population**	12,603
Rural population**	4,467
Median age*	41
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	3,891
Population 18 years and over*	13,180
Population 65 years and over*	3,372

Now for my old district on the west side of St. Paul:

22 to 24 years	580	5.2	524	4.8	1,104	5.03
25 to 29 years	1,042	9.4	1,006	9.2	2,048	9.32
30 to 34 years	946	8.5	853	7.8	1,799	8.19
35 to 39 years	869	7.9	755	6.9	1,624	7.39
40 to 44 years	833	7.5	645	5.9	1,478	6.73
45 to 49 years	638	5.8	569	5.2	1,207	5.49
50 to 54 years	481	4.3	496	4.5	977	4.45
55 to 59 years	354	3.2	385	3.5	739	3.36
60 and 61 years	116	1.0	156	1.4	272	1.24
62 to 64 years	156	1.4	181	1.7	337	1.53
65 and 66 years	96	0.9	107	1.0	203	0.92
67 to 69 years	132	1.2	146	1.3	278	1.27
70 to 74 years	180	1.6	284	2.6	464	2.11

and the projected numbers, which are unfair due to size:

2000 Population*	287,151
1990 Population*	272,235
Percent change from 1990 population*	5.5
2007 population estimate***	287,669
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	103,253
Urban population**	287,151
Rural population**	0
Median age*	31
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	77,827
Population 18 years and over*	209,324
Population 65 years and over*	29,647

Remember, most of the numbers are now 9 years old, and simply moving forward the clock you can get new age cohorts; reality is more complex, however, as the economy and movement will alter things quite a bit. The stunning difference is in the old 25 to 44 Year old age classes. which in the simple sense are the new 35 to 54 year olds. Especially in the thirties, the difference is quite striking. The median age is ten years difference, which tells you the weight of the pyramid. Hibbing, and probably most range cities, is skewed much much older. The projections are also different; almost 30% of Ramsey county in 2000 was under 18. Hibbing's was slightly less, but the important thing was how many were already in child bearing years. Alot of Hibbing has since passed beyond true child bearing age. It will be interesting to see what the changes are in next years census.

I guess my perceptions are true...but darnit the pics I grabbed of the dance itself didn't turn out. Alot young people drinking like fish and standing around ...and far less people wanting hair band music, thank goodness.

2009-01-27T03:56:00.000-08:00

What kind of state do you want?

With Governor Pawlenty's pronouncements on the Corporate tax rate, I thought it would be interesting to do some comparisons since this plan, like most Republican thinking, makes a number of assumptions without consulting that abstraction called the real world. The source of his numbers is this corporate think tank. For 30 years, tax rates and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy have been expanded to where the they only pay 6% of taxes collected in the U.S. The first question might be to examine where tax rates are by state; Minnesota is at 9.8 % and the rate is high, but it does not tell you what breaks and subsidies there are. It also does not say why it is a much more succesful state then such tax paradises like South Dakota, home of the poorest county in the United States. But let us compare this with states with much lower rates, then look at this to how a society might be contrasted rationally, such as by social measurements like access to health care, education, literacy and poverty rates. There it is a bit more confusing, but we can look at states that compare completely opposite of Minnesota by social measurements; For example Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or Kentucky. These are states with many conditions like the third world, yet have some of the lowest corporate tax rates. In short the world is much more complex than the governor lets on; handing breaks or having low corporate rates is not connected to advancement. In fact, it might show a connection between low rates and low quailty of life. The governor's beliefs, like most of republican thinking, does not work with the real world. After years of budget cutting on the backs of working people, we now have this tired old bucket of drivel. You would think they would come up with something new. In short, it appears the governors model is from down south, with hordes of poor people and a small elite, with no worker's rights and conditions like the third world for much of the population.

2009-01-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

Do Unicorns steal the tusks of Narwhal's and other new age theories...

I think it is easily discovered...All unicorns must die !

2009-01-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Range Radio and crazy talk:
Of course all media is in a shuffling state and has been for years, but the talk radio on the range is entering a bizarro world. The am station in Virginia, owned by the local right wing lunatic from Duluth, is best listened to when accompanied by films from the Nuremberg rallies and goose-stepping practice, while that out of Hibbing gives the standard right wing fare...a day to day rehashing of an imaginary world, liberal conspirators preparing children to live off welfare. Knowing a little about the place, I still have not quite figured out just how many whack jobs in the area listen to this drivel. Are they mostly rural? Are they just a skimming of the local elite? Closet cross dressing gun nuts who happen to listen to crazed, obese, multiple divorcees? There is nothing local about it, and there is only one true local station, unfortunately set a little west of here. But as I occasionally listen, I see how the obvious failures of multiple station ownership, lack of local media and lunatic politics come together...Don't bother listening. Just pull some old speeches of Mussolini and at least learn some Italian.

2009-01-17T06:04:00.000-08:00

Hopefully non-wonkish;

Minnesota State of the State: This is it?

Listening to the speech was the as if revisiting a bad republican policy document from the Reagan era...no taxes..blah blah blah...the family budget..blah blah...It shows just how ideologically right wing and blind this man is.

His homey family simile might be a great form of communication, but like most of his ideas, it is not based in reality and it does not work. Tucking children in when working two crappy jobs without health care, or working the family budget when it consists of avoiding medical bills, the landlord or foreclosure, or watching your job go up in smoke due to speculation built from the governor's same ideology.

But the government is not a family; it is just a little more complex than that. (By the way, if one continued his way of thinking, his children would be viewed as lazy, irresponsible wastrels leeching off the family income and not earning their own way, rather than, as let's say, children.)

And here is our problem. For three decades now, both at the federal and now state level, there has been a movement, by the wealthy, corporations and right wing true believers to undo the reforms of the New Deal that actually made this a somewhat fair society. More of the tax burden has been placed on working people while the wealthy, investors ( most of whom invest in speculation and not productive capital), corporations have received breaks, loopholes or subsidies in volumes. Supposed centrists like Jesse Ventura, with little understanding of how any of this worked, merely saw it as an equation involving their pocket books, not on where and whom the money was coming from. And now, in this last decade, especially since the Ventura "reforms", we are in yet another mess, and this governor wants to shove the consequences down the road out of pure, blind self and own class serving insanity. By proposing this bag of highly refined manure, he shows what little he knows: In short, he is dealing with a "slump in private spending by reducing public spending". There are alternatives, and here is one proposal, but more could be added.

And decreasing corporate income tax will not solve our budget or make us a a better place to live. The lowest tend to be in states with the worst social statistics, some rivaling third world conditions in the southern U.S.

But that shows where this governor wants to bring us, perhaps. His vision is not of a happy middle class family, but of a small, white elite employing everyone else without benefit of protection or incomes. And that should scare us.

2008-12-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

One of the great Electronic Library projects relaunched after it crashed from over use in the first hours last month...http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ combines many libraries from all over Europe. But there are already others: http://www.archive.org/index.php aka the Internet Archive holds collections including books, concerts(!) and other collections. Another project within the archive is the Open Library project at http://openlibrary.org/ which also includes a scan on demand service for book access. I think this is the true Geek Heaven...

2008-09-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

Excelsior, Lobbying, and old connections. ( Yes it will be long)

If you have not seen it, which might be difficult, the auditor's report on Excelsior's loan came in this week. It shows money not well spent, mostly on love-ins amongst officials to try to keep the money sucking leviathan moving. It still has no private investment, no market, no building, no shoes, no wallet...But I digress. The ultimate questions are 1) Is it truly needed? and 2) Will the money spent in other place(s) provide the same return on energy? The second question answers the first; if the energy can be found in some other way, by some other method, with all costs included in the price, then there are alternatives to shipping coal 1500 miles to the Range. The IRR has loaned this behemoth consisting of one non-engineer ex-Hibbing Hockey player and his wife 9.5 million$. I will assume the IRR's expected that Rangers would humbly follow along with whatever boondoggle they handed money to, but not in this case they have not. So, getting back to fundamentals, I still want to ask the above question; can the energy be found in some other way less harmful, less costly, or perhaps less environmentally damaging, a cost usually not included? Could, let's say, the 9.5 Million$ have been spent elsewhere and have provided an immediate return in energy? Investing in efficiency on the range cities' aging housing stock perhaps? Model community programs, modifying our aging infrastructure for efficiency and long term sustainability, rather than strip malls, asphalt and coal fired steam heat? Planning for transportation alternatives and efficiency as liquid petroleum becomes more expensive? ( It will). Perhaps just studying where energy is wasted, then planning on how to correct it. All of these are possibilities, and infinitely better than the lobbying party cash they have handed out so far. It is not just a question of 40,000$, but a question of energy return on investment, including the environmental costs (See this). This monstrosity serves no purpose other than to build for the sake of building, to benefit certain connected Range interests, and to continue the insanity of living as inefficiently as possible.

Can we please stop handing money over to these people and start living in the last century?

2008-09-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Not Another Bailout...

In the last thirty years, I have watched as as deregulated industries receive billion dollar bailouts. The investors and executives somehow always walk away still wealthy, while taxpayers are left with the debt, the bad assets and the bill. This one is a monster, thanks to Phil Gramm and other pseudo-economists espousing the bs about the free market. So here we go again. The Details at Krugman

2008-09-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

A great article by Chris Hedges on Sarah Palin; it is fairly frightening.

Here...

2008-09-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

An Alaskan Native on Sarah Palin:

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska
By Evon Peter

9/8/2008
My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic
Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My
organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska
and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for
the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as
well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from
the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.
I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of
human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of
unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the
Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of
Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our
path to justice.
Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States
through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native
peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human
“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our
lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was
called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the
Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the
years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become
entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct
violation of our human rights.
What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive
in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:
1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live
in the garage or backyard)
2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and
be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save
the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt
in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)
3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with
poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince
you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil
and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise
4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except
under strict oversight and through extensive regulation
5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did
not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled
your life (voting or otherwise)
How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that
you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you
to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that
justice could one day prevail for your descendents? And most importantly to our
conversation, how American does this sound to you?
To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was
born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my
grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house
and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress
unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my
grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and
the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for
our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the
building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if
leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice
of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.
United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major
platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,
lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its
corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return
African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the
opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations
dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations
are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources
differently than African, Asian, and European nations?
Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the
Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native
peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose
Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and
yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no
roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to
varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has
become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.
As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski
in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their
traditional way of life through subsistence.
The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also
extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In
the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination
legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in
the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and
resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led forprofit
corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the
government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits
made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in
partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of
legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the
guise of progress.
Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have
maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in
Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out
upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of
due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the
same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally
recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized
but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to
sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes
rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t
make decisions concerning their own land and people?
The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for
profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this
attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within
Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United
States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular
area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to
offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the
Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil
development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,
forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of
millions.
Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For
example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any
disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people
to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.
This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable
alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options
that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact
ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off
shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would
have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which
would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer
term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and
perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.
While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation
about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering
with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have
an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth
about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.
Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of
our future generations,
*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization

2008-09-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hedges, the future on display at the Republican Convention.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080908_tyranny_on_display_at_the_republican_convention/

By the way, Truthdig is one of the best places for actual news.

2008-09-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

St. Paul.

A quick hit: The St. Paul police arresting journalists. Journalists doing nothing but reporting. That and giant fence through the middle of the city. Here is a link...

2008-08-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

No Strike at United and Hibtac:

According to WDIO, the steelworkers union and Cleveland Cliffs reached a tentative agreement, avoiding a strike.

2008-08-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

Thought Police and Population Control.

Exactly why does the Hennepin County Sheriff have an undercover operation infiltrating peace groups? Search warrants on a group named "Food not Bombs"? Charged with conspiracy..to riot? How is this provable? And why is any law enforcement given this free reign? Is it just the Patriot Act? ( They have done this before..years ago). This is why Police, military, or anyone else cannot be given authority...More at Minnesota Independent.

2008-08-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

People who need to stay away from me.

This group of troglodytes needs to be in a cage. Like most missionaries, they simply have a need to interfere in the lives of others, and rather than bring useful things like clean water, medication or education, they instead bring their lunatic beliefs and a compulsion to demand everyone else join them. They are so joyful in the lord they include a counter of death, declaring most of them go to hell.

Then, of course, as usual, they ask for money. Money. Why does god need money?

2008-08-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Energy Costs

We are all feeling it at the pump, and many of us have changed our behavior or absorbed the cost. But this is not the heating season, and that will add more to the burden. Here is a table of heating oil futures:

Avoiding an explanation for the the index numbers, the gist is this: heating oil price has increased around 100 percent in the last year. 100 Percent.

This next table is for Natural Gas out of the New York Mercantile exchange:

This is cost per million BTU, the actual energy content. It shows a recent drop.

The other chart I will link to for it is too large; it is propane prices for the last 18 years. Relative stability until 2004, but over a 100 % increase since then. Ouch.

Essentially, the last several years have seen enormous increases. Most have been able to absorb the costs, though low income people haven't. This is crucial for our area. Living here is energy intensive for over half the year. Not everyone can adapt by throwing more wood in the stove however, and large institutions definitely cannot. Their budgets will truly hurt, and that impact will really start to hit home now. I would argue that efficiency investment should come first. Handing out cash to boondoggles like excelsior needed to end yesterday.

2008-07-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

Rural School District transport costs.

Knowing the already existing troubles for the school districts in the area, fuel cost increases will play havoc with spread out districts. One of consolidation's truism's is that economies of scale will provide greater opportunities for children. Does the data support this? One of the few studies examining this shows it does not work for rural districts because transport costs do not allow the economy of scale solution to the problem; transport costs eat up the supposed savings. To quote from this study:"As the number of children per school multiplied five-fold between 1930 and 1996, the per pupil transportation cost actually doubled". What does this mean for our districts in the time of near 100% fuel price increases, both for transport and heating? What will the solution be for this area, already hit by other problems?

2008-07-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

An old table. Yes, I know my tiny readership just ran or fell asleep. But being a scientist, I like numbers, for they tell us something. This is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service from two years ago, with fuel around 2.50 a gallon. I use it for one reason, to show average rural miles driven. Then there is this:

It is an average fuel price graph from August 2007 to June of this year, courtesy of AAA. Rural area's simply have to use more fuel. This is especially important for our area's school districts, rural residents or lower income people. The important thing is the budget percentage transportation takes up as costs go up. Most are still in a daze over the increases, but are either changing behavior( smaller cars, driving less), or have simply absorbed the cost. But my worry is for institutions such as already struggling school districts, hospitals or government services. In many ways, these costs are fixed, and at what point does the child per mile transport cost overwhelm our school districts? It is in the next budget rounds this will take hold, and I do not envy anyone trying to solve it...I will look at home heating oil next....

2008-07-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

And this is victory? ( No, just a little less violent)

One of the news themes yesterday, via administration and military spokesman(also called mouthpieces for propaganda) was " victory is within sight", with qualifications of course. So first to Juan Cole for a small but realistic run down of the latest daily violence in Iraq, where " bombings, assassinations and kidnappings (still)occur daily", oft ignored if no Americans are involved ( only Americans are human of course). An ignored piece about an ignored country was in the New York Times Magazine, former U.S. Afghan narcotics official Tom Schweich opines on Afghanistan's production of Heroin..,probably now the world's largest producer, and how the U.S. and other government's are ignoring it.

And this is success?

2008-07-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

The great Cracker is destroyed:

For those of you not in the know, the great Eucharist cracker destruction is over. Observe the rusty nail through the wafer. P.Z. Myers has destroyed the body of Christ. The comments from religious loons are the scariest...read on here

2008-07-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

I went biking tonight down the Mesabi Trail on the backside of Hibbing, hoping to find single track ( I prefer Mountain Biking). I did find some places, but not as much as I had hoped for. I did see some great views and alot of people riding though; Here is a shot of one view:

2008-07-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

A gutsy column from Dennis Anderson in the Strib today. What he is referring to, is the LCCMR Conservation Plan; This will be overall guidance document for conservation in Minnesota. Unless you are a policy geek or interested in resources, do not try to read it. As a guidance document, it will speak of targeting resources, etc...etc... All kinds of vague pronouncements. From this agency policies, proposals and grant dollars will be targeted. But as Dennis Anderson points out, it fails in concrete action, and maintains much of the status quo. Having been a partial participant in the process, I can state that amazingly obvious items are left out. One is energy, which ultimately rules our lives; the vast majority is often wasted on such things as left on appliances, light bulbs and a million automobiles stuck in traffic, or people commuting 50 miles. There is much about biofuel goals, but nothing about the fundamental problem: reducing the inefficient miles driven by individuals in 4000 pound vehicles. Instead, we will subsidize our way to a destroyed landscape and bare soils to keep the cars going. Politics can also play a role. Taxpayer funded subsidies to such things as Excelsior energy, when simple, proven conservation measures such as insulation, LED or fluorescent bulbs, public transport and community design would nullify the need for an unproven, expensive and dirty gift to certain local elites via the public coffers. Forcing developers and planners to account for energy and transportation impacts ( oh my, the end of rampant subsidized suburbanization and strip malls). Or, realistically assessing the community impacts of extraction industries. Why the last one? Because extraction industries are temporary, but the effects on people and the environment aren't. If anyone understands this, it is us in the north. Our communities suffer at the whims of the world economy while the landscape is destroyed, and we are left holding the bill and the bag, the bag being overburden piles, pollution, a disturbed landscape and communities that suffer from the social implosion when it is all upended. Our cities, out townships and our rural places suffer. Very few of us can afford the lake places to escape to as do outsiders as prices go through the roof . Why is this important? Because what we allow now will decide what we have later. The cost plus boom of the 60's and 70's left us with over built communities, no resources and local officials suffering the delusion that all would be alright forever. In 1982, we paid for it, and we still pay for it now. And now, as we sell off lakeshore, fill wetlands, build roads to nowhere or handout millions to pie in the sky schemes (Excelsior) in an attempt to bolster communities built for one purpose: extraction. It is, ultimately, a political document, built to make goals and not offend those wanting cash and quick profits. It does not say, however, that we must state what the limits of space and behavior are, and that is the fundamental problem. If we continue to extract, fill, cut,drain, or plow over our best farm soils, or build our communities on unsustainable resources, we are left with what we have now: Horrifying suburbs like Coon Rapids; wasted, polluted landscapes like Redore outside of Hibbing, or devastated communities like rural St. Louis County suffering an economic depression with the end of logging. Only outsiders or businesses supplying tourists and cabin owners are able to reap the benefits, and those are minimal at best, with jobs that pay little, offering nothing for human development other than servitude to the arrogant wealthy. ( I have been a janitor, a nurses aide and a maintenance man so I know this well). Blaming environmentalists and others is blaming the weatherman for a tornado warning. The warning is not just about biodiversity or species, but about communities and what actually works,. When you sell your soul for 16 an hour and an atv, you will be chained to needing that forever, and is that minuscule payoff worth a a destroyed landscape where no one wants to live and community implosions when everything shuts down? That is what this document fails to address; nowhere does it say no. To anyone. It will direct grants to encourage natural shorelines, but nowhere will it say " shoreline alteration for development and access for pontoon boats will now be regulated", or " Wetland alteration other than fundamentally needed development will not be allowed."
It is statements like that which are needed.

2008-07-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

In honor of KSTP's taxpayer protection happy funtime charade, I am going to remind them and everyone else of the rest of the state's help to good old Eagan, Minnesota( Northwest's Headquarters and our governor's hometown...oh my) a few years ago. Let's talk subsidies:

1989 MARCH: Gary Wilson and Al Checchi approach NWA about acquiring the company. Other investors make bids.

1989 JUNE: NWA agrees to sell to a group of investors including Wilson, Checchi, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and others for $3.65 billion.

1989 SEPTEMBER: NWA's CEO, Steve Rothmeier and several others resign and are replaced by Checchi and his team.

1991 MAY: Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson and Al Checchi announce a tentative agreement for the construction of two NWA maintenance bases in the state. Legislation passes authorizing public subsidies for NWA.

1991 DECEMBER: The Legislative Commission on Planning and Fiscal Policy approves, by a vote of 11-7, an $838 million financial assistance package for Northwest. The package consists of a loan of $270 million from the Metropolitan Airports Commission and more than $500 million in construction financing for maintenance bases in Duluth and Hibbing. The construction bonds are delayed by a lawsuit.

1992 MARCH: State officials sign a $761 million public financing package for NWA. The original $838 million figure is reduced for a number of reasons.

1992 APRIL: NWA receives the loan from the Metropolitan Airports Commission and gives half of the $270 million to Bankers Trust, its primary lender.

1992 NOVEMBER: NWA's six unions agree in principle to accept $900 million in employee concessions over the next 3 years. NWA seeks a $300 million loan. KLM Royal Dutch Airline, a part owner of NWA, and Bankers Trust, pledge $100 million if other lenders will commit to the rest.

1992 DECEMBER: NWA executives announce the final approval of a tentative $2.2 billion restructuring plan that includes a $250 million emergency loan, $340 million in debt deferral, and cancellation of $3.5 billion in orders for new aircraft. Industry experts say that cancellation of orders for new aircraft threatens the plans for construction of the maintenance bases.

1993 JANUARY: The final piece of the $2.2 billion financial restructuring plan is the concessions agreement with the unions. In return for concessions, NWA unions demand 80 percent equity in the company. More than 1000 NWA employees are laid off.

1993 SPRING: Concessions discussions continue between Northwest and the various unions.

1993 JUNE: NWA warns unions that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection within two or three weeks if contract concessions are not promptly approved.

And, this was all about debt from a purchase; a shell game. Their troubles came from the debt from the purchase. Nothing else.

I will not add the rest of the almost two decades of subsidies the south metro has received from Minnesota taxpayers, or the U.S tax payers in the 2001 bailout.

Perhaps they can be quiet now.

2008-07-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

This is rather funny...faith healing and cursing exist elsewhere than this continent. So hop on over to Rationalist International and see some fun and scary stuff. Two of them are challenges to people with supposed magic powers, a hypnotist and a tantra. Others show the dark side..threats, murders committed to satisfy bizarre and insane beliefs, attacks for religious reasons, all the usual craziness when mass irrationality exists.

2008-06-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

Posted at Miskwaa today

2008-06-15T08:23:00.001-07:00

Posted @http://neminndems.blogspot.com/

2008-06-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

Babbitry: n. behavior characteristic of a self-satisfied middle-class person (also babbittry)

Boosterism: the act of "boosting," or promoting, one's town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it

What kind of boom is this?

Going around the countryside in the last few weeks, it was obvious from a number of for sale signs that something happened recently affecting a whole lot of people. In certain range cities, the boosterism and worshipful praise of the coming boom are at nauseating levels, even for a cynic. This project, that project and other such blather. The typical money eating sociopaths showing up ( if there is one thing I have discovered about certain Range cities, it is they have refined nepotism and insularity to an art so refined it rivals the old Chinese imperial city). And, they are the very definition of Babbitry, a term long since forgotten but still oh so applicable. Sinclair Lewis' writing is still the truthful essence, from Elmer Gantry, and Babbitt to Arrowsmith. All should be required reading , especially for city councilors and mayors. I would add a new character, a combination Gantry and economic development consultant advocating TIF districts and stripmalls.

There is another matter. While some woo retailers and look to plat out land, there is another entire reality which seems to be in another world far removed from this candy mountain. This is the year 2008, and since 2001, the number of decent, stable jobs lost in the area is still down by the thousands. Ainsworth in Cook and Grand Rapids are long since shut down. Because of that, the logging industry looks like the old cliff divers on ABC's old Wide World of Sports. I hate to guess on what fuel costs are doing to the remainder when the main buyers are now on the regional outskirts and diesel is over four dollars a gallon. The rural economy is in the tank unless you are a lake property developer.Those still living there but commuting to other work will soon be crushed by fuel costs. LTV, a long since forgotten and hideous memory is still only 6 and 1/2 years removed. Despite the building, it still remains the fact that over 2000 once stable jobs disappeared in the last few years, and only the depression like early 80's can rival what has gone on. Yes, there are the projects being built and within view, but it remains that at best on a local regional scale there is still a long way to go just to replace what was last in those last several years. Any statement respecting growth should be viewed as wasted vapor. Growth would be defined as long term stability, not applicable in an area so utterly dependent on inherently unstable extraction industries. A few construction boomers with out of state license plates is not the solution.

This is one reason I hate boosterism. Boosters are usually the local elite, touting pet projects they often benefit from or working within the government structure and thus having stable incomes. They also ignore the reality of the locals forced to become Walmartians and living without healthcare while still eligible for public housing, often now commuting at four dollars a gallon due to ill designed cities.

So, the next time I am stuck in some meeting listening to the vacuous drivel which flows from their mouths, I am going to refer them to this speech from long ago...The Untold Delights of Duluth, but add whatever range city I happen to be in at the moment.

2008-05-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

Essar and Minnesota Steel

I will give a general apology to anyone having to read this, for it will be confusing at best. This news is moving fast, and what happened two weeks( much less months) ago is no longer true. Essar's purchase of Esmark was denied by the USW, so it may no longer happen; most likely it will but with a delay or modification. Additionally, ArcelorMittal sold the Bethlehem works to the Russian firm OAO Severstal. Severstal has also made an offer to Esmark on a buyout that already has union approval. Remember this also: Essar bought Canadian firm Algoma steel at the same time they bought Minnesota Steel. Why am I writing all this useless drivel?

Twice last week I was told by construction workers they were sticking around because the deal was done and building begins in July. In short, rumor. No announcement. Nothing in the business press. No politicians and businessmen clamoring for the camera. Nothing. And nothing is the only thing happening. But the important thing to remember is they already have steel production capacity in North America. It appears that many have assumed that what was proposed is still going to happen. All I am saying is it may not..it may be only a mine to supply their other facilities. They went after Bethlehem hard and still want Esmark's other facilities . People: We are nothing but a butt pimple to these corporations. Do not plan your life around them.

2008-05-24T08:09:00.001-07:00

For everyone assuming a steel plant will be built at Cooley ( Minnesota Steel), you need to see this. What this means in its entirety, only Essar knows, but it could have an effect on plans. You see, if you already own steel production capacity, and you already own the ore, why bother building another plant? This might be a makeup deal for this. What does that have to do with it...Essar bought ( not approved yet) Esmark...it awaits approval, but it looks like a make up deal for the fighting over Esmark...This is about market share people, and if you are sitting waiting for the gods of steel to make a decision, do not be stupid and have a backup plan.

2008-05-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Americans are the people who bulldoze fifty acres to build a house, then place a moose and eagle statue in their yard because they love nature...

2008-04-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

This article in the Strib today reports on two U profs who warned that ethanol production would eventually affect the food supply. It came true, just much faster then was expected. In my field, natural resources, I have watched and wondered for years as I saw more of everything being used by us, and wondered, how long can this absurdity last? Those who do question such moronic tendencies as suburban development, or continually funding a transport system and culture where one person drives around in a four ton vehicle are viewed as some sort of evil naysayer worthy of witch burning, taking away the freedom of driving around in a large truck, spewing garbage, instilling pride in ignorance and all of this with a frigging Nascar sticker on the back. This is the attitude of someone who has never matured past the age of 16, arguably, and something I stopped understanding years ago. Here is the problem: Energy is a physical commodity, and if you have to expend more to get less, then the cost goes up. The U.S. peaked production long ago in 1970, and is not going to miraculously fall into a bunch of cheap, easy to refine light crude. It doesn't exist. No major fields have been found since the 1960's anywhere in the world, and the major fields are all post peak. All of them. The sands of Alberta require mining, steaming, solution, then refinement just to get it to us. The costs are twice what was predicted. I will neglect the hideous, ecosystem destroying mess they make. There are some fundamental problems in American society. For two generations now, people have become used to the idea of unlimited driving, unless you of course are very poor. We have built every system we have in transportation, housing and labor based on the idea that we can all drive wherever and whenever we want, that we can spin trucks around 24 hours day hauling plastic covered food goods 1500 miles apiece in unlimited quantities, and that this little Shangrila is going to last forever. It is embedded in our culture, where people, (mostly men)worship the sheer tonnage and inefficient horsepower of their particular vehicle, where a commute of 30 miles in 2 ton vehicles is considered normal, and weekends are spent blowing more fuel individually than an entire village in China has access to in one year, all unquestioningly and without the real price tag being paid. The question here is always: " How do we keep the cars going?", rather than, "how do we move people and goods efficiently and conveniently with the least energy?" It frightens many, because like a religious faith they cannot conceive of another way. It frightens engineers and planners because they know it would take 50 year to re-engineer this giant goat screw. It frightens economists, because they know the costs. So along came ethanol, nee alcohol, as the miracle cure. Farmers get more subsidy, and we do not owe the Arabs anything. There is a problem...it uses other resources also. Water. Soil. Energy. Carbohydrates, called food, which we have to convert. It is, in essence, casting away the last six inches of Midwest topsoil and entire aquifers so we can all drive 20 miles to work alone in a dodge magnum. Does anyone see the insanity in this? What was true for a half century is true no longer. The oil supplies this was built on are going and about to go forever, and everything to replace it with is more expensive, nastier, harder to refine, and there just isn't as much. There are no more Ghawar's. I do not expect this to change until we are squeezed even more, until fuel becomes such a chunk of people's income that they are forced to change, and an entire cultural shift takes place that sees a stock car race as a giant waste of resources..which it is. People have been sold a bill of goods...that we can live without communities, that we can drive endlessly around forever, and that we can have all the food we want shipped in from Chile..It is not real, never was, and it will not be here forever.

2008-04-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Credit to NPR, Melissa Bock for the picture...
I've been watching the local theaters hoping this drivel will not show up. After the climate change skeptic teenager on NPR ( which has now officially gone to crap), I suppose next we will have a bevy of stories about this garbage. Oh wonderful, I get to watch Ben Stein whine and lie for an hour. In honor of him being an economist, I declare too much opportunity cost for me to waste precious life moments listening to deluded people lie.

The picture is a methane geyser, and we see them here also. Whenever you see bubbling, especially in the swamps and bogs here, it is methane being released. I have heard there are enormous bubble releases that occur in the tailings ponds at the mines. It is a greenhouse gas, releasing more carbon than CO2. The technique used for such discoveries is called rational thought or evidence based thinking, rather than wishful delusion.

2008-04-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

I suppose now all the global warming denialists will start screaming, but exactly what was this crap? This was April 8 on my walk to work. The snowbank is the middle of the street...too much to plow anywhere. I will not even add the last two days. I endured a five hour drive from St. Paul Thursday night rivaling the Dakar rally, with snow instead of dust. This is a cool pic though, I will admit: That was a monster.

2008-01-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

Exactly what is this insanity?

The proposed new state Park at Lake Vermillion has all kinds of support, but the comments from local pols are show a a scary attitude:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/07/19/vermilionpark/

and here for Sen. Tom Bakk's recent comments:http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=57914&section=homepage

Local Rep. David Dill has made similar comments about the state's need to sell lakeshore to make up for "lost" tax revenue. Parks are notorious for creating local revenue, and more often than not an entire economy is built around them. So why then, sell off precious, quickly disappearing lakeshore? Is it really just about taxes and local revenue, or is it something deeper ? I doubt it that is all there is. I think these guys just do not like nature. They are dems because that is the only way they can get elected here. I say protest this. We want and and need a state park, and we don't need to sell off what little precious lakeshore land we have left.

Here is how to contact:

For the St. Louis County Board:
http://www.co.st-louis.mn.us/slcportal/SiteMap/HomePage/ContactUs/tabid/552/SiteMap/HomePage/Departments/CountyBoard/tabid/554/Default.aspx

ForRep. David Dill:rep.david.dill@house.mn
For Sen. Tom Bakk: sen.tom.bakk@senate.mn

2008-01-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

Iraq Reality and wishful delusion

No, the surge is not working.The attacks still occur but coverage doesn't. For several months, this has been the major media refrain: Petraeus is a genius,and the surge is working. Unfortunately,it just isn't true:
http://www.juancole.com/2007/12/top-ten-myths-about-iraq-2007.html
Looking deeper, we see what has actually happened.The population is either on the run as refugees, or it is separated by sect and/or ethnicity:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/09/a_tale_of_two_mapes.php

Lesson: Beware of lazy reporters and the status quo

2007-12-23T07:24:00.001-08:00

The Non-reasonable life: Religion and the Golden Compass

This, of course, is the latest offense to good church going people. A story of a rebellious girl, an oppressive hierarchy with a fixed belief system and some magic creatures. This, as usual, frightens the self-deluded sheep of the great Midwest:

http://www.stpns.net/view_article.html?articleId=76341024365417045

or here: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/12220461.html

The controversy speaks for itself. Religious believers, by default, are unreasonable and dogmatic. As Daniel Dennet recently stated, there doesn't seem to be a way of not offending believers if one does anything questioning a religious belief system. It does not have to be an "insult" (whatever that is) or a deliberate artistic aspersion such as "Piss Christ". Merely if one does not agree with the totality of a belief, in any way at all, it is treated as degrading. Perhaps something as light hearted as stating " there is no evidence for the creation of the world via two naked people in a garden with a talking snake" or " there is very little actual evidence for the existence of Yeshua of Galilee", will engender howls of protest from the likes of an evangelist. Criticizing the historical record of the papacy creates wails of "oppression, oppression" from Catholic believers. It is as true with this story. It is not explicit, it is not violent, it is not adult themed. It merely questions authority and dogmatism. This, ultimately, is what frightens believers. Belief, and autoority, without evidence, is mere dogmatism. It is a way of thinking which must be stamped from us in order to survive. Ignore the lunatics, and go see the movie.

2007-12-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

A BBC Channel 4 Documentary about American Doomsdayers:

2007-12-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

I am glad I am alive now,for I have no desire to compete with these. They are among my favorite creatures, an enormously toothed eating machine. No wonder prey animals react so strongly to any handling; A million years of these things roaming around would imprint all kinds of fear.

The Smilodon

2007-12-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

This week, on Challenges in Evolution, the results of a debate between Willam Dembski and a Siberian Tiger

2007-12-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

Broken Government..a video

2007-12-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

Religious lunacy...I know, it is redundant, but in Khartoum, they are currently demanding the death of a school teacher whose students named a bear Muhammed. Perhaps it should have been name " surrounded by ignorant, murderous backward fanatics".

From the Guardian:http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2220180,00.html

2007-11-13T06:48:00.000-08:00

2007-11-13T06:22:00.000-08:00

2007-10-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I was leaving work downtown. I passed a lady looking worse for wear and I deliberately said hello; I always try to do this because it is natural for me. I come from the same place. She had black to brunette hair, malnourished, skin in bad shape. A drunk or junkie I thought. She bummed a smoke, then begged another for later. I understand, she has nothing. Homeless she says. I'm an ex drunk junkie, I told her. AA? she asked. Yeah, many years now. What are you doing here? I work in that building..Dnr building. I used to digitize maps at the Experiment station. What the hell, I said. You sucking them down ? Nahh, I'm a crackhead.

It went on from there, more of the same. You have to clean up I told her; I got lucky, you can too.

I regret that I didn't ask more, that I did not encourage her, push her into hope as people did for me.

You can have a better life,I want to say.

Help her is what I want to do. I hope I see her again ...

2007-10-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

A unique presentation given by Steven Pinker here:http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/163

2007-10-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

In the news lately is some local crazies from Ely terrorizing people in the Boundary Waters see here:http://www.timberjay.com/current.php?article=3695

Originally being from the area, and having lived, worked in and then left it, I suppose I could put my two cents in. People constantly question why young people leave the area. Of course the answer is usually the economy, which is true. There are entire other groups of people who leave for other purposes, however. Some of it is just wanting to go someplace else, or to a larger city, or just plain ambition that cannot be followed through on in the area. Then there are many others who leave because they cannot stand social isolation, usually people who are somewhat different, whether racially, culturally, in sexual preference or just plain don't wish to be surrounded by a world of insular locals, whom having never left and seen the larger world, assume they are somehow better than anyone else, and only their thoughts and habits matter.

Their ignorance, never confronted, becomes part of the community thought. It gains the power of myth.

Somehow, a small minority in the area has continued its myth of oppression, that their rights were and are being violated, and that they should decide how public land is used. They classify themselves as being oppressed, yet they aren't actually treated differently than anyone else. They just wish they could motor around,rather than paddle, or ride their snowmobiles or atv's anywhere they choose, because doggone it, that is how things are supposed to be. In short, it is let me and my friends do what we want. And don't you dare question it.

It is one of the reason's I left. Insular ignorance. Moronic beliefs. Never having had ambition to learn beyond their own desires, they howl at the world, then wonder why people look at them for what they are; close minded idiots. I love the woods; I hate gravel pits. The two do not go together. Neither does a half drunk yokel tearing ass down the road on an atv with a pistol; He is what he is, a half drunk yokel. Somehow, they have become some mythical rebel, rather than just a scary halfwit you want to keep away from your kids.

It is why I left. It is why many will continue to, never to come back, and why nothing will ever grow there. You can't grow a garden on wasteland.

2007-09-26T18:10:00.001-07:00

One of my newest heroes ...Introducing Eric Pianka..A brilliant Ecologist, Herpetologist, Ecologist and what else can I say..http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/eric.html

2007-09-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

So Dan rather is finally suing CBS. Of course many act as if he is a resentful old man, or crazed, or for empty headed republicans ( sort of redundant, isn't it?) , the evil head of the old liberal media. This despite ample evidence the fix was in for George to get a pilots job, despite his failure to pass the test or any other qualifications, and the history of his actually not showing up for duty. My dog knows the fix was in. So do my dead relatives. Hell, my nephew's gecko knows that anything that was ever done for, by, or near dubya means the fix was on. So repubs, for once just shut up, and quit defending your own delusional lunacy. You are supporting a criminal. For more reading go here:http://www.gregpalast.com/dan-crashes-bush-flies-high/

2007-09-13T05:52:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures from research this summer, one of the reasons I didn't post in an eternity. I will say it simply: the forests of Northern Wisconsin are in dangerous shape. In 20 years, much of diversity will be long lost.

2007-05-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

I am finally going to go up north this weekend, the first time in a long time. I miss the woods , and I miss some people, but I don't miss everyone. There are others I just flat out think are stupid, including some relatives. What is catching my eye this week is a group out of Ely, CWCS, who think they are oppressed if they and others cannot use any form of motorized transport. They talk about loving the woods, but like Atv'ers, I must ask the question: How do you enjoy the woods with aloud engine and traveling to fast to see anything. The answer is simple: They don't actually enjoy the woods, they just like doing what they want in it. so here is a challenge: Show me how you enjoy it by actually spending time in it at a speed enough to use your senses, and not with a motor. Otherwise, shut your mouth.

2007-03-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

Greg Palast, a wonderful journalist, has a great story on one of Bush's appointees for US attorney. His main qualification is clearing the voting rolls via dirty tricks for the republicans. Here is the post:http://www.gregpalast.com/bushs-new-us-attorney-a-criminal/

2007-03-01T20:14:00.000-08:00

The whackjobs that are the Republican Party's activists are having their meeting; see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melinda-henneberger/conservative-bushbashing_b_42385.html.

The Phyllis Schafly types, those concerned about such things as the Mexican conspiracy to take us over by sheer birth rate, rule this event. Apparently they are bashing Bush; He isn't far enough right. Looking at their candidates and the requirements they must fulfill, we are in deep trouble. We have the man whose sole qualification was being mayor of New York when planes crashed into buildings, another who was a pow ( I at least admire him being a veteran), and even more frightening, a follower of a religion founded by a man with such an outlandish story ( see the story of the Mormon church) that his followers should be tested for lunacy. Will anyone please tell me why these people are allowed to vote, other than the constitutional right? I want to ask them if they would vote for a follower of Poseidon, or perhaps Kulkulkan, at least someone interesting, rather than the nutball Joseph Smith....I doubt there is a god, but if there is...Please help us.

2007-01-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

And now the whackos will appear....

The Minnesota DNR, as part of its legal review process, has just released its proposals for endangered, threatened and species of special concern in Minnesota. This has already brought the yokels out ( see these comments at the Duluth News Tribune: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=32306&page=com

Here is the DNR web page regarding this : http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/ets/rulesrevision.html

It is always amazing to read the ignorant comments and narrow worldviews by the public. Threats to property rights, misinterpretations of biology and evolution, flat out idiocy by mouth breathing yokels..it runs the gamut.

Have fun....

2006-12-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

And to continue from yesterday....

What's most frightening is the complete and utter disconnect in people's minds. What used to be extreme is now commonplace; and I mean the forms of evangelical and fundamentalist christianity where items such as the rapture and revelations are discussed openly and rationally, as if they are rational subjects rather than the frankly insane topics that they are. But these are just the most extreme. I am always amazed at the lack of historical background people know about this supposedly sacred text...that Paul the apostle did not know jesus, that instead several decades after the death of said son of god he had a vision of him on the road....or the millennium long rule of the catholic church and what it became, or the traveling preacher who derived eschatology from the bizarre allegory that is revelations....they only know what some whackjob preacher tells them...they know nothing of basic subjects like geology, microbiology, or frankly even frontal systems in weather. The wealth of ignorance abound in an ordinary group of people could fuel an empire for centuries if convertible....and I am not speaking of a wrestling audience.

2006-12-29T06:39:00.000-08:00

Ostrich people.......

Living where I do, I am constantly surrounded by ignorance, superstition and that truly scary phenomenon called modern christianity. It is placed in such importance that grammar checkers don't like it spelled with lower case as in this case. But I am tired. I am frustrated. I am long since beyond anger having at a young age tired of debating the morons who sat outside of my yard attempting to debate me while I shot baskets. I would sit alone in class as the rest would leave school heading to confirmation. Lately, I've been surrounded again. God does this. God does that. God is wonderful. God thinks this. God thinks that. I just broke up with someone after they had highlighted biblical quotations denouncing homosexuality and passed them on to someone else. I am no longer tolerant. It is time to end this drivel.

At every point of a former causal explanation formerly attributed to god, investigation has shown the cause to be material. Every disease that used to be caused by evil spirits was found to be either completely false ( as in witchcraft) or with some other cause...i.e. the bubonic plague. Despite this, we still have arm waving, jesus praising, snake handling sycophants praising the lord and begging for the rapture and salvation...to the tunes of billions of dollars in property and cold, hard cash. They will happily solve addictions, paralysis and solve marriage incompatibility. All this while driving off in a limo. Now, many will say, that is only a minority, and look at the good it does....a simple question is this.....why wouldn't the same resources be just as effective doing good for the sake of good, justified by real explanations? Why does it have to be done in the name of a 2000 yr old dead jew whose own people said was obviously not the messiah, who no one who spread the word about later on actually knew ( Paul, decades after the fact) and also showed a mean streak.

There are entire communities with megachurches who somehow tie jesus in with the ability to drive suv's and purchase cheap goods paid for by essentially slave labor at walmart. When you observe this, it is obvious that the enlightenment has not affected much of the U.S. It is a bizarre combination of overt materialism, jesus worship and the tenets of the whackjob right of the republican party. There was more intellectual honesty during the american revolution than now.....more later......

2006-08-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Ok....so I have been busy. A dry year means fires, and I have been dipping into that bottomless pit of gold for a couple months now, along with my regular gig. Frankly, I am sick of defending monied idiocy from its own stupidity. I will give you a quick source, though there are many more: Roger G. Kennedy's " Wildfire and Americans: How to Save Lives, Property and your Tax Dollars". Read it, get angry and weep. No, I haven't been up north at Cavity Lake. I've been working locally, defending the world from canary grass fires and ramshackle farms. Mostly I've been sitting on my butt. Waiting. All this is justified in the Billions of tax dollars spent by numerous local, state and federal agencies protecting those who have chosen to move into fire traps, encouraged by insane land policies, transportation systems and the most unholy and useless creature to ever walk the earth, the real estate developer.

There is one reason over 500 people have been fighting the fire at Cavity lake to the tune of over 5 million dollars. It is not to save us from a catastrophe. It is to save rich property owners of the Gunflint. They are not being charged one extra red cent for this largesse...they can claim their property taxes are paying it, but it comes nowhere close to what has been spent the last 7 years in stationing aircraft, crews, prescribed burn operations and the administration of the entire affair, which easily runs into the eight digits in terms of cost. You, the taxpayers of other places, the hardworking stiffs, are paying so these very wealthy people can build their million dollar boondoggles in one of the most fire-prone regions in North America.

And we encourage people to do this. We say it is ok. And this is true throughout America; witness the insanity of southern California or Arizona.

I have witnessed one occasion where a property owner became angered over our resistance to engage a fire to save a chicken coop surrounded by 8 foot tall canary grass, We were supposed to heroically endanger ourselves to save this hut from the owners' stupidity.

I have simple solution: bill people for the cost of protection. For the next ten years, all property owners on the west side of the Gunflint shall pay their fair share at tax time. If you have a mansion on Seagull lake, you get a monster. All 7 years of costs since the 1999 blowdown shall be recouped. Your bill is a cool million. A small shack, your bill is smaller.

I am sick of sucking soot for these wealthy spoilt morons. Let their property burn.

2006-04-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Today it is illegal immigrants. Frankly, I don't know how Mexicans can be illegals. These people look like skins, and somehow people who are indigenous being suddenly illegal is the usual insanity perpetrated by white anglo-americans. Many of them are, in fact, indios, just from south of the border. They simply want and need to make a living. Having been around many of them, they work hard, often under punishing conditions, thousands of miles from home. I always ask the question: " Would someone do this unless they had to?". Considering most of their heritage, they have much more of a natural right to be on this continent than any white american. So instead of bitching about them, I am going to propose that we ship certain anglo-Americans back to a colony more akin to their needs, sort of like a white Liberia. This will also reduce skin cancer care costs, for I am shipping them to the Norwegian island of Svalbard, where their white flesh will produce vitamin d in the cloud cover.

First up is Sen. Marty Siefert, republican from Marshall, MN. He often calls himself the representative of Joe Six Pack. A couple years ago he sponsored an amendment to make the drivers test english only. I wonder how many hours were wasted on this piece of crap legislation, instead of just hiring a couple of spanish speaking testers. Observing his last name, I demand that he be tested from now on in his native german. He also complains about welfare people, doesn't like abortion, and is your typical backward ass repub. Frankly, I don't want Joe sixpack running things. I see him now at the end of the bar, his cheesy white gut hanging out from under his shirt, babbling incoherently over his beer about them " damned meshicansth". He complains about welfare while receiving commodity subsidies courtesy of the taxpayer. He drives his oversize vehicle on taxpayer built roads, fueled by dead soldier payed for oil, all the while bitching about the price. His wife will tell you he is as stupid as a retarded goat, but she loves him anyway. We really don't want him running things. Nor do we want Siefert, as his representative. It is time for his return to his native North European landscape . Off to Svalbard with you.

Next is U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. Here is a real nutball. The American Nazi party occasionally complains he is appropriating their program. He is into government power, as in the Patriot act, and thinks congress should have the right to police judges, really meaning he and his friends should decide what is right. He has introduced legislation wanting to criminalize all so-called illegals. Since his ancestors came from another continent, without authorization from the peoples here, I have decided he must go to Svalbard also. So must any of his friends, family, and cronies. And his dog. And any of his inbred cheesehead cousins. All U.S. House of rep. republicans must go also. You want a nice pure world, you can have it.

This is typical. Only rightwing nutball descendants of those who committed genocide could conclude that people who are indigenous are illegal. These two are just the beginning. At least half the white population of South Dakota should go also, for they are nothing but the white trash descendants of land thieves. Only they have to go to Novaya Zemyla, the arctic island used by the Soviets as a weapons teasting ground. That we have a good start.

2006-04-24T07:52:00.002-07:00

To a headier topic. I suffered through Michael Crichtons work, "State of fear", last week. In it he expounds, voiced mostly in a superhuman MIT academic turned superagent ( an interesting psychological subject itself), on the evils of environmentalism and climate change. He also adds appendices and editorials at the back of the book with his views on the entire subject. I will avoid the book itself, for it is mostly stereotyped characters and opinion disguised as storyline. It will appeal nicely to paranoid rightwingers with caricatured actors and lawyers and evil earth-first types committing murder and mayhem.

Crichton is often looked highly upon due to his credentialed M.D. status and obviously widely read scientific background. Lately he has become the darling of the flat earth -no environmental crisis crowd due to this book and his public appearances denouncing any environmental problems. He also castigates environmentalists for stopping development in poorer countries, essentially calling them theives and liars for using the tools of development while stopping or berating others from doing so.

First, Crichton has never been a practicing scientist, his books being fiction based on theoretical science. His MD is from over 30 years ago, hardly a qualification to engage in peer based criticism of complex a subject as climate change theory and modeling. Within his critique,( and this is risky because I am actually treating his opinion as worthy of scientific criticism), he performs the greatest error of any science: selection and omission, or simply put, the failure to include and deal with all available evidence. He omits what counters his idea, and brings forth what supports it. He then attacks the entire subject as being based on groupthink and the need for scientists to get grants. His main evidence is that some locations are cooler, or have shown a cooling trend within some recent periods. This, of course, does not deal with all the other places that have shown to be getting warmer, in fact much warmer, over vastly larger areas, or that many of these reading coincide with predictions of various models. Finally is his general theory that land use changes account for most temperature increases, there is no crisis, ddt got a bad name, species are not going extinct, old growth is bad, and in 100 years the world will be a better place.

Drivel. Plain and simple.

Ideas are powerful. And some are dangerous. This is one of Crichtons main themes in the book. His argument throughout is the environmental crisis is a creation of propaganda now fed by momentum and money. On no page does he deal with the quality and quantity of forests, the numbers of species gone or going extinct, the numbers and amount of toxins, the disappearance of once vast reserves like the cod of the Grand Banks, or any other actual details. This is a figment all of our imagination, and specifically that of a rich Hollywood elite and scientists bent on making a living through our tax dollars. One of his characters exclaims that that the natives, by burning, were expressing the knowledge that "old forests sucked". This is frightening, because I thought perhaps as an MD, he might have a limited understanding of biology and ecology. Old forests "suck" only for certain species and only for certain human uses. Biologically, they are just as rich as any ecosystem, only for different species. As far as human uses, it depends on whom is using them and when and what for. Life itself grants no judgement. Often, it is the indigenous who cry the greatest when the world is plowed over by the industrial.

Nowhere does he leap farther than in his criticism of a mysterious cabal of environmentalists denying the poor of the world the right to develop. The poor of the world often wish to develop, or merely to continue on with their lives without the harassment of our major corporations, who extract, pollute, exploit and drive the locals off their land. If any one group denies the poor of the world, it is the right wing who Crichton aligns himself with. Represented by corporations, the WTO, and other similar organizations, it is they who do not develop for the sake of people, but extract and exploit for profit. Witness the places with great resources. Somehow the profits never make it to the locals. It is the right wing in this country who refuse to allow funding for simple birth control, or lower cost aids drugs. Perhaps Crichton should avail himself of the evidence and speak out about these subjects.

Next Posting: Bjorn Lomborg, one of Crichtons favorite victims.

2006-04-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

I guess I should have a camera. On the first plot this morning, three male turkeys were walking in the middle of an asphalt county road displaying. One had a nice 6 inch or so beard. The largest, who could look into the window of my car, had a beard that was shredded. The third, I did not get a good look. They did not run from my car. They came walking towards my car, seemingly curious, or, it seemed, bent on aggression. Then it dawned on me: game farm birds. No wild bird would act like this. This is a continuing american tradition. After wrecking the habitat so no native species can live, wannabe game managers decide they know better and start releasing whatever they wish. Then we get Tom turkeys who walk on the highway and approach cars. Or feral pigs. Or chukars. Or whatever else any yokel decides to let loose. The largest came right to my window and looked in. I was tempted to grab him, whack him and cook him, but without long gloves and the size of those spurs ( well over an inch long), I passed. I also wonder if people in the area had fed them from vehicles the way they approached me. They were gobbling away, doing full fanning displays. Anyone who has seen this knows how impressive this is, with an almost drum-like whoosh sound as the feathers extend. I was looking for sharptails of course, and had to get out to glass the fields. They did not run, but kept moving, intent on where they were going, gobbling and displaying. I wondered how fast a predator would devour these idiots, like american suburbanites let loose in a cannibalistic culture, easily trapped by fake drive up fast food windows. Ahhhhh.....to only dream. Maybe I should release large predatory felines raised on a diet of human flesh....

The next plot was perfect for sharptails, with over two square miles of open field and brushland. The damned things were in the middle of the road dancing, with another in the field 75 yeards away hitting the ground so hard it sounded like a drum rather than the light stepping you always hear. Besides that were the usuals, the snipe doing display flights, sandhills, geese, ducks and a few I couldn't identify.

The final noxious highlight of the morning was the local city's sewage lagoons, wafting the odor of a ten day old unflushed toilet a half mile down the road. I neglected to make that my stopping point.

2006-04-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

So now to Atv's and other "off-road vehicles". Being an outdoorsman in both work and life, I spend over two thousand hours in the field a year. Noone better dare tell me that I am seeing only the negative. I have seen fishing areas destroyed, wildlife habitat converted into mudpits, entire hills turned into erosion channels, public property wrecked, all done by these benignly named technological freaks. I have yet to see any good. No broken homes have been reconciled, food production isn't up, no diseases have been cured and not a single orphan has been housed due to these devices. In fact, precious liquid hydrocarbons, metals and plastics, all finite resources, are instead squandered away into something that does nothing but destroy the landscape. A simple test is perhaps needed. If someone can show me any place or time where habitat has been improved, a spawning ground made better or more ruffed grouse choose to live in symbiosis with atv use rather than a 1000 acre aspen forest, perhaps I might alter my opinion. I doubt anyone will come up with an example. What Atv's are about is adrenaline. One argument often used is that recreational vehicle drivers enjoy the outdoors also. They don't. They enjoy going through the outdoors at speed on a petro-combustion vehicle. When one is on top of an operating engine, with helmet, glove and goggles, and driving said vehicle, it is quite difficult to discern the sights, sounds and lives of nature, except for those creatures running away from you. When one looks, listens, and enjoys nature, they usually use their senses, i.e. eyes, ears and perhaps the nose. This is slightly more effective than moving at 40 mph on a machine producing upwards of 70 decibels, head encased in a helmet.

I will avoid other pro- atv arguments as they are empty at best, and great examples of a drunk's reasoning at worst.

The problem with atv's is their very nature. Easy to operate and able to go just about anywhere, any slack-jawed yokel,over-amped teenager or beer swilling troglodyte can hop on and tear up the world. It is like handing a group of sixteen year old boys a fifty caliber machine gun and saying " don't hurt anyone now". Just because something is fun doesn't mean people should be allowed to do it.

What truly irks me to no end is that every time I buy gas in Minnesota, part of the taxes I pay goes not improving roads or bridges, remediating the habitat lost to their construction, assisting in transporting people to work or products to market, but to be handed over to local atv clubs to pay for their personal playgrounds. Often with little or no oversight. Their lobbying power, combined with that of certain legislators and two in-state manufacturers, has bought them taxpayer cash and land use with no essential limit.

Now we have another proposal.

I apologize to the rest of the state for having the same hometown as its proponent. Senator Tom Bakk, Cook-DFL, has introduced legislation to increase the percentage of tax revenue going subsidizing this insanity. It is most likely aimed to help the tourist industry in the north, for it really helps none except resort, gas station, and restaraunt and bar owners, whilst annoying everyone else and destroying nature. We need to simply call this what it is: welfare for the few who benefit from this. It is nothing more.

At this time, with much of our infrastructure underfunded for decades, with continued sprawl, with no access to health care for much of the population, that this is even brought to the floor is frightening. This is what a legislator does? Hand out more cash to an already questionable enterprise? ( See the various articles on lack of oversight regarding trail clubs available at the Minnesotans for Resonsible Recreation website).

It seems our only hope is that gasoline be pushed to such prices it becomes a productonly for useful work. Maybe this only will stop this latest attack on our resources, both land and the public dollar.

2006-04-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome. I am currently ensconced at a relatives watching her dog and running around east central Minnesota looking for sharptail grouse ( my latest foray into wildlife). I have learned that one) I do not wish to have a manufactured home surrounded by junk vehicles and two) there is very little room for species that cannot handle human disturbance. Finally, humans have too much free access to heavy equipment. Given free reign, they turn any landscape into a flattened field or a muddy mess in quick time, then place a sign naming it "Happy Time farm" or "Scenic Valley", usually after denuding the place of any beauty and building a mcmansion on it. Don't even get me started on atv's..I'll save that for next time.