It is called decorum
- Thread starter Gry
- Start date
- Status
Franco was financed by wealthy American businessmen as a 'lab'.
As was Mussolini.
Hitler as well.
These men having learned what they did from their lab work, were ready to 'bring it home'.
They approached the most decorated solider in America and asked him to assist them in overturning
the president of the United States.
A coup.
Smedley turned them down.
These 'gentlemen' would of course had someone else in mind to approach as a backup.
Who ?
As was Mussolini.
Hitler as well.
These men having learned what they did from their lab work, were ready to 'bring it home'.
They approached the most decorated solider in America and asked him to assist them in overturning
the president of the United States.
A coup.
Smedley turned them down.
These 'gentlemen' would of course had someone else in mind to approach as a backup.
Who ?
M
moose eater
Don't knock Hedges just for being Hedges; take a look at what some of the pros he references are saying.
Again, there's the unadjusted 35% federal corporate tax rate the Big Boys manipulatively complain about, and the there's the reality of what they actually pay after the loop holes they've arranged through Congress; typically 0% to 11%, per digging into major Oil Producers on the North Slope, who cried loudly on television, wanting to pay us less for our oil in Alaska and the Dakota, or easily found at any number of sources re. other corporations; GE to name a common manipulator in the game.
-----------------------------------------
"This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”
August 27, 2018
Truthdig
Income inequality in the United States has not been this pronounced in over a century.
Chris Hedges
You know the statistics. Income inequality in the United States has not been this pronounced in over a century. The top 10 percent has 50 percent of the country’s income, and the upper 1 percent has 20 percent of the country’s income. A quarter of American workers struggle on wages of less than $10 an hour, putting them below the poverty line, while the income of the average CEO of a major corporation is more than 300 times the pay of his or her average worker, a massive increase given that in the 1950s the average CEO made 20 times what his or her worker made. This income inequality is global. The richest 1 percent of the world’s population controls 40 percent of the world’s wealth. And it is getting worse.
The richest 1 percent of the world’s population controls 40 percent of the world’s wealth. And it is getting worse.
What will the consequences of this inequality be economically and politically? How much worse will it get with the imposition of austerity programs and a new tax code that slashes rates for corporations, allowing companies to hoard money or buy back their own stock rather than invest in the economy? How will we endure as health care insurance premiums steadily rise and social and public welfare programs such as Medicaid, Pell Grants and food stamps are cut? And under the tax code revision signed by President Trump in December, rates will increase over the long term for the working class. Over the next decade, the revision will cost the nation roughly $1.5 trillion. Where will this end?
We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse. We will revolt or become 21st-century serfs, forced to live in misery and brutally oppressed by militarized police and the most sophisticated security and surveillance system in human history while the ruling oligarchs continue to wallow in unimagined wealth and opulence.
“The new tax code is explosive excess,” the economist Richard Wolff said when we spoke in New York. “We’ve had 30 or 40 years where corporations paid less taxes than they ever did. They made more money than they ever did. They have been able to keep wages stagnant while the productivity of labor rose. This is the last moment historically they need another big gift, let alone at the expense of the very people whose wages have been stagnant. To give them a tax bust of this sort, basically reducing from 35 percent to 20 percent, is a 40 percent cut. This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”
When capitalism collapsed in the 1930s, the response of the working class was to form unions, strike and protest. The workers pitted power against power. They forced the oligarchs to respond with the New Deal, which created 12 million government-funded jobs, Social Security, the minimum wage and unemployment compensation. The country’s infrastructure was modernized and maintained. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alone employed 300,000 workers to form and maintain national parks.
“The message of the organized working class was unequivocal,” Wolff said. “Either you help us through this Depression or there will be a revolution.”
The New Deal programs were paid for by taxing the rich. Even in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower presidency, the top marginal rate was 91 percent.
The rich, enraged, mounted a war to undo these programs and restore the social inequality that makes them wealthy at our expense. We have come full circle. Dissidents, radicals and critics of capitalism are once again branded as agents of foreign powers and purged from universities and the airwaves. The labor movement has been dismantled, including through so-called right-to-work laws that prohibit agreements between unions and employers. The last remaining regulations to thwart corporate pillage and pollution are removed. Although government is the only mechanism we have to protect ourselves from predatory oligarchs and corporations, the rich tell us that government is the problem, not the solution. Austerity and a bloated and out-of-control military budget, along with the privatization of public services and institutions such as utilities and public education, we are assured, are the way to economic growth. And presiding over this assault and unchecked kleptocracy are the con artist in chief and his billionaire friends from the fossil fuel and war industries and elsewhere on Wall Street.
“We’ve given a free pass to a capitalist system because we’ve been afraid to debate it.”
The elites cook statistics to lie about a recovery from the 2008 global financial crash. To gather unemployment statistics, for example, government agents ask people two questions: Are you working? If they answer “yes” they are counted as employed even if they have a temporary job in which they work only an hour a week. If they say “no” they are asked if they have been looking for work. If they have not looked for work in the last four weeks they are magically erased from the unemployment rolls. And then there is the long list of those not counted as unemployed, such as prisoners, the retired, stay-at-home spouses and high school and college students who want jobs. Alternative facts did not begin with Donald Trump.
“You don’t have to be a statistical genius to understand that over the last 10 years, a significant number of people gave up looking because it’s too disgusting,” Wolff said. “The jobs they were offered were inferior to what they had before or so insecure that it made their family life impossible. They went back to school, went into the illegal economy or began to live off their friends, relatives and neighbors.”
“The quality of the jobs, the security, the benefits and the impact on physical and mental health have been cascading downward as the wages remain stagnant,” he went on. “We’re not in a recovery. We’re in an ongoing decline, which, by the way, is why Mr. Trump got elected. This is happening to capitalism in Western Europe, Japan and the United States. This is why an angry working class is looking for ways to express and change its circumstances.”
“Society has a responsibility to itself,” Wolff said. “If the private sector can’t or won’t manage that, then the public sector has to step in. It’s what [Franklin] Roosevelt said when he came on the radio: ‘If there are millions of Americans who ask for nothing other than a job, and the private sector can’t provide it, then it’s up to me. Who else is going to do it?’ If we cut back on welfare we are making people depend on the private sector. What happens to people thrown on a private capital sector that cannot and will not function in a socially acceptable way?”
“Instead of creating a middle class, it polarizes everything,” he said of the inequality. “It allows the top executives to go completely crazy with their pay packages. They are paid beyond what’s reasonable, beyond what their fellow capitalists receive in other parts of the world. There is a collapse of the ability to buy things. A company that saves all this money through a tax cut from Mr. Trump is not going to spend its money hiring people, buying machines, producing more. They’re having trouble selling what they already produce. They’re impoverishing the very people they sell to. What do they do with the money? They take it and pay themselves. They give themselves higher pay packages. They buy back their own stock, which they’re legally allowed to do. It pushes the price of the stock up. Their [personal] compensation is connected to how well the price of the stock does. No jobs are created. No growth is created. The price of stock is going up even though the viability of the enterprise—because of the [company’s] collapsing market—is shrinking.”
“Capitalism is hollowing itself out,” he said. “The capitalists refuse to face this because they are making money, for a while. That’s the same logic as the monarchs before the French Revolution building the fantastic Versailles without understanding they were digging their own graves in those lovely gardens.”
The elites divert attention from their pillage by blaming foreign countries such as China or undocumented workers for the economic demise of the working class.
“It’s a classic ploy of crooked politicians stuck with a problem of their own making, blaming somebody else,” Wolff said. “We take the poor 10 or 11 million immigrants in this country with questionable legal status and we demonize them. We scapegoat them. They couldn’t possibly account for the difficulties in this economy. Throwing them out does not fundamentally change the dynamics of the economy. It’s childishly easy to show this. But it’s good theater. ‘I am smiting the foreigner.’ ”
“Tariffs are another way to smite the foreigner,” Wolff went on. “The tariff is a punishment of others. These days, the bugaboo is China. They are the bad ones. They are doing this. I’d like to remind people two or three things about these tariffs. One: Historically, they don’t work very well. It’s very easy to evade. For example, we put a tariff on steel from China. What do the Chinese do? They cut a deal with the Canadians or the Mexicans or the Koreans or the Europeans. Sell it to them, who resell it here. It’s on the same ship coming here. It just has a different flag at the back. This is childish. It’s well known.”
“Number two: It’s political theater,” he said. “It doesn’t change very much. For example, a good half of the goods that come from China come from subsidiaries of American corporations that went to China over the last 30 years to produce for the American market. You are smiting them by closing off their market. They’re going to be angry. They’re going to lose their investments. They’re going to take corrective action. All of this is negative for the American economy. It’s bizarre.”
“Finally, the Chinese, their politicians being not that different from ours, will have to posture in return and retaliate,” he said. “They’re already targeting our farm products. It is chaos. The United States, when we were a young country, was accused by the British and the Europeans of stealing their technology and intellectual property. Never before has it been easier to communicate intellectual property than it is today. The Chinese have been doing their share of this as an up-and-coming economy. It’s not new. It’s not frightening. It’s a part of how capitalism works. To suddenly get people outraged as if something special is going on, that’s just dishonest.”
There is no discussion in the corporate-controlled media of the effects of our out-of-control corporate capitalism. Workers struggling under massive debts, unable to pay for ever-rising health care and other basic costs, trapped in low-wage jobs that make life one long emergency, are rendered invisible by a media that entertains us with court gossip from porn actresses and reality television stars and focuses on celebrity culture. We ignore reality at our peril.
“We’ve given a free pass to a capitalist system because we’ve been afraid to debate it,” Wolff said. “When you give a free pass to any institution, you create the conditions for it to rot right behind the facade. That’s what is happening.”
© 2018 TruthDig
Again, there's the unadjusted 35% federal corporate tax rate the Big Boys manipulatively complain about, and the there's the reality of what they actually pay after the loop holes they've arranged through Congress; typically 0% to 11%, per digging into major Oil Producers on the North Slope, who cried loudly on television, wanting to pay us less for our oil in Alaska and the Dakota, or easily found at any number of sources re. other corporations; GE to name a common manipulator in the game.
-----------------------------------------
"This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”
August 27, 2018
Truthdig
Income inequality in the United States has not been this pronounced in over a century.
Chris Hedges
You know the statistics. Income inequality in the United States has not been this pronounced in over a century. The top 10 percent has 50 percent of the country’s income, and the upper 1 percent has 20 percent of the country’s income. A quarter of American workers struggle on wages of less than $10 an hour, putting them below the poverty line, while the income of the average CEO of a major corporation is more than 300 times the pay of his or her average worker, a massive increase given that in the 1950s the average CEO made 20 times what his or her worker made. This income inequality is global. The richest 1 percent of the world’s population controls 40 percent of the world’s wealth. And it is getting worse.
The richest 1 percent of the world’s population controls 40 percent of the world’s wealth. And it is getting worse.
What will the consequences of this inequality be economically and politically? How much worse will it get with the imposition of austerity programs and a new tax code that slashes rates for corporations, allowing companies to hoard money or buy back their own stock rather than invest in the economy? How will we endure as health care insurance premiums steadily rise and social and public welfare programs such as Medicaid, Pell Grants and food stamps are cut? And under the tax code revision signed by President Trump in December, rates will increase over the long term for the working class. Over the next decade, the revision will cost the nation roughly $1.5 trillion. Where will this end?
We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse. We will revolt or become 21st-century serfs, forced to live in misery and brutally oppressed by militarized police and the most sophisticated security and surveillance system in human history while the ruling oligarchs continue to wallow in unimagined wealth and opulence.
“The new tax code is explosive excess,” the economist Richard Wolff said when we spoke in New York. “We’ve had 30 or 40 years where corporations paid less taxes than they ever did. They made more money than they ever did. They have been able to keep wages stagnant while the productivity of labor rose. This is the last moment historically they need another big gift, let alone at the expense of the very people whose wages have been stagnant. To give them a tax bust of this sort, basically reducing from 35 percent to 20 percent, is a 40 percent cut. This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”
When capitalism collapsed in the 1930s, the response of the working class was to form unions, strike and protest. The workers pitted power against power. They forced the oligarchs to respond with the New Deal, which created 12 million government-funded jobs, Social Security, the minimum wage and unemployment compensation. The country’s infrastructure was modernized and maintained. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alone employed 300,000 workers to form and maintain national parks.
“The message of the organized working class was unequivocal,” Wolff said. “Either you help us through this Depression or there will be a revolution.”
The New Deal programs were paid for by taxing the rich. Even in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower presidency, the top marginal rate was 91 percent.
The rich, enraged, mounted a war to undo these programs and restore the social inequality that makes them wealthy at our expense. We have come full circle. Dissidents, radicals and critics of capitalism are once again branded as agents of foreign powers and purged from universities and the airwaves. The labor movement has been dismantled, including through so-called right-to-work laws that prohibit agreements between unions and employers. The last remaining regulations to thwart corporate pillage and pollution are removed. Although government is the only mechanism we have to protect ourselves from predatory oligarchs and corporations, the rich tell us that government is the problem, not the solution. Austerity and a bloated and out-of-control military budget, along with the privatization of public services and institutions such as utilities and public education, we are assured, are the way to economic growth. And presiding over this assault and unchecked kleptocracy are the con artist in chief and his billionaire friends from the fossil fuel and war industries and elsewhere on Wall Street.
“We’ve given a free pass to a capitalist system because we’ve been afraid to debate it.”
The elites cook statistics to lie about a recovery from the 2008 global financial crash. To gather unemployment statistics, for example, government agents ask people two questions: Are you working? If they answer “yes” they are counted as employed even if they have a temporary job in which they work only an hour a week. If they say “no” they are asked if they have been looking for work. If they have not looked for work in the last four weeks they are magically erased from the unemployment rolls. And then there is the long list of those not counted as unemployed, such as prisoners, the retired, stay-at-home spouses and high school and college students who want jobs. Alternative facts did not begin with Donald Trump.
“You don’t have to be a statistical genius to understand that over the last 10 years, a significant number of people gave up looking because it’s too disgusting,” Wolff said. “The jobs they were offered were inferior to what they had before or so insecure that it made their family life impossible. They went back to school, went into the illegal economy or began to live off their friends, relatives and neighbors.”
“The quality of the jobs, the security, the benefits and the impact on physical and mental health have been cascading downward as the wages remain stagnant,” he went on. “We’re not in a recovery. We’re in an ongoing decline, which, by the way, is why Mr. Trump got elected. This is happening to capitalism in Western Europe, Japan and the United States. This is why an angry working class is looking for ways to express and change its circumstances.”
“Society has a responsibility to itself,” Wolff said. “If the private sector can’t or won’t manage that, then the public sector has to step in. It’s what [Franklin] Roosevelt said when he came on the radio: ‘If there are millions of Americans who ask for nothing other than a job, and the private sector can’t provide it, then it’s up to me. Who else is going to do it?’ If we cut back on welfare we are making people depend on the private sector. What happens to people thrown on a private capital sector that cannot and will not function in a socially acceptable way?”
“Instead of creating a middle class, it polarizes everything,” he said of the inequality. “It allows the top executives to go completely crazy with their pay packages. They are paid beyond what’s reasonable, beyond what their fellow capitalists receive in other parts of the world. There is a collapse of the ability to buy things. A company that saves all this money through a tax cut from Mr. Trump is not going to spend its money hiring people, buying machines, producing more. They’re having trouble selling what they already produce. They’re impoverishing the very people they sell to. What do they do with the money? They take it and pay themselves. They give themselves higher pay packages. They buy back their own stock, which they’re legally allowed to do. It pushes the price of the stock up. Their [personal] compensation is connected to how well the price of the stock does. No jobs are created. No growth is created. The price of stock is going up even though the viability of the enterprise—because of the [company’s] collapsing market—is shrinking.”
“Capitalism is hollowing itself out,” he said. “The capitalists refuse to face this because they are making money, for a while. That’s the same logic as the monarchs before the French Revolution building the fantastic Versailles without understanding they were digging their own graves in those lovely gardens.”
The elites divert attention from their pillage by blaming foreign countries such as China or undocumented workers for the economic demise of the working class.
“It’s a classic ploy of crooked politicians stuck with a problem of their own making, blaming somebody else,” Wolff said. “We take the poor 10 or 11 million immigrants in this country with questionable legal status and we demonize them. We scapegoat them. They couldn’t possibly account for the difficulties in this economy. Throwing them out does not fundamentally change the dynamics of the economy. It’s childishly easy to show this. But it’s good theater. ‘I am smiting the foreigner.’ ”
“Tariffs are another way to smite the foreigner,” Wolff went on. “The tariff is a punishment of others. These days, the bugaboo is China. They are the bad ones. They are doing this. I’d like to remind people two or three things about these tariffs. One: Historically, they don’t work very well. It’s very easy to evade. For example, we put a tariff on steel from China. What do the Chinese do? They cut a deal with the Canadians or the Mexicans or the Koreans or the Europeans. Sell it to them, who resell it here. It’s on the same ship coming here. It just has a different flag at the back. This is childish. It’s well known.”
“Number two: It’s political theater,” he said. “It doesn’t change very much. For example, a good half of the goods that come from China come from subsidiaries of American corporations that went to China over the last 30 years to produce for the American market. You are smiting them by closing off their market. They’re going to be angry. They’re going to lose their investments. They’re going to take corrective action. All of this is negative for the American economy. It’s bizarre.”
“Finally, the Chinese, their politicians being not that different from ours, will have to posture in return and retaliate,” he said. “They’re already targeting our farm products. It is chaos. The United States, when we were a young country, was accused by the British and the Europeans of stealing their technology and intellectual property. Never before has it been easier to communicate intellectual property than it is today. The Chinese have been doing their share of this as an up-and-coming economy. It’s not new. It’s not frightening. It’s a part of how capitalism works. To suddenly get people outraged as if something special is going on, that’s just dishonest.”
There is no discussion in the corporate-controlled media of the effects of our out-of-control corporate capitalism. Workers struggling under massive debts, unable to pay for ever-rising health care and other basic costs, trapped in low-wage jobs that make life one long emergency, are rendered invisible by a media that entertains us with court gossip from porn actresses and reality television stars and focuses on celebrity culture. We ignore reality at our peril.
“We’ve given a free pass to a capitalist system because we’ve been afraid to debate it,” Wolff said. “When you give a free pass to any institution, you create the conditions for it to rot right behind the facade. That’s what is happening.”
© 2018 TruthDig
From the perspective of anyone who understands that once government ventures into areas that are outside of the core functions which they SHOULD provide, they become a self-perpetuating, grossly inefficient mess that is governed by political considerations rather than reality.
A prime example is the USFS. We currently have a wildfire that is 10 miles from our community that could have easily been stopped in the first couple of days. Instead, the FS decided to "manage" it because everyone knows that fire is THE solution to the forest problem that the USFS themselves created when they got out of the timber business. So, in the midst of the worst fire season in history and in some of the roughest, virtually road-less area in California, they allowed the fire to get to it's current size of 37,000 acres. At this point, the key factor that may save our town is the fact that there are private timber companies between the fire and town that have been making desperate preparations to stop the fire. Oh, and that timber that they have been dropping to create dozer lines? The State won't give them permits to move it until they are damned good and ready, so it is currently decked in the path of the fire.
OkieSmokie
Member
Yup. That is all around messed up. You wont get any arguement from me on that point.
that's your problem tarzan, you're always sleeping, and your diminished IQ leaves you insulting others posts instead of replying to them as intellectually gifted folk prefer to do.......
M
moose eater
I worked for the U.S. Forest Circus in 1979 in SE Alaska, rives. Yes, at some levels they are incompetent. Best when some of the leather-top desk jockeys stay out of the way of the bushmen, frankly.
But when we're saying 'all of this,' or 'all of that,' is this or that, in its entirety, it's often over-simplification, and inaccurate.
Many depts of natural resources, forest crews both state and fed, etc., will let a fire burn, initially to get rid of 'problem stands'; beetle-kill spruce, etc., they like to let some places burn to contain the die-off,and to rid the most hazardous fire dangers. Sometimes that back-fires. Seen the military do that up here with grass burns.
I worked the Sloake/Sloak/Sloke River fire out of Atlin B.C., near the Yukon Territory Border in NW B.C. in the summer of 1978, after it attained national emergency status. Good times!!! ;^>)
Once the fire gets good and hot, even running 3 D-9s side-by-side doesn't create a fire-break sufficient to keep it contained. We'd watch burning objects, not embers but objects, travel 1/4 mile to a 1/2 mile through the air, the up-draft was so f'ing hot.
We'd watch such things fly on our way back to the make-shift helipad, shrug our shoulders, and accept that it would be tomorrow's inconsequential paid hiking and snacking mission. If D-9s x 3 weren't effective, our polaskis were basically a make-work project for relatively low wages (back then & there), where at we got fed really well.
Fact is that when they get THAT hot, even repeated retardent drops (and we had a fleet of Canuck and Alaska choppers dropping retardant), often make little difference.
They try to manage hypothetical or theoretical strategies managing ALL sides of perspectives, and sometimes they get out of control. There's forest management, pest or disease control, and preservation of dwellings/suburbia. Typically not in that order.
My neighborhood here, where I live, burned up in the early 80s; crispy-crittered for a HUGE area. Well before I built here. I don't burn unless the ground's either covered in snow, or drenched like a Mo Fo.
But it was in response to -that- fire that the State of Alaska legislature felonized even an accidental fire, if the destruction topped value 'X'' (*Of course, they've selectively let those who were members of certain groups/strata off on those charges while hammering others).
The government is often as fickle as the people who elect it, tending to swing like a pendulum, and sometimes making little sense.
Yet there are things they do that are necessary, and they're typically best at those things when they're doing them altruistically, and not catering to special interests.
But there will always be some degree of chasm between 'book intelligence,' and reality.
Meant to mention, acknowledging this is a hot button comment, that the climate change that some choose to see as non-existent, plays directly into the increased number of sizable fires, and increased difficulty in containing them. Just one change brought on by hotter weather, and more wind. The 2 together are deadly in combination.
But when we're saying 'all of this,' or 'all of that,' is this or that, in its entirety, it's often over-simplification, and inaccurate.
Many depts of natural resources, forest crews both state and fed, etc., will let a fire burn, initially to get rid of 'problem stands'; beetle-kill spruce, etc., they like to let some places burn to contain the die-off,and to rid the most hazardous fire dangers. Sometimes that back-fires. Seen the military do that up here with grass burns.
I worked the Sloake/Sloak/Sloke River fire out of Atlin B.C., near the Yukon Territory Border in NW B.C. in the summer of 1978, after it attained national emergency status. Good times!!! ;^>)
Once the fire gets good and hot, even running 3 D-9s side-by-side doesn't create a fire-break sufficient to keep it contained. We'd watch burning objects, not embers but objects, travel 1/4 mile to a 1/2 mile through the air, the up-draft was so f'ing hot.
We'd watch such things fly on our way back to the make-shift helipad, shrug our shoulders, and accept that it would be tomorrow's inconsequential paid hiking and snacking mission. If D-9s x 3 weren't effective, our polaskis were basically a make-work project for relatively low wages (back then & there), where at we got fed really well.
Fact is that when they get THAT hot, even repeated retardent drops (and we had a fleet of Canuck and Alaska choppers dropping retardant), often make little difference.
They try to manage hypothetical or theoretical strategies managing ALL sides of perspectives, and sometimes they get out of control. There's forest management, pest or disease control, and preservation of dwellings/suburbia. Typically not in that order.
My neighborhood here, where I live, burned up in the early 80s; crispy-crittered for a HUGE area. Well before I built here. I don't burn unless the ground's either covered in snow, or drenched like a Mo Fo.
But it was in response to -that- fire that the State of Alaska legislature felonized even an accidental fire, if the destruction topped value 'X'' (*Of course, they've selectively let those who were members of certain groups/strata off on those charges while hammering others).
The government is often as fickle as the people who elect it, tending to swing like a pendulum, and sometimes making little sense.
Yet there are things they do that are necessary, and they're typically best at those things when they're doing them altruistically, and not catering to special interests.
But there will always be some degree of chasm between 'book intelligence,' and reality.
Meant to mention, acknowledging this is a hot button comment, that the climate change that some choose to see as non-existent, plays directly into the increased number of sizable fires, and increased difficulty in containing them. Just one change brought on by hotter weather, and more wind. The 2 together are deadly in combination.
It is idiocy to let a fire go under the current conditions regardless of the motivation or whatever supposed "science" is behind it. Less than 10 miles to the west of this one is one of the largest fires in California history at 230,000 acres and multiple deaths, and it was just wrapping up when the new one started. They are currently cutting dozer lines 7 wide, and it isn't expected to hold. The smoke has been so thick that the air tankers and helicopters are grounded.
"Climate change" is far less of a factor than they would like you to believe. Yes, things have warmed up marginally, but having 10x as many trees as the land can support, 70% of the standing timber dying off from bug kill and drought, and a number of fucking pyro's running around are much larger components.
In the early '60's, there were 2 full-time USFS employees here. When they needed firefighters, they pressed the mill crew and loggers into service. Now, thanks to Forest Service policy, there are no mill crews, there are 130+ USFS employees here, double that many 12 miles away and similar distributions in every nook and cranny up and down the highway. Yay government...
"Climate change" is far less of a factor than they would like you to believe. Yes, things have warmed up marginally, but having 10x as many trees as the land can support, 70% of the standing timber dying off from bug kill and drought, and a number of fucking pyro's running around are much larger components.
In the early '60's, there were 2 full-time USFS employees here. When they needed firefighters, they pressed the mill crew and loggers into service. Now, thanks to Forest Service policy, there are no mill crews, there are 130+ USFS employees here, double that many 12 miles away and similar distributions in every nook and cranny up and down the highway. Yay government...
M
moose eater
I feel your angst. Seriously.
Winds have also been an added feature to the 'changes' in climate. And they drive fire like nobody's business.
Hot fire and serious wind means 'hang it up,' if you're in the path.
And we've had more freezing rains/'frizzle', more wind storms, downed trees as a result (including in seasons we didn't use to GET wind storms), more precip in summer, more snow bringing down lines in winter with the frizzle and winds, etc., than we ever saw before.
It's not just the heat with 'climate change.'
And yes, 10 miles, in the wind, with a hot burn, can be covered in a couple days. Sometimes less.
You sound aware, but flames burn up-hill faster than they burn down hill. For obvious reasons. Heat rises, flames leap upward as a rule. Not so much downward..
Hope you're on the down-slope.
Winds have also been an added feature to the 'changes' in climate. And they drive fire like nobody's business.
Hot fire and serious wind means 'hang it up,' if you're in the path.
And we've had more freezing rains/'frizzle', more wind storms, downed trees as a result (including in seasons we didn't use to GET wind storms), more precip in summer, more snow bringing down lines in winter with the frizzle and winds, etc., than we ever saw before.
It's not just the heat with 'climate change.'
And yes, 10 miles, in the wind, with a hot burn, can be covered in a couple days. Sometimes less.
You sound aware, but flames burn up-hill faster than they burn down hill. For obvious reasons. Heat rises, flames leap upward as a rule. Not so much downward..
Hope you're on the down-slope.
Thanks.
This area is notorious for strong prevailing winds - one nearby town was founded because there was no need for dry kilns for the lumber.
The biggest issue driving this fire season was the late rainy season. That big burst of greenery that resulted can't be sustained for long and becomes tinder.
Yep, fire has legs on uphill runs. That's why this one has progressed the 25 miles or so in the direction that it has traveled, and we are further up the hill yet. However, the other fire that was adjacent to this one progressed 32,000 acres in one night, and it was running downhill...
This area is notorious for strong prevailing winds - one nearby town was founded because there was no need for dry kilns for the lumber.
The biggest issue driving this fire season was the late rainy season. That big burst of greenery that resulted can't be sustained for long and becomes tinder.
Yep, fire has legs on uphill runs. That's why this one has progressed the 25 miles or so in the direction that it has traveled, and we are further up the hill yet. However, the other fire that was adjacent to this one progressed 32,000 acres in one night, and it was running downhill...
People confuse climate change denial, with criticism of the plans to combat climate change. When the proposed solution is to give billions of dollars to random countries, it is certainly questionable.
I have to agree the government is inept in most situations. The environmentalists have a hand in the madness. Forrest managment is virtually non existent.
I have to agree the government is inept in most situations. The environmentalists have a hand in the madness. Forrest managment is virtually non existent.
Here is a little blurb that came across my FB feed and struck a chord with me -
This area once sported one of the world's largest saw mills, supplying lumber to this great country. At the same time, hundreds of ranches ran thousands of head of beef cattle, under that same forest, supplying beef to hundreds of thousands of people. The mills provided good paying jobs to thousands of loggers, millworkers and supporting personnel. Ranchers provided jobs to cowboys, farmers, equipment dealers, and many more. Now we sport one of the largest populations of unemployment and food stamps.
Caving to pressure from environmental groups and others, the "managing agencies" of our lands have removed all but a very few head of livestock. They have removed almost all timber harvesting. The mills are gone. One small mill struggles to find enough timber to keep there doors open.
Now every summer we get to watch hundreds of thousands of board feet of valuable timber go up in smoke, not to mention tons of rich grass that would have fattened thousands of pounds of beef.
The very worst, and most insulting part of all this, is they think that you are dumb enough to believe them when they tell you this is all because of "global warming."
How stupid do you think Americans are?
This area once sported one of the world's largest saw mills, supplying lumber to this great country. At the same time, hundreds of ranches ran thousands of head of beef cattle, under that same forest, supplying beef to hundreds of thousands of people. The mills provided good paying jobs to thousands of loggers, millworkers and supporting personnel. Ranchers provided jobs to cowboys, farmers, equipment dealers, and many more. Now we sport one of the largest populations of unemployment and food stamps.
Caving to pressure from environmental groups and others, the "managing agencies" of our lands have removed all but a very few head of livestock. They have removed almost all timber harvesting. The mills are gone. One small mill struggles to find enough timber to keep there doors open.
Now every summer we get to watch hundreds of thousands of board feet of valuable timber go up in smoke, not to mention tons of rich grass that would have fattened thousands of pounds of beef.
The very worst, and most insulting part of all this, is they think that you are dumb enough to believe them when they tell you this is all because of "global warming."
How stupid do you think Americans are?
i do see the california governor authorized increased levels of timber management a few months ago
if you can blend in private enterprise to help shoulder the load and make some money, it really is all good
but it is being seen as a problem, government fucks up, private businesses fuck up, such is life
insomniac_AU
Active member
Yes bush fires can be almost impossible to control. We deal with huge fires almost every year here in Australia. Our firefighters seem to have given up on dozing firebreaks because as you said they are almost ineffective. They seem to now backburn miles ahead in the path of the fire. No fuel, no fire. The last fire through our area made short work of jumping the 300ft wide river near our place. Fires that large seem to create their own wind. The roaring sound of an out of control bush fire is absolutely frightening. There have been stories of fire fronts keeping up with cars traveling at 60mph.
Hill and Knowlton might be best suited to answer that.
Best of luck with the fire and all that goes with it.
M
moose eater
IAU, We stood at the bottom of some large-diameter, tall pine trees in North B.C. You could see the wind current winding up beneath them in circular manner when the forest floor and surroundings was truly hot, like a turbine engine, and hear the similar noise like a jet ramping up, growing as it whirled, then WHOOOOOOSH!!! The flames shot up the pines (BIG pines) like a giant Roman candle!
We were in the bush, a good distance from Atlin.
But that image of whirling wind from the heat cycling like a turbine below those trees, followed by that climactic WHOOOSH!! it may sound weird to some, but it was a rush and a half!
No strong wind aloft that day, just the cycling whirling heat. Visible. A real trip!
Shortly after that I realized the soles of my Herman Survivors were hot as hell. We'd been standing on ground that had smoldering going on underneath, not visible on top of the ground, but underneath, and then we were all doing a hot-foot dance.
Portable pumps on crude wooden stretchers, with long coils of hoses, both of which some other poor bastards had to carry, for reaching creeks for high pressure dousing of the hottest of the hot trees still standing. Very little impact in that regard; some effect, but little in reality. But for spraying down hot -feet-, they were quite effective.
A particular crew kept leaving empty tins of various seafood, dripping fishy smelling oil on the trails where they'd have lunch. Fire burning in fingers, and critters confused, continuing to run into hot spots while trying to get away from them. Ended up with bear troubles there (especially 1 old silver-tip grizzly that treed a number of folks) over a several day period, for the bone-heads who thought leaving such refuse here and there was OK. Someone hung a sign in our camp that read, "Anyone Caught Leaving Trash In the Woods Will be Sent Deep Into Bear Country With a Club." ;^>)
Wouldn't trade a minute of those days, but no one got truly messed up while I was there, and the blaze stayed clear of Atlin.
Lost one Hughes 500 D T-tail that threw a rotor and lost hover from maybe 40 ft up. Pilot walked, but the bird was toast.
Crew out of Anchorage in a 205 did us 'favors' where town-side procurements were involved. Good guys. Military-trained. One of them dropped a large, full retardant bucket, intending instead to hit the lever on the plug. Oops. That was a scene from afar. No one underneath, on the ground.
Events like that, if everyone is good in the end, make for decades of stories that still bring back fond memories and smiles.. Still a rush to think about..
We were in the bush, a good distance from Atlin.
But that image of whirling wind from the heat cycling like a turbine below those trees, followed by that climactic WHOOOSH!! it may sound weird to some, but it was a rush and a half!
No strong wind aloft that day, just the cycling whirling heat. Visible. A real trip!
Shortly after that I realized the soles of my Herman Survivors were hot as hell. We'd been standing on ground that had smoldering going on underneath, not visible on top of the ground, but underneath, and then we were all doing a hot-foot dance.
Portable pumps on crude wooden stretchers, with long coils of hoses, both of which some other poor bastards had to carry, for reaching creeks for high pressure dousing of the hottest of the hot trees still standing. Very little impact in that regard; some effect, but little in reality. But for spraying down hot -feet-, they were quite effective.
A particular crew kept leaving empty tins of various seafood, dripping fishy smelling oil on the trails where they'd have lunch. Fire burning in fingers, and critters confused, continuing to run into hot spots while trying to get away from them. Ended up with bear troubles there (especially 1 old silver-tip grizzly that treed a number of folks) over a several day period, for the bone-heads who thought leaving such refuse here and there was OK. Someone hung a sign in our camp that read, "Anyone Caught Leaving Trash In the Woods Will be Sent Deep Into Bear Country With a Club." ;^>)
Wouldn't trade a minute of those days, but no one got truly messed up while I was there, and the blaze stayed clear of Atlin.
Lost one Hughes 500 D T-tail that threw a rotor and lost hover from maybe 40 ft up. Pilot walked, but the bird was toast.
Crew out of Anchorage in a 205 did us 'favors' where town-side procurements were involved. Good guys. Military-trained. One of them dropped a large, full retardant bucket, intending instead to hit the lever on the plug. Oops. That was a scene from afar. No one underneath, on the ground.
Events like that, if everyone is good in the end, make for decades of stories that still bring back fond memories and smiles.. Still a rush to think about..
M
moose eater
You're welcome, rives, though I just realized I quoted the wrong post!! ;^>) (More sleep might be in order!)
SE Alaska where I was with the USFS briefly, is a rain forest. Many folks don't realize the higher methane content in rain forests and similar, for rotting forest debris.
When we had a month+ of sun and dry (a freak occurrence there), all the commercial loggers were shut down. We could look across to Zarembo Island in the distance, and they were twiddling their thumbs.
We were Gov, and doing mistletoe eradication (not the stuff you kiss under at Christmas, but a fungus that thrives in older clear cuts) and we were -not- shut down for increased fire risk, even though our spark arrestors/mufflers, potential fuel spills, etc., posed as much a danger as the loggers' saws did... Our crew cutting all day, 5+ days/week..
The older clear cuts there were a horrid mess of poorly managed corporate greed that had resulted in the demise of the top soil depth from the days of the early 1942 cuts they'd done there for Sitka spruce for the war effort and aircraft construction, which had once produced trees of diameter you wouldn't believe if I told you.
When we came in to do our 'busy work' (which really amounted to creaming the next crop of harvestable spruce for the often-Japanese-owned and U.S-subsidized timber industry, which the U.S. and Alaska actually lost money on due to outrageous subsidies), the average diameter of the larger trees remaining within their previous cuts' perimeters from 1942 and the early and mid-1970s, was about 30-36". Sometimes 38".
Particularly, the commercial crews from 1972 and 1976 (LOG Logging, circa 1976, was one such entity) had left trees they were required to take due to size, but unusable for commercial purposes, blasted by demo crews instead of fallers, (as fallers don't typically cut what they don't get paid by the bd. ft. for), clinging in multiples to tons of dirt, tipped sideways, that continued to grow, to the point there was such pressure from the weight of blown roots standing on their sides (TONS!!), and trees running intertwined horizontally, that there were times I -literally- put a 1/2" cut into a 30"-36" diameter, horizontal cottonwood tree, and the thing exploded(!!), fragmenting at the cut point, sweeping hard like a giant booby-trap of sorts, with me tossing my saw, and diving into unknown depth of greenery below.
Same f'ing commercial crew left LOTS of blast holes the caps never went off on, with wires still going down into rock. We called a USFS desk dude down from Juneau, who arrived by chopper, who looked at the mess these folks had left (for which they SHOULD have been fined or jailed or both), and said that, "if any of us got caught up in a detonation of one of these old holes, it was our own fault." No BS!!
That's the other side of commercial logging in remote areas 40 years ago in SE Ak. Been there. Woodpecker Cove, Mitkoff Island, opposite side of the Island from Petersburg.
There's some 'extremes' out there. And the top-soil in some of those places is -decimated- for irresponsible activity like I just described..
St. Phatty
Active member
Ever think about bottling the water and selling it ?
If you have a high quality resource like clean natural water ... Christ I'd rather have you selling water than Nestle or Monsanto or Perrier.
Question is, how would you work the Moose motif into the product name ?
The World and the Earth need more Moose Eater like CEO's.
U
Ununionized
They really do create their own winds. When fire burns live forest,
you're not dealing with the fire from dry wood.
The immense amount of water turning to vapor, makes the fire's uplift many, many times larger. There's more LIFT involved when you turn all that water as liquid inside plant material, into vapor.
you're not dealing with the fire from dry wood.
The immense amount of water turning to vapor, makes the fire's uplift many, many times larger. There's more LIFT involved when you turn all that water as liquid inside plant material, into vapor.
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