Cocoposts

Tucker on Ron Paul

Tucker Carlson has written this entertaining bit about Ron Paul for the New Republic.   Read the whole thing.

Ron Paul is deeply square, and every bit as deeply committed to your right not to be. "I don't gamble, but I'm the gambler's best friend," he says, boasting of his support for online casinos. He is a Second Amendment absolutist who doesn't own a gun. "I've only fired one a couple of times in my life. I've never gotten around to killing anything." It's an impressively, charmingly principled world view, though sometimes you've got to wonder how much Paul has in common with many of the people who support him.

 

 

Surge in Off-Roading

Durango makes the New York Times series on federal lands.  This part called Wheels in the Wild.

DURANGO, Colo. In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed.

But the gate has been knocked down repeatedly, shot at and generally disregarded. Miles beyond it, a two-track trail has been punched into the wilderness by errant all-terrain-vehicle riders who have insisted on going their own way, on-trail or off.

There are so many of these machines,€ said Dave Petersen, a bow hunter who monitors public lands issues here in Durango for the environmental group Trout Unlimited,  it has€œ made our big public lands much smaller, for the wildlife and for us. (...)

T-shirt image from the The T-shirt guy.

And this sidebar from the Times story:

Groups Representing Motorized Users:

Blue Ribbon Coalition
Americans for Responsible Recreational Access
Advocates for Access to Public Lands
Ride With Respect
Utah Shared Access Alliance
Montanans for Multiple Use
Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition

Groups Seeking to Curb Off-Highway Vehicle Use on Public Lands:

Responsible Trails America
Trout Unlimited
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Rangers for Responsible Recreation

Notice some imbalance?  Vehicle manufacturers participate heavily in some of those motorized user groups.  And it doesn't include groups like the American Motorcyclist Association  or the Off-Road Business Association, where No Trails = No Sales!   The Times doesn't touch on these formidable business interests in the "debates" about ATV use.

Honda seems to over-stress the functional aspects of their vehicles.

(...)  On the farm, a tractor cost exponentially more to purchase and maintain, and an ATV uses 8 percent of the fuel necessary to feed a tractor.  Consequently utility usage exploded in the 1980s and ATVs became multi-purpose machines, serving both recreational and utility purposes. This multi-purpose usage grew from 30 percent of total usage in 1985 to approximately 80 percent of today's ATV market. (...)

By the time the '90s rolled in, the Honda FourTrax had become an essential part of the great American toolbox. You'd be hard pressed to find a Louisiana rice farm, Washington apple orchard or Montana cattle ranch that didn't have at least one. 

From copper mines to banana plantations, golf courses to pig farms, forest reclamation projects to shopping center maintenance, nothing on wheels had ever been as versatile, reliable, efficient and affordable, on the job or on the weekend, as the Honda ATV. 

Though sport models such as Honda's FourTrax 300EX and the new-for-'99 400EX are immensely popular with sport and recreational riders, industry observers estimate that 85 percent of ATV use in the '90s revolved around some sort of enterprise. Mr. Takeuchi's idea had grown up, gone to work and done a good job.

Now let' s go play!  But be careful.  Here's an interesting bit about the power of ATV manufacturers from Oregon Live. 

As the ATV industry's lobbyists fight to shape regulation in Washington, D.C., its lawyers have built a solid bulwark around their product in another arena: the courts. Injured riders once won huge verdicts, among them a landmark $5.7 million Oregon case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that was long ago.

Many lawyers these days are reluctant to sue ATV manufacturers because it's just too hard to prevail. The ATV companies spend heavily to defend cases and blame the riders for accidents. Victories for plaintiffs are rare. One big reason is the sway that government-sanctioned ATV safety warnings carry with jurors.

Ugliest Billboard Ever

Here's stuff about illegal dumping  on DCF.  Update:   Sorry about the million different typefaces but I'm lazy busy and need a boss an assistant. 

The Albuquerque Journal makes news of illegal dumping on the Southwest Mesa and this was also a story on KOB recently.

Illegal dumping was once a huge problem in the arroyos of the far Northeast mesa - North Albuquerque Acres. A little remoteness and a road was all it took. Offenders included construction contractors and local trash “do-it-your-selfers”. Not only was it unsightly and hazardous, heavy rains would wash mattresses and tires downstream to block road culverts and cause flooding.

Not anymore. Dumping is one thing development cures.

But there is a lot of vacant land available for this kind of abuse. The owner of some dumped–upon land, who was interviewed for the Journal story, notes how common the problem is.

Scott Henry owns Clearbrook Investment Inc., which owns one of the parcels on the corner. He said he doesn't like the fact that people are using the land to dump on. "If I dumped stuff in their front yard, obviously they wouldn't like it," Henry said, adding that dumping is a problem for many people and businesses that own vacant land. "If you own any land, and you don't have a barbed wire or chain link fence around it, it's an issue. And I don't have the answer," Henry said. "It's somewhat similar to the graffiti problem, it's not the property owner's fault, in many cases, that we've got some criminal activity."

Underused and passed-over lands are ripe for trashing. They are also the hallmarks of sprawl development. And while proponents of new development on raw land at the fringes argue that infill is hard, they simultaneously create more and more to fill in, the further out they go. Without consideration and resources for these places between here and there, they are subject to abuse. They become unattractive and even harder to develop.

Sprawling Bernalillo County has information here with contact numbers to call to report dumping and some other useful resources.

And the New Mexico Environment Department Solid Waste Bureau has a lot of info on their website as well.

Infectious Session

The next New Mexico Legislative Session begins January 15th.   You can hear the Roundhouse make a heaving sigh and a coughing noise as it starts-up in the otherwise  still mid-winter.  The excitement of the session begins!   I can feel it in my chest!   Or that could be my cold reminding me of the last Session's infections.    

It sure breaks up the long mid-winter and the energy is addictive.  The  annual hazing ritual for new secretaries known as "training" will be beginning next week.  Sigh.  I remember it so fondly.  Regimented practice of obsolete bill processing techniques and protocol.  Learning to recognize fellow staff, lobbyists and Members by their unique coughing patterns. 

I almost want to go up there  to work again but Inky won't let me and Big and Yellow dogs and the cats come live with him in the aerie. Even for just a month!     ::cough::

   

President Pro-Tempore

Ben Altamirano has died.  Joe Monahan has the coverage and tribute and musings.   

Hunting and Habitat

A Denver Post's story noted a November National Geographic article about the decline in hunting and the implications for habitat protection.

"The great irony is that many species would not survive at all were it not for the hunters trying to kill them," wrote author Robert M. Poole.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics reveal just 12.5 million hunters in 2006, more than 1.5 million fewer than in 1991. Overall, the number of hunters and anglers declined from 37.8 million in 2001 to 33.9 million in 2006. The Rocky Mountain region experienced one of the most dramatic declines.

Hunting seems irrelevant to many people.  Others are fine with it in the abstract.  As if killing animals was a very distant thing and OK for someone else but not for them - like extreme skiing.  Others carry a stereotypic view of hunters involving drunken red-necked guns blasting away in the woods (not terribly different from the stereotypic view of the back-slapping Iowa farmer - only wearing bright orange.)

The author in the National Geographic piece attempts to capture the diversity of the hunting experience and describes his own in this excellent bit:

As a bird hunter who occasionally shoots a deer for the freezer, I have never shared the big-game hunter’s appreciation for horns, antlers, and trophies, which convey an elevated status upon those who keep track of such things. They carry pictures of trophy elk and whitetails in their wallets and speak knowingly about Boone and Crockett Club scores for antler points, rack spreads, and other measurements. It may be that trophy fever is rooted in the aesthetic that prompts me to save a few grouse or woodcock feathers each year—which are beautiful on their own merits and evoke a particular day in the field, when a bird twittered up through the alders, folded in mid-flight, and was brought to hand by Bart, an old Brittany spaniel who still knows his job and does it with style.

Bart and I pile into the car with the first cool days of autumn, heading north, as we’ve been doing for more than a decade. Even at age 13, he still quivers like a puppy; he knows what’s in store, the very thing for which he was bred as a pointing dog. Year after year, we tromp the same moldering orchards, endure the same slashing hawthorn thickets, hear the same old stories from friends in New Brunswick and Maine, and flop in the same seedy hotels along the way. We mourn the dogs that have died since last year and meet the puppies that will replace them. This routine is a reminder that the seasons dance to a cadence as old and reassuring as Ecclesiastes—even older.

Each bird I take from Bart is accepted with a mingling of thanks, a twinge of regret, and a smoothing of earth-colored feathers. When we have enough for a meal, it is cause for ceremony, accompanied by good wine and extravagant praise for Bart, who can no longer hear a word I say but pretends to, knowing this will earn him a nice piece of woodcock or grouse at the end of the show. Such gestures are important in a world where hunting seems increasingly irrelevant and misunderstood.

 

 

Hands Over the Christmas Vacation

Among the seasonal traditions at the cocobode is the annual movie gorging, beginning with the ceremonial replaying of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  It's not Christmas without viewing Clark Griswold's Grand Illumination of 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights.  When he gets them lit, a nuke plant is rev's up and the Hallelujah chorus sings.  Remember Aunt Bethany brings her cat wrapped up as a gift?  And the cat gets fried chewing the tree lights?  Bethany was played by Mae Questel, a vaudevillian era actress and famous cartoon voice, in her last film appearance.   

Writer John Hughes wrote this, along with another on my favorite movie list - Ferris Bueller.  Says something, about taste and maturity, I know.   

Christmas presents included Hands Over the City for my growing collection of planning movies.  This is Francesco Rosi's 1963 story of Naples's real estate speculation and corruption.   The lead character is a developer and politician who votes on plan changes to benefit his housing construction business. 

Francesco Rosi, in a disc two interview, describes how one square meter - bought while in the countryside becomes worth a great deal if serviced with electricity and water- paid for by the state or the city.

All you had to do was change a color to change the purpose of at site and therefore its value would multiply enormously;  The "legislative plan of 39" was continually messed with and undermined.

The theme seems to resonate.      

 

 

Ornaments in Newspaper

There are plenty of good reasons not to like the morning daily.  In my case it's genetic.  My Mom hated the Albuquerque Journal editorials so such that she would frequently rip out the section to wave it around and throw it to the ground in disgust.  We'd have to piece it together later to read what she was going on about.   

I unwrap her old Christmas decorations from worn sections of newspaper that remind me of her no less than the ornaments themselves.

    

TIDD Circus

I love a circus. 

 Witnessing the choreography of  public meetings about Tax Increment Development Districts was sort of  like a circus.  Instead of trapeze acts there are back flips of logic and  tightrope walking with the truth.  TIDD's - exotic and intriguing circus beasts - appeared center ring only briefly and with canned fanfare.  Then handlers moved them out of the big top  and clowns gathered up fat reports left behind like important poop.         

The SunCal spokesman said this in the conclusion to his editorial hawking the TIDD show:  (...) Protecting the city's TIDD ordinance from unreasonable amendments ensures a future of progress for the entire community.

Protecting  TIDD's is important.  They are probably endangered in their native habitat.  But they surely can't be comfortable in those cages in the back under the tarps - guarded by multiple bureaucracies and shepherded along by those who would exploit them.  And if you try to peek or poke at one with a stick you might get an arm taken off.

The men say move along, move along.  Nothing to see here folks.   No conflicts at all.  Just carrying water for elephants.

 

Real Estate Proctology

The Albuquerque Journal's Sean Olsen raises the obvious question again about conflict of interest in Albuquerque' sprawl development.  That's a broad sticky-wicket through which our elected officials apparently carve a very narrow path.

Cummins said his development already has water service and major road access through Paseo del Volcan.  "There is absolutely nothing of benefit that the TIDD brings to us," he said.  (...)

Within this old Alibi story from 2004 is an interesting line. 

Cummins has said he will not vote on any plans that would directly affect the value of his property. But, bureaucratically speaking, to get any closer to the deal, he'd have to be the county commission's staff proctologist. (...)