23 thoughts on “Morning Ed: United States {2016.05.18.W}

  1. Wolverine: The wolverine was harassing the stock. It’s a legal kill. Happens all the time to coyote’s and such. Did you read the comments? Mostly city folk smack talking about how ranchers are bloodthirsty killers who (probably) can’t kill illegal aliens, so kill animals to satisfy their blood lust. Jebus, why do you point us to crap like huffpo?Report

  2. I still can not muster even a flicker of concern about fertility fretting, not even a spark. Do we need to have more young people to support an aging population? Sure, and we can import them. Are fertility rates falling in the developing world too? Yep, sure are. Won’t stop us from importing the young folks we need. Could this lead to a world where all the various nations desperately vie to persuade people to live within their borders? Where they provide pervasive and comprehensive support for people considering having kids? Yes? Good and better then. Bring on the low fertility world, bring it on! One to none babies for everyone*!

    *and if you want more than one power to you.Report

  3. Re: Oregon-
    I think it’s interesting that the article makes it clear that the rural areas have been devastated mostly by a shrinking of government support.

    The area doesn’t seem to be economically viable without extracting resources like timber and mining.
    Yet the militia types don’t own the resources or land. They didn’t buy it, they didn’t discover it its virgin state. And they try very hard to profess ignorance of the ones who did.

    Yet they insist they have some sort of claim to the land, and demand to be given title to it.

    All the airy philosophy really revolves around this point, that the taxpayers should give them stuff for free.

    This just Obamaphones for rural white people.Report

    1. Ya don’t see an inch of old-growth timber where I’m at.
      All clear cut for coal and steel.
      Do we really think that they deserve any less right to land than the folks in Pennsylvania?Report

      1. Given current population trends, turning control of the western federal lands over to the individual states is likely to result in less extraction/development in most cases. The only broad exception to that would be that states would have much more incentive than the feds to do land swaps and such to get rid of the God-awful checkerboard pattern that the feds thought was a good idea back in the 1870s.Report

    2. The most interesting thing about this round of western federal land holding resentment — which peaks every 30 years or so — is the emphasis that is being placed on counties. That’s not particularly surprising in light of population patterns. If control of the now-federal public lands in Oregon were transferred to the state, land use policy would be dictated by the metro areas in the Willamette Valley, and would probably shift towards even less extraction and/or development. One of my FB friends in Hillsboro, who is normally a calm, level-headed, live-and-let-live woman, was frothing at the mouth over the Mahleur occupation, demanding that the FBI go in with guns blazing, or get out of the way so that the State Police could do so. (Sanity check: in the western states where I’ve seen the numbers, grazing fees on state-owned public lands are much higher than the fees on federal land.)Report

      1. Some of the liberal wags on other blogs have coined a phrase that for conservatives, the most appropriate level of government is whatever one they happen to control.Report

          1. I was going to say that the only reason the liberals look less like that is they’ve decided to go all in at the national level, mostly the regulatory agencies and the federal courts. Eg, the heavy lifting in the regulatory “war on coal” has been done by a dozen blue coastal states using federal lawsuits.Report

      2. I think one of the most interesting things to come out of it is a lifting of perception that a quantum of local law enforcement has any problem in colluding with the feds. When I look for markers of anomie, beliefs in the nature of ‘local’ LEO action provide pretty good indicators.

        What happens when core beliefs are proven false? Answers will vary.Report

    1. I used to do a bit of work for the FBI in Sac and once got a semi-tour of the Juctice fortress there. Agent Ralph showed me many interesting things, but one thing that he showed me, and it stuck out, was the garbage truck they used (with lights and radio!) to pick up Persons of Interest’s trash. Sac is a Waste Managment town and so the truck had a symbol on it sides eerily similar. I can’t remember if it was the same or just really close.Report

  4. Local to me, the electrical grid for the eastside needs a major upgrade to the primary supply lines (they are 50 years old). The nonsense people come up with for why the lines should not be upgraded would be hilarious if they weren’t seriously putting such ideas forward. The best is the claim that the eastside doesn’t need additional capacity, we just need better electrical conservation, etc. Mind you, the affected population has grown from something in the ballpark of 50K back when the existing lines were raised, to 400+K today.

    More sensible ideas involve more decentralization of the grid, and while I like that idea, I doubt that is something that can be implemented in the necessary time frame to prevent rolling outages.

    I wonder how many other key infrastructure projects get resistance like this?

    Public utility guys, thoughts?Report

    1. Go ask your city construction crews how much raw sewage is running through channels in the ground. The channels are left after the sewer pipes erode away, be they iron or clay. Thanks Drano!

      Most of that occurs in alleys, where there are aging water lines, few of which are looped. Which is all kinda….. meh

      but then start rolling loaded dump trucks through there…..repeatedly…….. in the rainReport

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