Warning...Environmental policy, so it is a bit wonkish. Having worked for different divisions within the DNR( no longer), and with my research and current work in this very field, it is very dear to me.

The details for the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment:

How much will it raise and what will it be used for?

The current general sales and use tax rate is 6.5%. Sales tax
revenue is deposited in the state General Fund.) It raises the state sales tax to 6.875% and dedicates the additional proceeds as follows:
• 33% to a newly created Outdoor Heritage Fund to be spent
only to restore, protect, and enhance wetlands, prairies, forests,
and habitat for game, fish, and wildlife (approximately
$80 million in FY 2010 and $91 million in FY 2011);
• 33% to a newly-created Clean Water Fund to be spent only
to protect, enhance, and restore water quality in lakes, rivers,
streams, and groundwater, with at least 5% of the fund spent
to protect drinking water sources (approximately $80 million
in FY 2010 and $91 million in FY 2011);
• 14.25% to a newly created Parks and Trails Fund to be
spent only to support parks and trails of regional or statewide
significance (approximately $35 million in FY 2010 and $39
million in FY 2011);
• 19.75% to a newly created Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund
to be spent only for arts, arts education, and arts access, and
to preserve Minnesota’s history and cultural heritage
(approximately $48 million in FY 2010 and $54.5 million in
FY 2011).

The money does not automatically go to the Minnesota DNR. It is competitive money, meaning agencies and groups propose projects which are then evaluated for funding.

Finally, some stability, and maybe some new projects and repairs...Believe me, I have my stories.

A suicide due to bad policy?

There is an old saying regarding forest fires: "The government puts out fires by throwing money at them until it rains". Having some experience and qualification in this field, it is a truth beyond absurdity. It is, essentially, a welfare program for civil service firefighters, contractors and property owners. Blame is always fixed on the person who started it, whether one exists or not, rather than official policy of allowing building in fire prone vegetation then spending millions defending the property of the stupid. And now the man whom blame was fixed upon for the Ham Lake Fire has committed suicide. And still, except in a few academic circles or in grumbles amongst certain government employees, no one will ask ask questions, and certain forums will affix blame on this man. The Ham Lake fire cost 11 million dollars, and like most fires, the weather actually put it out. The usual term used was tragedy, and blame needed to be affixed somewhere, and finally someone.

Fundamentally, however, there is a problem. We have allowed, continue to allow, and support by bucketloads of taxpayer money, the insanity of supporting people building within some of the most fire-prone vegetation in the hemisphere, near-boreal forest on shield rock:



If the fire had not been started by someone, lightning would have caused it, and the results would have been the same. The only thing that slowed it down was the prescribed burns which had been done to burn off the fuel left from the blow down...often over 50 tons per acre. This was not a tragedy. It was the result of ignoring nature, of allowing people to build expensive structures in a place so fire prone every July or August that managers cringe any time there is lightning. And they continue to bill us for the privilege.

Until that fundamental fact is accepted, this insanity will continue.

While there are many writings on the subject, the best by far is Roger Kennedy's ( A good Minnesotan also!)"Wildfire and Americans:How to Save Lives, Property, and Your Tax Dollars"...a very good read which should be required reading in every school.

Like the mineral bodies, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Northeastern Minnesota have much in common. And now, of all things, we have sulfide mining in common. For more information, check out this site: http://www.savethewildup.org/ . The site, of all places, is the Yellow Dog Plains, an area of Jack Pine holding a population of the spruce grouse. And how do I know this? A month ago, at a half price book store ( the greatest stores ever!!), I found, from what I believe, one of the few books on this bird, a more boreal and naive species of grouse that also lives in areas of Northern Minnesota. A fascinating read combining stories and results of research. But I digress. As here, the ore is a low grade sulfide ore copper-nickel, and low grade and sulfide are key words. Low grade means tons of rock and thus, land, followed by much processing and tailings, another key word. For as pointed out, but never answered or solved, is that every sulfide mine has polluted. Every Single One. No exceptions. And despite the claims for Polymet and others, their mines will be the same...Again, with no example of any one of them having not polluted. Not one. Ever. And, for decades, this same acid mine drainage has been flowing into Dunka Creek, then into Dunka bay on Birch Lake between Ely and Babbit. The State, meaning taxpayers, has been paying to solve this for years, just as we have been paying and subsidizing most mine research, including the Taconite process, since the beginning. And we still end up with giant holes and pollution problems. And so, I am against all of this. The arguments will all be economic, and about saving communities now dying or becoming retirement communities, and the word will be jobs, ignoring the words pollution and profits. And again, locals will be suckered into a fools game...that of selling their souls and, land, air and water for jobs guaranteed to be unstable, like all mining jobs, with the community left to pick the mess yet again. If you wish to find out more..go here

Reasons to live here:

The first picture is from this spring, wild leeks through last years leaves;


And this, a monarch catepillar on milkweed at the family homestead:


By the way, the blueberry crop is wonderful this year...I will post pics once I stop eating them.

Finally, of all things, a large social networking site for non-theists ( code words: people who don't believe in god), meaning humanists, agnostics, atheists or just plain anyone not believing in the supernatural: http://www.atheistnexus.org/. For anyone isolated in smaller cities or rural areas, being a non-believer can be pretty lonely sometimes, so this could be a blessing for many...

This picture is not mine, it is from Paul Krugman's Blog, which lately, along with Calculated Risk, have been the best places to cut through the blather and understand the true failings and thievery of the mortgage crisis and just how deep the doodoo we are in is. Whenever bankers of one form or another,( investors, bankers, insurance salesmen, three card molly tricksters and other such conmen) start speaking deregulation, hide your wallet and think of this picture. These are just some of the people who brought you this latest debacle, and are of the same breed who brought you the savings and loan crisis in the 80's. We are now well into a multi billion dollar public bailout of private risk for private profit.

Get your hand out of my pocket.

Amongst all the sniveling on gas prices, it is still easy to see more resource waste in a look down the street than could be justified anywhere. First, a couple weeks ago we had this, an attempt to set the worlds largest group atv ride. In this we have the finest of American culture; a ridiculous sense of material entitlement, a gratuitous waste of precious resources, environmental destruction and the bloated, semi- alive fatty deposited carcasses called American bodies. At the same time, sniveling about the price of gas, and how we should drill everywhere. It is amazing this thinking is acceptable as a logical thought process: We should destroy entire ecosystems so overweight yokels can ride around and cause erosion . At the same time this was also going on. As Beldar might say.. " Ahh; the humans...wasting hydrocarbons, driving aging, oversize technologically inferior metallic vehicles around to symbolize the pathetic yearning for their misspent youth".

This underlies American thought and perhaps might ultimately be its downfall: An inability or unwillingness to see that fuel supplies are really just chemical tools. And we have wasted alot of easy to get energy, and waste more everyday. Until it is seen that having a relationship with a car or atv is like having a relationship with a shovel(it usually is males, people who have not matured mentally or emotionally past age 16 or so), nothing will change.
My thought is this: After everyone who dies of starvation is fed tomorrow ( about 35,000 to 40,000), and those who are malnourished are fed, and after everyone who needs medicine, sanitation or education gets that, then you can ask for gas to play. Only then. Until then, any American who dares open their mouth around me for anything other than efficient transport will be verbally abused or simply eviscerated.

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

wrote at Whitepine today

Wetlands, mudders and atv's...





This week was this story from the Strib on a mudrun turned wetland violation. In any story, the most interesting and frightening addition is reading the comments. They range from the bizarre to the rational, but it often shows the scary part of our society. This one brought out the best; deranged mudheads, private property rights nutballs and absolutely ignorant fools. Two comments stand out, however. One writes on how rural or small town people often assume they know more about nature than city people. That I often find is true. Just because you have a bear in your garbage, live on a gravel road and deer hunt doesn't mean you know squat. Working in resource management, one sees this all the time. Horse people converting forest and wetlands into pasture, then years later you see nothing but a rocky, muddy, weedy mess. Small farmers growing corn on clay soils next to a stream and needing the evil gov'mint to come in a put up a deer fence at taxpayer expense. The local guy who decides he is going to "improve drainage" by ditching and damming. Most, frankly, have the biological knowledge of a treated fence post. What they really know is what they wish to know so they can justify what they want to do, an often universal human trait. But out of the mouths of lunatics often comes legitimate questions, and in this case the offender himself asks one:" Why do Atv's get to play and I don't?". I could get technical, for in this case wetlands law applied and the event was a frigging nightmare, but the question is legitimate. The DNR, bowing to political pressure, and so have other government units as the counties and feds, created an entire system for atv's and vehicles. Oh yes, it is regulated, and most of it follows existing road systems or other existing networks, but that begs the question on how the entire operation is justified, and why is the same agency obligated to protect resources not just allowing, but actively developing systems that are inherently ecologically destructive with no legitimate economic or social purpose. It is one thing to manage timber or minerals for economic reasons( though the giveaways are ridiculous and offensive), and another to say let's build a trail system for something we know is ecologically destructive and consists of nothing but people tearing up the woods and burning gas. The above pictures are not a bad example..that is normal for what is seen everywhere. At a resources meeting last week, there were the usual atv people present, and when faced with any evidence, the usual arguments popped up. They are just bad apples. They need more places to go or else they will go there illegally. Here is a thought experiment. Picking another illegal, inherently destructive activity, perhaps lets say illegally playing in wetlands with heavy equipment: "People get great enjoyment being in nature while playing with heavy equipment and altering wetlands; if we do not allow them to do it on public land of adequate size, they will just do it illegally. If we use part of the transportation tax to develop places where citizens can run excavators and enjoy the outdoors while moving hydric soils around and digging holes, they will just do it wherever they please and create problems". Pardon the absurdity, but that is what we have now.

From the local news...


This is a story about a drunken fight that ended in a killing and the lunacy that surrounds it. By lunacy, I mean the complete delusion most people react with. A tragedy it is, yes. but there have been other words used...cowardice and evil are two of them. There is one fundamental aspect no one seems to ask the story: Why was a drunk guy walking around with a gun? He had been booted from the casino for being too drunk. He goes to a house, tries to crash a party, gets booted out, starts a fight, gets beaten down not once but again, pulls a gun..I remind everyone, HE pulled the gun first, then gets shot by the guy dominating the fight. For a year now, I have listened to the word tragedy used in this young man's life, but no one in public has dared ask the question..what was he doing running around town drunk with a gun? My only explanations are two elements. The killer, another young man, is black, and therefore suspect. The other is mass delusion as people do not wish to state the obvious: He got himself shot by being drunk, obnoxious, having a gun and starting multiple fights.

posted at whitepine today

People who have not read that little thing called the Constitution...

In western Minnesota, three kids were suspended for not participating in the pledge of allegiance. That this policy existed despite the numerous court cases forbidding such forced exercises is only one frightening part of the story. It is the sheer muddied ignorance of the entire original basis of our government which should cause everyone to immediately return to the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist papers and the Constitution and begin reading. A telling statement is the mother having to justify her child not engaging in the pledge as " not being defiant against America". I am going to apply a thought experiment; replace the word America with another country's, for example, in an English colonial court in 1775 having to argue that " John Adams is not being defiant against England." It is telling that none of the participants can get past several assumptions. One is that worship of the state is a good thing, which it isn't ( read horrifying radicals like Jefferson or Madison), or that enforced rituals of patriotism ( at its very essence the true root of fascism) are legitimate. The argument then breaks down into a justification for behavior despite how bad it is. That is not the point; our entire system was founded on the principle that the state exists at our behest, not as an entity unto itself that does no wrong ( a truly fascist concept). The government we have, despite its many flaws, originated with the concept that the state was not a god, that the state derived its powers from its population, and was only a political system one participated in. It was not meant to be worshiped unto itself. That is what is happening now, however; the state and its symbols whether flags or recitations, are treated to be an object of worship. The sheer blindness of this false patriotism is best expressed in the story itself, where the community ed instructor proclaims the validity of the entire enterprise based on his serving in the military. I am sorry buddy, but you are not the only one who served, and that merely shows how blind and stupid you are. This was not meant to be a place where people blindly worshiped flags and treated the state as an arm of god, something so very against the very nature of our origins the moment it is mentioned in public the speaker should be humiliated for public stupidity. I will refer people to the original writings, as they are readily available. One very wonderful document is Washington's farewell address, really a public letter, where he warns against standing armies. Ultimately, this case is about whether the state or its people are most important. It is to be a state of its citizens, and not the the citizens of the state...

The war on science..and the war on Resource Management Anyone who works in Natural Resources may tell you now, if they actually know anything and are actually committed to the work ( rather than just working at a job), that it is probably the area truly under attack by the right wingers. Cuts have been abundant at a time when resources are being pressured the most, and they and their supporters not only dislike the rational inquiry of science, but the application of this to resource management, or anything that questions their grabbing a dollar at the public expense. The same is true in this region, where economic hopes are placed at more and more extraction and exploitation. This has happened before, and memories are short here. They do not seem to remember the difference between 1978 and 1984, and they are falling for the same again. Relying yet again on one industry is not going to solve the communities' problems...in essence, we are going to destroy more of the place so for another 20 years someone can drive a pickup and an ATV, just as the seventies were spent on oodles of snowmobiles and muscle cars, all to be sold off at cut price in the 1980's. So where does resources fall into this? Our objective is to make sure that use is sustainable, but whole divisions and departments counter that, and actively help and subsidize the very industries that destroy the most...and mining is one primary problem. The regulations do not acknowledge the reality that every time someone destroys just a little bit, it adds up. We, hopefully and eventually, will acknowledge this, that the strip malling of America must cease, and that we must eventually say no to developers and ourselves. It is always interesting to me how some express their love for nature, then they plow it, pour concrete and asphalt, build a 3000 sq foot "cabin", replete with sat dish and air conditioning, roam around the lake on a leviathan pontoon boat, then tell me how they " love nature". Loving someone is not destroying them..it is allowing them to exist. The state of course, as a politically driven beast, cannot challenge these precepts. It can only attempt to control and modify the lunatic behavior of our society...one that experiences nature by driving, taking a picture in front of a sign, sampling the local coffee shop, purchasing a t-shirt, then dumping the garbage in the local ditch. All species go extinct, and most likely we will as all do, or we'll split off into different species...and maybe much of this will be forgotten when the stars burn out...

I wrote over at Whitepine today

Today's feature in the Strib focuses on the housing crisis and Wright County, where subdivisions now sit empty, housing auctions go unattended, and blame is thrown around like monkey dung. We have seen this before, if anyone remembers, and it was not long ago taxpayers footed another big bill for speculators and bankers: The S & L crisis was like this, a product of deregulation, speculation and that great American past time, public subsidy of private risk, or welfare for the rich evil cynics like myself would call it. Anyone ( with a rational brain)watching the goings on in the suburbs three years ago would have wondered how long you could ride that horse, but doomsayers or long-term rationalists are never welcome when the money hangs like meat on a chain. The dogs will tear you apart just for barking. There are some rules in life I still try to live by. If a salesman says don't worry, that means hold on to your wallet. If a financier or banker says we need to de-regulate to free up the economy, it means my buddies and I want a higher rate of return for doing nothing, and we want the public to bail out us investors when it goes bad; so sayeth Adam Smith. Unlike most, I will not blame ordinary people. Most are trained dogs believing whatever crap is told to them throughout their lives; god is in the heavens, corporations love you, and the good life of the suburbs awaits all if you stay away from those nasty dark people and keep your teeth white. That and they want a decent home, a job and health care, and they pray and hope if they play the game right, that will happen, for they have been told that. There is more to this than a few mortgage bankers and irresponsible owners trying to speculate. It is fundamental to what they have been doing for the last 35 years: Remove the brakes from the New Deal reforms that tried to correct speculative bubbles which are almost always driven more by investors than markets. There is another aspect to this, and anyone can see it if they look. Suburban development is not stable, does not build places that people actually want to live for the long term, is a waste of resources, and is probably the craziest thing we have ever done. As fuel becomes more expensive, and it will, the giant truck we are all riding to the supercenter will become more and more expensive, and there we will sit locked in communities without a heart, 20 miles from nowhere. For the area, as we now see potential development, I will remind everyone what happened before; just look at the numbers for 1978 then for 1988, remember what happened well, and then as people race to split the parcels as the boomers move to town, get ready to ride. There is only one long term project proposal of real size; the rest are mines lasting only 20 years, or smaller projects not really having a dent. 20 years, and we are left with a big nasty mess and overbuilt infrastructure...AGAIN. And, like the last time, most of the money will be blown on gas toys and beer, with 60 inch screens added in this time....and then they will whine when the house won't sell.....

Two Biology related stories caught my eye this morning. First, a moose calf that was hanging around Duluth was found to have brainworm, the common name for the infection shown above, the scientific name being parelaphostrongylus tenuis. It is a natural parasite of the whitetail deer and does not hurt them, but when it infects Moose or Caribou, it is fatal. The worm crawls around inside the brain making holes as it goes. Often, as whitetail numbers increase due to landscape or climate change, the number of Moose goes down, and this is one of the culprits. The other is the Wisconsin Conservation Congress voting their desire for a wolf hunt to "keep the population within management objectives". That sentence compares to a French deconstructionist for lacking meaning. What it really means is this. The wolf population of Wisconsin is not a " management success" for their DNR. They did not reintroduce them, nor manage them, for reintroduction would have raised howls(yes, irony) and bellows from the slack jawed morons that populate most of the U.S. There is an area on the east side of Minnesota bordering Wisconsin that has very few roads or people, and as wolves expanded within the state, they moved into and through that area, eventually populating Wisconsin and the U.P. Now, there are actual packs, oh my, and they might take the occasional hunting dog, calf, lamb or hopefully, several of the millions of deer roaming Wisconsin( the state's deer numbers are so far out of whack it is a biological emergency). It shows a common misperception, that "sportsmen" (hunting is not a sport, it is a method of getting food) are knowledgeable. They are often not. As the former director of one states Deer management section said, " the average hunter in____ wants to sit on a stump for an hour, have a deer walk by, shoot it, then go back to sitting in his shack". Witness the trucks loaded with equipment every year, with entire fleets of atv's towed behind trucks loaded with enough gear and fuel to outfit a company of troops. I once did research in Wisconsin, and as it approached bear season, I would have hounds show up in my plots confused at my presence as the bear hunters worked their dogs. Often, they would have better telemetry equipment than researchers. What many hunters want is the equivalent of a canned hunt and a trophy to bs about, not the actual experience of hunting. It is a fast food equivalent of the natural experience. My concern is for allowing at least some natural processes to occur, and for species other than americanis modernis be allowed to roam and live free, and this includes humans. For more info on Moose decline in Minnesota, go here

The political economy of food.

Of all things, I bought half of a pig from my cousin's farm a while back, cut and wrapped of course. Yesterday I enjoyed the Ham with real au gratin potatoes , and as we sat enjoying the delicious, juicy ham ( enough already, I know) the difference in taste was obvious. It had some, and it was good. But so were many other things about said swine meat. It did not travel 1500 miles, the average distance alot travels to get here. It did not grow in a confinement barn with 2000 other pigs breathing ammonia all day( probably why it tastes good), and it helped a local farmer I know.This my ham during production ( not really) So for all of you today, here is a lesson in where bacon comes from

This was bare grass yesterday. Only a few spots of snow in the shade. And now this. Even for a dedicated snow-a-holic skier, the dreams of mountain biking had infected me, and now....Too sticky to really enjoy skiing...Aaaahhhhgggg.

So I have been remiss. I did not realize it has been two months since a post. But life has been busy. I have relocated to the Iron Range, a place I'd never thought I'd return to. I even live in one of the cities, and not the country to the north as I planned. And it has been an adventure, even for someone originally from the area. No coffee places with wifi open in evening hours within 15 miles. Alcoholism and other addictions run rampant. Teenagers with a look that says " get me out of here!". And those that stay are well, hmm, sometimes frightening. Mudder culture is everywhere, and generally amongst the males it is alcohol mixed with gasoline for enlightenment. There are entire missing age cohorts, especially gen x and y. Ant then this...the local paper...
. I hope the tag I want people to see shows up. You can guess from the tone of this vile piece of greasy fishwrap the editor's mentality. He berates the local school for apparently joining in this. According to him, and most of the right wing nutballs of his ilk ( I know, it is a redundancy), this is pushing the " homosexual agenda", whatever that is. I suppose that means they demand not to be assaulted, verbally abused and, oh my, to be treated like everyone else. Obviously a conspiracy of grand proportions. Last week, I spent the day at a conference where local officials were discussing planning. The question always is " how can we attract younger people to live and work here?". The blame has always been the economy, with some justification. But there are other components; namely, social life, the local culture, the land itself, etc...etc... As one of the local mayor's said, " if you want barriers to change, I will give you about 200 names and addresses to start. "This is a perfect example; The reptile who runs this paper is part of the problem, and so are many others like him. It is no longer the same world, and hoping for some bizarro place populated by happily working, white, nutball christians is not going to help your cities grow. Neither will holding on to mudder culture, or celebrating the digging of repulsive giant holes:large hole. Hey...most of the world thinks nature and art are pretty and are not attracted to toxic waste sites and industrial brownfields. They also do not like insular people who aren't friendly. I will not even speak of the heifer like women...I will save that for my next post after the angry replies are done.

Shunning the non-believer; or in this case, the questioner.

From the Wall Street Journal, we get the case of a woman removed from a church and jailed because the pastor wanted her gone, despite her being a member for decades:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120061470848399079.html.

Now a return to the good old days. Perhaps they will bring back the Scarlet Letter. Here is my first candidate:
I have several questions. The first is why a sheriff is spending the time jailing a 70 yr old woman for trespassing in a church. There were no felonies that morning? NO DUI's? No bear in the garbage can? No breakfast with Otis at Aunt Bee's? Why not arrest the preacher for committing fraud for extracting cash-money from church members while telling obvious falsehoods? All with a tax exempt status. This, of course, is never questioned. His followers are the dangerous ones. They should be marked with a warning " do not feed or allow to reproduce" to ensure their blind stupidity is not passed on. It is a good argument for why organized religion should be rooted from the culture like the smallpox campaign.

Why the animal rights movement are idiots, or "Save the Botrychium Ferns!"

I am about to P&%^ a lot of people off. My research is on invasive earthworms, and so invasive species in general are for me a specialty and a concern. This note on the invasive species weblog awoke me from my winter break stupor and raised my ire:
http://invasivespecies.blogspot.com/search/label/squirrels

More concern raised over the lives of 257 invasive grey squirrels than is raised over all the disappearing and disappeared species in all of the British Isles. It has all the usual hallmarks of the Bambified view of nature existing amongst most urban westerners: An utter and complete ignorance of actual biology, a general love for anything cute, herbivorous, small and furry, and a willingness to sacrifice entire species and communities to save certain favored species. For example, I have never seen an animal rights group come out for preserving local invertebrates from the spiny waterflea http://www.iisgcp.org/EXOTICSP/spiny_water_flea.htm , despite the nasty effects on entire lake ecosystems. Bambi, of course, is another story. Warm,fuzzy,with big brown eyes and a mammal, it is of course lovable to those who relate to animals via childlike emotion. They ignore, however, that deer in unfettered numbers, unlimited in behavior and procreation by predators are destroying what is left of our forests:http://citypages.com/databank/25/1249/article12655.asp. There is another side to this also, of course. Deer Hunters, who favor that species over anything else, mostly the types who brag about the horns ( I always evaluate deer potential by size and tenderness of loin flesh... those long muscles along the back are quite tasty!). They demand high deer numbers regardless of effects so they can drive to their stand, sit on a stump for an hour, shoot, then sit around bragging about it for weeks, rather than actually hunting.


So children, especially those of you who will now write and accuse me of being "speciesist", please understand this: Just because you like something doesn't mean it needs to be here. View the world in its totality, for the wolfpup needs mom to eat Bambi in order to feed her,

and the grey squirrel is destroying your native squirrel. Here is a solution: