Relax, Everything is Going to be Okay!

[elkduds]

Yeah, federally managed public lands aren't instrumental to the success of the NAM at all....

Habitat? We don't need no stinking habitat.

 

[Treeshark]

I'm slow this morning. Please explain in language I will understand.

It kind of seems like this was the dumpster fire you had envisioned when you redirected away from Buzz’s thread.

I’m not seeing a whole lot on this one that is pertinent to what Paul’s original purpose either- which is a shame in my opinion, as he presented an interesting and potentially valuable counterpoint.

 

[TX Trophy Hunter]

I'm making leaps, assumptions and presumptions here...

But, seems any civil engineer could do it solely, maybe with a ti-84+ if his phones in the other room.

How much study do you need for a trail? Reason I ask is-

Let's presume hiking is allowed. And 1000 people will hike. About 7% of the population bikes (100% think they bike like lance ..). 7% x 1000 people + 3%YoY growth in the bike audience.

Can the 2 acres. 20 acres. 200 acres. 2000 acres. 20,000 acres handle the 7%+3%YoY growth at 100% occupancy rating? At 75%? And 25%?

Ok. Part 1 done.

Part 2- impacts. Well. More people. Marginally. Which translate into (checks database) yup, .001928194% correction factor for depreciating impact on land per thousand visits.

Ok done. Part 3- we crossing water on the trail? No go to part 4, yes go to part 3b.

Part 3b- how deep is the water?

Part 4-fire the other 10 guys it took to deduce Y/N on the "extra impact".

7 years, 4 months, 13 days later, 6 people attending the ribbon cutting. 2 more on average a month utilize the resource additionally on the current system. $472k paid in direct or indirect costs, separate of co

15 minutes on my system.

Meet in the middle, fire them all, 3 month max permit process + 3 month intermission on failed permits between reapply. Seems simple, sweet. The simple suite of products of you will.

Yes this is sarcasm. Yes you don't need all the experts, 1 or 2, again 3 max. Maybe a 4th for structural items..but he could probably do 1 or 2 or 3s job, so again. 3 max.

Hell> now hiring- civil engineer with focus/experience in biology settings. Similarly, given they are probably 2 of the highest degree selections known to mankind, id wager finding an individual with a biology degree and civil engineering degree is pretty hard at 3/10 college graduates, considering theyll be working a pretty easy calculation slightly harder than Pythagorean regarding if an ecosystem can sustain another 15-20 people every 15-20 days..

So you can’t even name 1 position from the organization you know so much about. Here’s the reality of your theoretical situation. The sierra club has sued you for failing to follow NEPA. You have not had a public comment period, or demonstrated consideration for adherence to the endangered species act, considered wildlife, archaeological, botanical, soil, or timber impacts. You will now be tied up in court while the tax payers fund lawyers to try and unf— your proposed action which will likely never be implemented at this point.

 

[BigHornRam]

2027 is when everything fully goes into effect. See my last post.

What if the Trump Tax cuts don't sunset in 2027?

 

[SAJ-99]

Allowing the inmates ample runway to achieve self-immolation, burning up Mr. Barnard’s thread in the process.

Well played, @Big Fin.

The thread started by setting the boat on fire. It's funny because the Coast Guard relies on civil volunteers in a lot of instances. Cuts to the government are fine if Americans increase their volunteer efforts. No holding my breath on that.

Comparisons to this action with the private sector layoffs are hard to make. There are plenty of lazy people in the private sector. Plenty trying to fly under the radar and make it to retirement. I can walk into any private business on one day and say "cut 10% of the staff" and it have no impact. On another day I could walk in and say "you need more staff". That variability is the nature of a service business. I have been through quite a few RIFs (banking sector in the 90's was amazing). M&A results in redundancies, so a RIF makes sense, as does a decline in business. Neither of those apply here. The result here is more work and less staff. The core problem (unsolvable in many cases) is there is no clear way to manage efficiency in these roles because there is no end product to measure.

The whole public lands mantra for transfer is Local management is best, but in this case staffing decisions are best done by Washington?

 

[trackerbacker]

I don't want to eviscerate your position, but here goes

Do you still live in Iowa?

Yes

Look out your window, where we’ve let nature, nature.

Ok. Before I answer, have we?:

it’s full of emerald ash borers,

Nature

Japanese knotweed,

Nature

and garlic mustard

And nature, seems nature naturally being noxious is...well...natural....let's go on

. The creeks are a straight canal lined with flood mitigation dikes and our “prairies”have more miles of tile then all of the roads in the state combined.

Ooof....doesn't seem like nature

Our drinking water wells have nitrates so high that our cancer rate is #1 in the world.

We also have the oldest population and net 0 inflow/outflow of residents. A statistically static environment except age cohort increasing. Consider chemical usage (ignoring DSM waterworks failures over decades...) is getting safer, increasing efficacy, and no on will water more profits for 0 gain, would you consider that age probably has more to do than chemcals as, again, one is static or decreasing (chemical usage, population) while the other is increasing (population age, cancer).

But, purely chemicals.....and I'm no fan of chemicals, but to ignore more relevant data than second hand smoke causing lung cancer the next county over is a stretch.

Our biggest state forest doesn’t have a tree older than 75 years. But let’s let nature, nature.

And most State Forest were logging lands prior, no? Seems again, dumb on your end.

All .....how many thousand acres? How many were logging lands/private utilization prior?

When did Iowa buy their State Forest? Because over 75 years ago, it's their fault, under 75 years old no shit, they bought secondhand land. It's been used.

Your bitching about non stock oem tires on a 2005 f150. No shit it doesn't have 2004 tires on it.

And has far as .gov employees making more than their private counterparts for half the work, thanks for making me spit my coffee out laughing so hard.

Ok. Whats your job (as I believe you are .gov)? Specifically it's title (vaguely for anonymity works).

Does that exist at Prudential? At DR Horton? Luana bank? Kwik trip/star? At the corner bar?

Is your compensation higher or lower than the private sector equivalent? Hourly. Benefits. All in.

How many of you, are there, at your companys division(inside of iowa.gov)? How many, of you, are there at individual prudentials, luanas, so on and so forth?

USPS vs UPS/FedEx/prime/DHL/etc.....

The USPS went from 'no rain or snow or sleet shall stop us' to, well.....if the legal system didn't rely on their word, they wouldn't exist anymore.

Let's cut right to the tough question though, specifically I believe, do you work for .gov?

If so, why .gov instead of .com?

 

[trackerbacker]

View attachment 361846

Hey. Second to last paragraph, first sentence (in case someone thinks I was serious with the numbers)..

But it's how I felt haha

 

[TX Trophy Hunter]

What Elon is doing is the equivalent of taking the oil pump and radiator out of new cars to lower production costs. Everything is going to break down and fail. And when that happens to federal lands the solution is going to be to transfer them to the states. The premise to this thread is to relax and let it unfold. I disagree with that premise.

 

[elkduds]

Well, maybe if people want to use the trails they'll have to pitch in. Crested Butte CO is a mountain biking Mecca ONLY because of volunteers.

The Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA) is the oldest mountain bike club in the world. Founded as a riding club in 1983, today CBMBA creates, maintains, advocates for and loves the 450+ miles of singletrack around Crested Butte, Colorado.

Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association

The Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA) is the oldest mountain bike club in the world. Founded as a riding club in 1983, today...

gunnisoncrestedbutte.com

Those trails are almost exclusively on USFS land. The T in Public Land Transfer is transfer. When those lands are privatized, it won't matter how well or poorly staffed, managed or volunteered they used to be. They will be locked away from public users into perpetuity.

@Big Fin posted this last Thursday:

The APL movement got their asses handed to them in the 1980s when they came out with the idea to sell the public land. With that beating, the Republican party moved the APL folks to a darker corner of the room. Yet, they're not fools. They came up with a strategy of how they could use Congress to make the public lands of America a mess, mismanaged, underfunded, a liability, and a revenue loser for locals, such that the time would eventually come where Americans would show little opposition to liquidating these lands; the long-term goal of the APL movement.

The 50-year strategy as witnessed by those of us who have been in this since the 1980s, and confirmed from tidbits gathered in my discussions with people like Terry, strategy fully promoted in articles from Pendley and others, the directives called for in public land chapter of Project 2025, shows that the strategy goes something like this:

1. Defund the agencies - Don't give them the resources to properly manage. Since public lands are such a low priority in Congress, it is easy to use public lands and agency funding as bargaining chips in bigger debates. Since 1990, such has happened.

2. Defund the rural counties with large tracts of public land - Federal lands do not get taxed as our private lands get taxed. Instead, we have two programs to offset those lost taxes - PILT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) and SRS (Secure Rural Schools). Both allow Congress to appropriate money to replace lost tax revenues. Yet, that assumes Congress would fully appropriate such amounts. They don't appropriate enough and stiff the counties. The APL movement pressure Congress to lower the appropriations for county payments that are supposed to replace lost tax revenues. Why? Because it is part of the 50-year plan to piss off rural folks, their County Commissioners, and their School Boards, by not allowing the Federal Government to pay the going rate on property taxes, resulting in lower collections and school funding, and causing locals to have a higher property tax burden than they should have. Since 1990, this plan has worked well and rural counties have lost a lot of Federal receipts.

3. Promote the idea of better land management, but pressure Congress to keep status quo - As I've stated in many videos, every single problem that frustrates us with Federal land management could be solved by Congress. Yet, Congress, as much as many of them complain, do nothing. For some in Congress who know little about public lands, it is a function of ignorance. For others, it is intentional disregard for their constituents interests.

4. Block every attempt to increase revenues from Federal lands - Some may not know that the Feds are to share with counties receipts from Federal lands of grazing, timber, O&G. Yet, when we try to get grazing lease rates somewhere above the 10% charged on adjacent state or private lands, these APL sympathizers in Congress squash any attempt that would increase the Federal revenues. That hurts counties, adding to #2 above, as there is now less revenue to share with Counties. O&G royalty rates increased recently, but they are still much lower than state or private royalty lease rates. Timber stumpage rates are below private stumpage rates. The Hard Rock Mining Act of 1872 exempt hard rock miners from any royalty payment on gold, silver, copper, and other minerals. When we ask Congress to impose a royalty on hard rock minerals, the biggest opponents are the APL sympathizers in Congress. In front of cameras they complain that Federal lands don't earn enough money, while in the dark room meetings they cut deals to make sure Federal land payments stay way below market rates.

There are more prongs to their approach, such as not funding backlogs, ignoring deferred maintenance, redirecting budgets to wildland fire, etc. . To their credit, they've been strategic, patient, and well funded. If you read the public land chapter in Project 2025, it gives you a clear picture of the road map they see ahead.

Their methods are far more nuanced. When Mark Kenyon was writing his book about public lands, he interviewed me while following on a bear hunt in 2017. We felt that the "State Transfer" idea was getting called out for what it was, an attempt to liquidate Federal lands. He asked me what I thought would be the next approach. I gave him my thoughts. He posted this on IG yesterday and I was surprised what a shitstorm it caused.


The goal of this administration is to divest public lands and create a Sovereign Treasury fund. #Kingsdeer. USA was created as an alternative to sovereignty.

 

[Forkyfinder]

Hey. Second to last paragraph, first sentence (in case someone thinks I was serious with the numbers)..

But it's how I felt haha

What do you do for work? Also not real relevant.

But i found your engineer with biology understanding comment kind of funny. Sort of like finding a doctor that also does accounting. But carry on.

 

[dranrab]

It kind of seems like this was the dumpster fire you had envisioned when you redirected away from Buzz’s thread.

I’m not seeing a whole lot on this one that is pertinent to what Paul’s original purpose either- which is a shame in my opinion, as he presented an interesting and potentially valuable counterpoint.

From a personal standpoint, I don't mind drifts and tangents. That's the way real world conversations go.

 

[np307]

So much so, we should pay more in taxes to help nature fight climate change!

Though, how the taxes changes the climate I'm unsure of...

....better get a interdisciplinary team involved.

No, if you'd actually read the history of wildlife in NA you'd know that late 19th and early 20th century hardline capitalists were removing all of the wildlife to feed the markets and hunters lobbied to have that stopped and for much greater regulation to take place around wildlife in NA. You owe every bit of wildlife enjoyment you do to those early conservationists who realized that wildness we enjoyed in America was too precious to lose. But I guess we unlearn those lessons pretty quickly.

 

[dranrab]

What Elon is doing is the equivalent of taking the oil pump and radiator out of new cars to lower production costs. Everything is going to break down and fail. And when that happens to federal lands the solution is going to be to transfer them to the states. The premise to this thread is to relax and let it unfold. I disagree with that premise.

I provided a real world example of how an agency that suffered a 40% workforce loss was able to overcome. If these agencies can't handle a 10-15% loss in workforce, they have the wrong leadership and supervisors.

 

[trackerbacker]

So you can’t even name 1 position from the organization you know so much about. Here’s the reality of your theoretical situation. The sierra club has sued you for failing to follow NEPA. You have not had a public comment period, or demonstrated consideration for adherence to the endangered species act, considered wildlife, archaeological, botanical, soil, or timber impacts. You will now be tied up in court while the tax payers fund lawyers to try and unf— your proposed action which will likely never be implemented at this point.

Didn't say a single thing about the organization.

If the sierra club is suing me, Im guessing that like BBB....

I didn't pay them enough to say I was A+. Both are bullshit, and both id wear with a badge of honor.

Dude. I've developed more land than most people will ever think to buy, You think I don't know what it takes to have .gov approve me moving dirt?

Ask @Straight Arrow if I'm acutely aware of how regulations, law and bullshit works. He's my latest fan. (See, gloating #filipoff)

It's a bloated process meant to do nothing more than extract money, if it was anything else, penalties wouldn't be fines. Fines I can roll into cost of doing business. Fines I can put on my taxes to reduce burden. Fines are simply permission slips for a fee.

I know this. They know this. You, you think it's different. You have one bike club in 1 area doing 1 thing. I've been to north of 20 city councils, p&z, swppp bullshit, DNR, fema. I've paid many thousands in lidar. I've paid many thousand to replat land from fema flood zones and stripped titles through DNR and FEMA to disappear the FEMA 100 on projects.

And you know what it takes to do that? Not an interdisciplinary team that thinks they are important but are simply arbitrary to the main point and powers that be, but money.

Think I've ever failed a p&z when it starts with me asking the fire marshall what things he wants to see from the 'development' that would make him 'happy' to vote yes? Closed doors?

Do you know why I specifically buy and sell only PUDs? Because I don't have to contend with public comment. Period. They can get up there, whine, and they do, whether they are the immediate neighbor or from cross town, but that's it. Legally, public input can not persuade or play decision maker on PUD. So I typically won't even respond.

You think you have a clue? And that's little lol me, in little ol Iowa towns. What do you think the guy 2x me does? The one 5x? 10x? Here's a hint:

Scales of magnitude.

But. Tldr- sounds like your personal issue would be better solved by hiring qualified and competent planner instead of crowd sourcing legal battles on federal land for hobbies?

Perhaps the way in which you went at it at any juncture, has been wrong?

Don't get me wrong, the sierra club is an asinine club (today), but y'all didn't sun tzo enough. to the victors, the spoils.

 

[Gulf of America]

Nothing says checkmate quite like someone refusing to substantiate an assertion they make.

My odds of convincing you to change your mind on anything are worse than my odds of convincing my 1-year-old to stop closing drawers on her fingers. So yeah, check mate. Good for you.

 

[trackerbacker]

No, if you'd actually read the history of wildlife in NA you'd know that late 19th and early 20th century hardline capitalists were removing all of the wildlife to feed the markets and hunters lobbied to have that stopped and for much greater regulation to take place around wildlife in NA. You owe every bit of wildlife enjoyment you do to those early conservationists who realized that wildness we enjoyed in America was too precious to lose. But I guess we unlearn those lessons pretty quickly.

Do I?

I mean, perhaps, but do I?

What if I lived on land that's been in 1 family for since beyond that timeline? It's tendered it's own animals. The king hasn't sent reimbursements..

Wait, do we own them. Or .gov? Or the states? Or the tribunals? And if a tribunal wanders to a federals....who owns who and who owes what then?

What about if I've paid for more than you, do you owe me?

Let's of interdisciplinary thoughts today.

 

[dranrab]

The thread started by setting the boat on fire. It's funny because the Coast Guard relies on civil volunteers in a lot of instances. Cuts to the government are fine if Americans increase their volunteer efforts. No holding my breath on that.

Comparisons to this action with the private sector layoffs are hard to make. There are plenty of lazy people in the private sector. Plenty trying to fly under the radar and make it to retirement. I can walk into any private business on one day and say "cut 10% of the staff" and it have no impact. On another day I could walk in and say "you need more staff". That variability is the nature of a service business. I have been through quite a few RIFs (banking sector in the 90's was amazing). M&A results in redundancies, so a RIF makes sense, as does a decline in business. Neither of those apply here. The result here is more work and less staff. The core problem (unsolvable in many cases) is there is no clear way to manage efficiency in these roles because there is no end product to measure.

The whole public lands mantra for transfer is Local management is best, but in this case staffing decisions are best done by Washington?

The Coast Guard Auxiliary is an incredible volunteer force. I love the guys and gals that do that volunteer work. Unfortunately over the past 2 decades their numbers have gone from about 36000 to about 19000. Many of those members have aged out of operational work and others are in it primarily for the social aspect. In many cases they are doing things that the Coast Guard doesn't do, rather than augmenting the CG on operations. Teaching classes, setting up public outreach booths, doing courtesy vessel examinations. They can't do emergency SAR response, defense/military operations or law enforcement. I would have joined the Auxiliary if not for the bureaucratic bullshit. In fact, that is the most often identified reason that people leave or don't join.

"The core problem (unsolvable in many cases) is there is no clear way to manage efficiency in these roles because there is no end product to measure."

My last CG job was such a job. There were no real metrics to measure my activity, output or success. I managed my own efficiency by focusing on what mattered most. I could have drafted a lot of cool statistical drafts and charts to show people, or I could have delivered a boating safety product to the public I served. I focused on the latter.

 

[rjthehunter]

Tell him to come to the Front Range in Colorado, if he's any good he'll be making six figures and have more work than he wants for the foreseeable future...

In the last 2 weeks, I've called plumbers from Eastern MT, to MN, and everyone is so busy I only was able to wrangle in 1 bid for a new project.

If someone isn't busy right now, they're probably bad at what they do, or aren't looking for work.

It kind of seems like this was the dumpster fire you had envisioned when you redirected away from Buzz’s thread.

I’m not seeing a whole lot on this one that is pertinent to what Paul’s original purpose either- which is a shame in my opinion, as he presented an interesting and potentially valuable counterpoint.

I could share some of the threads of mine buzz managed to get shut down by being a douche. He gets special treatment.

 

[Forkyfinder]

"I've paid many thousand to replat land from fema flood zones and stripped titles through DNR and FEMA to disappear the FEMA 100 on projects.

And you know what it takes to do that? Not an interdisciplinary team that thinks they are important but are simply arbitrary to the main point and powers that be, but money."

@trackerbacker This is just pure BS - as someone who also deals with it. Its not money. The government also cant study every drainage with a fine tooth comb - and many of the fema models are very old and use old/weak contour data. You have to pay a professional (well a few) to do surveying, engineering, and hydrology for that.

 

[dranrab]

My odds of convincing you to change your mind on anything are worse than my odds of convincing my 1-year-old to stop closing drawers on her fingers. So yeah, check mate. Good for you.

If changing people's minds is the reason for posting, surely you know that isn't going to work. I focus on helping people understand my beliefs, thoughts and perspectives, so that even if they don't agree they can see that there's a substantive basis for them. As I outlined for you, ,Elon, like the rest of the USA does, minimizes his tax burden under the laws that Congress created. If I am going to hold anyone in contempt for that it will be Congress who created the laws, not the person that's doing the same thing I do.

Crazy talk, I am sure.