Disqus - Latest Comments for Rayne1

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

allstihl24 — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:39:03 -0000

I live in the eastern U.P. and much of it is wet and protected but my concern is how about the ones who heat with would like me will I have to fight for it. I cut all my own wood my self I pull a forest permit every year and make enough wood for the winter are they going to stop selling me a permit. Many of us up here can't afford propane or fuel oil so we cut are own wood for heat and a company like this could out bid even the local foresters on goverment contracted wood plots. Then they won't have wood to sell to the local people around them and when they do get there hands on some wood the cost will be jacked up for a face cord. So really is anyone looking at the big picture here. I'm all for cheaper and better fuel but I'm sick of the quick fix bull that never works out Kinda like the NAFTA bill that worked out great all our jobs left the US so I just hope they are thinking about everything and not just there pockets.

Re: GM’s Wagoner resigns at White House request

Rayne1 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:38:22 -0000

This is one of those pieces where editorial team and team members may have a disagreement. Perhaps people outside of the automotive industry would view Wagoner's exit as a surprise, but with bondholders continuing to make noises about unfairness of concessions they were being asked to make at this late juncture, there was sure to be at least one human sacrifice.

And there will be more; changes are expected on the board of directors at GM.

The bigger unknown ahead is Chrysler -- what can we expected of a privately-held company cloaked in the amount of secrecy which accompanies subsidiaries of Cerberus? Will we see similar human sacrifices, or will the current management remain intact because Cerberus is likely Chrysler's largest debt-holder?

Re: Cox shifts Countrywide settlement funds away from controversial Grand Rapids parks plan

Rayne1 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:50:14 -0000

It's the part you'd like to gloss over and ignore.

Re: Split deepens in LGBT coalition over anti-bullying legislation

MIgaydude48917 — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:00:36 -0000

Rayne1, I find it rather disingenuous of you and your publication to direct bloggers to, "Refrain from ad hominem attacks" while your reporter left out important information about the comments in the article by Mr. Volk.

Your reporter responded to my post with a line that reads. "Does is raise questions about the author? Yes."

I do not think the average person would have raised an eyebrow if they knew the email came from a handheld device.

Does it raise a question about the author? You bet it does! I would suggest and encourage you to assign a new person to the story because Mr. Heywood admits he has a bias towards Mr. Volk and his group.

The only way your newspaper will get respect from the average gay person is if there is a non-bias person behind the keyboard.

We have a very important fight ahead of us and that fight is the safety of children. We do not have time to worry a media person who even has the perception of being in back pockets of the people that are being accused of rolling over on the issue.

Re: Split deepens in LGBT coalition over anti-bullying legislation

MIgaydude48917 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:41:51 -0000

MI GAY MAFIA

Triangle Foundation
Michigan Equality Michelle Brown
Michigan Board of HRC Michelle Brown
LAAHR
ACLU's Jay Kaplan

I am sorry to say the following groups have been forced to fall in lock-step:

Affirmations
AFSC-LGBT project

The God-father of the mafia for the last 10 years has been Triangle. Because of Triangle the young gay men and women do not understand the history, while the older gay men and women have demonized these groups due to fact the only time they want to hear from the masses is in the form of a check.

Re: Solutions to AIG’s bonuses? Death or taxes

chetlyzarko — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:20:43 -0000

Where were you and your reporters? I mean, you and your reporters are paid to cover that kind of stuff - I'm not. So you ask your readers - where they were covering something you could have uncovered? And had you found it then, it'd no doubt have embarrassed R's.

Turns out that Democrat Senator Chris Dodd is the guy who slipped the language in there. And he received $108,000 from AIG in campaign donations. Where were you then ... and now ... on that issue.

You blame your readers - and the world - for not knowing as if they have deep inside access to that. What a bizarro world you see. In reality, Tim Geitner knew weeks ago but never disclosed it publicly until it happened - O'Bama has broken all of his transparency promises (bill waiting periods the most relevant here). Gary Peters voted for a bill he didn't have time to read or investigate - that's why his faux outrrage is misplaced. He demands AIG employees admit their moral responsibility - unless he at least admits his own while doing that, its hypocritical.

Where were you then? Where everyone else was - in the non-transparent dark.

Where are we now on government spending? In the dark - until its too late to do anything about the open barn doors.

I'll admit to you that now-out-of-power Republicans share some historical culpability, but that not the issue of who had the "last clear chance" to stop this accident, as the term of legal art would suggest. It also doesn't represent real change - shifting blame is politics as usual.

Re: Split deepens in LGBT coalition over anti-bullying legislation

Rayne1 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:58:20 -0000

Your comment provides further evidence of a split within the LGBT community; thanks for sharing.

For those of us in the straight community, it might be helpful if you were able to identify groups/members of the "MI gay mafia" as it is not as obvious to us which organizations/people are on which sides of the anti-bullying legislation issue. Without this information it's also more challenging for editorial staff to ask reporters for more clarity; your focused feedback here would be helpful.

Re: Split deepens in LGBT coalition over anti-bullying legislation

Rayne1 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:47:44 -0000

The feature was copy edited for compliance with AP standards; the email was reprinted in accordance with those standards, including notations where the content has been provided unmodified, verbatim. Given that the email may have been generated on a handheld device rather than on a device with a keyboard, readers might well expect the email to appear as it does.

I'm going to ask that you address the content of the feature -- the split in the LGBT community over anti-bullying legislation -- and refrain from ad hominem attacks, in keeping with this site's comment policy.

Re: Solutions to AIG’s bonuses? Death or taxes

Rayne1 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:39:53 -0000

Apparently the persons who voted for the first $85 billion in exchange for 79.9% equity stake last September also didn't perform thorough due diligence -- that includes the Treasury Secretary and Fed Reserve Chair who pushed the package -- since the "retention bonuses" were on the books for over a year.

Where were you then?

Re: Fermi 3 opposition takes legal action to block new nuclear reactor

Rayne1 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:22:52 -0000

We'll encourage you to read Michigan Messenger's last feature on Fermi 2 regarding rates of cancer in Monroe:

In the 1980s, the cancer rate for young people in Monroe County was below the state average. In the ’90s this rate grew, and in the first half of 2000 the cancer rate for this group in Monroe was greater than the state average. For the period 1999-2004, there is data to compare the Monroe under 25 cancer rate to both the Michigan and U.S statistics. The rate was 23.5 per 100,000 in Monroe County, 21.5 per 100,000 in Michigan and 19.5 per 100,000 nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

These numbers include all types of cancers reported for this group.

There could be many environmental exposure risks in the Monroe area, but we noted in our last feature:

Dr. Janette Sherman, adjunct professor at Western Michigan University’s Environmental Institute and author of “Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer,” has spent her career researching environmental causes of cancer. She said that cancer among young people should be viewed as an indicator for radiation problems associated with nuclear plants.

Radioactive isotopes such as iodine 131, cesium 137 and strontium 90 are passed on to people through cow’s milk, she said. “They come out of the stack and fall on the ground. They permeate the water and are eaten in food.”

Children are particularly vulnerable to this radiation, she said. “It doesn’t take 40 years to get leukemia if you are a kid.”

Sherman said that her analysis of leukemia statistics in the United States indicates that kids living near power plants are more likely to get the disease.

Sherman said that the rise in cancer rates around Fermi is significant.

“I think people ought to be concerned,” she said. “We don’t need to have nuclear power. We have solar and wind and conservation.”

More data from studies could only be a good thing when the lives of Monroe's young people are impacted disproportionately.

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

Rayne1 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:35:31 -0000

What kinds of incentives/deterrents are there to encourage effective forestry management on private lands? As a forester you know there are studies which show that simply harvesting a limited amount of wood is not enough to ensure good wildlife management. What prevents a private owner from simply taking 30% of wood off his own woodlot without consideration for the rest of the ecosystem or for regrowth? Longyear could be an exception to the rule with regard to woodlot management.

Initially there was no information from Mascoma indicating they were limiting their cellulose harvest to whole logs. What if there is a shortage of whole logs -- do producers of cellulosic ethanol like Mascoma begin to look at "forest waste" including limbs, leaves, needles as part of the harvest?

And what if any incentives/deterrents are there in place to prevent excessive use of short-rotation wood crops, particularly near areas where wildlife may be more fragile? (I'm thinking of areas theoretically where Kirtland Warblers may have been sighted, jack pine stands in areas logged over the last 60 years.)

There are a lot more questions than ready answers. If you have some answers, feel free to share.

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

Rayne1 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:15:35 -0000

Do the Porcupine Mountains ring a bell? Mount Ripley?

I've lived in Michigan for nearly 40 years and I know the terrain pretty well, was born here.

The problem with the eastern portion of the UP is described by Champlain at Louisiana Pacific; the easy wood is already becoming expensive, and putting more demand on these same resources will drive up the price, likely making one or both businesses (LP or Mascoma) untenable.

Is there a genuine effort to create more jobs or reduce carbon in the atmosphere or both? There doesn't seem to be a solid answer or commitment.

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

cinnamonfern — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:54:49 -0000

I've lived in Michigan my entire life (in a variety of locations across the state, including the UP), and I definitely would not classify any part of the state as mountainous. And although the western half of the UP is part of the Canadian shield and is quite hilly and rocky, the location that Mascoma will be getting most of their feedstock from is in the eastern half of the UP, which is very flat.

I agree that it will be important to develop harvesting methods that are sustainable in the long term. This is a key issue to those of us involved in lignocellulosic ethanol research. We have seen too many situations where people were not concerned with long-term consequences of their actions and ended up devastating the environment. Hopefully we will be able to learn from others' past mistakes and take steps during these beginning stages to develop a more sustainable industry.

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

Rayne1 — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:18:33 -0000

No, the UP is not flat. Check a topographic map, you'll see that much of it is actually mountainous.

Much of the land is also in private ownership, and even a good portion of that is in possession of entities who are intent on conservation.

Sustainability is definitely key, but assessing sustainability requires actually doing thorough and effective due diligence -- unlike the kind of due diligence that too many investment firms and banks have done for the last two decades.

We're not addressing fuel efficiency with regard to this series on Mascoma; we are only looking at the business proposition and the short- and long-term return on public investment.

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

Biofuelsimon — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:47:05 -0000

Hi Rayne1,

Isn't the Michigan peninsula is flat, there are no insurmountable obstacles to building roads through it are there? So there should be no great difficulty in getting the wood to the plant.

If the price of the wood is high enough then people will harvest it and replant for future profits. Also the numbers are from 2005 (Global Boom Time) not 2009 (Depressions Ville) the amount of wood extracted during the bad times for building, paper etc is likely to be much lower than during good time. So having a new outlet for wood will keep the price up and encourage people to invest in Michigan's forests. Who grows any crop just to stand and look at it?

The key is to encourage them to do it sustainably isn't it? The point that you're all missing is fuel efficiency.

Re: McCain’s Michigan headquarters rented from law firm specializing in mortgage foreclosures

Rayne1 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:51:07 -0000

We'll be turning off comments on this thread as the post is now more than 6 months old and comments being received on this particular post at this time have more in common with spam than with the content of the post.

Re: Split deepens in LGBT coalition over anti-bullying legislation

Rayne1 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:06:47 -0000

FrankAV, as a straight woman with kids I'll tell you that I'm confused about the entire situation.

Bullying is a violation of a student's civil rights in that it interferes with their right of access to education. NO CHILD should be subjected to any kind of bullying, period.

For some rather vague set of reasons there is an argument within the LGBT community about enumeration -- enumeration meaning that anti-bullying legislation should spell out explicitly that bullying shall not be permitted based on age, race, ethnic origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, so on -- with some saying enumeration is essential to the effectiveness of the legislation and others claiming that anti-bullying without enumeration is a start and still others claiming that no enumeration is necessary.

I don't understand why there is any argument at all other than the LGBT community clearly appears fragmented and unable to generate a critical mass of consensus on this issue let alone others.

It is important that ALL PARENTS realize that their children, ALL CHILDREN, are potential victims of bullying (frankly, all kids are likely bullied at some point in their school career, it's so common). Parents should be more aware that school boards across the state of Michigan have done virtually nothing to ensure a consistency of practice to reduce and eliminate bullying, which in itself appears to be a violation of the 14th Amendment since children cannot reasonably expect to receive the same protections from district to district let alone school to school. And in some cases, the school boards are party to the bullying since they are aware it's going on and actively choose to do nothing about it.

This is not just an LGBT issue; it would be nice if the LGBT community pulled itself together, realized they need to make a case to other natural allies and develop a more effective, coordinated approach to the problem of bullying -- before another child drops out, tunes out or tries to hurt themselves out of frustration and desperation.

Re: CNBC’s Santelli stiffs The Daily Show’s Stewart, yielding comedic uptick

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:59:28 -0000

Oh, you can bet that there will be plenty of lampooning of this administration in the years ahead. Goodness knows there's already been a mess of it across other outlets besides The Daily Show.

But your bashing of the Obama administration's projections is pretty weak; just where do you think the data has come from on which those projections are based? Who and what do you think has impacted and will continue to impact those numbers?

The thing about the people on CNBC is that they are capable of serving their corporate masters and their criminal friends while hiding behind their tepid and ineffectual disclaimers that do not protect them from their own fate.

At least the people in the administration have the fortitude to run for or accept office to serve the public; the folks on CNBC don't serve anyone ultimately but themselves.

And you seem to have forgotten that CNBC is the press -- a collection of very challenged members of the press who managed to get it all wrong for years. Maybe the fact that viewers can so easily forget CNBC's role as the media is part of the underlying problem.

Re: CNBC’s Santelli stiffs The Daily Show’s Stewart, yielding comedic uptick

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:47:36 -0000

Boy howdy, could we try the same kind of framing on conservatives? Let's swap out the names and see if it works:

"Michael Steele is a conservative Republican who championed the potential of the Bush administration, publicly admitted that he voted for Bush, and railed against the Obama administration at every opportunity.

So now he's a retard, huh? Was he a retard because he was wrong THEN, or because he's wrong NOW? Was he a retard because he was wrong about his support of Bush in the first place? Or because he rethought his position?

Here. Here's a tissue. You just hit yourself in the face with your own poo.

Priceless!"

Oh, almost worked. The rethinking part is a challenge for most conservatives. What a pity.

Re: CNBC’s Santelli stiffs The Daily Show’s Stewart, yielding comedic uptick

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:38:35 -0000

You finally made a point, albeit bass-ackwards: this state lost sight of the fact it could NOT survive on the scraps of the giant's table.

It was supposed survive by serving the needs of the average American, just as it did in its previous boom cycles, when we made the cars they wanted, when we gave them the lumber they wanted, without a care for what the ultra-rich thought of us, through our sweat. Our bad for not realizing this sooner, that we shouldn't listen to Wall Street but to the public. We're punishing ourselves thoroughly. But we've been through bust-and-boom cycles before and have been dealing with this gritty challenge for years now since a certain so-called conservative decided our state should eat its seed corn, savaging a surplus and leaving a legacy of deficit behind in his wake. We're growing a nice callous and many new skills.

But you, on the other hand, cannot see the truth for your ill-informed braying schadenfreude. Conservatism has proven itself to be nothing more than a hollow and often criminal argument to support a small percentage of very wealthy people at the expense of the rest of the country, and it's failed miserably with its let-them-eat-cake attitude. How's that 401K and the rest of your investment portfolio looking these days? Do you really think Santelli or the rest of his market manipulating peeps could give a rat's whisker about the fact you have to work far longer to make up those losses?

By the way, I'm the one laughing, because you really have not the slightest clue about whom you are trash-talking.

Re: Gay marriage? meh; worry about the robot love

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:14:17 -0000

I'm less concerned with the philosophy of seeking affection from an object instead of a human; I'm far more concerned about development of mechanized devices endowed with artificial intelligence, but without any ethics.

Particulary the Three Laws of Robotics: why is Toshiba skipping over them?

For folks who are not geeks, the Three Laws of Robotics were morals which Isaac Asimov wrote of in the 1930's-1940's, ones which were supposed to underpin the actions of robots as tools to serve mankind. The Laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Why did Toshiba ignore the lessons of Asimov's work and bypass the "Prime Directive" (serve and protect humans) when working on development of a semi-sentient being? The implications are incredibly ugly if all developers acted so rashly.

Humans have enough problems with their own ethical framework, just as your comment indicates; why would we create more beings without any ethical framework at all?

Re: CNBC’s Santelli stiffs The Daily Show’s Stewart, yielding comedic uptick

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:54:00 -0000

Comedy Central. Get it? Stewart's a comedian. You can call it poo-flinging, but you're railing against a guy whose job is to make fun of people.

But he does make a pretty good point that one of the most popular financial news networks consistently lobs softball questions instead of doing their job as the Fourth Estate. It's a pity when they are capable of better given smart guys on their team like David Faber. Ask any of the rich conservatives you know how their net worth looks now in comparison to 2007; did they listen to the folks at CNBC, by any chance?

Re: Uncertainty clouds plan to extract biofuel from Michigan’s forests

Rayne1 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:33:41 -0000

Perhaps you missed this point in the article:

One federal official who works in the Upper Peninsula’s Hiawatha National Forest, when told the amount of “feed stock” required, analyzed the number and said, “That would take the entire annual harvest in the Eastern Hiawatha forest in 180 days.”

Assuming the amount of feed stock in question is 375,000 cord of wood, the harvest of the Eastern Hiawatha forest is 48 million cubic feet of wood over 365 days.

Let's look at <a href="
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/TimberHar... State Timber Harvest Trends" dd. 16-SEP-05, prepared by Dr. Larry Pedersen and submitted to MDNR's Chief Lynne Boyd said,

The most recent forest inventory estimates net annual forest growth in Michigan to be about 930 million cubic feet per year, while removals represent approximately 1/3 that growth. There are a variety of factors that contribute to this statistic. Much of the growth is on private lands and timber harvesting is a low priority for most private landowners. National forests have expanded their protection of recreational and ecological values which are contributing factors to reduced harvests from federal holdings.

(930 million CF) x 0.3 = 279 million CF annual removals BEFORE Mascoma's demands on these forests.

We don't know if the remaining 651 million CF of annual growth can support Mascoma's additional demand because state and federal foresters haven't been asked, and a substantial amount of that 651 million CF of growth is located on private lands which may not ever be subject to commercial harvest or are not located in areas that are economically feasible for harvest.

There's simply not enough information to confirm the viability of UP forests for cellulosic ethanol production -- at least not publicly available.

Re: How will we get our news? (Scripting News)

Rayne1 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:32:58 -0000

You're absolutely right, people are already providing journalism, including excellent investigative work we haven't seen in quantity from mainstream media.

The question is not whether journalism is dead or dying; we should not mistake publication processes for journalism. The question is business model: how do we support journalism now that it's leaving an old and dying print-based, advertising-supported business model?

In no small way this is a return to the the basics, the roots of American journalism. How did Ben Franklin's peers earn their keep, once they had their own presses?

Re: The One Word Obama Now Owns More Than Any Other

Rayne1 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:09:40 -0000

I actually didn't watch either speech because I was too busy watching everybody else watching and covering it.

First time that I've ever gotten 5 copies of a presidential speech emailed to me by different people inside a 15-window before the speech. Definitely says something about the consciousness of the people who sent the speech (although I have to admit feeling inundated).