A Bunch of Subversives in Central Maine (Clinton, Washington: mortgages, how much)

[Northern Maine Land Man]

"Clearcutting" and polluting have been illegal in Maine for many years. That's a good thing. There is not much paving going on either, except for skinny coats on popular roads just before tourist season. Don't want a new road through your property? Don't build one or don't sell for one. It isn't any more complicated than that.

There is no map available because there has been very little land sold. If we just listen, the environmental industry tells us what they want.

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

“Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease.”
Maurice Strong

[Mark S.]

[Coaster]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

To quote: "Baloney". There are no plans. Nobody knows who will sell their property for a private road so there is no map. There are many questions that need to be answered before such a road is built 10 or 12 years in the future. Some people get frantic when anyone mentions economic development of any kind in Maine.

Wait. What? Vigue himself has put out the proposed plans, including artist concept drawings of the green overpasses for animals. Opponents have dug up other versions. None of them show tunnels or overpasses for private roads and trails.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

You have to know something about the terrain involved before you design either an overpass or underpass. Nobody knows which properties will actually be purchased for such a rod a decade or more in the future. What Vigue said was that no camp, woodlot, recreational trail or farm would be cut off. There will be ATV and snowmobile trails across the Penobscot and other rivers; IF this road ever gets built. If our economy and the Canadian economy are still viable a decade from now people will want a road. Thee will always be people who want to collapse our economy. Maybe they will be successful and the road will never be built.

[Maineac]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

"Clearcutting" and polluting have been illegal in Maine for many years. That's a good thing. There is not much paving going on either, except for skinny coats on popular roads just before tourist season. Don't want a new road through your property? Don't build one or don't sell for one. It isn't any more complicated than that.

There is no map available because there has been very little land sold. If we just listen, the environmental industry tells us what they want.

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

“Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease.”
Maurice Strong

"Clearcut and pave" was a term we used at Scott Paper. Knock-down, total devastation, take it all biomass harvesting designed to maximize annual profits, with no factual basis in assuming spruce-fir would grow back in any reasonable amount of rotation. It does grow back, but not before being choked out by gray birch, pople, raspberries, alders and other "weed" species, which have to be knocked back with 2-4-D (well, back in the late '60's it was 2-4-5-T, better known as Agent Orange, which is now illegal to use in the U.S.). Your "paper company land managers" only focus was annual profit, not water quality, future forests or multiple use. Without the shoreland zoning you disdain, all the rivers and lakes would be clearcut up to the shores.

Now, as to "Don't want a road through your property" I'm calling shenanigans once again (hey, I'm 60 and I occasionally watched South Park with the kids - shenanigans meaning complete and utter bull****) because the State will step in, given the mensa candidate now occupying the Blaine House, and use eminent domain premised on the New London (CT) supreme court case that says they might be able to get away with stealing people's property for private benefit - something people in your camp are supposed to despise. Vigue says WE (Cianbro) won't use eminent domain, but I'll bet everything is all teed up for the State to attempt to use it.

Clearcut and pave, babeeee - as long as it benefits the chosen few - then the chosen few can make a few more billion by selling it to China. Would that - lemme get the calculator (I'll use average width of 750 feet, 220 miles) ahh yes, exactly 20,000 acres, all become soverign Chinese land? You do understand that if it's PRIVATE, they can keep you out, right? Who taught you the songs you sing, anyway? Beck and Limbaugh? You bought the party line, designed to make you overlook things you might normally, given political proclivity, squawk about hook line and sinker, didn't you? There's some seriously expert people manipulating public opinion behind the scenes, and billions a year spent doing it in pursuit of the almighty dollar. They've even convinced you there's an "environmental industry", an interesting coinage clearly intended to engender disdain. Spit the hook, boy, before it's too late. Those of us that like the middle of the road are getting screwed by big money.

[Maineac]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

You have to know something about the terrain involved before you design either an overpass or underpass. Nobody knows which properties will actually be purchased for such a rod a decade or more in the future. What Vigue said was that no camp, woodlot, recreational trail or farm would be cut off. There will be ATV and snowmobile trails across the Penobscot and other rivers; IF this road ever gets built. If our economy and the Canadian economy are still viable a decade from now people will want a road. Thee will always be people who want to collapse our economy. Maybe they will be successful and the road will never be built.

"There will always be people that want to collapse our economy." Do you know how absolutely, sublimely ridiculous that sounds? Some who whats too see the Maine economy collapse. They must be liberal, enviro-whackos or whatever fictitious creature you want to invent. I take offense, as do, I'm sure, many others who still haven't been convinced whatsoever this road is good for Maine. Of course, there will always be gun toting, Limbaugh listening, Hannity loving, Beck beauties who want to crush the 99% of Americans and put them to work for the benefit of the 1%, simply because they constantly repeat, like parrots, the rhetoric they've been spoon fed. Feeling offended as well?

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Sonny, I remember when our nation's debt was under a trillion dollars, when we had prosperous manufacturing companies and led the world in production and innovation. That was before the progressives in both parties screwed the pooch. Now we are fast closing in on 18 trillion in debt and we have to send our manufacturing needs out of the country to find employees who can or will work. We have a few companies who persevere, but they are under attack by the progressives in both parties. My neighbor is back on the road driving tractor trailer at nearly 80 years old. The company begged him to come back out of retirement because he can pass a random drug test.

Why can't you people let private companies and private landowners decide if they want a road and the jobs that go with it. The nature of commerce used to be a willing seller and willing buyer. Now it's a willing seller and willing buyer - if we let you.

[IHeartMaine]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

Sonny, I remember when our nation's debt was under a trillion dollars, when we had prosperous manufacturing companies and led the world in production and innovation. That was before the progressives in both parties screwed the pooch. Now we are fast closing in on 18 trillion in debt and we have to send our manufacturing needs out of the country to find employees who can or will work. We have a few companies who persevere, but they are under attack by the progressives in both parties. My neighbor is back on the road driving tractor trailer at nearly 80 years old. The company begged him to come back out of retirement because he can pass a random drug test.

Why can't you people let private companies and private landowners decide if they want a road and the jobs that go with it. The nature of commerce used to be a willing seller and willing buyer. Now it's a willing seller and willing buyer - if we let you.

What jobs?

Stop trying to ram this down people's throats Mr. Vigue!

[beltrams]

The US' prosperous years of the early to mid 20th Century were by and large the result of the largest flood of cheap energy via easy-to-access, close-to-the-surface oil, gas, and coal that the world has ever seen. That, and truly huge, easy to get at iron ore deposits in the Great Lakes area as well contributed to the prosperity. Such economic "growth" was the result of huge increases in energy consumption - something that wind, solar, nuclear (the latter with its high complexity and long supply lines) will never begin to replace. Regulation had very little to do with it. Witness that in the early years of the USSR, even with their regulation and corruption, they managed some impressive industrialization in the early to mid 20th Century as well. It was about easy resources, not regulation or lack thereof.

Nowadays, however, companies in Canada are mothballing tar sands projects now because even at these "high" world oil prices, the costs of getting this expensive tar sands oil to market are greater than their oil receipts - and this in the face of some of the most generous, easy, lax regulatory environments Alberta can manage.

Oil and gas producers are facing a serious financing crisis because even at these "high" oil and gas prices, the newest recovery techniques such as tar sands and fracking are so costly, the procedures cannot be long afforded and yet the oil companies' consumers cannot sustain higher oil and gas prices as we've seen over the past half dozen years or so - receipts that could otherwise better support more expensive, extensive fossil energy exploration. That is, every time oil and gas prices go higher, recession results, but if we don't grow the energy supply, recession results then too. The fact is, our civilization cannot afford the expensive oil and gas that is now the only fossil energy stuff left in the ground, at least in any quantity to be useful to the very energy-hungry world economy, especially the Developing World's economy.

Given how oil and natural gas are now in worldwide decline, it would be sheer folly to build another major highway in Maine, especially one that has so few actual benefits for Mainers like this E/W highway. By the way, cars and trucks don't run on coal very well unless said cars are electric, and even then batteries are still far from delivering the 350+ mile range that a tank of gasoline or diesel can.

I happen to think Maine will do fairly well in an energy and resource-constrained future what with our abundant forests, fairly low population, hydroelectric power, and relative proximity to New Brunswick's and Nova Scotia's hydro electric resources.

But it isn't the 1960s anymore either.

[Coaster]

Absolutely excellent and timely post, Beltrams! Bravo.