Public libraries. 21st Century saloons?

[Ken]

But why were they getting those federal payments? It was because they were not allowed to log on those lands like before, because of environmentalists. And when a huge part of a county is owned be the government, the county cannot collect property taxes on that land.
https://www.doi.gov/pilt

Environmentalists had little to do with it. Environmentalists and environmental groups have very little power. They did sue the Forest Service to make sure that it actually followed the LAW in managing the public forests (which are the heritage of ALL Americans, not just those who live within nearby counties). But that is it. The Forest Service and the courts decided that they did, indeed, need to actually follow the law when managing our public forests. Imagine that. In this country the government also has to follow the law. In this case laws like the Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act.

The biggest reason why mills are closing and logging jobs are vanishing is improvements in productivity. It simply takes 1 logger today to do the same amount of work that required 50 loggers a century ago. And the wood products industry is similarly evolving. The old rural mills that used to make 2x4s and other dimensional lumber that were scattered all over rural Oregon a century ago are mostly obsolete, replaced by much bigger mills in the US and Canada that produce much more sophisticated wood products like plywoods and laminated products.

Timber towns in Oregon are going through the same evolution as farming towns in the great plains, mining towns in West Virginia, or fishing towns in New England. When industries become more productive they require far fewer workers. And towns either adjust or wither on the vine.

But in the case of Douglas and Josephine Counties, it is mostly just the unwillingness of local people to accept that they now actually have to pay for the services that the rest of us have paid for all along. My property taxes would drop in half if I had the same tax rates as they currently have in those counties. They would rather have low taxes than libraries or properly funded police, schools, and highways. It is a choice.

So why the pejorative language? If the folks from Douglas County would rather have low taxes instead of a library, why should you care? And where do you get the moral authority to say that their decision to have low taxes instead of a library is motivated by greed?

If you actually followed these local election campaigns you would find that all the pejorative language comes from the side opposing paying for libraries and other services. The extremist anti-tax rhetoric can actually get pretty vile.

All they are really accomplishing is heightening the death spiral of their own communities as young people and people with children give up and move away. Look up the example of Cave Junction Oregon to see where this leads. They refused to raise taxes to pay for their police and now it is a cesspool of lawlessness.

[ken_sylvania]

Environmentalists had little to do with it. Environmentalists and environmental groups have very little power. They did sue the Forest Service to make sure that it actually followed the LAW in managing the public forests (which are the heritage of ALL Americans, not just those who live within nearby counties). But that is it. The Forest Service and the courts decided that they did, indeed, need to actually follow the law when managing our public forests. Imagine that. In this country the government also has to follow the law. In this case laws like the Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act.

The biggest reason why mills are closing and logging jobs are vanishing is improvements in productivity. It simply takes 1 logger today to do the same amount of work that required 50 loggers a century ago. And the wood products industry is similarly evolving. The old rural mills that used to make 2x4s and other dimensional lumber that were scattered all over rural Oregon a century ago are mostly obsolete, replaced by much bigger mills in the US and Canada that produce much more sophisticated wood products like plywoods and laminated products.

Timber towns in Oregon are going through the same evolution as farming towns in the great plains, mining towns in West Virginia, or fishing towns in New England. When industries become more productive they require far fewer workers. And towns either adjust or wither on the vine.

But in the case of Douglas and Josephine Counties, it is mostly just the unwillingness of local people to accept that they now actually have to pay for the services that the rest of us have paid for all along. My property taxes would drop in half if I had the same tax rates as they currently have in those counties. They would rather have low taxes than libraries or properly funded police, schools, and highways. It is a choice.

So why the pejorative language? If the folks from Douglas County would rather have low taxes instead of a library, why should you care? And where do you get the moral authority to say that their decision to have low taxes instead of a library is motivated by greed?

If you actually followed these local election campaigns you would find that all the pejorative language comes from the side opposing paying for libraries and other services. The extremist anti-tax rhetoric can actually get pretty vile.

Oh, really? So you're just copying them?

[Ken]

So why the pejorative language? If the folks from Douglas County would rather have low taxes instead of a library, why should you care? And where do you get the moral authority to say that their decision to have low taxes instead of a library is motivated by greed?

If you actually followed these local election campaigns you would find that all the pejorative language comes from the side opposing paying for libraries and other services. The extremist anti-tax rhetoric can actually get pretty vile.

Oh, really? So you're just copying them?

Are "greed" and "selfishness" pejorative words? If so, they are accurate in this instance. And it is also short-sighted. Choosing not to invest in your own communities just makes them less desirable. And so people choose to leave instead of investing locally, and the downward spiral continues.

[temporal1]

Yes, obscene for sure. What were their intentions? Hard to say, but the radio/tv industry has been full of creeps and deviants and filthy minds since it began. My grandparents had good reason to put radio and TV out of their homes.

Not an exaggeration.

Throughout history, all continents, entertainers were considered the derelicts of society, not leaders, influencers, not wealthy or revered. True even in young U.S., until .. ?? .. radio/television/moving pictures, allowed the onset of hollywood depravation.
No one in upper society would allow their children to pursue that low life, it was shameful, neither to “rub elbows” with entertainers. The dregs of society.

It was a big deal. No “idols,” etc. Going to hollywood was known to step into a dark world, sex and drugs.
Families would split up over it. It was shameful.

Creeps, deviants, filthy minds, is right. It was known, no surprise.

Lots of people have attempted to clean up things over decades, with some progress, not keeping up.
Movie ratings were one one imposition.

Of course, Big Money combined with no moral compass is a bad combination.

[ohio jones]

The biggest reason why mills are closing and logging jobs are vanishing is improvements in productivity. It simply takes 1 logger today to do the same amount of work that required 50 loggers a century ago. And the wood products industry is similarly evolving. The old rural mills that used to make 2x4s and other dimensional lumber that were scattered all over rural Oregon a century ago are mostly obsolete, replaced by much bigger mills in the US and Canada that produce much more sophisticated wood products like plywoods and laminated products.

Another factor is that the saloons (along with most everyone else) aren't buying enough books anymore.

[RZehr]

Douglas County and other timber counties had exceedingly low property tax rates for decades because they were getting subsidy payments from the government (the equivalent of property taxes) for the massive amount of public forest lands that fell within those counties. When those subsidy payments were reduced, those communities were faced with raising their own property taxes to pay for normal government services that every other community in the state had already been paying for all along. In a few places like Douglas County and Josephine County the local people simply chose not to do that. And consequently faced library closures, cutbacks to police and law enforcement, cutbacks to county road maintenance, cutbacks to schools, and so forth.

This was a choice by the people of those counties. They would rather keep their artificially low taxes than pay for the services that other communities have always paid for routinely. You can look up the property tax rates for every county in Oregon. What you will find is that in Douglas County the tax rate is 0.79% and in Josephine County where they have also closed libraries it is 0.66%. That is substantially lower than your own tax rate in Jefferson County (0.92%) or most of the more urban counties that are at 1% or higher. https://smartasset.com/taxes/oregon-pro ... tor#oregon

And no, library closures have nothing to do with homeschoolers. The point about homeschoolers is that they are the group that makes the MOST use of public libraries and is most reliant on them here in my community and I suspect in most others. Consequently it was the homeschool community in Douglas County that was most affected by library closures. The kids attending public schools at least still had their school libraries available.

But why were they getting those federal payments? It was because they were not allowed to log on those lands like before, because of environmentalists. And when a huge part of a county is owned be the government, the county cannot collect property taxes on that land.
https://www.doi.gov/pilt

Environmentalists had little to do with it. Environmentalists and environmental groups have very little power. They did sue the Forest Service to make sure that it actually followed the LAW in managing the public forests (which are the heritage of ALL Americans, not just those who live within nearby counties). But that is it.
…

Oh. Let’s see. They sued. And won. But it wasn’t their fault, they have very little power. That’s a patently silly load of garbage to claim. They have quite a bit of power.
But they had “little to do with it”. Riiiiiiight.

[RZehr]

Mom Says She Got 'Dress-Coded' at Library Story Time for Wearing Sweater and Jeans

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mom ... 49578.html

[RZehr]

Here is news from this weekend. Another mill in Douglas County to close. 93 jobs lost. Buried in the article, it says:

Reduced output from public forestland, increased consumption by larger wood products manufacturers and the effects of the 2021 Private Forest Accord are squeezing smaller mills like C&D, according to Johnson.

“Everyone’s facing all of those issues to varying degrees. The timber supply situation is something our industry has been focusing on primarily because we’re getting hit from all angles,” said Matt Hill, executive director of Douglas Timber Operators, a regional forestry association.

Hampton Lumber closed its mill in Banks last fall, followed by the Rosboro Co. mill in Springfield and Interfor Corp’s mill in Philomath. It’s possible other mills may be weighing shutdowns, too, Hill said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t have any specific information about any specific mill,” he said.

…

Oregon’s wood products manufacturing sector had been relatively stable since the Great Recession, employing around 23,000 people. Employment has dipped slightly in the last year, but those numbers don’t fully reflect the recent spate of closures, which are set to eliminate at least 300 jobs altogether in mostly rural Oregon communities.

The mill closures should be a wakeup call to Oregon policymakers about the dangers of leaving forest management to the courts, Hill said. Forestland management is subject to nearly continuous legislation as the industry, environmentalists and regulators wrangle over policy goals and their implications.



https://www.oregonlive.com/business/202 ... iddle.html

I guess they should just pay higher taxes so that they can go to the library instead of going to work.

But what is the 2021 Private Forest Accord? It is the result of relentless litigation by environmental the impacts the privately owned timberland. These powerless environmentalists aren’t happy with choking off the logging of public lands. They want to stop all industry.

The Private Forest Accord (PFA) is a compromise agreement made between representatives from Oregon’s timber industry, the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, and prominent conservation and fishing organizations, to modify portions of Oregon’s forest practice laws and regulations in a way that expands protections for fish and amphibians while also providing regulatory certainty for timber harvest and forest management. The changes to the Oregon Forest Practices Act are aimed to avoid, minimize and mitigate the legacy effects of timber harvest and other private forest management activities have on certain aquatic species and their habitats.

The Accord, which was signed in 2021 by 13 conservation and fisheries groups, 11 timber companies and the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, outlines key goals that should allow the Oregon Department of Forestry to receive federal approval for a Habitat Conservation Plan on private forestlands, and an accompanying incidental-take permit for these species.

Following 16 months of facilitated negotiations, the signatories of the Private Forest Accord proposed state legislation that passed and was signed into law in 2022, setting new standards for forest roads and culverts to remove barriers to fish passage, and expanding the width of required no-cut buffers along streams to help keep water cold and clean, among other regulatory changes aimed to enhance protections for aquatic habitat. The Oregon Department of Forestry is the lead agency on implementation of these new standards. For more information on the PFA, please visit Department of Forestry’s PFA web pages.

The PFA legislation also created a mitigation fund as a subaccount of the Oregon Conservation and Recreation Fund, designed to support aquatic habitat restoration and conservation projects that offset the impacts of the forest practices covered by the Habitat Conservation Plan. The legislation called for establishment of a grant program, administered by ODFW with projects reviewed and recommended by a new advisory committee and ultimately approved by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Let’s let Canada and Asia and South America log and pollute. We will just buy from them lumber and steel, and regulate American companies out of business so we can ensure that environmentalist feel good.

[Ken]

Oh. Let’s see. They sued. And won. But it wasn’t their fault, they have very little power. That’s a patently silly load of garbage to claim. They have quite a bit of power.
But they had “little to do with it”. Riiiiiiight.

We are a nation of laws. Sometimes even the government fails to follow them as was the case with the rampant clear cutting of timber back in the 1980s. Everyone is within their rights to expect the government to follow its own laws. Don't like them, that's for Congress to decide or change. That is where the real power resides, not with the environmental groups who asked the Forest Service to follow its own laws.

In any event, the spotted owl wasn't the main reason why timber dollars declined in Oregon. The big timber companies were also shipping raw logs overseas by the millions from Coos Bay instead of having them processed in local sawmills. Small local sawmills also failed to adapt to newer wood products that the construction industry now uses. And productivity gains means less loggers and mill workers are needed to process the same amount of logs. Like I said, no different from farming, mining, or fishing.

[RZehr]

Oh. Let’s see. They sued. And won. But it wasn’t their fault, they have very little power. That’s a patently silly load of garbage to claim. They have quite a bit of power.
But they had “little to do with it”. Riiiiiiight.

We are a nation of laws. Sometimes even the government fails to follow them as was the case with the rampant clear cutting of timber back in the 1980s. Everyone is within their rights to expect the government to follow its own laws. Don't like them, that's for Congress to decide or change. That is where the real power resides, not with the environmental groups who asked the Forest Service to follow its own laws.

In any event, the spotted owl wasn't the main reason why timber dollars declined in Oregon. The big timber companies were also shipping raw logs overseas by the millions from Coos Bay instead of having them processed in local sawmills. Small local sawmills also failed to adapt to newer wood products that the construction industry now uses. And productivity gains means less loggers and mill workers are needed to process the same amount of logs. Like I said, no different from farming, mining, or fishing.

Laws and the interpretation of the laws change. What they were doing was legal until the environmentalists forced via lawsuit, a new and different interpretation of those laws.

But sure. Let’s save the spotted owl (turns out it wasn’t even logging that was its threat, it was the aggressive, invasive, barred owl. Which scientist are now shooting.) and ignore all the animals that will lose their habits in other countries. And ignore An Inconvenient Truth, that for every moderately environmentally responsible industry that is closed down here, it is replaced by a wildly environmentally irresponsible company across the sea.