Re: “Shipping Jobs to China?”

Phil, the local logging industry wants to be seen as a resource provider while operating like any profit based company. The resource in question is obviously nowhere near as renewable as the logging companies want us to think, nor are they as "green" as they'd like us to believe either. In fact, when people think "green", they don't think "deforestation". Quite the opposite. These companies still log at maximum allowances set by higher regulators, spinning the story so as to have us believe they're voluntarily slowing their roll, so to speak. So basically I agree with you sort of for the most part I think. Those companies are just a bunch of human beings like everybody else, they can change their ways as much as everybody's had to on account of their company's environmental damage. Our planet's environment is in critical condition, and the global consensus recognizes a 180 u-turn is needed to save everybody's future. That's reality. There is no better time to start than fifty years ago. So, like any company, loggers are cutting jobs at the bottom while still seeing profits at the top. The logging companies own LOTS of Humboldt County's open space, and it would be excellent for everybody in the world if that space was allowed indefinite generations to reforest itself. This can happen simply by further restricting the amount of local logging and insisting on exclusively "selective harvesting" or whatever Green Diamond etc. calls it at an extreme maximum.... ...just like any company, let the loggers fight out the profit loss among themselves until each company has been whittled down to their current highest-ups going out with chainsaws and "harvesting" one log per acre per day themselves so they can maintain their personal profits. $500 per day is still over $100,000 than most of Humboldt's population makes in a year. Give them the land outright if that's what it takes, they obviously don't recognize the need for REforestation on massive levels right now. Trees are not commodity anymore than livestock or human beings.

Re: “Top 10 Stories of 2010”

Not Hank Sims (first comment) is full of it, and he (she) knows it. Heavy duty conservatives...the "far right"...took office. A few of them flew "lefty" flags to trick voters, too. To say they're plans are moderate is just as intentionally misleading. The only thing they gather from public input is how to tell the public what the public wants to hear along the lines of what these pseudo-moderates have planned.

Re: “Top 10 Stories of 2010”

I'm game to call it polar like that, Hank, so to say both are special interests pushing for policy at the expense of others, what they're doing then is at the expense of eachother. I don't care too much about the one side telling us we need more jobs when there's more than enough jobs right now...or that the same side wants to keep building and building when there's tons of places to live right now too. In your model, I see Expand, building on a neverending game of catchup that's plagued the nation forever vs. Stabilize, practiced in places people only wish they could live. Which side belongs to the small minority that makes money while the majority watches their cost of living inflate while their job values deflate? It's pretty dang obvious. BUT!!! More allegorical to the way it really is, if politics involves somebody banging on your head with a hammer, it wouldn't be accurate to say the political spectrum is banging on your head with a hammer vs. not banging on your head with a hammer. There's a lot of stuff politics can do besides bang on your head with a hammer...but within the spectrum, a certain group would constantly have to work to stop a (non-affiliate) group from banging on your head with a hammer.

Re: “What Now, Treesitter?”

Whenever you say "compromise", Nova Noah, remember you're talking about cutting down forest. And when it's gone, it's gone. Nobody's unpaving parking lots to put up a forest. There's no compromising the future otherwise, there's going to be far less forest and far more city. I'm very greatful for everybody who's on the frontlines protecting our natural habitats...without compromise.

Re: “Real America”

hey 10:24, do you really think Caltrans would admit to improper handling of a multimillion dollar project? The only substance in the article you pasted is that there are even more complaints about their overall 101 widening than just locally.

Re: “County Home Prices Drop to Lowest Level Since 2004”

The rich are taking advantage of the poor every chance they get. To be somebody who earns a million+ dollars a year in the united states, your life has got to be about seeing a category...whatever that category may be...of human beings as generic commodity. Like Simcity in real life. The heck would I have to do to find myself in a position of having a $5,000 mortgage...for each of the thousand units I owned? And be able to pay them off with money to buy more every year? I would either have to have been born into that scenario or, some time ago, decided to scalp as many suckers as I could. I don't think people are throwing themselves into debt voluntarily.

So...looking at the housing boom/bust in Humboldt County...who was involved in handing out the loans at the time?

Re: “County Home Prices Drop to Lowest Level Since 2004”

No allusion, if that's the word. I would integrate your response into whatever human mechanism I operate, duh. In relating that to the north coast journal, see above.