The Boondocks blog, No. 73 for the week starting June 16, 2008.
Legislature Wants Wine Ice Cream Exempt from Liquor Laws
In Midwest Floods, a Broad Threat to Crops
Activity at Gilboa Site Leads to Lawsuit
State May Actually Refund Snowmobile Fund Raid
Troy Record on Bob Reilly Kerry Cows
Presidential Campaigns Avoid Specifics at Rural Assembly
Rural/Urban Geography Will Determine Presidential Winner
Naive to Think Criminals Will Comply With Gun Laws?
Gas Drilling Stirs Up Question of Water Risks
Rules Set for State Grants to Beech-Nut Plant
Snowmobile Trail Fund Bill Sits in Assembly W&M
After Nine's Gun Ruling, NY.'s Gun Laws May Be Next.
Paterson: NRA Should Train Gun Owners
Energy looks at high energy prices and our future.
Enviroman looks at man and the environment.
Hayseeds looks at politics and life in our nation.
Individual looks at myself and how I'm changing
Outblog is all about my outdoor experiences.
Transit looks at the changing ways we get around.
Truck gives you stories and trips in my Ford Ranger.
Newsday looks at the Wine Icecream Bill that recently passed the legislature.
It seems as though as much as 20% of Iowa's grain for this year has been destroyed by rain with more possibly to be destroyed from ongoing flooding and increased rains.
Apparently there is quite the insane camp up there that is irking the neighboors.
The first one is great.
Yesterday the Senate passed S.8144 Griffo, which would return unspent trail fund monies from past years from the Snowmobile Trail Fund, that was taken to balance the budget.
Today, it was announced that the companion bill in the Assembly, A.11009 Desitito will be on the Tourism Committee agenda which will meet tommorow.
After it makes it out of committee, it will have to be passed by Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which meets multiple times of a day now that session is winding now. Assuming that the finance wonks don't have a problem with it, then it moves to the floor, and hopefully gets voted on tomorrow or Thursday.
This is great news for all snowmobilers.
The Nation looks at how the super-rich are buying up all the purty places in rural America.
He's afraid of their big horns, but who wouldn't be? The article has an interesting look at dying cattle breeds and the homogenization of agriculture, not to mention Assemblyman Bob Reilly.
Apparently they don't want to allienate liberal or conservative rural voters so they nothing.
That's what the Daily Yonder is arguing.
That's what this Letter to the Editor for June 18 in the Daily Gazette points out.
I read with interest the June 13 editorial [“Albany tragedy compounded by gun story”], regarding the tragic death of a young girl in Albany. My heart goes out to the parents and other members of this family.
I mean no disrespect to her or her family, but I would like to have someone explain, in a language that I can understand, how stricter gun control could prevent a tragedy such as this. The gun control proponents state that with stronger gun control laws, gun killings would decrease. Stricter gun control simply means that the average American citizen loses another of their constitutional rights.
Do these bleeding-heart, spotted owl-kissing liberals really believe that the criminal element is going to comply with gun laws in the first place? If they are really that naive, then I can arrange a really good deal on some oceanfront property in Nevada or Vermont — depending on the type of weather they prefer.
Contrary to popular opinion, the ostrich doesn’t really bury it’s head in the sand — unlike some of our elected officials.
Duh.
There are still some concerns about natural gas drilling in the southern tier of the state:
Prospectors are already paying hundreds of millions of dollars to landowners to stake out access to the Marcellus Shale. Farmers in Tioga County are being offered $1,500 per acre, while the going rate east of Binghamton is $2,500 per acre.
Conventional wisdom says prices—less than $100 per acre a year ago when the potential of the Marcellus was unknown—will continue to rise sharply if lawmakers pass a bill this session designed to streamline the permitting process in New York state.
In Harrisburg, Pa., regulators from the Department of Environmental Protection met with 150 oil and gas industry leaders on Friday to make sure they understood Pennsylvania laws governing drilling operations. The first-of-its-kind summit came after operators illegally diverted streams and spilled diesel fuel at several sites.
Meanwhile, Southern Tier planners, water officials and sewage treatment operators interviewed for this report could not forecast the impact of the massive drilling rigs, each requiring one to three million gallons of water and producing a similar amount of waste. Nor did they know of plans in the works to accommodate them.
"It's like a road covered in fog. It's hard to see which way it turns," said Chip McElwee, executive director of the Broome County Soil & Water Conservation District, an agency that works with landowners to preserve water resources.
Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, is asking lots of questions as she researches a bill to streamline the permitting process and speed up development.
The answers, so far, are slow in coming, she said.
"What kind of water treatment is necessary? What are the penalties of dumping it? There are so many questions," she said. "I'm always hearing 'It's part of the permitting process.' We're trying to get a handle of what's in this stuff."
Interesting. A.10526 Parment / S8169 Young would expdite the drilling process for these wells by creating a statewide standard for wells and how far they would have to be spaced from one and another.
The NY Leauge of Conservation Voters is also concerned about the expiated process leaving environmental damaged.
The DEC on the other hand is confident that they know what they are doing and it won't be big deal.
"The composition of frac' fluid is an important issue, and we are going to be looking at that," said Brad Field, director of mineral resources for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
While the additives may be considered proprietary, the state can demand a chemical analysis before frac' water is accepted by treatment plants.
It's certainly something worth following.
A.2612 was passed by the Assembly last night 80-58. It would modify Chapter 208 of the Laws of 1999 to prohibit all game preserves from having non-native species for hunting.
Currently, hunting preserves are allowed in our state, regardless of whether or not they have native or non-native animals, as long as they provide 10 acres for the animals, proper shelter, and hunters don't use fences or man made items to limit the free range of animals (ie. no cornering or staking down animals). The bill would not limit hunting preserves if the animal was native species for the area, regardless of whether or not it was in a fenced in preserve or not.
This bill is of concern to the farm and hunting communities as it would limit hunting preserves and take away a significant market for deer and elk farms that raise non-native deer or elk from the area. The NYS Deer and Elk Farms Assocation has nice coverage of the issues of the bill.
The Farm Bureau is encouraging people to write their legislators with this message that explains the issue well.
I am writing to ask you to please oppose S.784 which is legislation that would seek to remove the current ten acre threshold that is defined as a “canned shoot” and extends the prohibition to any fenced in or other area in which a non-native big game animal is unable to reasonably escape – regardless of the size of the fenced in area. These overly restrictive provisions, if enacted, mean that any owner of a hunting preserve that stocks a number of other species of deer would be found guilty of operating a “canned shoot,” even if the hunt takes place on a 1,000 or 10,000 acre hunting preserve.
This legislation will surely weaken the rural farm and tourism industry surrounding hunting preserves, while diminishing private property rights and restricting opportunities for farmers to access new opportunities and expand markets. This is especially true for hundreds of New York State deer farms that specialize in growing both native whitetail deer and other “non-native” deer species including elk, sika, fallow and red deer that would not be exempted under this legislation. From an agricultural perspective, the majority of these animals are slaughtered and sent to restaurants. However, some of these deer and elk farm operations also supply hunting preserves in their communities and across the State with mature deer and elk. The restaurant trade keeps deer farm operations at a break-even level, but the preserve market helps farms turn the profit needed to continue operations.
In addition, if this legislation is enacted it will be included in a burgeoning cannon of statute that seeks to restrict and control the treatment, handling and hunting of animals in New York State. As a farmer, I am very concerned, as like many other bills now enacted into law, this legislation will be seen as a baseline from which to work for animal rights organizations and hunting opponents for years to come.
For these reasons, I strongly urge you to oppose S.784. Thank you for your consideration.
I doubt the Senate will touch it this year. That said it doesn't hurt to use the two second form the farm bureau has to send the canned letter (no pun intended).
The plant must not only create new jobs in the Mohawk Valley, it must also purchase at least $4 million in local produce from New York farmers.
It's great to see New York State is no longer just giving money out for free to corporations but requiring them to do something for the state in exchange for the money. The requirement to buy local will stimulate economies beyond the plant, and probably lead to greater savings in energy.
A.11009 is stuck in Ways & Means and has yet to move out of that committee, after getting out of Tourism on Wednesday afternoon.
The Assembly has adjourned for the weekend, and won't be back until 12:30 PM on Monday, for a last day of session.
Ways and Means is a dangerous place to be if it doesn't make it on the agenda or Denny Farrell's fiscal people decide it should be killed.
Let's hope it happens at the first meeting of Ways and Means on Monday. If it's not on the agenda, it doesn't have a prayer of getting passed on Monday.
The legislature may come back on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that's far from certain. It's really bad news if Ways and Means doesn't move on it first thing on Monday.
Lawmakers voted Monday in favor of a bill to return $1 million taken out of the state Snowmobile Trail Development and Maintenance Fund.
The money, to be used for trail work, was removed earlier this year during the state budget process.... Money for the trail fund is collected through snowmobile registrations statewide.
"The snowmobilers who have contributed to this fund were rightly outraged that the state dipped into it to balance the budget," Little said in a statement. "Snowmobile trail maintenance keeps riders safe and helps ensure visitors from other states have a great experience on our trails so they'll continue coming back."
"....This is not an appropriation that the legislature made where there was excess money and they just swept it back," Whelan said. "It doesn't come from taxpayers; it comes from snowmobile registrations."
More about this bill in Glen-Falls Post Star.
Many of New York's highly restrictive gun control statues will be challenged should the Supreme Court expand the second admendment.
As we do with snowmobiles and similiar things, the governor is proposing that the NRA or it's state's affiliate be given a role in training users with the proper use of firearms upon their first purchase.
I think it makes a lot of sense. The NRA knows probably a lot more about guns then the state does, and would also be more then willing to take that position. The snowmobile club joining requirement for registering a snowmobile hasn't gotten people too upset either, despite the fact that NYSSA also has a lobbying arm.
