Ya missed the good side! The wood stacks across the street, dat's what the da gang here wants to see!
TAKE THEM A PIC!!! I have been admiring those stacks for years! Always wondered who owned them. Seriously folks, he's addicted! I was always worried a big flood would get it but never has. Good work!
That's right, I lost about of cord in last spring's flood. All my stacks were in water up to their bellybutton. Even my splitter was under water up to the ram.
He keeps his wood piles in the 50 year flood plain. Totally protected by saplings but a big flood would turn over all the piles and make a mess.
I'll stop by and get a pic later. Seriously, Ralphie has a serious problem!!! Are there any groups to help him quit???? FHA?
There's kind of a similar deal going on across CA. It's a combination of the Bark Beetle infestation and IMO shenanigans **cough corruption** between the State of California and PG&E. Gov. Moonbeam signed the wildlife safety bill which allocated 1 billion (yes with a b) to vegetation management around power lines. PG&E can now take any tree within 30 feet or within the fall line of a distribution line. I don't mind the taking of the trees but I'm furious that the taxpayers or the ratepayers have to pay for this. PG&E has been pocketing the rate increases for vegetation management for years and now since they have to answer for the Napa fires (destroyed whole neighborhoods) they get a bailout. To make matters worse guess what they're going to do with the trees. Lumber? Nope! They're chipping them and using them in a bio electrical plant and selling the power back to the ratepayer. So not only does PG&E get the taxpayer to foot the bill for the vegetation management they should have already done, but then they get power production that they get to make a profit off of.
Central Maine Power here in Maine did the same thing. Neglected line maintenance for years, then a storm blew in last year and suddenly they got a 11% rate increase and started replacing poles and cutting trees. In the meantime they scammed Mainer's too much and the Maine Government did an investigation and found out they had been scamming Mainer's. CMP fought it, but the Maine Supreme Court allowed a class action lawsuit over the deal. They did a poll on TV and CMP had an unfavorable rating of 87%. When 87% of your customers hate you, you are in deep trouble. Now they have a TV ad out apologizing for their mistake. When was the last time you saw a ad on TV with a company apologizing?
My comment was not about whether or not Ralphie is sick....... we all are actually.... my comment, “huh?” was about your assertion that floods had never carried his wood away (unless I misunderstood what you wrote). Which according to his comments in the linked thread, he lost a cord or so in the floods last spring.
It is too early to tell. The Supreme Court only ruled that they could be sued in a class action lawsuit, and did not rule over the matter directly. That just it means it is moving forward.
Yeah gotta love it. Quite a racket being a utility must be. Cozy up **cough payoff** a few politicians, commit fraud and all you have to do is say sorry. Even if the class action lawsuit is successful they'll just turn that into a loss write off at the end of the year or ask the government for a rate increase to cover the cost. Win-win for the utility. It's sort of like suing the government. If you win the only people that pay are the taxpayers. You're basically suing your neighbor without your neighbor knowing it.
Sadly it is way worse then that...our Senator's son is on the board of directors for a local windmill company who happens to be getting a huge subsidy right now to put up more windmills. It all started when his father was governor, and termed out, then just before getting done, passed a law "deregulating power" which shut down the nuclear power plants and allowed people to buy "green Power" which naturally he had a huge stake in. In the first vote against the Keystone Pipeline, guess who was the deciding vote against it? It took 18 years, but he is doing alright on this power deal. Mainer's aren't, we pay one of the highest rates in the country yet our biggest exporter is electricity by dollar amounts. We should have the lowest electrical costs in terms of supply and demand.
Am I understanding this correctly? Are you saying this guy went from being governor to senator after a term limit as governor?
As the EAB is only recently hit Vermont, it sounds horrible but I like ash so much better than the elm that all died years ago with Dutch elm disease. It so much nicer.
