JosephH

Bump, 20 minutes til I can leave, are we on? Because I need to eat something and if we're on I'll eat differently than if we aren't.

I can head out in about 45 minutes - are we on?

Bottom line is WSP rangers and staff had already been working for years with half the budget they needed to keep up with all the maintenance and policing demands placed on them, and that was before the current fiscal crisis. Without this pass revenue a lot more parks would be closed right now due to ranger and staff laysoffs.

Again, if you want to jump off stuff then learn to base jump - doing this sort of shit with climbing gear is pretty much guaranteed to lead to tears sooner or later.

The great conservative one-liner is 'trickle down'. Don't tax corporations and the rich who benefit from them and the money will flow downhill to the rest of us and the government so that the middle class and infrastructure will be maintained. The same crew said unfunded wars would spread democracy which in turn would yield financial and resource rewards for America. We've just done a decade-long, large-scale experiment in both ideas and, Reaganesque feel-good platitudes aside, bigger failures would be hard to find. 'Trickle down' doesn't, never will, and if you think it does I have an anti-gravity machine that might interest you...

Yes I do, but I put up two clean on the first lead, the other on the second lead only because the roof had two inches of leaf litter over the top of it. On the one I did a single [failed] TR go to make sure it was really clean of loose rock before sticking it on the first lead. No hanging was done on any of them at any point. I'd even give Steve a TR go on two of them before a lead attempt - the third should be a straight up lead.

From U.S. Senator Bernie Sander's web site: March 27, 2011 Sanders Calls for Shared Sacrifice BURLINGTON, Vt., March 27 - While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether. With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit. Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes. Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders. 1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (Source: Exxon Mobil's 2009 shareholder report filed with the SEC here.) 2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. (Source: Forbes.com here, ProPublica here and Treasury here.) 3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS. (Source: Citizens for Tax Justice here and The New York Times here. Note: despite rumors to the contrary, the Times has stood by its story.) 4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009. (Source: See 2009 Chevron annual report here. Note 15 on page FS-46 of this report shows a U.S. federal income tax liability of $128 million, but that it was able to defer $147 million for a U.S. federal income tax liability of $-19 million) 5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year. . (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here and Citizens for Tax Justice here.) 6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction. (Source: the company's 2009 annual report, pg. 112, here.) 7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. (Source: Bloomberg News here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.) 8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.) 9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction. (Sources: Profits can be found here. The deduction can be found on the company's 2010 SEC 10-K report to shareholders on 2009 finances, pg. 127, here) 10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent. (Source: The New York Times here) Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families. "We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed," Sanders said, "but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We've got to talk about shared sacrifice." From where I sit, you can't blow trillions upon trillions in wars and tax breaks for the corporations and the rich and then complain about 'government spending'.

I suppose I could give a one-handed belay and try for good vids - he isn't going to fall anyway...

Let's be clear, you stated the routes at DZ (and Menopause at Beacon) were choss, I said otherwise and you couln't lead them anyway. So I'm available later today, but you're the one who said you're in burly shape right now, so how about you just lead them and I'll belay - that's what I had to do when I put them up - then I'll lead them. PM me and I'll meet you out there.

Yep, but even Opdycke went out and bought one of the passes. Looking forward to an epic TR as well.

Is that item on your agenda? good on ya if so. Good call. If people want to jump off shit they should learn to skydive and then base jump. Use climbing gear for climbing, jumping gear for jumping. It's always a bad idea to fuck around with climbing gear in this way.

PM if you want it back...

Maybe, but worth six hours in the car - not to me anyway unless I was passing through. Plenty of ass-puckering action locally.

Got out to monitor Wed. night and WDFW biologist David Anderson was good enough to get out twice Thu. to verify. We have two fledges up on Big Ledge which are in the ledge-to-ledge hopping and beginning longer flight stage; they should be competent flyers by the 15th. Heads up that least one big block came down on the SE Corner base from the top so it looks like we still have stuff coming down in that area, but no pre-open work session is planned for this year. Enjoy...

....for most folks.

Nah, I'm a trad climber which is a pretty tough proposition on most limestone. I was in Railay in '93 and I suspect it's still about the only time the locals have seen a full trad rack or someone trad climbing there (which mostly consists of slinging things and stacking stuff in pockets). A couple of them were pretty fascinated by it all so I was never wanting for partners.

My next door neighbor is an ultramarathoner doing about 120 mile / week. Does 'casual' 50-70 mile runs all the time and is pretty lackadaisical about diet. Good guitarist as well - totally laid back and doesn't look a bit like an athlete of any sort.

Well as a former Alien and long-time (since they were first made) TCU user with a double rack of Master Cams as well as MC Offsets I'd consider your opinion humble as well.

For burly I use Mammut Supersafe 10.2 with a double-pick sheath - great rope. In the case of the Supersafe the teflon coating makes it exhibit less drag than most ropes. For roped soloing I use a Maxim Glider 9.9 with a TPT single-pick sheath; handles very similar to the Supersafe, almost as burly, nice tight and smooth sheath. These days I'm leaning more towards the Glider for the majority of my climbing and reserve the Supersafe for scary things.

Obviously not from the guy who led all the pitches on the Nose in 15 hours with them and thinks they're fabulous.

Damn straight! You go to war with the tired, brokedown, weary army you have [taken advantage of] -- not the army you might want but can't afford even at a later time.

I'd say since Gore v. Bush that 'States Rights' are only alive as another rightwing myth enshrined in their hypocrisy to be trotted on an as-needed basis when it's convenient to their agenda (and by a democratic president spinelessly dodging a basic human rights issue).

PM if interested...

How's it going on the 'click' access to the larger photo sizes? Also, it would be nice if the default sort was "Posted Date" / "Descending" versus what it is.

The big change from the 60's and 70's is a change in mentality relative to many people aspiring to wealth. In the 60's and 70's corporations were all about assembling conglomerates, but they turned out being unwieldy and more trouble than they were worth. The task of dismantling them went to a new class of rising legal and mba all-stars and in the 80's they became adroit at doing just that for their corporate masters. Then things went awry when a couple of these clowns got loose in the wild - they began raiding older corporations that were governed and managed with and for 'traditional' values for their pension funds and easily liquidated assets. The old guard didn't know what hit them and the go-go 80's was a boom of pirates and raiders with a newly honed instinct and intuition for less-than-well-guarded corporate assets and pensions. That initial period of corporate raiding wound down as management and boards of directors realigned to the 'new normal' of a more aggressive competitive, legal, and financial landscape. The raiders then looked around to see what other piles of unguarded cash might be laying around and in the 90's went after healthcare and airlines siphoning billions off of doctors and pilots who didn't have the wherewithal to even grasp what was happening as it was let alone do anything about it. Then during the late 90's the raiders were getting more politically savvy and pushed for 'banking and financial reforms' that would further erode the ability to protect cash and allow them to set up an unregulated shadow financial system. Once that was accomplished it was full-steam ahead on the course that led us to where we are today - the packaging of all principal forms of consumer debt into asset-backed securities that are sliced, diced, rated, and traded such that it is all but impossible to trace a piece of investment paper back to a specific home, auto, student, or credit card. The dotcom boom simply contributed to their success by cementing a 'bubble' investment mentality in the minds of consumers that played out in the real estate markets. In the 00's that same scenario played out in debt markets for nations with many governments acting no differently than Americans taking on mortgage debt. The debt crisis of nations like Greece and Portugal is just another facet of the overall ABS fiasco run amok. The reality is nothing substantial has changed and our world is still dominated by an unregulated shadow financial system. Don't kid yourselves, the fundamental change that took place in business in the 80's was we grew a generation of sharp lawyers and MBAs who changed the 'meaning' of business from one largely revolving around value creation [over time] to one where [instant] legal / financial piracy without value creation is half the new game. We, as a nation and as individuals, are all the poorer for it.