Packing peanuts ban 2019

No love for peanuts here but I left NY state over 30 years ago and very glad I did. A great state in general but controlled by the lunatic fringe in New York City.
 
NY and especially California lawmakers need to go away. Their laws they come up with are just too much for common sense people to grasp IMO.
 
NY and especially California lawmakers need to go away. Their laws they come up with are just too much for common sense people to grasp IMO.
the fires in cali are proof alone( although ive read horror stories about building codes,too.heres a long read but quite informative :
Hello my name is Dan Story. I have lived in Oregon most of my life. I am 45 years old and have been around the outdoors my whole life. My mother grew up on a working ranch in the Ochoco mountains in Central Oregon near Prineville. Her dad (my grandfather) managed the timber on the ranch (about 400 acres worth) his entire life. He won Oregon Tree Farmer of the Year I believe around 1977. (It may have been Eastern Oregon Tree Farmer of the Year?) I spent many a summer on the ranch as it was less than an hour away from where I lived. I studied Forestry all 4 years in High School under the teachings of William (Bill) Wysham. He was an amazing Forestry teacher. I then went to Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, OR and received my AAS in Forest Management.
My first forestry job (Timber Marker) was with the BIA in Warm Springs, OR on the Warm Springs Reservation. That was in 1991 right after I graduated high school and before I started college. In 1992 I began work on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Unity, Oregon. I have been on the WWNF ever since. I first worked in Silviculture and Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) all the while helping out the marking crew and the genetics program. I did this until 2001 when I made the permanent move into genetics. Budgets and downsizing over the next 2 years caused me to make the transition into fire in 2004. I worked in La Grande Oregon as an assistant engine captain for the fire season of 2004. I then made a move once again and went to Baker City, Oregon in 2005 taking the same position. I was an assistant engine captain until 2009 when I moved into the Fuels department. I served in this position until 2011 when an opportunity to move up the ladder came once again. It was in 2011 that I made the move into Engineering as the Road Maintenance Manager for the Whitman District here in Baker City, OR. This is still my current position.
 
I have dealt with every aspect of managing timber (mainly in dry pine sites) my entire career and before that in high school and on the family ranch before that. I have had the pleasure of working on hundreds of thousands of acres of NF ground through the entire process of land management. Marking timber, cruising timber, treating fuels after the timber sale such as thinning, hand piling, machine piling, burning piles, burning timber sale units (prescribed fire) then planting these units with trees and then years later thinning these same units of planted trees. I have seen prescribed fire move through the landscape through treated and untreated stands of timber. I have seen wildfire move through these same stands.
Around 1900 timber cutting in the west became a huge industry and large chunks of acreage were logged heavily. Around North East Oregon this came to an end around 1930-1940 and as the large private timber companies abandoned the large pieces of ground that had been denuded the Forest Service started acquiring these large chunks of ground. It must have taken years for some of this ground to come back into timber production. The 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s were big years for the Forest Service around here for logging. The agency had been around a few years but was still learning how to properly manage the Forest.
From 1900 on we began suppressing wild fire. Sure there were some large fires every once in a while but the forest was much different then. Large chunks had been denuded recently by large corporation making fire spread difficult but there was a few other reasons for the limited large fire on the landscape. There was grazing by cattle and sheep going on all over, there was many many people in the woods back then logging and mining. Up until around 1990 any fire that started in the woods was met with loggers, miners and Forest Service personnel. The multiple logging companies all had heavy equipment in the woods on active timber sales. Fire was met with swift heavy action.
Around 1990 things started to radically change for the Forest Service and the loggers. There were folks out there who did not like what was going on in the woods. Someone figured out that the Endangered Species Act could be used as a tool to stop, slow down, and hinder the logging going in the woods. This is when we first started to hear about the Spotted Owl. This would change everything. Timber sales were sued by these special interest groups, people were chaining themselves to trees and roads and logging equipment was being vandalized and burned. Others were out feverishly looking for other plants and animals that met the criteria for listing on the Endangered Species Act. Once they knew that these plants and animals could be used as a tool to shut down logging they had succeeded in their ultimate plan. As logging got shut down and the planning process for getting timber sales became incredibly cumbersome the mills really began to shut down. Then NAFTA hit and really started to drive down the value of timber. This put the mill shutdown into overdrive. The 21 inch rule as a definition for old growth came about in approx. 1991. So during a time when the price of timber began to go down, the timber sale frequency slowed way down, the mills were faced with having to retool to be able to run these smaller more infrequent lower valued trees. The writing on the wall for many loggers and mills was that if you stayed in this business you face a huge chance that you would go bankrupt very soon. Many did.
 
Loggers began to become fewer and fewer and fewer. Stands of timber were not being logged and not being grazed near as heavy. The Forest Service didn’t have the timber sale profits to fund positions and didn’t have the need for so many personnel so our work force began to be reduced radically. The same fire that started just 10 years earlier was not being hit with that dozer that was just down the road on that timber sale. There were now fewer loggers and Forest Service personnel in the woods. The trees started to crowd in and the fuel loads on the ground began to become heavier and heavier. As stands of timber began to become way overcrowded they began to over-compete for water. Every last drop of water. When a tree is stressed it gives of a pheromone that calls in the bugs. Ips, western pine beetle, mountain pine beetle, red turpentine beetle, spruce budworm, douglas-fir tussock moth and others. These bugs started killing large numbers of trees. After a few years these trees began falling on the ground. It really doesn’t take long. You would be surprised at how fast this happens.
Now introduce the same lightning pattern that we have always had to this stand of timber. The results of this is what you see before you now only it’s getting worse by the day. Manmade fire is also occurring in larger numbers than we have ever seen. Fire is getting into stands of timber that have not been managed since the 70’s and 80’s and that is more than enough time to have an over-story of large trees with an intermediate stand of timber under it, with a young stand of trees under it and fuel bed of a portion of all of these age trees on the ground laying on the forest floor. These stands of extremely overstocked trees created a canopy that is incredibly difficult for rain to penetrate. The fuel bed of dead trees laying on the ground becomes dryer and dryer. The green trees remaining are feverishly competing for what???? Yep, that’s right…. WATER. We have trees more densely populating the ground than we ever have had in history. Live fuel moistures in the green trees are very low because the trees are competing with each other for every last drop of water. The ground that these trees are growing on was never meant to support the amount of vegetation that currently exist on it. This causes trees to grow suppressed, slow, and susceptible to disease and insects and in a lot of cases die at a young age.
Prescribed burning has become much much more difficult than ever before. We have smoke management now. You have to check the forecast on the day of the burn. If smoke from your prescribed burn is forecasted to move towards areas of population then you most likely are not going to burn in that spot that day. As the areas you would like to prescribe burn get closer and closer to town it becomes increasingly more difficult to get a forecast that is favorable to move smoke away from the population center that the prescribed fire creates. You may go multiple years without getting a favorable smoke forecast for the prescribed burn near town. What happens to that fuel bed next to town? It gets deeper and heavier and more dangerous in a place that needs the fuels treated the most. People are so much more sensitive to seeing smoke than they ever have been before and rightfully so. Nobody likes to breathe smoke but the option of not breathing smoke is not an option. Your 2 choices are to breathe prescribed fire smoke in the spring or fall or to breathe wildfire smoke in the summer months. The choice of “neither” is off of the table. This is not negotiable.
Lightning is hitting trees just like it always has. The huge difference is what the stand of timber looks like compared to 30 years ago. By the time a fire engine or Initial attack crew get to the fire it is a much different animal than it was at the beginning of my career. Early in my career that fire would be skunking around in some pine needles and light grass and slowly making its way downwind or upslope. The fire was usually not in any danger of getting into a heavy pocket of dead and down woody debris (fuel). That lightning strike is now in heavy fuels and moving towards more heavy fuels. It is intense with much longer flame lengths and much more heat than ever before. It requires more effort to contain. The same amount of wind on this fire is a much bigger issue. More resources are needed. Helicopters, air tankers with retardant, more line diggers, more fire engines, more dozers more everything. Now expand this across the West. Now look really big picture. What happens now when you get a lightning bust across the West? California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. 30 years ago most of these lightning strikes happened near a logging outfit, were in stands of timber that had been grazed and logged and had fuels treated with machines or prescribed fire or both. Now when you get a lighting bust and these fires start in dense overstocked, heavy fuel bed of dead trees some of them are not caught in that first day. They begin to grow and get larger. You call for extra resources from your neighbors. They tell you that they were just about to call you for help. You start calling for help from neighboring states. They tell you the same thing… We were about to call you for help. You put out orders for hot shot crews, fire engines, dozers, water tenders, 20 person crews, helicopters, and heavy air tankers and at the same time California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico is doing the same thing. All because the same lightning pattern that we have always had is starting fires in stands of timber that look nothing like they ever have before. All the available resources are divvied up amongst all the new fires. Nobody gets all the resources they wanted. The fire is burning in a fuel bed that begs for as many resources as it can get. You’re forced to make do with what you can get. Fires are “herded” away from new housing developments if they can. All the while you keep placing orders for more help but so is everyone else. I have fought fire in Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and of course Oregon throughout my career. The issues are not localized to my little corner of Oregon.
At the local level you may have had 25 lightning strike fires. You may have caught 24 of them. The 1 fire that you didn’t catch becomes a 100,000+ acre multi-million dollar fire.
Global warming? So this is a huge question facing us today. Is Global warming to blame for what I just described to you? In my opinion the answer is…. It is a very small piece of the puzzle. Maybe 5% part of the problem? Global warming didn’t start the fire. In most cases lightning did. In NE Oregon I have not seen more lightning now than in the past. Matter of fact I think I have seen less in the last 10 years. Did global warming cause the increase of overstocked stands in the forest? Did Global warming cause the trees to over compete for water? Maybe? Did global warming cause NAFTA? I do believe NAFTA is getting worked on so that is a small help. Did Global warming cause the huge increase of fuels laying on the forest floor? Maybe a little? Did Global warming cause the mills to shut down? Did Global warming cause the loggers to go out of business? Did Global warming cause the Endangered Species Act? Did Global warming cause current day timber sales to be economically unfeasible? Did Global warming cause timber prices to drop dramatically since the late 1980’s? Did Global warming cause our increased NEPA and EA document requirements? Did Global warming cause our Timber Sales to be litigated? Did Global Warming cause our reduction in workforce? Did Global warming cause the issue of not getting all the resources to the fire that we ordered? Did Global warming cause prescribed fire smoke issues? Did Global warming cause our springs and streams to dry up because there are so many more trees per acre than ever before competing for water? Maybe a little? If we fixed Global Warming tomorrow would the wildfire risk be diminished? I don’t believe it would. It may be a tiny little part of the issue but it’s not the answer.
The scary part of all of this is that large fires are here to stay. Stands of timber are way too crowded. Competition for water by all of these trees is more than the springs, streams and rivers can handle. Resources are harder to get to fight fire. Fires are burning in a fuel bed that we have never seen the likes of before.
 
In my opinion we need large scale responsibly managed timber sale/fuels reduction projects. We need them right now. Unfortunately there are a ton of roadblocks in the way to getting to this point. What mills would the timber go to? There are not many left. What loggers would log these timber sales? There are not many left. Would the special interest groups allow us to do our jobs and manage the Forest? My gut says …No. or not completely. The 9th circuit court is on the side of the special interest groups. That’s a hurdle we have not been able to overcome. Are we going to all of the sudden start educating the public on why the Forest is really burning to the ground? Probably not… Unfortunately folks until a lot of these issues are fixed you will continue to see large tracts of land burn to the ground.
You can believe me or not. That’s is completely up to you. I did no scientific studies to validate any of my opinions. All of my knowledge is based on almost 40 years of observing forest management from my families small timber ranch in the Ochoco’s to almost 30 years of timber management on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. I have literally watched with my own 2 eyes what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to managing timber. Whats happening in the west since 1991 is not working folks.
There is so much more to write but I will leave it here.
Enjoy.
Dan Story
 
Found the law looks like just for city of my.
Not sure but we will research wed and figure out what to do, I'm not sure we ship to the city, if that is case were good to go but sanfran and Portland also involved jobbers in those areas so may not be issue.
 
Good deal. I put this out hoping to spare ya crazy fines.
City (staten isl, manhattan, brooklyn, queens, bronx) and or whole state is the question.
Considering the bridges are over $12 now, cigs $13, imagine what peanut fine is. Not peanuts.
 
I seen they have a hardship application for small business. Depending on where you fall in that category it might be worth a look.
 
Here in chicago, we have to pay for plastic grocery bags. My thought is, a plastic bag stuck to an aldermans catalytic converter so he she wanted them banned. They could not so they have us pay 5 cents a bag. To me, someone has to pay 5 cents for each bag, its the companies that decide its the consumer. I go to home depot get two things for 100.00 and they cant give me a bag. So Chicago is as bad or worse than NY city.

That being said, I hate peanuts. Cant get rid of them unless you tie them in a bag otherwise they are all over the lot when the garbage picks up. Uline has a long line of haz mat cartons where the stuff stays upright and cant bounce around. Every other company industrial just ends up tacking on the packaging in the cost. Or there is that spray foam that you put in plastic bags that molds to the contents.
 
Here in Suffolk County Long Island, part of the NY nanny state, we have to pay for plastic bags, except if you are living off of public handouts and receiving food stamps, then it's free.
So now I carry reusable bags in the Jeep.
 
Here in Suffolk County Long Island, part of the NY nanny state, we have to pay for plastic bags, except if you are living off of public handouts and receiving food stamps, then it's free.
So now I carry reusable bags in the Jeep.
California is doing the same thing. My wife and I went there for a weekend and needed to purchase some things and couldn't believe they were charging for the bags. AND we had to ask for straws at the restaurants because it is against the law for them to offer you one.
 
Illegal to offer straws.....but you can enter that state illegally and not get arrested. Upside down indeed!
 
i put all my peanuts in big black plastic contractor bags. once i have a bunch of bags i just post free peanuts on craigslist. they are usually gone the same day. about 2 months ago i got rid of 25 bags of them. that was prob 2 years worth. 5 cents a bag isnt bad. we are not getting charged for plastic bags yet except a few small dept stores. one cashier at a place recently said it was going to be a statewide thing @ $1 per bag.
 
For groceries, those insulated zippered bags are great & i never go without them. They hold alot, less trips to fro garage & insulated.
For the spi goodies we love, peanuts are ok with me and they insulate on extreme days.
If the goodies eventually come with different packing, will anyone mind $1 added to order? I won't.
 
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