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Hanses25
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - 09:43 pm: | 
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I have to look at all this in a different way, or at least explain it differently. Lets say for the sake of an example America is my house. In this example lets say my house has all the latest technology, best efficiency, most safeguards, and had many things to occupy my time. If I never associated with my neighbors and aided them in everything it took to turn my house into such a modern marvel, how would my neighborhood be? Lawless, third world, and what would the resale value of my house be, with such a crappy neighborhood? I have to believe that helping our neighbors, and being our brothers keeper is a good idea. There will come a time when our neighbors will return the favor. As long as it doesn't say made in France I can support helping others make it in the world. As long as everyone in the U.S. that will work is doing so, and I can't support labor movements that want $30/hr for sling'n hash at Mickey D's. |
Race_pirate
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 09:59 am: |
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The times are a changing..... I am happy with the fit and finish, performance and style of my XB9R. Regardless of where the kickstand bolt or clutch lever is made, any where in the world Buell is America's Sportbike!!! All US auto manufacturers out source for parts internationally, I still drive a Dodge. I am just happy that the XB exists and I have one.
I dont think in my lifetime we will see America like it was during 1900 to the post WWII economic and industrial boom. It was DISCO that killed America!!!
The only change I would like to see is a Water cooled 52 to 60 degree V-twin with 8 valves, a cassette style gearbox, dry clutch and a solid/reliable 130-140 rear wheel HP stuffed into the XB frame.
Designed and manufactured in the USA would be a important to me for the Buell. (And yes I am aware that Porsche was consulted on the HD EVO head design) That would be OK too... |
Glitch
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:09 am: |
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any where in the world Buell is America's Sportbike!!!
I like your thinking! |
Freyke
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:34 am: |
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check here for american made goods...
http://madeinusa.org/nav.cgi |
Brucelee
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:46 am: |
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Well, it is not manufacturing, but you can complete the picture.
Death of a Sawmill
By JIM PETERSEN
December 29, 2005; Page A11
EUREKA, Mont. -- My friend Jim Hurst auctioned his sawmill in August.
Jim's decision to pack it in after 25 years of beating his head on the wall made big news here in northwest Montana but, alas, not a peep from this newspaper or the New York Times. That's too bad, because the loss of our family-owned mills also signals the loss of technologies and skills vital to our efforts to protect the West's great national forests from the ravages of increasingly fearsome wildfires.
I was in Jim's office a few days before the auction. He told me he was at peace with his decision, but Jim has a good game face, so I suspect the decision to terminate his remaining 70 employees tore his guts out. They were like family to him.
Jim's outfit was the economic backbone of tiny Eureka, Mont., a sawmill town since the early 1900s. I have a photo of my schoolteacher great-aunt standing on the front steps of the town's one-room schoolhouse in 1909. Although the town has grown some since then, its rural charm is still very much intact.
Jim Hurst at his mill.
Thanks to the nation's housing boom, business has been good for the West's sawmills for the past three years. But Jim faced an insurmountable problem: He couldn't buy enough logs to keep his mill running. This despite the fact that 10 times as many trees as Jim's mill needed die annually on the nearby Kootenai National Forest. From his office window, Jim could see the dead and dying standing on hillsides just west of the mill. They might as well have been standing on the moon, given the senseless environmental litigation that has engulfed the West's federal forests.
Thanks to Jim's resourcefulness, his mill survived its last five years on a steady diet of fire- and bug-killed trees salvaged from Alberta provincial forests. Such salvage work is unthinkable in our national forests, forests that, news reports to the contrary, remain under the thumb of radical environmental groups whose hatred for capitalism seems boundless. Americans are thus invited to believe that salvaging fire-killed timber is "like mugging a burn victim." Never mind that there is no peer-reviewed science that supports this ridiculous claim -- or that many of the West's great forests, including Oregon's famed Tillamook Forest, are products of past salvage and reforestation projects.
Jim shared his good fortune with his employees. Each received an average $30,000 in severance and profit sharing: a tip of the hat from him to a crew that set a production record the day after he told them he was throwing in the towel. Such is the professionalism -- and talent -- found among the West's mill workers. A few Oregon mills tried to recruit them, but most don't want to leave Eureka. I haven't the faintest idea how they'll make a living, but in the 40-odd years I've spent observing forests and people who live in them, I've learned never to underestimate the power of roots.
Although he's still a young man filled with creative energy and enthusiasm, I suspect the government has seen the last of Jim Hurst. Three years ago, I called nearly 100 sawmill owners scattered across the West and asked them if they would invest $40 million in a new small-log sawmill on the government's promise of a timber supply sufficient to amortize the investment. The verdict was a unanimous "No."
The never-reported truth is that the family-owned sawmills that survived the decade-long collapse of the federal timber sale program no longer have much interest in doing business with a government they no longer trust. Most now get their timber from lands they've purchased in recent years, other private lands, tribal forests or state lands. Some even import logs from other countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Chile.
You would think environmentalists who campaigned against harvesting in the West's national forests for 30-some years would be dancing in the streets. And, in fact, some of them are. But many aren't. Railing against giant faceless corporations is easy, but facing the news cameras after small family-owned mills fold has turned out to be very difficult. Everyone loves the underdog, and across much of the West there is a gnawing sense that environmentalists have hurt a lot of underdogs in their lust for power.
Environmentalists also face a problem they never anticipated. Recent polling reveals some 80% percent of Americans approve of the kind of methodical thinning that would have produced small diameter logs in perpetuity for Jim's sawmill. We Americans seem to like thinning in overly dense forests because the end result is visually pleasing, and because it helps reduce the risk of horrific wildfire -- a bonus for wildlife and millions of year-round recreation enthusiasts who worship clean air and water.
Many Westerners wonder why the government isn't doing more thinning in at-risk forests that are at the epicenter of our Internet-linked New West lifestyle. I don't. Until the public takes back the enormous power it has given radical environmentalists and their lawyers, the Jim Hursts of the world will continue to exit the stage, taking their hard-earned capital, their well-developed global markets and their technological genius with them.
Fifteen years ago, not long after the release of "Playing God in Yellowstone," his seminal work on environmentalism's philosophical underpinnings, I asked philosopher and environmentalist Alston Chase what he thought about this situation. I leave you to ponder his answer: "Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."
Mr. Petersen is the founder of the nonprofit Evergreen Foundation and the publisher of Evergreen Magazine in Montana. |
Glitch
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 01:11 pm: |
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From the madeinusa.org website
"Made in the USA" products need a content consisting of 51% or more of domestically produced or manufactured parts, labor and or value-added content or any combination thereof. The ownership of a company is not the key factor. The fact that a company is a good corporate neighbor by manufacturing or buying goods and services domestically for sale in the local markets and providing jobs, is of key importance. This is a fundamental ingredient of employment stability and economic growth." |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:16 pm: |
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Bruce,
What happens to soil and its crops when a farmer neglects to amend it in favor of repeatedly planting and harvesting new crops?
What is it that amends the rich forest topsoil that allows timber/trees to grow big and healthy? |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:18 pm: |
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How much of the America's virgin redwood forest remains today? |
Brucelee
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:24 pm: |
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"How much of the America's virgin redwood forest remains today?"
The point of your question is what?
How much of America's ANYTHING virgin remains today?
To wit,
In 1900, 90% of vermont's land surface was farmland. Today, 90% of Vermont's land surface is forest. |
Brucelee
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:31 pm: |
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"What happens to soil and its crops when a farmer neglects to amend it in favor of repeatedly planting and harvesting new crops?
What is it that amends the rich forest topsoil that allows timber/trees to grow big and healthy?"
If you want to know more about sustainable forestry, I suggest this article. Long but worth it.
http://www.greenspirit.com/trees_answer.cfm |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 06:47 pm: |
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The point of my question is that there is darn good justification for concern about maintaining the most majestic and awesome nature has to offer. Can you answer the question or not?
I live amidst a region of sustained forestry. Can you answer the question? |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 07:15 pm: |
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The "point" is that both sides have one, a "point" that is, and that there is validity in each.
Too far to one side and you end up with the greedy rape of entire forests a'la the redwoods.
Too far to the other and you end up with the demise of an entire industry.
Not sure the closing of one sawmill amounts to anything close to the demise of the entire logging industry.
We have however seen the indiscriminant over-exploitation of entire virgin forests. Only a tenuous 4% of the original virgin redwood forest remains today in various fragile disjointed tracts. That is unacceptable and puts at risk the existence of that valuable virgin forest. Lot's of sawmills were kept busy for a long time during the greedy over-exploitation of the redwood forests. Some complained vehemently and had to shut down when we decided to save the remaining 4% of the virgin redwood forest.
Sounds like the sawmill folks made out okay. Not many would forgo a $30K severence if offered it.
My grandfather was a forester/logger/timberman. But he never ever clear-cut. He practiced select harvesting, a holistic rather than a clear-cut/cash-crop approach to logging. It requires more planning and intelligence, but pays in sustained ecosystems and healthier forests. It is better for the animals and for the environment.
If we cannot see the validity in both sides of an issue, we are part of the problem. |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 07:30 pm: |
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From your source... "Taken in the right light, clearcuts can actually looked quite pretty."
I've seen clearcuts, I know clearcuts, clearcuts are NEVER EVER pretty.
I agree with the following... "First, it is important to place some of the world's forest into permanently protected parks and wilderness reserves where no industrial development occurs. The World Wildlife Fund recommends that 10 percent of the world's forests should be set aside for this purpose. Perhaps it should even be 15 percent."
I would add that a goodly portion of said protected forests must be accessible to the general population. So, we need to triple the size of our virgin redwood forests. How many sawmills do you suppose would be put out of business in order to achieve that goal? |
Glitch
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 08:39 pm: |
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Speaking of managed forests, Germany does a great job. |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 09:09 pm: |
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One of the hypocrisies of the elite California liberals is their beloved private coastline. Gotta give big giant kudos to Oregon for keeping all its coastline as public access. No question in my mind that that was the best decision.
Californian liberals, if they were honest, would be pushing to buy back and make public their entire coastline. |
Brucelee
| | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 10:33 am: |
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"Californian liberals, if they were honest, would be pushing to buy back and make public their entire coastline"
If they were honest? Hee hee hee! |
Brucelee
| | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 10:44 am: |
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For another point of view. I recommend the entire article referenced above. Here are excerpts from the Greenspirit website on Forestry management:
Fire has always been the main cause of forest destruction, or disturbance, as ecologists like to call it in order to use a more neutral term. But fire is natural, we are told, and does not destroy the forest ecosystem like logging, which is unnatural. Nature never comes with logging trucks and takes the trees away. All kinds of rhetoric is used to give the impression that logging is somehow fundamentally different from other forms of forest disturbance. There is no truth to this. It is true that logging is different from fire, but fire is also very different from a volcano, which in turn is very different from an ice age. In fact, no two fires are ever the same. These are differences of degree, not kind. Forests are just as capable of recovering from destruction by logging as they are from any other form of disturbance. All that is necessary for renewal is that the disturbance is ended, that the fire is out, that the volcano stops erupting, that the ice retreats, or that the loggers go back down the road and allow the forest to begin growing back, which it will begin to do almost immediately.
And more
Taken in the right light, clearcuts can actually looked quite pretty. Think, for just a moment, of the clearcut as a temporary meadow. It is temporary because it will not stay that way; it will grow back into a new forest a gain. But it is meadow-like for the time being because the trees have been removed and now the sun can reach directly to the ground, fostering the growth of plants that could never grow in the shade of the trees. We never think of meadows and clearcuts in the same breath. After all, meadows are lovely places which you can walk across easily in the open sun, find a dry smooth place, lay your picnic blanket down and have a lovely afternoon. Clearcuts, on the other hand, are ugly places full of twisted, broken wood and stumps, and there is no nice smooth, dry place to put down a picnic blanket. These distinctions have nothing to do with biodiversity or science, they are purely matters of human aesthetics. Meadows are actually small deserts where it is too dry for trees to grow. That's why they are so smooth. Meadows are only capable of supporting drought-resistant grasses and herbs. Clearcuts, on the other hand, can support a wider variety of grasses and herbs, as well as woody shrubs and trees. Within a year or two of harvesting, clearcuts will generally have far higher biodiversity than meadows. And within a decade or so they begin to look just as good too.
In the space of a few short years, a clearcut that is very ugly to look at can be transformed into a beautiful sea of blossoms growing from seeds that blow in on the wind after fire. Was the clearcut bad when it looked ugly? Is it good now that it looks beautiful? The fact is, it is a serious mistake to judge the environmental health of the land simply by looking at it from an aesthetic perspective.
The way we think the land should look often has more to do with personal and social values than anything to do with biodiversity or science. We tend to idealize nature, as if there is some perfect state that is exactly right for a given area of land. There are actually thousands of different combinations of species at all different stages of forest growth that are perfectly natural and sustainable in their own right. There is nothing better about old trees than there is about young trees. Perhaps the ideal state is to have forests of all ages, young, medium, and old in the landscape. This will provide the highest diversity of habitats and therefore the opportunity for the largest number of species to live in that landscape.
Deforestation is a difficult subject for the forest industry because it certainly looks deforested when all the trees are cut down in a given area. Unfortunately for the public's understanding of this term, cutting the trees down is not sufficient in itself to cause deforestation. What really matters is whether the forest is removed permanently, or reforested with new trees. But the unsightly nature of a recently harvested forest, even if it is going to grow back eventually, can easily give the impression of environmental destruction and deforestation.
On the other hand, a rural scene of farmlands and pasture looks pleasant to the eye and is neat and tidy compared to the jumble of woody debris in a clearcut. Yet it is the farm and pasture land that truly represents deforestation. It has been cleared of forest long ago and the forest has been permanently replaced by food crops and fodder. More important, if we stopped plowing the farmland for just 5 years in a row, seeds from the surrounding trees would blow in and the whole area would be blanketed in new tree seedlings. Within 80 years you would never know there had been a farm there. The entire area would be reforested again, just by leaving it alone. That's because deforestation is not an event, that just happens and then is over forever. Deforestation is actually an ongoing process of continuous human interference, preventing the forest from growing back, which it would if it was simply left alone. The most common form of interference with forest renewal is what we call agriculture. That's why deforestation is seldom caused by forestry, the whole intention of which is to cause reforestation. Deforestation is nearly always caused by friendly farmers growing our food, and by nice carpenters building our houses, towns, and cities. Deforestation is not an evil plot, it is something we do on purpose in order to feed and house the 6 billion and growing human population.
The scene of cattle grazing in a lush green pasture is pleasant to the eye. Yet it wasn't that many years ago when McDonald's restaurants, bowing to heavy public pressure due to concern about deforestation in Central and South America to grow cows for hamburger, promised they would never buy another tropical cow. It was apparently fine, however, to continue buying cows grown in North America. Is this because we have a higher standard for deforestation in North America then they do in Latin America? No, it is a complete double standard. Deforestation is deforestation regardless of where it is practiced. The forest is completely removed and replaced with a monoculture pasture on which exotic animals that were not present in the original forest graze. |
Race_pirate
| | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 10:54 am: |
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Buells are not grown on trees...... |
Freyke
| | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 12:00 pm: |
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Dennis: I told you, we're an anarco-sydicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week...
King Arthur: Yes...
Dennis: ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
King Arthur: Yes I see...
Dennis: ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs...
King Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: ...but by a two thirds majority in the case of...
King Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is? |
Therenardo9r
| | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 12:53 pm: |
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Kinda lost in the subject here somehow ! It is not because a Buell is American that it is the best (by the way I am French..a real one living in France, and even so we make a dream motorbike the Voxan (almost the only one here)) I still like my Buell much better !
I bought my XB because it is well made, because it has the torque where it should be, because it is a very creative motorbike, and I am proud of owning it.
I have had many other motorbikes, but i like my buell best overall for my age and what I wanna do with it...
Thanx you guys over in the West for making such a great bike..
Lucky thing for me that I would never say "from the time it does not say made in the US" otherwise I would not have a Buell, maybe one day you'll have to buy something French because that's where it best made or suits you best, like my Buell...
Happy new Year |
Jlnance
| | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 04:54 pm: |
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maybe one day you'll have to buy something French because that's where it best made
I do like Champagne.  |
Perry
| | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 05:23 pm: |
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Nearly all americans buy French products whether they realize it or not.
The anti-French sentiment is a recent phenomenon, the result of the media portraying a very strong anti-American sentiment among the French - both politically and ideologically. Whether that is true or not is another story, but that's the impression being created, and it certainly has its effects.
The media no longer try to tell anything but their own story, and objectivity that was once a point of journalistic pride has basically disappeared, and IMO we're all the worse off for it.
Course, we ALL love a French dude on a Buell!
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Jlnance
| | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 07:47 pm: |
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We tend to forget our history.
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Diablobrian
| | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 07:55 pm: |
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Eiffel designed the statue of liberty. |
Blake
| | Posted on Saturday, January 07, 2006 - 12:32 am: |
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Vive la France!  |
Buell_it
| | Posted on Saturday, January 07, 2006 - 03:18 am: |
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Merci beaucoup Blake |
Metalstorm
| | Posted on Saturday, January 07, 2006 - 07:42 pm: |
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My favorite french car company is Chevrolet.
Well, it was originally french. |
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