Sen. Schumer gets it says Sen. Wyden

A report on this week’s SOPA and PIPA drama lists winners and losers. Google,Rep.Darrel Issa, Reddit and Sen. Ron Wyden landed on the winning side according to thehill.com

Rep.Lamar Smith, Sen. Patrick Leahy the MPAA and the Chamber of Commerce soundly on the losing end.

And President Obama coming in late to the parade is somewhere in the mushy middle or muddle.
It is a surprising mix of players from business groups,corporations and both political parties planted on both ends of the victory.

Washington Posts blogger Greg Sergeant observes it was “a huge victory for grassroots online organizing” and wonders about lessons learned:

Does the Senate Dem leadership really understand that its approach was a major threat to what makes the Internet a democratic force and that it needed a complete overhaul?

Senator Ron Wyden, the primary driver of opposition to the bill within the Senate, and he confirmed that the leadership grasps the depth of the problems with its approach, and is ready to address them head on.

Wyden singles out Sen. Schumer for grasping the situation and says he has “really now come to understand what’s happened in technology,”

Vermont's Senator Leahy is less understanding and to put it mildly disappointed with the outcome in his statement released after Majority Leader Reid killed the senate bill. Leahy’s stern warning raises the specter that Chinese and Russian criminals may even now

"...smugly be watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy And warns But the day will come when the Senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem."

No surplus left anywhere in the world

“There’s no surplus left anywhere in the world,” not petroleum , maple syrup.This is what Sen. Schumer is talking about ."Everybody is waiting for this year’s crop.”Restaurants in Vermont are rationing maple syrup and not allowing unlimited pouring. As the state’s annual harvest gets under way this week, restaurants and shops are paying as much as $70 a gallon for syrup, said Rick Marsh, president of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association. That’s up from about $40 last year, he said.

Although Vermont may lead the nation in maple syrup production New York State politicians are taking the lead in using the current high price of syrup to reintroduce legislation suggested in 2008.
The plan would provide for access to private land and to create centralized storage and bottling plants .Incredibly they are hoping for the $65 million dollar industry to increase sales by 400 percent! Although Schumer had no statistics for Vermont he did say “Listen to this, we have 289 million maple trees in New York, but we tap less than one-half of 1 percent of them. It’s a large, untapped resource, shall we say.”
Sen. Schumer, newly appointed Sen.Gillibrand and upstate NY Rep John McHugh have proposed legislation to help small producers nationwide.
Maple TAP Act which would direct the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a program under which states may apply for grants to encourage owners and operators of privately-held farm and ranch land with maple trees to voluntarily make such land available for maple tapping.

Quebec, the OPEC of maple syrup accounts for more than 70 percent of the global supply, 5.35 million gallons last year. Vermont, the domestic leader, produced 500,000 gallons. New York, which had a strong year, produced 322,000 gallons. Quebec produces more because it taps over a third of its trees. Vermont taps 2.1 percent.

While supply has dwindled, international demand has increased, largely because of marketing efforts by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, a trade group representing 7,300 companies. The focus has been on Asia, and Japan now accounts for 10 percent of Canada’s maple syrup exports, said Geneviève C. Béland, a marketing executive with the federation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/dining/11maple.html?ref=nyregion
http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=309291
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=ah5DD99EXVkw&refer=home