Of Livestock and Congress - Foghorn and theTan

Of livestock and congress

Time to Ship

Foghorn and the Tan

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            If none of you heard what Senate Conservatives’ Fund President Ken Cuccinelli called Senate Republicans’ decision to push Homeland Security funding that included money for this president’s de facto amnesty law, it was empirically correct.

He declared the reverse fulmination by Senate majority leader, Mitch (Foghorn) McConnell, “total surrender”.

“Oh, it’s an absolute surrender, and surrender is the primary word that we have been able to associate with the Republican leadership since Election Day,” he said. “Can you point me to one time they have fought?”

“No you can’t. What did they run on? Fighting! Well, if they had run on what they have been doing just in the last few months, there wouldn’t be Republican majorities in the House or Senate.”

The fact is the Senate and the House leadership, the latter headed by John (the Tan) Boehner, have not only failed to defend campaign promises, they are retreating from the defense of their gutless vote on CROmnibus in December. They promised they would deal with the unconstitutional precedent of prerogative emigration legislation by the Executive Branch in February by attaching amnesty defunding language in the Department of Homeland Security funding action.

February passed, the dilly duo slid the measure through unscathed, and now it appears Foghorn and the Tan will fully acquiesce to the will of this president.

 Pork producers

I rely on pork producer updates with much more enthusiasm than any national news.

Part of it is I don’t have to defend what I am thinking. An example is the settlement with the dock workers in Long Beach whereby pork will be loaded more expeditiously on ships bound for the Pacific Rim. The implications are not just that the backlogs of cold storage inventories will be brought more current, but the acceleration of pork in the pipeline will more rapidly affect the king of American protein, beef, and the implications to my pocket book.

The good part of a more in-depth explanation of the foregoing is that we don’t have to sit through another profile in fiction hosted by Brian Williams or an imbecilic panel discussion between Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams. The hog press isn’t into to couching words for a political agenda. They offer commentary whereby we can cut to the chase and evaluate how the world is not standing still while Washington dishonors our Constitution. For example, the Port of Guaymus on Mexico’s Sea of Cortez is quickly being modified and expanded to become the priority destination for Chinese goods rather than Long Beach. America is losing its ability to react because of Washington.

We didn’t learn that from news headlined on network tickers. We learned that from the heartland that has to deal with the obstacles of professional politics in order to exist.

The survey of preferred hog feeding systems is another example. No other forum anywhere can come close to elevating parallels that takes place in hog factories and the hallowed halls of Congress.

Whether you prefer CHORE-TIME®GENERATION4 pig feeders for implied efficiency or Hogslat-Hog Slat, Inc’s 25 years of hog feeding ingenuity, you can bet that hog production will be infinitely more efficient than Congress. With hogs, you can maintain strict control of intake and the conversion of feed to protein has gotten better and better. Real science and the art of feeding are at work.

The efficiency of Congress is regressing each day, week, and year. More money is pouring in than ever and yet the outflow is accelerating without restraint. Attempt to find a single cabinet level endeavor that has any suggestion of a budget cut. They don’t exist. The squandering of treasury and permanent wealth is incomprehensible. It is mind boggling. It is pathetic. It is astounding and the Republican majorities are not only complicit they now appear to be fully rudderless.

As for the Dems, they are what they are … the rule of the mob rather than the rule of law.

Cuccinelli is correct. The Republicans appear shrill and Lilliputian. They exhibit what not a single one of them is yet willing to admit. They continue to avoid confronting the constitutional truancy of this president on the basis of his skin color … rather than the content of his character.

The Founders didn’t envision that our federal government was destined to be a growth industry nor did they risk their lives and their futures on a system that would return a king to the helm.

Rather, the Founders had a more profound respect for the citizenry from which they arose and a lingering suspicion of the effectiveness and inherent overreach of government. Their fears were well founded. The modern results have proved them correct. There is no such thing as citizen leadership in this system. In its place is career governance with the centralized theme of self protection and empowerment. Collusion is rampant and, in its ensconced, metastasized form, it is not nor can it be self correcting.

It is time to ship.

Time to ship

Over the next two weeks we are going to work back through our cow herd.

This process is done because there is no room for underperformance or non-producers in our systems. Even with today’s cow prices, the ability of ranchers and particularly federal lands ranchers to compete against a back drop of other production regions is difficult. There are many reasons, but the emphasis today is not that discussion. The emphasis is the process of making decisions on shady or non-producers.

Let’s start with bulls.

We have come to believe that bulls should not be kept in our herds over four breeding cycles. Tenure over that length of time creates concern of herd health issues, impotency, and decreasing libido. Dominance and imperial dynastic overtones also emerge. Stagnation is the result. Just like original constitutional framing intentions, bulls with ruling tenures of more than six years ought to be sent to their great reward. Their benefit to the whole is no longer viable. In our case, we ship them..

If herd management is an issue, the arrival of uncontrolled and unintended bulls emerges as well. The presence of a bull battery that is not formed and shaped to support the herd goals is destructive. Independence and aggression can be tolerated, but, if it is disruptive and divisive, those bulls must be eliminated. Control must never be ceded to influences that challenge foundational tenets. Those bulls must be shipped at all costs.

Cows are no different.

Decisions are based upon diagnostic checks as well as simple profiling. A cow in a chute is subject to full evaluation. A shitty OB sleeve (SOBS) is a byproduct of one of the major checks that is performed. A grease pencil mark on her hip displays the result. A single stroke, a double stroke, a triple stroke, and a big zero are the marks. The big zero invariable results in a left hand turn out of the chute gate for the permanent solution alternative.

A look into the mouth of the cow is also required if she shows age or body score appearance differing from her herd mates. She must be able to perform under the same conditions as the rest of the herd, and, if she can’t, she can’t be subsidized to remain on par with the whole.

Her attitude and individual character are also under scrutiny. If she runs off when you deal with her, she is remembered. If she fights you in the corrals, in the sort, or in the chute she might be turned left regardless of her SOBS.

Diversity is not new to the bovine world. In fact, it has long been a science base welcome for the purposes of increasing productive efficiency. It is sought for the benefit and wellbeing of the whole, but it is not acceptable if the results become destructive and depart from permanent goals.

Collectively, all these factors have implications. In order to survive, we must make good decisions. Shipping is the real tool of consequences in our business. It has many benefits, but most importantly it leads to … real sustainability.

Foghorn and the Tan

There they are folks.

They have dishonored their word and demonstrated contempt for the will of the American public who reelected them. As they have ceded their souls to the rule of the rulers, they have made a mockery of their oaths and our expectations. To our absolute horror, they have set the stage for accepting all matters of unconstitutionality by this president. They have conceded by accepting where we are today without recourse.

I called a trucker today to ship cull cows and bulls … I suggest the American electorate demand the same prescribed outcome for these two impostors and their complicit colleagues.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.

 You can't say we weren't warned.

Our Founding Fathers were divided on the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and those who opposed the adoption were generally referred to as the Anti-Federalists.  They warned then of what we are seeing now.  Some left the Philadelphia Convention because their state legislature had only authorized them to entertain amendments to the Articles of Confederation, rather than adopt a whole new form of government (see this letter from two NY delegates).  Others, like John Hancock, participated in the debate but refused to sign the final document.  One should read the Anti-Federalist Papers to fully understand their disagreements with the original version of the U.S. Constitution and why they opposed its ratification.  Other prominent Anti-Federalists whom you might recognize would be Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe and James Winthrop.

Here is a very brief summary from ushistory.org

...Ranging from political elites like James Winthrop in Massachusetts to Melancton Smith of New York and Patrick Henry and George Mason of Virginia, these Antifederalist were joined by a large number of ordinary Americans particularly yeomen farmers who predominated in rural America. The one overriding social characteristic of the Antifederalists as a group was their strength in newer settled western regions of the country. 

In spite of the diversity that characterized the Antifederalist opposition, they did share a core view of American politics. They believed that the greatest threat to the future of the United States lay in the government's potential to become corrupt and seize more and more power until its tyrannical rule completely dominated the people. Having just succeeded in rejecting what they saw as the tyranny of British power, such threats were seen as a very real part of political life.

To Antifederalists the proposed Constitution threatened to lead the United States down an all-too-familiar road of political corruption. All three branches of the new central government threatened Antifederalists' traditional belief in the importance of restraining government power.

The President's vast new powers, especially a veto that could overturn decisions of the people's representatives in the legislature, were especially disturbing. The court system of the national government appeared likely to encroach on local courts. Meanwhile, the proposed lower house of the legislature would have so few members that only elites were likely to be elected. Furthermore, they would represent people from such a large area that they couldn't really know their own constituents. The fifty-five members of the proposed national House of Representatives was quite a bit smaller than most state legislatures in the period. Since the new legislature was to have increased fiscal authority, especially the right to raise taxes, the Antifederalists feared that before long Congress would pass oppressive taxes that they would enforce by creating a standing national army.

This range of objections boiled down to a central opposition to the sweeping new powers of the proposed central government. George Mason, a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention who refused to support the Constitution, explained, the plan was "totally subversive of every principle which has hitherto governed us. This power is calculated to annihilate totally the state governments." The rise of national power at the expense of state power was a common feature of Antifederalist opposition.

The most powerful objection raised by the Antifederalists, however, hinged on the lack of protection for individual liberties in the Constitution. Most of the state constitutions of the era had built on the Virginia model that included an explicit protection of individual rights that could not be intruded upon by the state. This was seen as a central safeguard of people's rights and was considered a major Revolutionary improvement over the unwritten protections of the British constitution...