Wednesday, December 07, 2011

EPA cites Albuquerque with Clean Water Act violations

Federal regulators have cited New Mexico's largest city twice this year with violating provisions of the Clean Water Act, and environmentalists are concerned failure to correct the problems could ultimately affect the Rio Grande. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in late October issued an administrative order against Albuquerque for alleged storm water permit violations. The order, which stems from a 2009 audit, accuses the city of failing to implement an effective program for managing the storm water that races down the city's streets and through its drains and arroyos each time it rains or snows. The order also says the city failed to develop goals for assessing the effectiveness of its management practices. City officials disagree with some of the findings. They're preparing a response for the agency. Greg Smith, deputy director of the city's Municipal Development Department, said city officials were surprised by the order given that a similar audit was done in 2007 and the city received a "clean bill of health" at that time. "They found our program was adequate and implemented in accordance with the permit. That's the same program that is being criticized now," he said. In recent years, the EPA has cited four communities in its five-state South-Central region with violating the Clean Water Act's storm water provisions. Among them was Dallas, which was forced to spend more than $3.5 million on fines, the creation of two wetland areas and programs to limit the amount of pollution entering its storm water system. Estimates for bringing Albuquerque into compliance range from $1.9 million to $3 million, according to reviews done by an engineering firm and city employees...more

Cockerell's bumblebee rediscovered in New Mexico

An elusive bumblebee, which was last seen in 1956, was recently found living in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico, scientists announced Monday. Known as "Cockerell's bumblebee," the bee was first described in 1913 using six specimens collected along the Rio Ruidoso, a river located in the Sierra Blanca and Sacramento Mountains, N.M. Over the years, one more sample was found in Ruidoso, and 16 specimens were collected near the town of Cloudcroft, N.M. The last Cockerell's bumblebee sample was collected in 1956. No other specimens had been recorded until Aug. 31, when a team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside, found three more samples of the bee species in weeds along a highway north of Cloudcroft. The bee species has also "long been ignored because it was thought that it was not actually a genuine species, but only a regional color variant of another well-known species," Yanega explained. An assessment of the genetic makeup of the three newly discovered specimens gives fairly conclusive evidence that Cockerell's bumblebee is a genuine species, the researchers said...more

The article also says:

Cockerell's bumblebee does not appear to be facing extinction. The bumblebee dwells in an area that's largely composed of National Forest and Apache tribal land, it is "unlikely to be under serious threat of habitat loss at the moment," Yanega said.

Sure, just wait for the lawsuits.

North Carolina Principal Resigns For Suspending Student Who Called Teacher ‘Cute’

The principal of a Gaston County school where a 9-year-old boy was suspended for sexual harassment submitted his resignation Tuesday, saying he wasn’t given a chance to apologize. School officials offered an apology to Emanyea Lockett and his mother, Chiquita Lockett, after the boy was accused of calling a teacher “cute.” A statement from the system said it was determined that the fourth grader at Brookside Elementary School didn’t engage in sexual harassment. The school system said the suspension won’t count against the student, and there will be additional instructional assistance provided to the student for the classroom time missed. “This is something that everyone needed to see, just to see what’s happening within our school systems,” Lockett told WSOC-TV...more

Looks like they don't mess around in North Carolina.

I originally posted about this incident here.

Washington doesn’t need to regulate rain

If the Supreme Court declines to review it, a recent ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will put federal courts into the business of managing every acre of privately owned timberland in America. Farmers beware. You could be next. In May, the 9th Circuit determined that rainwater draining from forest roads into local streams, rivers and lakes is “point source pollution.” As such, it must be regulated in the same way effluent from sewage-treatment plants is regulated. To make a long story short, rainwater that accumulates alongside logging roads has become a new target of environmental litigators. Several lawsuits were filed within days of the 9th Circuit’s decision. The court made this determination despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has insisted for 35 years that requiring “point-source” permits is unnecessary to protect the environment and is even harmful. In deciding as they did, the judges overturned a long-standing rule that, within reason, the federal judiciary must defer to federal agencies in interpreting laws they enforce. The main culprits here are the lowly drainage ditch and the only slightly more fashionable culvert, a steel cylinder buried beneath the road surface that directs rainwater away from the road, reducing the threat of flood-caused soil erosion. It is this rainwater that the three-judge panel thinks the federal government must regulate. By instructing the EPA to oversee every ditch and culvert that runs alongside a forest road, the 9th Circuit is subjecting public and private timber landowners to an unnecessary and costly regulatory labyrinth that won’t make water any more suitable for fish and wildlife than it is now. Worse, every project, no matter its insignificance or urgency, will be appealed and litigated by environmental groups that oppose economically productive use of the nation’s forests...more

Reports say the Supreme Court will decide Friday about taking the case.

Wyoming appeals roadless rule decision

Gov. Matt Mead on Monday directed the state of Wyoming to petition for a rehearing of the decision that upheld a federal law prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of land in national forests across the United States. In October, a three-judge panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a ruling hailed by environmentalists as one of the most significant in decades. The ruling affects 3.2 million acres of national forest land in Wyoming, protecting water quality and wildlife habitat for grizzly bears, lynx and Pacific salmon. Wyoming's petition asks the entire 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, currently composed of 10 judges, to rehear the case. The petition alleges that the U.S. Forest Service violated the 1964 Wilderness Act when it created de facto wilderness areas. It also states, among other assertions, that the Forest Service circumvented required environmental and forest management rules and is required to evaluate forest use only on a forest-by-forest basis...more

Survey: Land trusts see 27 percent increase in five years

Land trust advocates are pointing to a recently released survey as proof that land conservation easements are a successful way for ranchers and farmers to preserve their land. The National Land Trust Census, released by the Land Trust Alliance last month, shows that conservation easements increased 27 percent between 2005 and 2010. The survey found 10 million new acres conserved nationwide since 2005, with more than 2.3 million acres in California. Easements keep land from being developed. A total of 47 million acres -- an area larger than Washington state -- are now conserved by land trusts through easements, according to the survey. Representatives of the Northcoast Regional Land Trust (NRLT), which operates in Humboldt, Trinity and Del Norte counties, said the greatest percentage of new acreage comes through local and state land trusts. In California, land trusts conserved 2.3 million acres between 2005 and 2010, a 34 percent increase. Land owners receive an enhanced tax deduction for the land donation. Currently, land owners who donate a qualified conservation easement are allowed to deduct the fair market value of the easement. These deductions are capped at 50 percent of income, but farmers and ranchers are able to claim 100 percent. According to the office of North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, the carry forward period for such deductions is 15 years. Thompson has co-sponsored a bill to make the incentive permanent -- the current incentive will expire at the end of this year...more

Ski area water-rights duel now in political arena

A showdown over ski area water rights is now in the political arena, as four U.S. Senators have asked the Forest Service to delay implementing a revised permit condition that could require resorts to transfer certain types of water rights to the federal government. In a Dec. 1 letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, Colorado Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, along with Senators John Barasso (R—WY) and James Risch (R-ID), asked the Forest Service to consider a moratorium on the new water rights clause.The ski industry claims the permit conditions are a federal water grab, while Forest Service officials say the intent is to keep the water rights linked with the permitted ski area use. Read more details and background in this Summit Voice story. In their letter, the four lawmakers said ski area operators in their state expressed concern that the water rights clause could have immediate and practical implications on ski area operations, but the letter did not spell out those concerns. According to the letter, a moratorium would give the agency a chance to assess the impacts of the clause and “allow ski areas to avoid immediate impacts to water rights.”...more

U.S. Forest Service opposes SkiLink

In a recent Congressional Hearing, the United States Forest Service weighed in on the Rep. Rob Bishop's SkiLink Bill, which if passed would sell federal land to build a gondola linking Canyons Resort to Solitude. Gregory Smith, the Department of Agriculture deputy chief, voiced his opposition to the project and said that the public benefit was not strong enough for him to encourage the 30-acre sale of government land to Canyons Resort. The gondola, dubbed "SkiLink," would link Canyons Resort to Solitude as a way to cut down traffic between Utah resorts. "While we appreciate the desire of the bill's proponents to reduce traffic between the two resorts, the department does not support" the SkiLink project, Smith testified...more

Arizona mapping error nearly fixed

Coconino County Supervisor Matt Ryan urged a House committee Friday to grant "much-needed relief" to county residents who recently learned that their homes were built on federal land because of a 50-year-old surveying error. A 2007 U.S. Bureau of Land Management survey found that a 1960 private survey erroneously marked some federal land near Coconino National Forest as private property. Those 2.67 acres of land would become part of the Mountainaire Subdivision, where 27 people bought what they thought was private property and where some now live. Some residents said they have had multiple property surveys over the years and it came as "a shock" when they learned that their homes had always been on federal land. Under a bill considered Friday by the House Natural Resources Committee, the 27 property owners would be able to buy the land from the Forest Service for $20,000. "We believe this is a small price to pay to grant these homeowners the peace of mind of knowing the property they live on is their own," Ryan said. A Forest Service official testified that the agency supports the intent of the bill, but would first like to see an appraisal of the property done and see the homeowners pay the appraised value...more

Environmental group sues over LBL farm subsidies

An environmental group is suing a pair of Kentucky farmers over subsidies they received over a two-year period for growing corn and soybeans in Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in western Kentucky. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics wants a judge to order farmers Kerry Underhill and Bobby Cunningham to pay between $5,500 and $11,000 per day for each day they received subsidies for farming the land without a valid lease from the U.S. Forest Service. The Oregon-based environmental group also wants an injunction stopping the farmers from filing for further subsidies without a lease with the government. At issue is whether Underhill and Underhill Farms in Cadiz, and Cunningham and Cunningham Farms in Murray, should have been eligible for federal farm subsidies on their crops between Jan. 1, 2008 and March 19, 2010. The environmental organization said the two had leases with the National Wild Turkey Federation, not the U.S. Forest Service, making them ineligible for subsidies...more

Federal rewrite of labor laws causing a flap down on the farm

Sparking outrage across the country’s rural heartland, the Obama administration is proposing rules to curb the ability of children on farms to engage in “corn sex” for pay. Farmers call it corn detasseling, a time-honored but physically demanding chore designed to promote cross-pollination in the field. For decades it has been a way for teens to earn extra spending money — and forge some good-natured field hand camaraderie — for a few weeks each summer. The Obama administration is considering revisions to federal agricultural work rules that effectively would bar teens younger than 16 from engaging in a number of traditional chores for pay — including detasseling. Opponents of the rules across the Farm Belt argue that they are in part an attack on a way of life, one foreign to Beltway bureaucrats and one that should be encouraged in an era of rising childhood obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Rule critics were bolstered last week by farm groups and detasseling companies gathering at state capitols to urge lawmakers to intervene with the Labor Department. The department is reviewing those laws, which also would cover work with bulls, cows and other farm animals and farm machinery, at the urging of groups such as the Child Labor Coalition and the National Safety Council. According to a Labor Department statement: “Children employed in agriculture are some of the most vulnerable workers in America. The fatality rate for young agricultural workers is four times greater than that of their peers employed in nonagricultural workplaces.” The rules would not affect children working on their parents’ farms, but could affect minors who want to work for relatives or hire themselves out for temporary work during the summer. The Labor Department proposal would restrict the range of chores children could do for pay, including driving tractors, branding cattle, working above a certain height and herding livestock on horseback...more

Song Of The Day #728

 So you want country?  Then Ranch Radio will bring you some pure country.  Here is Country Boy Eddie & His Show Band playing Fodder Fossil's Blues.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Southern Rockies Wolf Plans Dangerous? Includes NM

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Southern Rockies Wolf Plans Dangerous? Read for yourself

Folks,
The official S. Rockies wolf documents have now been released to the public. CLICK HERE to visit biggameforever.org/blog where you can download and read the proposal. Here's how these documents were released to the public.
On December 2, 2011 Arizona Fish and Game commission released official documents, which would mandate wolf proliferation across the Southern Rockies and into Texas. The documents have been confirmed by several sources, including a regional director for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service testifying at Friday's Arizona Fish and Game Commission hearing.
Despite denials by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding these plans, it has become clear that these plans are moving forward. This official "draft" was released for official comment by members of the wolf recovery team in the last couple of weeks. In the wake of criticism by western states, USFWS' national director accused states of "mischaracterizing" the Southern Rockies wolf plans. These leaked documents confirm that the criticism of these plans by western states were well founded.
Here are several quotes from the document that illustrate the dangerous nature of these plans:
(1) An acknowledgment of the intent to force wolves into Texas 
"Several questions at the August recovery team meeting focused on...availability of suitable habitat in Mexico and the United States, especially Texas." "Approximately 24,000 square kilometers of potentially suitable [wolf] habitat...occurs in western Texas."
(2) Mandated wolf proliferation across the entire southern Rockies
"Based on the material below we recommend that the Mexican wolf recovery area include "Mexico...western Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and the southern portions of Utah and Colorado."
(3) Dramatic increases in forced wolf populations minimum numbers
"Three major zones of suitable wolf habitat exist in the area encompassing Arizona, New Mexico, southern Colorado and southern Utah. Under current habitat conditions, it is estimated that over 1,000 wolves could inhabit this large area." This is more than triple the number of wolves that were required in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
(4) Mandating Mexican wolves OUTSIDE their historic range using the Endangered Species Act
The report spends several pages trying to justify mandated Mexican wolf populations outside their historic range. The report concludes "recovering [Mexican Wolves] outside purported historical ranges...may establish a useful and critically important precedent." Given demonstrable damage from invasive species, most biologists we have spoken with feel this is a slippery slope and a dangerous precedent. The areas outside of historic range includes Utah and Colorado.
(5) Plans designed to prevent S. Rockies wolves from ever being managed by Western states
The devil is in the details. Legally, no delisting can occur until Mexican wolves are recovered across a "substantial portion of the range." 90% of Mexican wolf range is in Mexico. With no plans to recover wolves in Mexico, there is little hope that wolves in the Southern Rockies would ever be delisted. The legal mechanism of preventing wolf management in the future is by eliminating the safe-guards provided by "non-essential experimental" status and instead create a "subspecies" listing. A "subspecies" listing would prevent delisting even if populations objectives are reached in the Southern Rockies. As a result, these plans provide little in the way of safeguards for livestock and wildlife.
(6) The plans would result in "swamping" of Mexican Wolf Genetics
Despite claims these plans are about recovering Mexican wolves, Wolf specialists have confirmed that interbreeding with Northern Gray wolves could overwhelm Mexican wolf genetics in as short as 20 years.
Folks these plans are dangerous. These plans do not protect wildlife. These plans do not protect livestock. These plans would violate well-established limitations on federal authority. These plans are based on a dramatic overreaching.
Please help us stop these plans from being forced on the good people of the Western United States.

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Congressman wants revised PILT rules

Colorado county governments received about $24 million in federal payments-in-lieu of taxes, or PILT, last year, but Rep. Scott Tipton is asking the Department of Interior to revise a legal opinion so that those counties may get an additional $4.3 million that is linked to mineral lease payments. Tipton, the Republican who represents Pueblo within the 3rd Congressional District, sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week, urging him to recognize newly created federal mineral lease districts as separate from county governments. If Interior will do that, according to Tipton, counties will be able to receive their full PILT payment as well as federal mineral royalties. It's not a major issue along the Front Range counties, but in Western Slope counties where there is significant oil and gas leasing, those counties have had their federal mineral lease payments deducted from the annual PILT money they receive on federal property within their borders...more

Coalition Responds to Proposed Child Labor Regulations

Responding to proposed child labor regulations, last week the American Farm Bureau Federation filed comments on behalf of more than 70 agricultural organizations in response to a proposal by the Labor Department that would limit youth employment opportunities on farms and ranches. AFBF also filed separate comments on its own behalf supplementing its views on the DOL proposal. Farm Bureau noted that the proposed regulation seems to go well beyond DOL’s authority. The department has the authority to prohibit youth employment in jobs that are "particularly hazardous" but the department’s proposal would prohibit youth from working in any job with "power-driven equipment." Read literally, the department’s proposal would prohibit a youth under 16 from working in any job that had even simple power tools like a battery-operated screw driver. The coalition argued that DOL should withdraw the rule and make sure that it is following the intent of Congress in only addressing occupations that are particularly hazardous. "We have no desire at all to have young teenagers working in jobs that are inappropriate or entail too much risk," said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. "Farmers and ranchers are more interested than anyone else in assuring the safety of farming operations and their right to operate their farms with family members is specifically permitted by Congress. We don’t want to see those rights infringed." The National Pork Producers Council, the American Sheep Industry Association and the National Turkey Federation, were part of the coalition. The group said that many youth use livestock as a part of 4-H, FFA and other leadership programs, but youth under 18 would be prohibited from being near certain animals without adult supervision under the regulations...more

Ranchers suing Assessor; challenge new land values

Ranchers who own a combined 430,000 acres in Yavapai County have filed an Arizona Tax Court suit against Yavapai County Assessor Pam Pearsall, accusing her of illegally jacking up the value of their grazing land. It's the largest number of acres involved in any property tax lawsuit he's ever seen, said the ranchers' attorney Paul Mooney of Mesa. The list of about three dozen plaintiffs reads like a who's who of Yavapai County ranching families, including Fain, Groseta, Hays, Maughn, Kieckhefer, James, Teskey, McCraine and Denton. Ranches include Yavapai, Orme and Inscription Canyon. The lawsuit says the plaintiffs own or lease 2.5 million acres of public and private ag land in Yavapai County, or nearly half of all the acreage in the county. The Assessor's Office in February raised the full cash value of grazing land from $7.56 per acre in the 2011 taxable year to $25 per acre in 2012. State law requires assessors to base grazing land value on actual income. The quadrupled value would increase the combined value of the 429,310 acres of grazing land from $3.2 million to $10.7 million...more

Wyoming lawmaker expects at least one horse slaughterhouse in the state

At least two Wyoming groups are considering opening horse slaughterhouses in the state after Congress passed legislation allowing USDA inspection of horse meat and plants, a proponent says. State Rep. Sue Wallis, R-Recluse, is a member of the United Horsemen. She said her group formed the company Unified Equine to explore the creation of a horse meat processing plant in Wyoming. The possibility only opened Nov. 18, when President Barack Obama signed an agriculture spending bill. The bill reversed a 2006 decision by Congress prohibiting U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections for horse meat and plants. The last horse slaughterhouse in the country closed in 2007. Without the inspections, horse meat couldn't be transported out of the state, Wallis said. So, technically, slaughterhouses weren't banned, except in a couple of states that passed laws prohibiting the businesses. But it is impossible to run slaughterhouses without inspections, Wallis said...more

Boy, 9, Suspended from School for Sexual Harassment After Calling Teacher 'Cute'

A 9-year-old boy North Carolina boy was suspended for calling a teacher “cute,” WSOCTV.com reports. The boy’s mother, Chiquita Lockett, said the principal of Brookside Elementary in Gastonia called her after the incident to say the comment was a form of “sexual harassment.” "It's not like he went up to the woman and tried to grab her or touch her in a sexual way," Lockett said. "So why would he be suspended for two days?” According to the station, a district spokeswoman said she could not go into detail, but said the boy was suspended for "inappropriate behavior" after making "inappropriate statements." The district's Code of Conduct doesn't list "inappropriate behavior," but says "disruption of school" is punishable by five days of out-of-school suspension...more

Ninja Cow Returns With A New Side of Beef - video

First there was one and now there are two. The cow Plattsmouth townspeople have dubbed the "ninja" cow disappeared over the weekend. She showed up this morning, but piled new problems on the town's already beefed up plate. "I saw these two little ears poke up alongside her," said Tom Malcolm, a rancher who has been helping catch the cow. "It's just uh oh, now we've got a new problem in town." That's right, the ninja cow is a new mom. The town wasn't worried about the cow being a danger before, but that's changing. "A black beef is the best momma there is out there," said Bob Wagner, a butcher in town. "So don't mess with the calf, she will really overhaul you if you mess with her calf." The new addition could also mean a harder time catching the mom. Malcolm points out that shooting the cow is now out of the question since that would leave the calf without a mom. As of late Monday afternoon, animal control officers had managed to coral the baby and were just hoping the mom would follow. KPTM

I've seen cows like that, but my Dad didn't call them "ninja".


The video report:



Link

My Texans of the Year are legacy cattle ranchers

Jerry Craft
West Texas ranch and range land is honest country — doesn’t deceive you with trees, bushes, vines or shade. There’s nowhere to hide from the sun. The litany of such places is always supplication for rain, and the colloquy of praise is ever for it. The earth is rocky, thorny and dry, and those legacy ranchers who lived, and still do, on land inherited from their ancestors, have personalities to match. They endure. Recently, drought-draped silence hung over West Texas. You read about it, saw the gut-wrenching images: furious winds fanning fire and brimstone, reminding of Old Testament rhetoric; the roar of fire and firetrucks and the noise of helicopters dropping orange fire retardant and precious water. Dust devils filled with flames raced across grasslands west of urban places where we wrung our hands because we weren’t able to water lawns as much as we wanted. Drought had destroyed prairie grasses, hay, grain, even cattle and wildlife. Then the relentless fires delivered a blow of such magnitude on cattle ranchers that recovery may take years. The economy played descant to the dirge of wastelands. In Jack County, on the eastern edge of West Texas, one rancher of many faced the cataclysmic event, fought as hard as he could, and came away almost whipped with his head almost down — but not quite. He had been through it all before, in the ’50s, considered the worst drought in the history of the Southwest. Jerry Craft is his name, and he represents others whose names you never heard. West Texans are accustomed to anonymity, even though ancestral roots go back for four and five generations. Twenty-five hundred acres of one of the Craft Ranches went up in flames. State and federal agencies advised evacuation. How do you evacuate a ranch? Fences were cut to allow cattle to escape. Cows put their calves down in the grass for protection at the sign of danger. That’s where the fire consumed them. Cows, perhaps checking on their offspring or reluctant to leave them, had hooves burned off and were left walking on leg bones. Those animals had to be shot...more

Song Of The Day #727

Ernest Tubb is on Ranch Radio today with his 1948 recording of Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue).

Monday, December 05, 2011

Angry farmers dump deadly cobras on tax office floor - video

Two farmers, including a snake charmer, were so angry at tax officials in northern India that they dumped dozens of snakes, including four deadly cobras, on the floor of the tax office, The Guardian reports. The snake charmer says the farmers on Tuesday were protesting alleged demands for bribes by officials in exchange for tax records in Basti, 185 miles southeast of Lucknow, the British newspaper says. "Snakes started climbing up the tables and chairs," said a local official, Ramsukh Sharma, according to the newspaper. "There was total chaos. Hundreds of people gathered outside the room, some of them with sticks in their hands, shouting that the snakes should be killed." A video shows office workers jumping on chairs as the 40 snakes slithered around the floor. There were no injuries, but forestry department personnel had to be called in to catch the reptiles, The Guardian says...more

Here is the video:



http://youtu.be/cpCqju4Owew

Watching The Wheels Come Off The Green Machine

The body count continues to rise as the Green Jobs Revolution sputters its way to the end of a disastrous 2011. Few seemed to notice last week when the electric vehicle maker A123 Systems—poster child for successful clean tech investing—“temporarily” laid off 125 workers at its flagship manufacturing plants in Michigan on the eve of the Thanksgiving media break. It also reduced its earnings guidance for 2011 by $45 million, because its anchor customer, Fisker Automotive, “unexpectedly” delayed the production ramp-up for its Karma luxury electric car—again. Could these be the same plants that Democratic congressional leaders hailed as the birth of a new era in American manufacturing? The same plants that received a $249 million U.S. Department of Energy grant from the same stimulus money bucket that funded Solyndra? The same plants for which Michigan shelled out $125 million in incentives to lure away from Massachusetts? Environmentally correct planners put all this public money to work to relieve the technology bottleneck they believed held back our transition to electric cars. So they invested my money and yours into building the largest lithium ion automotive battery plant in North America—to supply a Finnish electric car manufacturer backed by Al Gore’s venture capital fund and which received $529 million in federal loan guarantees. That Finnish manufacturer was supposed to begin production in 2009, but to date has only shipped 40 cars into the U.S. Those cars were delivered to a handful of millionaires and billionaires like Leonardo DeCaprio and Ray Lane who received tax credits because they bought an electric car...more

More on Coke’s Role in a Shelved Bottle Ban for Nat'l Parks

Jon Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, has said that its decision to scuttle a planned ban on small plastic water bottles at Grand Canyon National Park had nothing to do with opposition from the Coca-Cola Company. But a November 2010 e-mail released on Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request tells a different story. Mr. Jarvis cited only one concern, Coca-Cola’s contributions to the National Park Foundation, in discussing the ban with a regional manager of the Park Service. “While I applaud the intent” of the ban, he wrote in the e-mail, “there are going to be consequences, since Coke is a major sponsor of our recycling efforts.” “Let’s talk about this” before the park “pulls the plug,” he added. The latest documents also raise the possibility that Mr. Jarvis was ready to prevent the bottle ban from going forward at parks besides Utah’s Zion National Park, which pioneered the idea of such a ban three years ago and won a park service award for doing so. An e-mail in six months ago from Jo Pendry, who was serving as the national parks headquarters official responsible for park concessions, said that an aide to Mr. Jarvis told her that “the director’s view is NOT to ban the sale of bottled water but to go the choice route.” A draft policy document obtained in response to the Freedom of Information Act cautions park managers to “consider other factors prior to making a decision to reduce of eliminate the sale of water or other beverages in disposable plastic containers.” “Some visitors have come to rely on the availability of refrigerated bottled water for sale in our parks,” it said...more

The same envirocrats, who decry the influence of say big oil money, think its a different situation when the dinero is headed to them.

Farm Bill: Bailouts, Special Interests, and Pheasants

The infamous “secret farm bill,” negotiated by the leadership of the agriculture committees with little transparency and discussion, will not pass as part of the debt-reduction “supercommittee” recommendations, since discussions between Democrats and Republicans in the committee broke down. This means that the covert farm bill will not enjoy fast-track approval in Congress. We should be thankful that the new farm bill will be closely scrutinized and openly discussed. The hidden negotiations of the bill probably included handouts to close associates and lobbyists of the agricultural committees’ leaderships. In fact, one of the details that leaked out was that pheasant hunters, represented by Pheasants Forever, had “successfully lobbied lawmakers for provisions that would have steered conservation funding to landowners who preserved grassy areas as habitat for the game bird.” If the “pheasant lobby” successfully lobbied to receive handouts, who knows what type of guarantees were made to more prominent and politically powerful groups, such as rice and peanut farmers (who supported the secret bill)?We should expect a farm bill that will pit spending hawks, Corn Belt lawmakers, and welfare supporters against each other...more

The "secret" bill was written by the Senate & House Ag Chairmen, Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) and Frank Lucas (R-Okla).  So what's up with Lucas?  Is he a pheasant hunter or is this because of the over $5 billion in ag subsidies that have gone to Oklahoma in the last 5 years?

D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials. The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are. They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents. The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests. Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations...more

Song Of The Day #726

 Its Swingin' Monday on Ranch Radio and here are the Rowan Brothers and their recording of Nothin' Personal.

Sunday, December 04, 2011

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Las Vegas – Rodeo Taos Muncy Style

by Julie Carter

He’s always polite, perpetually humble – with perfect manners and a country-boy look that tends to contradict the inevitable explosion of athletic skill that detonates at the crack of a bucking chute gate.

Corona, New Mexico’s Taos Muncy, 24, has once again put the world of rodeo titles under siege. It’s just how he does things.

Taos ended his 2011 regular rodeo season leading the professional rodeo saddle bronc standings on both sides of the Canadian border –for the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) and CPRA (Canadian Professional Rodeo Association).
In November, he, along with wife Marissa and baby daughter Marley, made the drive to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where he competed in and won the Canadian National Finals in the saddle bronc riding.

The championship title came down to the wire, also Taos’s style. He won the Canadian title on the last horse on the last day, once again putting Corona, N.M. on the map, but this time in a foreign country.

Except for his trips to the Calgary Stampede which he won in 2009, Taos had never rodeoed in Canada before.  However, he was talked into it by his brother-in-law and saddle bronc rider Cody Taton. Cody, transplanted from South Dakota to New Mexico, didn’t qualify for the Canadian Finals this year but had twice before.
Taos picked up $16,000 over the 4th of July in Canada and decided to make a run at the finals. When he qualified, he was sitting in first place with only a $4,600 dollar lead.

As this story goes to print, Taos has started on his quest for yet another world title, his second on this side of the border, at the 2011 Wrangler National Finals in Las Vegas, Nevada. He sits in first place in the standings with a narrow margin of $7,500 over second place and 10 of the toughest broncs away from a world title.

In 2007,  his second on the pro circuit, Taos became the third competitor ever to win the College National Finals rodeo and a PRCA World Championship (the youngest to ever claim that title in the saddlebronc riding) in the same year. That historical accomplishment was embellished by winning Cheyenne Frontier Days that year along the way.

He missed qualifying for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in 2008 due to a broken leg and in spite of another leg break early in 2009, he qualified and did so again in 2010.

Prior to making his name at the Canadian Finals this fall, Taos picked up another title closer to home by winning the Turquoise Circuit for the year.

While most of Taos’ titles involve broncs and buckles, he wears a few others that round out the package of who Taos Muncy is.

He first is a son and brother in a close knit rodeo and ranching family that are as grassroots and down to earth as you will ever find. He also answers to two new titles he earned this year that give depth and completeness to his very normal life at the ranch –husband and daddy.

When he comes off the rodeo road, he easily slides back into the duties of a ranch cowboy -- checking waters, breaking ice, branding cattle, feeding, fixing fence and the endless list of other regular ranch duties.
And just before he gets ready to hit the road to Las Vegas, the tiny Corona community comes together for a potluck sendoff, complete with “Good Luck” posters from the school kids and never-ending well wishes.
It’s where he started out and where he’ll return. His map is one of a road to glory, but his inner GPS will always bring him home to the ranch.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com.

Peaches and Pines: Forest Management Drift


Forest Management Drift
Peaches and Pines
Government of (some of) the people for (some of) the people
By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 
     When Hugh Reed swung down off his then new saddle and dropped the reins to ground tie a pet bay horse, he had disgustedly proclaimed, “I am sick and tired of breaking brush!”  He had laid there on the grass in the morning sun on the south slope of Hummingbird Saddle where the divide drops into the West Fork drainage of the Gila.  “My Gosh, this country is so thick you can’t ride through it,” he had concluded.
     That incident took place 42 years ago.  That old pet horse, Snooper, is now long deceased and the policies of the United States Forest Service have made the problem of unhealthy and unproductive forests only worse. 
     Lesson in peaches
     When I met Xavier Salinas, my world was changing dramatically.  I had left my native New Mexico for any opportunity to find employment.  From a world of the underemployed and government domination, the San Joaquin Valley was like a walk on the dark side of the moon.  It was there that people actually grew wealth and expanded employment without government in the picture.  It was a world that I grew to appreciate and prefer.  I found I liked Americans who put themselves at risk to achieve great things.
     We had been in an orchard in Madera and I was getting my first lessons in stonefruit production.  “You can leave 5000 pieces of fruit on these trees or you can leave a 1000,” Xavier had pronounced.  “The difference is you can’t sell any of those from the tree that you left 5000 and you can get rich on those that you left 1000.” 
     “Necitè tamańo, Esteban (You need size, Steve),” were his words that still ring in my head.
     He was right.  You can produce 35,000 pounds of fruit per acre and you can do it with size 42 peaches or size ‘96s, but the difference is day and night.  It can be measured in a happy banker or a foreclosure notice.  It is success or failure. 
    Timber production is no different. 
     The Cutting
     In a Forest Service discussion, I asked about harvest cycles in New Mexico forests.  I was armed with enough knowledge of harvest cycles to be dangerous.  My suggestion that all cycles could be economic if the right conditions were allowed was denounced by the official.  He indicated the cycle would be in excess of 75 years and that it has been deemed uneconomic.  Huh?
     In front of me is a wedge of Douglas fir that came from the tree that Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM) cut in a ceremonial event held in Cloudcroft, New Mexico recently.  It was at that event the Otero County Commission symbolically took over the forest management of the Lincoln National Forest from the Forest Service.  Notwithstanding the obligatory approval by the Forest Service (in order not to have to order the arrest of a sitting Congressman), the consequences are immense.  The issue is American life and property safety. The issue is forest health and productivity. The issue is American jobs.  The issue is government for the people . . . not government for the government!
     The wedge itself is a story.  Why is it a Douglas fir wedge?  Why isn’t it a Ponderosa pine wedge?  The tree was cut on a south and western facing slope where, in a healthy forest, it should have been a Ponderosa pine tree that germinated from a sun drenched seedbed.
     Necitè tamańo!
     As the chain saw throttled up, and Steve Pearce, in his near OSHA approved attire, was scattering saw dust, you couldn’t help but look around.  In remarks that morning, there was the mention that Lincoln National Forest is a direct contradiction to the best example of southwestern forest management, the Mescalero Apache Reservation, immediately across the fence. 
     On the Mescalero, Ponderosa pine seedlings can germinate and grow in the sun of an open seed bed.  It is there that healthy tree density is running about 55 trees per acre compared to the Lincoln where trees are ranging upwards of 2500 per acre! 
     We know there is no excuse all southwestern forests don’t resemble the Mescalero Reservation.  For the Lincoln, the model is next door.  Both have the same latitude, rainfall, altitude and degree day accumulations.  The only difference is the management agenda.
      With 2500 trees per acre, there is no chance that any lumber business can be sustained.  For success, there must be an expansive change of direction and mission within the agency that was created with the intent and vision of the management of healthy and productive forests.
     The agenda
     When the Forest Service was established in 1905 under the provisions of US Legal Code 475, the mandate was simple.  Codified law stated no forest was to be established except to secure favorable conditions of water flows and a continuous supply of timber for the citizens of the United States.  It also stated that no lands were to be included if they were more valuable for mineral extraction or agriculture than for forest use.
     The agency’s web site no longer references those words.  Rather, an anecdotal quote is substituted for the historical genesis of the agency.  It comes from the Father of American Forestry, Gifford Pinchot, when he spoke of the Forest Service’s obligation, “. . . to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people for the long run.”  Is this true to intent, and, if so, who are those people? 
     An argument can be made the people aren’t average American tax payers because most forest visitations are declining.  It certainly isn’t the logging industry because places like New Mexico, where 20 logging companies employed local citizenry just over a decade ago, only one part time mill is operating.  It isn’t the cattle business because, in places like the Gila National Forest, cattle numbers have been reduced up to 70% from the numbers a generation ago.
     An argument can be made the true beneficiaries exist in two categories.  The first are folks in the fire suppression business.  The second is the environmental movement.
      Fire suppression is a growth industry.  It is one of two huge budget categories (the other is legal).  It also borders on dedication to a worrisome bureaucratic objective.  Buried at number eight in the organization’s pledges for serving the people is to “provide work for unemployed, underemployed, elderly, youth and disadvantaged people.”  Since when is the Forest Service a social service agency?
    More troubling is the fact that the people mentioned are not just Americans.  Number five in the pledges is to provide international assistance to sustain healthy world ecosystems.  The United States is in the business of subsidizing world forests! 
      Prompted by that realization, a brief review of recent year American Forestry Ph.D. dissertations was done.  In the brief search, not a single recent university dissertation on forest production could be found!  There were dissertations, though, from Wisconsin, Montana, Cornell, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado State that covered the following subjects:
1.      Simulation of food production and environmental changes.
2.      Managing public lands as common property.
3.      Public land management and subsistent economies.
4.      Ecological and sociological aspects of human/ big cat conflicts.
5.      Improved fodder tree management in agro-forestry systems.
6.      Ecology of forests across the human induced disturbance gradient.
7.      And, works done relating to the ecology of hog and mush deer in royal parks!
     The latter must give away the fact that this work was done with American dollars to support world forest health.  The dissertations were for Nepalese forests!
     Cattle again    
     The cattle phenomenon remains a major marker of forest management in environmental industry collaborations.  Currently, two philanthropic giants, the heirs of the Anheuser-Busch fortune and Ted Turner, are collaborating with the Forest Service to retire forest allotments.   In five allotments in the Gila and Coronado Forests in New Mexico and four allotments on the eastern slope of the Sequoia National Forest in California, these powerful advocates are partnering in studies that will demonstrate that cattle are the historic factors of forest health decline.
     The Forest Service notes the California study alternatives to determine whether cattle can be reintroduced are to extend the experiment, eliminate grazing altogether, or to forge an agreement with the ranchers to allow grazing one year in five.  Which factor among them adheres to the original Congressional premise for establishing the agency? 
     The word stakeholder was once the individual American.  That is no longer fact.  The Forest Service is the best example that agency management and the promises of laws often have little in common.  Our government is what it is . . .  a government of some of the people . . . for some of the people.


Steve Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.  “Even if Congress demanded a different direction, this agency has a dearth of production expertise.  It has been replaced by environmental sensitivity.”