Sunday, April 07, 2013

Dead Man's Burden - Official Trailer #1



http://youtu.be/j01bboSYnLs

N.Y. Dad’s Pistol License Suspended Over Something His 10-Year-Old Son Said — and It Could Be 8 Years Before He Gets It Back

A New York father has had his firearms all but confiscated after the Suffolk County Pistol License Bureau suspended his pistol license indefinitely over a perceived threat made by his 10-year-old son and two of his classmates at school. John Mayer, of Commack, N.Y., told TheBlaze that the incident occurred on March 1. It was like any other day, the father explained. He put his son on the bus and sent him off to school. Later that day, Mayer got a call from school officials at Pines Elementary School informing him that his 10-year-old son and two other students were talking about going to a boy’s house with a water gun, “paint gun” and a BB gun. There had reportedly been a school yard pushing incident the day before involving the boys, excluding Mayer’s son, and they were seemingly talking about getting even in some way. Mayer told TheBlaze that a teacher overheard the students talking and informed the principal, who then immediately called police and filed a report. He said the principal told police something to the effect of, there’s a “kid with a gun, ready to go.” School officials then “interrogated” the boys, Mayer explained. It was later determined that the 10-year-old boys did not have access to a BB gun, paintball gun or any actual firearms. The school’s principal later informed the father that his son would be suspended for two days for the incident. But the ordeal was far from over. Mayer said police officers were then deployed to his home where he was advised by officers that they might have to confiscate his firearms, which he says were all properly stored and secured. “I just couldn’t believe what was happening,” he told TheBlaze. The following Monday, Mayer got a call from the Suffolk County Pistol Licensing Bureau. He was reportedly told that his license would be suspended and police would arrive at his house the next morning to retrieve his handguns...more

12 GOP senators back Rand Paul on gun-control filibuster

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s threat to filibuster any new gun restrictions is gathering steam, as a dozen of his Republican colleagues have now signed onto his plan. The Kentucky Republican and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) first wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late last month to warn him of their intention to try to tie up the Senate if, as planned, Reid moved forward with legislation that would expand background checks and attempt to crack down on interstate gun trafficking. Reid is expected to bring a gun-control bill to the floor as early as next week, or perhaps the following week, and Paul is renewing his vow to try to block the measure. Paul’s follow-up letter, obtained by POLITICO, bears Monday’s date and is signed by 13 Republicans, including fellow potential 2016 presidential aspirant Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who signed on shortly after Paul’s first threat was issued — and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran of Kansas. While Paul gained a new measure of fame among libertarian-minded voters on the right and left during a recent filibuster sparked by the administration’s policy of targeted drone strikes, Reid has an ace in the hole. A new Senate rule would allow him to circumvent a filibuster on the motion to proceed to the gun bill by promising each party two amendments on the legislation. Under that scenario, Paul and his allies would still get a chance to raise their objections on the floor for hours on end, but they couldn’t stop the Senate from starting debate on the bill...more

And you can thank Tom Udall for that "new rule".

States look to tax guns, ammo

Cook County, Ill., this month began collecting a $25 tax on gun purchases, and at least six states are considering new taxes on firearms or ammunition as a way to help pay for the consequences of gun violence.  Gun and ammunition purchases are subject to local sales taxes, and manufacturers pay a federal excise tax — 10% for pistols and revolvers, 11% for other guns, shells and cartridges — that funds wildlife programs. Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers, says proposals for new gun taxes are "a coordinated effort by gun-control groups to try to impose a poll tax on the exercise of the Second Amendment." Such taxes don't create safer communities, Keane says. "They burden and frustrate the exercise of a constitutional right," he says. Legislation introduced in Congress would add a 10% tax to handgun purchases to pay for gun buybacks and other programs. Bills creating new taxes are pending in state legislatures in New Jersey and Washington state. Elsewhere...more

Reid’s Gun Control Bill Makes a Missing Firearm a Ticket to Five Years in Prison

Under Senator Harry Reid’s (D-NV) gun control bill (S. 649), if somebody steals your firearm or you lose it, you can go to prison for up to five years if you have not reported the theft or loss to local police and to Attorney General Eric Holder within 24 hours.
The provision merits ridicule for treating as a felon someone who misplaces a firearm and does not report it to the police and the federal government fast enough.
Section 123 of the Reid bill adds a new provision to section 922 of title 18 of the U.S. Code:
It shall be unlawful for any person who lawfully possesses or owns a firearm that has been shipped or transported in, or has been possessed in or affecting, interstate or foreign commerce, to fail to report the theft or loss of the firearm, within 24 hours after the person discovers the theft or loss, to the Attorney General and to the appropriate local authorities.
It also amends section 924 of title 18 so that a violation of the 24-hour reporting requirement committed “knowingly” is punishable by up to five years in prison or a criminal fine, or both. To punish someone who “knowingly” violates the 24-hour rule might sound reasonable to some people—until you know what a lawyer means by the word “knowingly” when it comes to a criminal statute.
The Supreme Court said in Bryan v. U.S. in 1994 that when a federal statute punishes someone for a crime committed “willfully,” the federal government must prove at trial that the individual knew that his conduct was unlawful. However, the Court also said that, when the statute provides that the government must prove merely that the crime was committed “knowingly,” the government does not have to prove that the individual knew that his or her conduct was unlawful. Thus, an individual who knew his or her gun was missing and did not report it to local authorities and the Attorney General in 24 hours would potentially face five years in prison...



Loose Language in Reid’s Gun Control Bill Allows the Beginnings of a National Gun Registry


by David Addington

...As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) must know, Americans who own firearms have a special sensitivity to a “Big Brother” federal government that wants to keep centralized records on who owns what guns and where in America. Loose language in his gun control bill (S. 649) could start America down that slippery slope.
Since the Second Amendment guarantees to the people the right to keep and bear arms, many Americans look askance at efforts to create centralized records that might some day, in some distant future neither wanted nor expected, facilitate a despotic government’s efforts to disarm the populace or ensure that its supporters but not its opponents possess arms. Some Americans look at history and view that concern as far-fetched; others look at history and see careful attention to that concern as essential to maintaining freedom.
Congress has attended carefully to the concern about a federal gun registry in the past. Thus, for example, section 103(i) of Public Law 103-159 (18 U.S.C. 922 note) regarding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) provides:
No department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States may–
(1) require that any record or portion thereof generated by the system established under this section be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or political subdivision thereof; or
(2) use the system established under this section to establish any system for the registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions or dispositions, except with respect to persons, prohibited by section 922(g) or (n) of title 18, United States Code, or State law, from receiving a firearm.
Unfortunately, the Reid legislation deviates from this strong guarantee that protects against misuse of the NICS process to start a national firearms registry.
Title I of the Reid gun control bill purports to “fix gun checks.” The proposed “fix” in section 122 of S. 649 is to take away an individual’s right to sell or give away a firearm to another individual unless, in most cases, the individual uses a licensed importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer of the firearm.



Cowgirl Sass & Savvy



Clothesline nostalgia 

by Julie Carter 


She set her bushel basket atop a small wooden keg to save from bending over so far with each piece of clothing to be hung on the line. The sun shone brightly as she methodically shook out each piece and pinned it properly to the heavy wire line that ran parallel to two others the full length of the back yard. 

Sliding the clothespin bag down the line as she progressed, without a thought she went about hanging aprons, dish towels and an assortment of undershirts and underwear. 

The next line would be full of shirts, always hung by the tails, never the shoulders, followed by a dozen pair of jeans in graduated sizes. Socks were matched up before hanging by the toes so they could easily be folded or rolled when taken off the line.

There are a couple of generations of us left that remember our mother’s time spent at the clothesline and a few more that might have carried the age-old tradition into a more modern time.


I've raised children who now have children and none of them have used a clothesline. If they lived anywhere there was one, it might have served to throw a rug over it or tie the dog to, but never did they experience life's connection offered by a clothesline.

They never learned about wiping off the lines with a cloth before hanging up the freshly washed clothes. They missed the lessons of clothesline etiquette -- hanging whites with whites and preferably the undies went on the line behind the bed sheets for propriety's sake. 

They have never been scrutinized by a neighbor’s raised eyebrow for dingy gray whites or ever shopped for Mrs. Stewart's Bluing. They may have only some recall of unconventional uses for clothespins such as fire-throwing catapults with stick matches, mousetraps, rubber band shooters and detonators.


I still have visions of my mother racing the rain that was blowing down off the mountain, pushing dirt clouds ahead of it and promising to ruin the efforts of her day-long washing project. 

Grabbing huge armloads of clothes in one fell swoop, clothespins flying, she'd move to rescue, first, the sheets and white things before they became dimpled with muddied drops.


In the day before the plastic laundry baskets, Mom would buy an oil-cloth liner for about a dollar at the five-and-dime store to use in another wooden fruit basket. She would sprinkle the clothes with a bottle of water with an attachment made just for this job, roll them tightly and place them in layers in the basket. Then she would cover it all in more plastic to hold the moisture until the ironing began.


The elevation at the ranch house where we lived was 8,200 feet, making summer very brief and winter fierce and long. For more months than not, freshly laundered clothes freezing on the line was the bigger problem.

It wasn't uncommon to have clothes that refused to dry outside strung around the dining room and hung on the backs of chairs to dry. There was also that flimsy folding rack that sat near the only source of heat in the main part of the house. I recall it full of drying diapers long before the day of disposables.

A memory of a time when life was simpler but work was harder. Propped up in the middle by a two-by-four post, old sagging clothes lines still offer a friendly greeting to a home where clothes are cared for by love, not by Whirlpool.

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


 


Henry Trost: What El Paso Could Have Been



Greatness amongst us
Henry Trost
What El Paso could have been
By Stephen L. Wilmeth


             In the 1880s an idea was bandied about that makes more sense every day. It was the concept of combining a defined number of southern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona, and far west Texas counties into a new state. The new state would be a marriage of cultural alliances tied to a geographic demarcation that was united by trade routes, customs, and industrial and commodity symbiosis. The state would be named Sacramento, and the capital would be … El Paso.
            Trost cometh
            Henry Charles Trost was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1860. He was the son of German immigrants. His father, Ernst, was a journeyman carpenter and contractor. His mother, Wilhelmina, was a strong matron who worked as hard as her husband. In all references, she was a task master.
            Henry and his twin brothers, Adolphus Gustavus and Gustavus Adolphus (!) grew up working with their father in the building trade. Later, as a team, they became not just superb craftsmen, but men of vision and cogs in a dynamic engineering and architectural business. It was older brother Henry, though, who was the creative genius.
            Trost’s training placed him in the sphere of influence of several historically significant designers. He was in Chicago from 1888 through 1896 to be near designer and instructor, Louis Sullivan of the Chicago School of Architecture. It appears he was a draftsman for Sullivan’s private business. He was also influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wright who came later to El Paso to observe and study Trost’s work.
            Henry never married. Rather, he embarked on a series stops that took him on a journey that ended with permanent residence in El Paso in 1903. One of the stops concentrated on ornamental iron work. There is reason to believe he did that to understand the processes and form his own opinion of craft design.   

Henry Charles Trost, 1860-1933
    His fame commenced at age 43 in a setting that most folks would dismiss when asked of lasting impressions and geographic preferences. Brother Gustavus Adolphus was in El Paso on a construction job and he urged Henry to join him. They started Trost and Trost the year Henry arrived.
In 1908, brother Adolphus Gustavus arrived. He was a structural engineer and served the company in the capacity of engineer and construction liaison. Brother Gustavus Adolphus filled the role of business manager. Their roles were distinct and the company thrived.
    Another milestone occurred in 1908. That year Trost designed the residence that would serve as his home, office, and creative enclave. That residence, completed in 1909, still stands at 1013 West Yandell. It is occupied by a long time El Paso family. It remains number four on the list of 10 most significant structures in Texas.
Trost genius
    The Yandell home altered the landscape of design. It was decades if not generations ahead of its time. Henry Trost designed it with a double roof. That design created an insulating barrier. That barrier complimented recessed window designs that disallowed direct sun in the summer but abundant sun impact in the winter. The unique, extended eaves also added protection from direct sun. As a result, the house was noted for its temperature comfort long before air conditioning or sophisticated heating was available.
    The house set the course for what Trost termed his “Arid America” style.
    As for styles, Trost moved across several including Mission Revival and Art Deco, but all evolved to fill the pursuit of his Arid America infatuation. References suggest a most profound early impression on him was in Arizona before he arrived in El Paso. It was there he saw the Spanish colonial mission, San Xavier del Bac.
    The company’s success spiraled upward quickly. One of the landmark projects was the famous El Paso del Norte Hotel that stands within a short distance from Mexico in downtown El Paso. Trost traveled to San Francisco to study the buildings that withstood the 1906 quake that demolished the greater part of that city’s downtown area. He applied those techniques and ideas to the Del Norte. At a cost of $1.5 million it was completed in 1912 in plenty of time to watch the Mexicans fight the battle of what was to become Juarez across the river to the south. El Paso residents drank whiskey, dodged bullets, and cheered from the terrace on top of the structure as the battle raged. At night downstairs in the bar under the incredible glass dome designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, they drank more whiskey as businessmen continued to ply their trade with Mexican counterparts.

"The unification of the state of Sacramento, its capital El Paso, and the Trost architectural genius was a formula for regional identity, relative advantage, and strength. Never has the area melded into the priorities or politics of Santa Fe or Austin. From a cultural, geographic, and economic model, the idea has more merit today than it did 125 years ago. "


    More than 20 Trost structures can still be found in downtown El Paso including Bassett Tower and the Mills Building. Those buildings and others made El Paso one of the most sophisticated cities in the nation by the mid ‘20s. It rivaled and arguably exceeded San Francisco in terms of elegance and structural significance. It was the western underscore version of New York City and Chicago. It truly was the Pass of the North and the grand entrance to the United States from the south.
    Henry Trost’s body of work is astounding.
    In his career, he designed more than 650 structures across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico. His use of reinforced concrete with his inset windows and protected balconies blended beauty with strength and energy efficiencies before energy efficiency was even a phrase.
    Visualize a historically significant structure in the Southwest and chances are it is a Trost. Starting in the east in Austin is the Driskill Hotel. The San Angelo City Hall is Trost genius. The Hotel El Capitan in Van Horn is one of the Trost grand hotels. The Hotel Paisano in Marfa is yet another. Their lobbies of European tiling, 14’ exposed viga ceilings and Trost inspired wrought iron banisters would be nearly impossible to duplicate today.
    The Palace Theater and the Cortez Building in El Paso are two more incredible structures. On the west coast, the Union Pacific Railroad terminal in Riverside, California is another Trost brainchild.
    And, the list of Trost masterpieces goes on and on …
Trost disregarded
    As El Paso is approached today by freeway, a completely different ambiance is projected from the sophistication of the days when the mega cow buyers tended bar and held court at the del Norte under the Tiffany dome. Depending on the wind and the atmospheric conditions, the air can be downright nasty. The impression is made more dispirited by the disarray of any consistency in El Paso modern building standards. It is an eclectic conglomeration of styles that border on steel, glass, rock, and … cardboard poverty. The sprawl and grime of Juarez in full view across the river only deepens the gloom.
    At the point disgust is about to set in, the campus of the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) erupts into view. A completely different image emerges. The dreary landscape of the western front of the Franklin Mountains is suddenly united with one of the country’s most appealing university architectural themes.
    A second look promotes the realization that El Paso has lost a gargantuan opportunity that will never be recaptured. If the city had maintained a disciplined conformity to the building style of the UTEP campus, the dreary landscape, united through the genius of Henry Trost, would have become a visual partnership with that city that would render it a world marvel.
    Henry Trost did not invent the Bhutanese skyline of the UTEP theme, but he married it to his Arid America concepts. The idea of the architectural theme at the school came from the wife of a long past dean, Stephen Howard Worrell. Kathleen Worrell first saw the style in pictures and the idea was taken to Trost. It was Trost who grasp the significance and incorporated it into the construction.
    Old Main, Graham Hall, Vowell Hall, and Quinn Hall formed the genesis. To the credit of its leadership, the campus has maintained a strict discipline to the consistency of the Trost-Bhutanese style. The campus is a gem in the midst of the Trost structures of old El Paso and unique in the nation. The loss of the style in the modern city, though, is profound. As a result, the genius of Henry Trost has been diluted, and, perhaps lost to the ages.
    If the Trost architecture could have been permanently united into a rigorous theme of the State of Sacramento, its capital, El Paso, would have been as unique as Santa Fe …in a much more dynamic setting.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The unification of the state of Sacramento, its capital El Paso, and the Trost architectural genius was a formula for regional identity, relative advantage, and strength. Never has the area melded into the priorities or politics of Santa Fe or Austin. From a cultural, geographic, and economic model, the idea has more merit today than it did 125 years ago.”


There is an NMSU connection too. Trost & Trost designed Goddard Hall, named after NM radio pioneer Ralph Willis Goddard. Goddard started KOB radio on the campus of NMSU and NMSU's current station honors him with their call letters KRWG. In the 20's, KOB was the largest college radio station in the world and on October 22, 1922 broadcast the first play-by-play program in college athletics (NMSU football Game).  Goddard's ghost is rumored to still haunt the halls of the building.  

You can read more about Trost's 1907 contract with NMSU (NMA&M) and his design for a horseshoe shaped campus by going here.

Baxter Black: Ag reporting goes high tech

I came of age listening to Evan Slack every morning on the radio telling us the current market. “Higher, higher, higher!” he’d say. Every week I could read a four-word headline in the Livestock Weekly by Elmer Kelton describing how the sheep market was goin’ to San Angelo in a handbasket. Then DTN came along. You could have a primitive computer in your own office where Mike Hansen kept you abreast of the commodities market in real time. Carry yourself into the new century. We still have weekly ag papers, daily radio broadcasts, television has become a factor, not to mention bloggers, consultants, brokers, economists and professors. Not only do we have mountains of information, it is offered through a blizzard of sources. Together, we have become the ag media. The title “ag reporter” still rings true, but to bring our job description into this century we need a better honorific. Just flippin’ through the pages of my brain I came up with agcaster, agman, agnouncer, agtattler, agteller, agpositor, agmonger, agamemnon, maybe agcap for captain, agscatter — which has a musical tone to it and could refer to scattering seeds or, of course, scattering manure. Either would be appropriate. I wouldn’t mind being called an agmeister...more

Cowboy's final ride ends Friday

by Kevin Welch

“This is a love story,” said Janice Williams, known as simply J. “I don’t know if I can think of a word big enough to say what it’s meant to me.”

J was standing on the side of a road in Armstrong County Friday afternoon, hair tossed by the stiff wind, surrounded by the friends, horses, wagons and buggies that were finishing the 14-day, 282 mile journey to send her husband Len’s ashes into the air above Palo Duro Canyon.

“For all these people to take two weeks off their jobs to get this man to his resting place, that’s unconditional love,” J said.

Len, who died of cancer on April 18 at the age of 52, was from Pampa and loved the canyon’s western character.

J shows off the two-gallon, enameled metal coffee pot where Len’s ashes waited in a plastic bag.

“They put fresh flowers in the spout every day, but they’re kind of blown away today,” J said, pointing to the flowerless stems that were left. “He’s been everywhere with us — all the bars, all the restaurants. He’s been in every picture we’ve taken.”

Len’s and J’s hobbies included competitive chuckwagon cooking, trail rides and catering brandings on ranches. Their home is in Breckenridge, northwest of Abilene. And the people who escorted them from there to the canyon looked like they stepped out off a ranch. There were high-top, colorful western boots; suspenders; mustaches that draped below men’s chins; kerchiefs and lots of cowboy hats.

Four horsemen helped control vehicle traffic for the 10 wagons and buggies in the procession down prairie-lined roads.



Here is the Amarillo.com video report:

http://youtu.be/eN8jvgvL-2Y

Democratic front group hyped as hunters by media in gun control fight

The liberal media will do anything to pressure lawmakers to support President Obama’s gun-control agenda. Politico published a story Wednesday with this headline: “Hunting Group Wants Background Checks.” The story gave the false impression that the millions of hunters in the U.S. support Mr. Obama’s push for “universal background checks.” That is way off target. In fact, 31 well-known hunting and conservation groups sent a letter to Capitol Hill Thursday expressing opposition to intrusion by the federal government into private firearm transfers. Politico only cites one small group in its story, Bull Moose Sportsmen, which claims 5,000 members. The story gives no context for the size of this group in relation to other hunting advocacy groups, nor its prominence in the community. The single poll cited in the Politico story is one commissioned by the group itself and claims 72 percent of hunters support “criminal background checks with some exceptions.” None of the major hunting groups which represent the millions of law-abiding sportsmen was mentioned, nor the polling of those members. In fact, Bull Moose Sportsmen is a fringe organization run by Democratic activists that has been rejected from membership into the major gun and hunting groups’ umbrella organization because it refuses to reveal its funding sources. The American Wildlife Conservation Partners (AWCP) is a consortium of 42 organizations, including major groups such as Safari Club International, Ducks Unlimited, National Wildlife Turkey Federation, National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The groups together represent 6 million individual members. Members of AWCP tell me that Bull Moose has been denied entry into their organization because it refused to reveal its mysterious funding sources...more

Shocking Photos: PETA's Secret Slaughter of Kittens, Puppies

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals -- indeed their "ethical treatment." Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA's front door every year and very few make it out alive. The vast majority -- 96 percent in 2011 -- exit the facility out the back door after they have been killed, when Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater stops by on their regular visits to pick up their remains. Between these visits, the bodies are stored in the giant walk-in freezer PETA installed for this very purpose. It is a freezer that cost $9,370 and, like the company which incinerates the bodies of PETA's victims, was paid for with the donations of animal lovers who could never have imagined that the money they donated to help animals would be used to end their lives instead. In fact, in the last 11 years, PETA has killed 29,426 dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic animals. Most animal lovers find this hard to believe. But seeing is believing. And if it is true that a picture speaks a thousand words, the following images speak volumes about who and what PETA really stands for...more

Agriculture degrees still in high demand for careers

Job placement specialists say degrees in nursing and science are lucrative, while concentrations in philosophy, political science and even journalism should be shelved. But what about farming? There are those in the know who say careers in agriculture couldn’t be better. “From our perspective the outlook for the agriculture graduate is very good,” said Adam Lohrey, agriculture studies recruiter at Wilmington College. “A lot of our students are making their connections and doing the internships prior to graduating. In the past three years we’ve had 95 percent job placement rate for our graduating seniors.” Recent agriculture and natural resources graduates with bachelors’ degrees have the third lowest rate of unemployment in the nation (7 percent), according to a 2012 study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The same study found that rate even lower for graduates with advanced agricultural degrees, at 2.4 percent.  The most obvious careers are directly related to the farm or ranch. There are approximately 22 million people who work in ag-related fields in the United States.  Today’s agriculture offers more than 200 rewarding and challenging careers.  “We’ve done our research and found out that graduating agriculture students can expect to make $40,000 annually, and those in the top 15 percent academically can get as much as $60,000,” Lohrey said. “There’s growth for management at various companies these days.”...more

Agriculture: By The Numbers



Ag Fact

 



Friday, April 05, 2013

Advocates gather near Taos to celebrate Río Grande del Norte

Hundreds of supporters packed Taos Mesa Brewing on a sunny Saturday (March 30) for a visit from federal dignitaries to celebrate the new Río Grande del Norte National Monument. Outgoing Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, retired U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-NM, were among those in attendance, and they were joined by a celebratory crowd that included conservationists, government leaders and business representatives. The event, which featured food, music and speeches, was held to commemorate the March 25 signing of a presidential proclamation creating the 242,555-acre Río Grande del Norte National Monument. Addressing the standing-room-only crowd, Bingaman, who introduced legislation to create a national conservation area around the Río Grande del Norte, thanked the people of Taos County and Northern New Mexico, saying without their enthusiastic support the monument designation would not have happened. He also suggested the day be recognized as “Ken Salazar Appreciation Day” for the secretary’s efforts. Heinrich said the Río Grande del Norte provides a “textbook example” of what can be accomplished with broad, effective community support. He said the monument designation can serve as a lesson to other communities throughout the country. Salazar said representatives like Bingaman are able to bring people together, adding that his love of the state and decades spent problem-solving on behalf of his constituents “forever make him part of the landscape of New Mexico.”...more

Lawsuit to Protect Border-crossing Wolves in NM & AZ, plus additional maps and commentary

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit today challenging a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that will allow federal and state agencies to capture wolves that enter Arizona and New Mexico from either the north or the south and keep them in captivity indefinitely. Mexico has an ongoing program to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves in the Sierra Madre, and wolves from the northern Rockies could move into the Southwest at any time. The Center’s lawsuit seeks protection of wolves found in New Mexico and Arizona, north of Interstate 40 and south of Interstate 10, from federal and state trapping. The lawsuit does not apply to wolves emanating from the Mexican wolf reintroduction program, begun in 1998, in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, which lies between the two interstate highways. Those wolves, which already suffer from reduced protections, are the subject of a separate Center lawsuit seeking science-based reforms in their management. The contested permit allows the live capture of any number of endangered wolves for any reason, including the primary rationale of protecting livestock. The permit does not require livestock owners to undertake any measures to reduce their risk of losing livestock to wolves before trappers could remove wolves...more


 
It's pretty easy to see what's going on here.  This is the proposed jaguar critical habitat:




Then there is the Sky Islands project, interested in the same area plus corridors to land in Mexico.




Here is a different view of their map.
 



Then there was the Bingaman Wilderness bill, which zeroed in on Dona Ana County for now.  Reportedly Senators Heinrich & Udall will be reintroducing similar legislation this summer.



Bob & Carol Richardson


And most recently, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance proposal for a National monument.





Why is Las Cruces and Dona Ana County so prevalent in all these proposals?  Take a look at this map, which shows gov't land in black and private property in white. 





There are other projects and more maps, but this should give you a feel for what they have planned for us.  Using existing law and administrative tools, plus new legislative proposals, they will keep throwing mud until something sticks.
 

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Idaho Senate passes federal lands transfer resolution


Idaho wants its land back, lawmakers in the Idaho Senate said Tuesday before passing a resolution that asks Congress to transfer title for federally owned lands within Idaho’s borders to the state government. The resolution, known as House Concurrent Resolution 22, was passed by the Idaho House on March 21. It passed 55-13 in the House and 21-13 in the Senate. The resolution has no legal effect. Sen. Branden Durst, D-Boise, argued Tuesday that he believes the federal government would simply ignore it. Supporters in the state Senate on Tuesday cited breaches of promises and mismanagement of lands by the federal government. The resolution would apply to about 16 million acres of public lands managed by the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. Wilderness lands, national defense areas and the Idaho National Laboratory would not be included in the transfer. Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, said in introducing the bill that the United States had promised Idaho at the time of statehood that the federal government would sell any land it held and would give 5 percent of the proceeds to the state. The resolution states that Idaho ceded its unappropriated lands to the federal government with that understanding—which, Siddoway said, has now been breached. He said that in addition, the federal government has been mismanaging public lands. Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, argued during debate over the resolution that she believes that mismanagement by the federal government had led to larger, more damaging wildfires. Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, further argued that forests have been wasted under federal management, left to be “eaten by bugs”—a reference to the mountain pine beetles that are killing trees on Idaho’s national forests. He argued that this mismanagement has left lands vulnerable to large wildfires, which he said damage homes, property and the lungs of Idaho residents. Hagedorn argued that allowing the state to control these lands and increase timber production would reduce wildfire and timber waste while boosting the state’s economy. “If we were to get some of those acres of timber … and utilize that biomass that is going to waste, we could generate jobs and electricity that we could then sell out of state,” he said. “There are some good reasons why we should do this, and putting people back to work is a great reason.” Other senators argued that the bill was “premature,” and should be held until a study group to investigate the issue had convened, following a measure approved earlier Tuesday by the Senate...more

Sen. Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, had this beautiful quote:

“Senators, the only reason you want title to a land is to sell it,” Stennett said. “And I don’t think Idaho should be for sale.” 

In other words, she'd prefer envirocrats in DC determine the use of the land, rather than private citizens in Idaho.

FBI Documents Connect Aryan Brotherhood with Mexican Cartels

 by Brandon Darby

...Evidence suggests that the Aryan Brotherhood has morphed into what is primarily a drug-trafficking gang, and there is a more frightening possibility: that the Aryan Brotherhood is acting as a conduit, doing the dirty work for a Mexican drug cartel criminal insurgency into the United States.

In November of last year, for example, an Aryan Brotherhood member went on the record stating that he had helped smuggle hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine across the border from Mexico. According to the Mexican newswire Notimex, the AB member "stated that he had some important connections with Mexican drug cartels."

On Tuesday of this week, a federal task force apprehended an Aryan Brotherhood "general" who "had ounces of crystal methamphetamine" on him at the time of his arrest...

The FBI has declassified 156 pages of internal documents that shed light on the inner workings of the Aryan Brotherhood from its inception in the late 1960s through the 1980s. The documents show that the AB is known for engaging in brutal, high-profile killings to impress upon foreign narcotics cartels and other organized crime groups that they are the best organization to handle a domestic US ground game.

The clearest analysis of the AB’s motivations are revealed on page 56:

The purpose of the AB is now power and is not a racial organization as it has been deemed in the past. The AB’s continue to be aligned with members of the Mexican Mafia (EME) and certain motorcycle type inmates. [emphasis added]

This passage refers to the same US-based Mexican Mafia verifiably operating as hitmen and narcotics traffickers for various Mexican Drug cartels. It is the same US-based group that was hired by the Tijuana Cartel to assassinate the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, killing a priest in the process. The FBI documents reveal that the AB has kept an alliance with the US-based Mexican Mafia since 1968. The Mexican Mafia has used the AB as hitmen.

The National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC), a Congressionally-mandated effort led by the FBI, reports that the AB works directly with Mexican cartels. The FBI’s 2011 NGIC report states:

MDTOs (Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations) use street and prison gang members in Mexico, Texas, and California to protect smuggling routes, collect debts, transport illicit goods, including drugs and weapons, and execute rival traffickers...

The report specifically names the Aryan Brotherhood as working with the Mexican drug trafficking groups.