No respect in submission (Enough of this nice crap)

Enough of this nice crap

No respect in submission

Thoughts from open blisters

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Leonard and I found where the fence was down.

            We were in his mechanical mule bouncing over the rocks when we spotted where the cattle were going through a mangled water gap. No, it wasn’t washed out. That would have been a good problem. The problem had occurred when, in our whole herd movement to a new pasture, a yearling steer, cut out to haul to the house to wean, had jumped into the steel rim tank (thinking it was a perimeter fence in the corral). He proceeded to try to drown himself before he gathered himself enough to jump out of the five and a half foot deep steel storage tank only to jump the perimeter corral fence and run. He will now be harder yet to gather.

            What cannot be scripted was the fact he stirred the water up and moss and debris clogged the outlet to a major trough where the cattle had been moved. The next morning Leonard found the drinker dry, and, as a consequence, at least 175 pairs went back through the fence to the pasture from which they had been driven.

The breached water gap was their exit.

            On the Hook

            Both of us were about half mad.

            Finding cattle back where they had come from started it. The weather pattern had also moved out and most of the ranch remained short of rain. It had been 100º for another four straight days and the grass, already stressed, was hanging limp like a hound dog’s tongue. Yet another dry summer was sickeningly disheartening, and our mood reflected it.

            What we faced, though, eliminated any discourse of “what if” or “whose fault”. We had to buckle down and get something done. The fence had to be fixed, the cattle regathered, the drought contingencies refined, and … there was to be no deferral or shirking of duties. The two of us standing there were the entire crew. We were the safety committee, the secretary, the pipe fitters, the electricians, the administration, the cowboys, the payroll clerk, the HR personnel, the mail carriers, and the labor gang. If the mood was to be improved by a joke, it had to come from one of us. If something had to be retrieved or purchased in the process, it had to be done by us.

            Real life got more serious yet when we figured out we were woefully unprepared to deal with the situation with the tools being carried in the mule.

            Our lives and that of our government counterparts are described in different pages in separate books. What we proceeded to do wasn’t even in their play book. If it had been a federal agency matter, there would have been a whole different complex. Chances are the end result would have resulted in a contract being let, and, rather than a water gap being fixed, three miles of fence would have been rebuilt.

            The actions of those agencies, however, would ultimately bring the full force of regulatory burden back squarely upon us, the two American ranchers standing in the cut rebuilding the water gap. It will impact our counterparts in each and every similar circumstance. A perfect example is the EPA maneuvering to expand their regulatory jurisdiction by changing the definition of the “navigable waters of the United States”.

            When that phrase is adjusted by simply dropping the word “navigable”, the dynamic of the change is more than immense. There is no equating navigable water to storm runoff that would affect the water gap Leonard and I were rebuilding if and when it rained hard enough to run some water, and, yet, that is exactly what dropping “navigable” implies. The agency knows that and yet they will stand defiantly and offer false witness as if it should be believed. From its extensive watershed mapping discovered by a House committee, the EPA denies any ties to the expansion of its jurisdiction from that work created by a coordinating contractor.

            “Let us be very clear- these maps have nothing to do with EPA’s proposed rule or any other regulatory purpose,” the official spokesperson offered in testimony to a House committee.

            As I drove the eight feet long steel T-posts selected for the water gap in the bottom of the cut while standing on piled rocks and reaching as high above my head as I could, the basic honesty demanded in our daily lives cannot be explained away with words offered in meaningless testimony. We are the ultimate cupboard constantly being robbed for government largesse.

            Reality is demonstrating this administration’s agency actions are delineated from a partisan mission that has nothing to do with grassroots needs or inputs. Their words are simply filler used to confound any measure of meaningful debate. Changes are occurring only when or if litigation, funded by the meager means of the public being trampled, throws an occasional roadblock against the juggernaut. Even then, the mission will be repackaged to renew the effort and defend the agenda.

By the time I had finished driving those posts without gloves, my hands were screaming for relief. Blisters were already formed and broken, but we had to finish what we started. We had no choice.

            The climate debate is another fairy tale that has become an intrusion on our sensibility. China, India, and Germany are not even going to attend the next big climate summit to be held soon in New York. Two issues are highlighted as a result. The first is the embarrassment we, the host country, should feel as we proceed blindly down the ever rockier path chasing this phantom topic. The second is the corruption of science. What a terrible thing it is when knowledge becomes the subject of controversy. Everything we have ever been taught is counter to that, but our leadership will be there promoting their cause.

            The last task in building the water gap was to hang a ballast on the bottom of the span to float it and allow water and debris to flow under the device. When it was done, our mood had changed. We were smiling.

            Unfortunately, we have no choice other than to recognize the multiple fronts being waged against us.  Congressional authority is being usurped to further enshrine a model that our Framers and Founders not only warned about, but staked their lives on confronting and defeating. Nothing in this current administration is about defending our lives and our rights.

            The blister lesson, though, emerges as a very basic tenant. If I can drive eight foot T posts without gloves … we all can.

            Collect your Cajones

            This nonsense about the fact conservatives have no game plan is tedious. What the conservatives suffer from is the incapacity to be brutally honest. It is a basic inability to define and present the truth with resolve. As a result, the message can be dismantled and is made to appear insincere. The best example is the lie about Americans being greedy capitalists. That is a crock. Half the population is now subsidized. How can that logic be defended?

            Furthermore, the half of the population being subsidized believes they have embedded and differentiated rights stemming from their victimization. They are taught that. They are being supported and encouraged by their elected representatives that run the government.

            It is past time to curtail this nonsense. Federal spending originates in the House of Representatives. If you check your representative’s voting record, you will find there is a 95% chance he or she has never stood on his or her hind feet and said, “NO!” to the obligatory and stepwise progression to ever increasing spending.

Those legislative actions not only fuel the agency assaults on the heartland, they have promulgated and encouraged their empire expansion. There must be consequences for such defilement by legislative appeasement.

            The agencies are self preservationists. In the void of practicing self regulatory stability offered through natural law set forth in the Constitution, the void has been filled by the agencies. They will not change until the funding mechanisms disallow the savagery of their actions.

            By legislative record, there is not a single effective fiscal conservative in my home state of New Mexico. There are no voices of substantive authority that display the single-mindedness to demand and lead a purposeful return to originality. The glow of being reelected takes full precedence over openly defying the gaiety of spending our money and growing the victimization class. As such, the über liberals among the elected cadre are true to form and mission. They intend to grow the state with their unwritten agenda of obliterating the founding cornerstone … those of us who have blistered hands.

                Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The night this was written it rained. Blessed, God given rain … nothing is more fundamental. Perhaps that is the single, concrete reminder that resisting this growing federal menace is worth the fight.” 

There are many things I could say about this column.  First up would be the juxtaposition of the private working individual with gov't agencies - that is powerful.  His penning the term "legislative appeasement" is beautiful, and so appropriate.  In fact, that leads me to the only thing I would add.  Wilmeth says "Congressional authority is being usurped."  That is true.  However, in many instances the authority has been delegated by Congress to the Executive Branch, and has been done under the leadership of both political parties. When in power, neither party has sought to retrieve that authority.  A recent example would be when the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and had Bush II in the White House, they did nothing to lessen or limit the President's authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906.  We recently "experienced" this authority in Dona Ana County and I can assure you there are more National Monuments to come.

In defense of Wilmeth I almost didn't publish this column.  How's that?  Because the steer jumping out of the tank would be proof to EPA that indeed the water was "navigable"!  -:)  But then I figured the term was being so corrupted by EPA anyway that it really didn't matter.