Wayne Co. profits from police property seizures

The way Krista Vaughn sees it, Wayne County fined her $1,400 even though police and prosecutors admit she broke no laws. Vaughn, who has no criminal record, was required to pay for the return of her car, which was seized by police after they mistook Vaughn's co-worker for a prostitute. Even though prosecutors later dropped the case, Vaughn still had to pay. Her story is not unusual. In Wayne County, law enforcement officials regularly seize vehicles without levying charges -- even in cases in which they later concede no law was broken. The agency provides perhaps the most prolific and egregious example of what critics contend is the wrongful use of laws allowing the seizure of private property. t's a practice that's paying off. The Wayne County Sheriff's Office, which helps run the prosecutor's forfeiture unit, took in $8.69 million from civil seizures in 2007, more than four times the amount collected in 2001. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office gets up to 27 percent of that money. "Forfeiture laws are being abused by police and prosecutors who see only dollar signs," said former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga, now a defense attorney. "It's a money grab, pure and simple; a sneaky way of getting a penalty on something prosecutors can't prove. It's like shooting fish in a barrel."...read more

I had previously linked to part one of this series here.

Lawyers: government misconduct in Blackwater case

Defense lawyers are alleging misconduct by Justice Department prosecutors in the case against one of five Blackwater security guards accused in the killings of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad. In its court filing Wednesday, Slatten's defense team called the U.S. government's handling of the charges against Slatten "a disturbing case of prosecutorial misconduct, undermining the integrity of the judicial process." The case against Slatten became untenable, not merely because of a fundamental lack of evidence against him, but also because the trial team repeatedly mischaracterized the testimony of witnesses and excluded evidence that ran in Slatten's favor from the grand jury that indicted him, Slatten's lawyers wrote in asking for a public hearing before the judge. "The collapse of the government's case against Mr. Slatten should be as public as the baseless allegations against him," Slatten's lawyers added. "He should not be required to endure the government's repeated public mischaracterization of the evidence while non-public proceedings tell a very different story."...read more

Trucker program attracts drug smugglers

A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers. Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo. But among the small fraction of trucks that are inspected, authorities have found multiple loads of contraband, including 8 tons of marijuana seized during one week in April. The program works like this: Participating companies agree to adopt certain security measures in exchange for fast entry into the U.S. They are required to put their employees through background checks, fence in their facilities and track their trucks. They also are asked to work with subcontractors who also have been certified under the program, which is run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets. But some of the 9,500 companies who are part of the system advertise their membership to drum up business, making them targets for smugglers, who can then threaten drivers or offer them bribes...read more

Happy Thanksgiving

Washington's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1789

The First Thanksgiving Day Proclamation Under the Constitution, New York City, October 3, 1789:

“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to “recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts and many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase in science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.”

(In God We Trust, Norman Cousins, editor, Harper & Brothers, 1958, pp. 71-72)

Obama to Go to Copenhagen With Emissions Target

President Obama is pledging a provisional target for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the first time in more than a decade that an American administration has offered even a tentative promise to reduce production of climate-altering gases, the White House announced Wednesday. At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said. The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global warming agreement with binding targets. Mr. Obama will travel to the United Nations talks to deliver the promise in hopes of spurring significant progress there. He will appear Dec. 9, near the beginning of the 12-day session, on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, officials said. By making the pledge in an international forum, Mr. Obama is laying a bet that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment...read more

Global WarmingGate: What Does It Mean?

Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.” If we do accept them as authentic, though, they truly are incendiary. They appear to reveal not one, not two, but three real scandals, of increasing importance. * The emails suggest the authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to “discipline” scientists and journalists who published skeptical information. * The emails suggest that the authors manipulated and “massaged” the data to strengthen the case in favor of unprecedented CO2-forced AGW, and to suppress their own data if it called AGW into question. The emails suggest that the authors co-operated (perhaps the word is “conspired”) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK...read more

Competitive Enterprise Institute Sues NASA in Wake of Climategate Scandal

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal — for nearly three years — to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer code, and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University. All of that material, and that sought for years by CEI, goes to the heart of the scientific claims and campaign underpinning the Kyoto Protocol, its planned successor treaty, “cap-and-trade” legislation, and the EPA’s threatened regulatory campaign to impose similar measures through the back door...read more

Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate

This may seem obscure, but the science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers. Here are three things everyone should know about the Climategate Papers. Links are provided so that the full context of every quote can be seen by anyone interested. First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results. The most prominently featured scientists are paleoclimatologists, who reconstruct historical temperatures and who were responsible for a series of reconstructions that seemed to show a sharp rise in temperatures well above historical variation in recent decades. In 1999, Phil Jones, the head of CRU, wrote to activist scientist Michael “Mike” Mann that he has just “completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps … to hide the decline”(0942777075). This refers to a decline in temperatures in recent years revealed by the data he had been reconstructing that conflicted with the observed temperature record. The inconvenient data was therefore hidden under a completely different set of data. Some “trick.” Mann later (2003) announced that “it would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP,’ even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back” (1054736277). The MWP is the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures may have been higher than today. Mann’s desire to “contain” this phenomenon even in the absence of any data suggesting that this is possible is a clear indication of a desire to manipulate the science. There are other examples of putting political/presentational considerations before the science throughout the collection...read more

Climategate: When Scientists Become Politicians

Over thousands of years, at each step, the response of the scientists was to continually adjust and refine their theories to conform to the data, not the other way around. This is how science is done and how we developed the knowledge that has given us such tremendous and accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs in the past century. It is occasionally reasonable to throw out a bad data point if it is in defiance of an otherwise satisfactory model fit, as long as everyone knows that you’ve done so and the rationale, but a deliberate and unrevealed fudging of results in an attempt to make the real world fit one’s preconceptions is beyond the scientific pale. Journal articles have been thrown out for it; PhD candidates have lost their degrees for it. But such behavior, along with attempts to cover it up and dishonestly discredit critics, is exactly what was revealed in a leak of emails last Friday from a research facility in eastern England. And it was not the behavior of previously unknown researchers on some arcane topic of little interest to anyone outside their own field. It was the behavior of leading luminaries in perhaps the greatest scientific issue and controversy of our age: Whether or not the planet is warming to a potentially dangerous degree as a result of humanity’s influence...read more

Wilderness bill opponents map out alternative plan

A group of opponents to a federal wilderness bill for Doña Ana County gathered Tuesday to outline its alternative to the proposal and ask New Mexico's senators to hold a field hearing locally about the matter. The group, including ranchers, off-road vehicle users, the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce and the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, in a letter to the senators have asked that several regions be removed from consideration for wilderness and instead granted other less-restrictive designations. The areas are clustered in southwestern Do-a Ana County, near the international border. Frank DuBois, a former state agriculture secretary who has opposed the wilderness legislation, said the group is asking for the change to keep from hindering officers who are enforcing immigration laws. Wilderness is the most-restrictive land designation granted by Congress. It prevents mechanized travel in most cases. National conservation areas are a designation in which the land-use parameters are tailored to match each region. Also, a 13,900-acre wilderness region proposed for Broad Canyon, south of Hatch, would be removed from consideration, under the opposition group's plan. "The chamber found this area to be too important for utility and energy corridors, flood control and other economic growth and public safety factors to have access restrictions legislatively imposed," said DuBois at a news conference...read more

Obama official slams oil industry

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar fired back at critics of the federal government's oil and gas leasing program on Tuesday, saying the oil industry was acting “like an arm of a political party.” In a conference call with reporters to announce oil and gas lease sales on federal land for 2010, Salazar said the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas leasing program this year has been “robust,” putting more than 2.7 million acres of land up for lease and generating $126 million in revenue. Four more leases are planned before year's end. “But you wouldn't know it if you listened to the untruths coming out” of industry groups, Salazar said. “Trade groups for the oil and gas industry repeatedly launch attacks that have all the poison and assumptions of election-year politics.” Salazar said enery company shareholders have two choices: let their companies sign on to industry efforts that “act like an arm of a political party,” or “engage constructively to find common-sense solutions” to improving the leasing process. The verbal barrage was aimed at groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which has been critical of a number of moves taken by the Obama administration, including rescinding 77,000 acres of lease sales done late in the Bush administration and recommending shorter terms for future leases...read more

Conservation is seen as key to dealing with state's water woes

Compared to building new reservoirs, recycling or seawater desalination, conservation is one of the cheapest, quickest and least environmentally damaging ways for the state to get more water. "I think we have a water crisis in California, and I think conservation is the only solution that can be implemented in time," said Kevin Wattier, general manager of the Long Beach Water Department. Water demand in Southern California has remained essentially flat the last two decades, despite the addition of 3.7 million people. Similarly, L.A. used slightly less water last year than in 1990, even though there are a million more Angelenos now. Much of the lid on demand has been achieved through gadgetry. Utility rebates and plumbing ordinances have put low-flow toilets and shower heads in millions of buildings and homes. Water agencies promote high-efficiency washing machines. But it hasn't been enough, said Timothy Brick, chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the region's water wholesaler. "I think we have a long way to go."...read more

Coyote sightings worry rural residents

Tara Emery's rural Chandler area neighborhood is under attack by a pack of coyotes that devoured seven of her chickens last weekend and some of her neighbors' poultry. All that's left of a flock of White Leghorn laying hens that provided her family with eggs is an injured rooster, one hen and a yard littered with feathers and broken eggs. A five-foot chain link fence didn't protect them, and Emery said she is very worried about her small herd of Nigerian dwarf goats that are due to kid in the next few weeks. Their tiny babies are smaller than the chickens and prey for coyotes. "I don't know what to do, and I'm afraid of what's coming next," said Emery. She is the second generation to live on the rural family plot in an unincorporated county island north east of Gilbert and Ocotillo Roads and said she has never seen so many coyote attacks. Nearby rural Gilbert residents said they, too are seeing -- and fearing -- coyotes. Sherri Isaac, who lives near Val Vista Drive and Queen Creek Road, said she recently saw a pack of four around the new Perry High School and neighbors have lost sheep...read more

Is the Senate health plan anti-gun?

"There is a broader issue here," said Dave Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute of Colorado, a libertarian think tank. "The more you socialize costs, the more you empower the argument that the government has the authority to control private behavior." Kopel pointed to the Japanese health care system, where employee waistlines are measured and those who are overweight are put into special weight loss programs, as an example of where the U.S. health care system could be headed. And gun control could become part of it, Kopel said. "If [the Department of Health and Human Services] can write regulations for lower premiums for healthy habits in general," Kopel said. "Then I don't see anything in the bill that stops HHS from saying people get higher premiums for unhealthy habits such as owning a gun or a handgun." Gun Owners of America spokesman Erich Pratt said the government has already blocked gun ownership through its access to the mental health records of military veterans. If a vet is diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, his or her name is sent to a special database used to prohibit gun purchases. So far, 150,000 veterans have been denied firearms using the list, Pratt said. The Senate bill could widen government oversight of who can own a gun, he warned. "With these mandates, it is really going to be impossible to keep our medical information out of this database," Pratt said...read more

Rancher jailed after housing homeless

A California rancher who houses homeless people on his property chose to serve 90 days in jail rather than accept probation after being convicted of misdemeanor safety violations. Dan de Vaul says the terms of probation offered Monday would prevent him from sheltering about 30 people who reside at his ranch and participate in a substance abuse recovery program. The 66-year-old de Vaul says he is proud to go to jail for housing the homeless. About 30 supporters applauded as he was led out of court in handcuffs. Judge John Trice says officials have offered to help de Vaul bring his property up to code, but he would not accept assistance. A jury in San Luis Obispo convicted him of two misdemeanors for violations of building and safety code. AP

UPDATE: One of the jurors posted his bail.

He Created a New Kind of Western

Kelton wound up writing something almost as ambitious: a book that may go down as the Great Texas Novel. When Kelton died in August at the age of 83, many of the obituaries cited "The Time It Never Rained" as his finest achievement. The story of rancher Charlie Flagg and his struggles during a terrible drought in the 1950s is not just another western. It's a piece of Western lit. At home, he was trying to fashion a new kind of western. It wasn't set among the gunslingers of the 19th century but during the very period he was investigating as a journalist. His editor didn't care for the first draft, so Kelton rewrote it. The second draft didn't cut it, either. Kelton tucked away the manuscript and went back to the kinds of westerns he could sell. Ranchers often have to wait out dry spells, and that's what Kelton did with his drought novel. Time passed. Kelton thought he improved at the craft of writing. In the early 1970s, he started his old story from scratch. It was published in 1973 as "The Time It Never Rained." Readers recognized it as a classic. It won the Spur Award for best novel, which for authors of westerns is the equivalent of a Pulitzer. The tale centers on Charlie Flagg, a stubborn rancher who battles the unyielding drought. He also resists the government's relief programs with a determination that his friends find both admirable and strange. What emerges is the portrait of a rugged libertarian: "I just want to live by my own lights and be left the hell alone," says Flagg. The federal aid turns out to have bad consequences. It fuels inflation, turns neighbor against neighbor, and chips away at bedrock freedoms. Each time a rancher surrenders a piece of his independence, says Flagg, "he's given up a little of his self-respect, a little of the pride he used to have in takin' care of himself by himself."...read more

'Other Men's Horses'

Cletus Slocum stole Donley Bannister's best horse and crip pled it. Now Slocum lay facedown in the dirt, as dead as he would ever be. Bannister was known locally as a horse trader, finding them in faraway places and bringing them to the West Texas hill country for sale. He could recognize a good horse as far as he could see it, and spot a blemish from fifty yards. He loved horses as other men might love a woman. The blue roan, he thought, was one of the best he had ever owned. The four Slocum brothers— three now that Cletus was gone— also had a reputation for knowing good horses, steal ing them when and where they could. They had gone unpun ished because law officers had not been able to bring a strong case to court. It was difficult to persuade a witness to testify against one of them, knowing that to do so was to invite an unfriendly visit by the other three. Bannister did not wait for the law to act. He pursued Cle tus across the rockiest ground along the South Llano River. He caught up with him when the roan stumbled and went down, breaking a foreleg. While witness Willy Pegg trem bled and begged for his own life, Bannister put an end to Cletus's dubious career. He felt no remorse over the man, but his heart was heavy with pain when he shot the crippled roan...read more

It's All Trew: Well, in the past, water was work

The most significant problem facing the first Panhandle settlers was lack of water for their families and livestock. Hand-dug wells along creek bottoms came first. Hauling water gathered from the few surface springs into wooden whiskey barrels mounted on sleds was practiced where possible. When the Rock Island Railroad arrived, they hauled water in tank cars to fill cisterns built at section crew shacks along the way. Later, they dug wells, filling huge wooden storage tanks for the steam engines, and allowed settlers to get drinking water. Well-drilling equipment became available during the early 1880s, and it is believed the first such unit to arrive in the New Clarendon area was purchased by Smith & Sherrick. It immediately went to work drilling a water well for Charles Goodnight. Interviews conducted in 1929 by J. Evetts Haley and L.F. Micou told of these earliest efforts to find water on the plains. Both horse-powered and hand-powered drilling machines were used. In the low country below the caprock, hand-powered equipment was used with a crude tower, rolling block in the top and rope pulled by hand. Two men could dig 70 feet in a good day with drill bits weighing 15 to 25 pounds. Most wells in low country had no rock formations to go through, just sand, dirt and gravel. Another interview stated that horsepower for digging deeper wells was developed through a geared power wheel with horses walking in a circle, pulling the pole round and round. Deeper wells required winches to hold and pull ropes...read more

Song Of The Day #188

File Factory is not working this morning and won't let me upload today's selection.

Since some of you missed out on our earlier selections, click here to listen to Song Of The Day #001, Cliff Carlisle singing Black Jack Davey.

Been getting ready for a news conference-letter signing this afternoon on the anti-rancher Bingaman wilderness bill. Will get back to The Westerner tonight.

Hage estate wins again

A federal judge has added $150,000 to the original $4.22 million judgment won by the estate of rancher Wayne Hage in a years-long battle over property rights. The federal government had asked Senior Judge Loren Smith to throw out the judgment. Instead, he increased it. Hage, a leader of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" against federal control of land, was the husband of former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho. They both died in 2006. The order is the most recent victory in a legal dispute that stretches back to 1991, when Hage filed suit against the government for taking his private property without just compensation. In a previous court decision, Smith referred to the well-publicized lawsuit as "a drama worthy of a tragic opera with heroic characters." Hage's 7,000-acre ranch in Nye County, Nev., bordered several allotments in the Toiyabe National Forest on which he built fences, corrals, water facilities and other rangeland improvements for cattle grazing. Tensions began to mount between the rancher and the U.S. Forest Service in the late 1970s, when the agency permitted the introduction of elk to the national forest, resulting in damaged fences and scattered cattle, according to court records. Over the next decade, other incidents aggravated the strain and eventually led to the lawsuit. According to court documents, the Forest Service excluded Hage's cattle from forage and water in certain allotments, impounded animals that entered those allotments and prevented him from maintaining ditches needed to exercise his water rights...read more

Lawsuits place global warming on more dockets

The lawsuit seeks damages from a group of 33 energy companies, including ExxonMobil and coal giant Peabody Energy, electric utilities, and other conglomerates for allegedly emitting greenhouse gases that the litigants say contributed to global warming. That, the litigants claim, caused a rise in sea levels and increased air and water temperatures fueling the Category 5 hurricane that destroyed their homes. The lawsuit, considered a long shot by legal experts, cleared a hurdle last month when a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said it could continue, overruling a circuit court judge who had agreed with arguments from the companies that global warming is a political, not legal, issue. The Mississippi case is one of a small number of global warming cases to test the judiciary's role in the climate debate. •In September, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals made a similar finding in the case of Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co., siding with a coalition of eight states, New York City, and three land trusts in their lawsuit against several coal-burning utilities for emissions. The lawsuit asks the court for an injunction capping emissions from the companies, claiming the gases are a "public nuisance." The case was dismissed at the district level on grounds that it was political, but on appeal, a two-judge panel disagreed. •Also in September, a federal judge in the Northern District Court of California dismissed a lawsuit brought by the tribal Alaskan village of Kivalina against 24 energy companies. Villagers are seeking $400 million in damages from the companies, claiming global warming had made their village uninhabitable...read more

Waffle-pocalypse!!! An open letter to President Obama

It seems our nation faces the dire consequences of a waffle shortage and Jason Sheehan wants the Obama administration to do something about it. He has written a letter to the President proposing a National Strategic Waffle Reserve and blesses the National Maple Syrup Reservoir currently under construction.

I believe Mr. Sheehan will see immediate action. After all, our national leaders might actually have to take a stand on the issues if they run out of waffles. I'll bet Harry Teague is working on this already. We may end up with the waffle reserve at Carlsbad Caverns.

Judge: Corps' Negligence Caused Katrina Flooding

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where one of the plaintiffs lived. Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages...read more

Very typical of our government today. Responsible but not liable. People are dead, property is destroyed, the government is responsible...but not liable.

Public land gone to pot

Clear Lake and Lake County are known worldwide for its excellent bass fishing. But the county also owns the dubious title as the "Marijuana Capitol of California." For the past three years more marijuana plants have been eradicated in the county than anywhere in the state. In fact, so far this year the state, county and federal authorities have confiscated more than 500,000 plants in Lake County. That's more than the entire state of Kentucky eradicated last year. Most of the plants were eradicated on public lands such as the Mendocino National Forest and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. According to authorities, the illegal growing of marijuana is destroying wildlife and the environment, plus making the public lands unsafe for hikers, hunters and others who enjoy the outdoors...read more

The federal and many state agencies have done everything they could to exclude human and commercial activities from the public lands and then seem surprised when someone other than their berry-eating backpacker buddies take advantage of the landscape they have created.

If you outlaw human use of government lands only outlaws will have use of it.

Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville raided by feds

An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests. Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars. Gibson issued a statement saying it is "fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood." The company said it did nothing wrong. Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson's plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law...read more

The price just went up on older Gibson guitars. All you musicians and all us listeners can thank the USFWS. We'll have to go back to stretchin' animal skins over a drum...if the animal rights folks will let us.

WWP Wins Summary Judgment On 100,000 acre Byner Complex Allotments

Western Watersheds Project's Arizona Office has been granted Summary Judgment by Administrative Law Judge Harvey C. Sweitzer in a successful appeal of a grazing permit decision issued by the Kingman Field Office, Bureau of Land Management. Judge Sweitzer agreed with WWP that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act on the Big Sandy, Los Molinos, and Diamond Joe Allotments (collectively called the "Byner Complex"). The Byner Complex of allotments has some serious rangeland health issues, and the proposed action sought to limit livestock impacts in some key areas by moving livestock to new unexploited areas through the development of new water sources. To do this, the BLM had proposed building five new wells, eleven new troughs, twelve new miles of pipeline and fifteen new miles of fence, which all could have extensive effects on the landscape and the riparian areas. The BLM failed to analyze or even disclose the descriptions of the new water facilities. Administrative Law Judge Sweitzer found the BLM’s behavior to be in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act...read more

Go here to read the decision.

Wolf hunt an orderly success

It was historic, to say the least, that Montana just completed the first regulated wolf hunt in the lower 48 states this week. Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks deserves kudos for managing the hunt to a tee, closely monitoring it with a reporting system that ensured that the statewide quota of 75 wolves would not be exceeded. To be sure, many believe more wolves could have been harvested. But there were specific reasons for the conservative quota, amounting to about 15 percent of the state’s estimated population of 500 wolves. Even with the hunt, Montana’s wolf population is expected to grow next year. Even though Montana and Idaho wolves were removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act early this year, the two states must show the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they can maintain sustainable wolf populations. “This was the first year in a five-year period we have to prove ourselves, and I think we have to prove ourselves well,” Ream said. Not to mention demonstrating the viability of the hunt in court. The delisting decision has been challenged by a coalition of environmental groups, and the state of Montana is rightly defending its authority to manage wolves. The regulated hunt is a big part of that program...read more

Spreading wildfires could bring 'an inferno on earth'

Fire patterns have changed over time as human populations have grown and altered landscapes by clearing forests, allowing pasture animals to overgraze grasslands, and importing new plant species. Across parts of the western United States, for example, cheatgrass, an invasive annual adapted to frequent burns, has supplanted native brush, desert shrub, and perennial grasses that typically experience longer intervals between fires. In other areas, mixed-age and mixed-species forests have been replaced by single-species plantations where flames can jump easily from tree to tree. The result, instead of a low-intensity restorative fire, is a fire so hot that it can cause lasting harm to soils. Humans have also altered fire patterns through deliberate suppression. After 1910, when a severe wildfire charred more than 3 million acres of western US forest in just two days, the strong desire to protect timber resources gave life to a policy of quickly extinguishing fires. For decades firefighters proved remarkably successful in this endeavor, but the upshot was that forests became so loaded with fuel that a blaze that evaded control could quickly grow into a dangerous megafire. Now policies are shifting in many places to let some fires proceed naturally or through preventative controlled burns; yet by warming the planet, we may be relinquishing even more control than we bargained for...read more

Warming's impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto

Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then. As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before. And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen: —The world's oceans have risen by about an inch and a half. —Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa. —Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests. —Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997. Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn't forecast results quite this bad so fast...read more

From worms to used motor oil, green gets a lift at ski resort

Worms that eat coffee grounds. Old motor oil that heats workshops. Patio furniture made of recycled milk jugs. Colorado ski resorts are going beyond standard recycling in an effort to green up their industry — and lure skiers and snowboarders concerned about the impact their sport is having on the mountains they love. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile our ski-loving, traveling side with the side that cringes at the environmental effect of all those people on the snowy slopes and the travel we do to get there. On one hand, you're gliding past pristine, snow-frosted pines, sucking crisp mountain air into your lungs and bursting with love for the outdoors. Then you sit down for an hour at an on-mountain restaurant and watch heaps of napkins, disposable silverware and plastic cups get tossed in the garbage can. Happily, resorts today seem more and more interested in reducing waste, pushing alternative transportation, using renewable energy, recycling and teaming up for environmental partnerships. Sure, there's a long way to go. But the effort is gaining speed, kind of like a downhill skier on a steep run...read more

I wonder if those worms will eat horse shit. Might turn green myself.

Sheryl Crow Takes up Cause of Wild Horses in West

Sheryl Crow is joining the call for a halt to federal government roundups of wild horses in the West, branding them as inhumane and unnecessary. The Grammy Award-winning singer is asking President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to scrap a proposed roundup of 2,500 mustangs in northern Nevada. Crow, who campaigned for Obama last year and performed at his inauguration, opposes Salazar's plan to move thousands of wild horses to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse herds
and the rangelands that support them. In a letter sent to Obama and Salazar earlier this week, Crow and actors Ed Harris and Wendie Malick, along with Madeleine Pickens, the wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, and more than 100 other groups questioned the BLM's horse numbers and said there may be only 15,000 mustangs remaining on public lands...read more

Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?

The American scientist was catching a glimpse of an emerging test of the world’s food resources, one that has begun to take shape over the last year, largely outside the bounds of international scrutiny. A variety of factors — some transitory, like the spike in food prices, and others intractable, like global population growth and water scarcity — have created a market for farmland, as rich but resource-deprived nations in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere seek to outsource their food production to places where fields are cheap and abundant. Because much of the world’s arable land is already in use — almost 90 percent, according to one estimate, if you take out forests and fragile ecosystems — the search has led to the countries least touched by development, in Africa. According to a recent study by the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the earth’s last large reserves of underused land is the billion-acre Guinea Savannah zone, a crescent-shaped swath that runs east across Africa all the way to Ethiopia, and southward to Congo and Angola. Foreign investors — some of them representing governments, some of them private interests — are promising to construct infrastructure, bring new technologies, create jobs and boost the productivity of underused land so that it not only feeds overseas markets but also feeds more Africans. (More than a third of the continent’s population is malnourished.) They’ve found that impoverished governments are often only too welcoming, offering land at giveaway prices...read more

Iowa to Host First USDA Meeting on 'Competition in Agriculture'

A series of public workshops looking at competition in agriculture and the role of federal anti-trust laws and their enforcement will take place at five locations across the nation in 2010. The first of those meetings, to be held jointly by USDA and the U.S. Department of Justice, will be in Iowa. USDA and the Justice Department made the announcement last week. The initial workshop is set for March 12 at the new FFA Enrichment Center in Ankeny, north of Des Moines. Specific areas of focus include concerns about the seed industry. A USDA spokesman says topics to be discussed are seed technology, vertical integration, market transparency and buyer power. One of the main issues centers on use of biotech traits in seed to the advantage or disadvantage of larger seed companies compared to smaller firms. An ongoing legal battle between seed industry heavyweights Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto prompts the focus on seed issues. Pioneer, based in Johnston, and its parent company, DuPont, allege that Monsanto is guilty of using its dominance in biotech traits in seed, particularly those resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, to dominate the seed market. Monsanto denies the charges, saying it has only a fraction of the seed sales market and that it licenses its traits widely, including to Pioneer. The latest figures show for seed corn sales, Monsanto's DeKalb and American Seed brands have 36% of the market. Pioneer gained two percentage points last year to reach 32% in seed corn sales...read more

Land swap angers hunters, governor

Hunters are ticked off and so is the governor as the State Land Office pushes a trade that would turn a chunk of pristine mountain wilderness over to private ranchers. Hunters think they'll be left out, and Gov. Bill Richardson issued a statement Friday calling the swap a "behind-the-scenes deal" that lack transparency and public input. Officials with the land office say that's just not true. It's a fight over elk, antelope and the land on which they live on around White Peaks in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Right now the land is a checkerboard of state and private property. Henington said it's cheaper to maintain state trust acreage if it's all together and that the land it's acquiring could be more profitable. "There's nothing else that we do but generate revenue for our beneficiaries," he said. The beneficiaries are schools across the state that use the money generated by energy production, agriculture and hunting license fees...read more

Tampa cattle drive rounds up history

Cowboys and cowgirls mounted horses Saturday and drove 18 wide-eyed cattle through downtown Tampa, past hundreds of people who lined up outside the Tampa Bay History Center. Nick Dotti brought his 2-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter — each decked out in little cowboy hats and boots — from South Tampa to the cattle drive, which was held to promote the museum's traveling exhibit about Florida cattlemen. Although a cattle drive in downtown Tampa was an odd sight Saturday, it wouldn't have been unusual 100 years ago. Beef cattle were regularly driven to local ports, often to be shipped to Cuba, said curator Rodney Kite-Powell. "It wasn't a daily occurrence. We weren't like Tombstone," he said. "But cattle were very common around downtown." Cattle first arrived in the United States through Florida in 1521 with Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, said Handley and Kite-Powell. Now, there are about 1.7 million head of beef cattle in the state. They're raised on about 7 million acres mostly between interstates 75 and 95, Handley said...read more

On the edge of common sense: Hindu practices differ little from traditional dairy

The Hindu dairymen, represented by the Hare Krishna in the United States, have much in common with dairymen from California, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The HK dairy is in West Virginia and is called New Vrindaban. They refer to themselves as a cow sanctuary. The big distinction is they never cull a cow. Granted, this sounds familiar to many a ranch wife who has heard her husband shout over the noise of the preg checkin' chute, "I know she's open and got no teeth, but let's run her one more year!" The HK cowmen sometimes name their cows, but that's not remarkable. I can recall Nicole, Two Dot and Dallas from my own bunch. The HK comment that "Cows are very dear to us, we take care of them like our own family." How many hundreds of times have you "normal" cattlemen who missed dinner, stayed up all night, nursed calves in the bathtub, rode into a blinding blizzard, fired up the generator to keep milking, went into debt and put your human family second behind a cow in distress? The HK dairy cows eat grain while they are being milked twice a day. They preach the "power" of cows to provide everything from milk for their children to manure for their farm. They make butter, yogurt and sweets. Ditto for traditional dairymen. But the paths of these two dairymen diverge in a profound way when the HK states, "slaughtering an animal is not natural for human beings." Have they not seen the paintings on the cave walls? Where do they get these ideas? Why did they invent the sharp knife and barbecue sauce? For coleslaw?...read more

Song Of The Day #187

Ranch Radio will get that foot tappin' this Monday morning with Baby I Want You So by Charlie Adams and The Lone Star Playboys.

The tune is available on his 30 track CD Cattin' Around on Bear Family Records.

Song Of The Day #186

Ranch Radio's Gospel tune this Sunday morning is I Pushed Through The Crowd by the wonderful blue grass singer Dale Ann Bradley.

The song is on her 12 track CD Songs of Praise and Glory.

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Who gets the turkey leg?

Julie Carter

Everywhere I turn, I hear people making plans for next week. A trip, shopping, cooking and the inspiration for it all -Thanksgiving Dinner.

In the peripheral, there are bets on football games and plots for spending vacation time from school classes.

Paintball wars, cattle workings, roping, skiing and lots and lots of eating, napping, visiting and family togetherness. If the ropers aren't going to a roping, they will discuss at length, every roping they have ever entered in their life.

Somehow, a turkey drumstick, dressing and of course the traditional pumpkin pie, still have the power to bring the family home, even from afar.

Almost everything that takes place on Thanksgiving could happen on another day of the year. I'm fairly sure the Pilgrims at the first such event didn't look at the calendar and say, "Let's do this on a Thurs-day in November. Is that good for you?"
So what is it really that keeps us coming back to the historical observance of collecting a crowd, cooking up everything in the house and then some, eating until it's gone and then moaning our way back to our tepees and cabins.

I believe it is the tradition as much as the food that brings families together year after year, under all circumstances. And rural America re-mains steeped in tradition for many things, but none more than a traditional holiday.

We don't get too revved up about President's Day, Mother's Day (except to hold a branding) and Secretary's Day, but give us the 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas and we'll show you some genuine Yee-Haw down-home country tradition.

There are a few folks that hold with the thought that the Pilgrims more likely ate chicken-fried elk steak than turkey and chose to follow that menu instead of the bird.

Others have sought a variation to the roasted fowl and opted for the deep-fried version.

This cooking method generated a retail Tsunami of turkey deep-fryers followed by the landslide of warnings about how the combination of fire and hot oil can quickly turn a fryer into a vertical flame thrower.

This year, our family traditions will again be orchestrated by my mother, who started the entire thing for my generation.

She will cook a turkey, make the best stuffing in the world, ours anyway, and we'll gather to eat at her big oak table that will be stretched with extra leaves from round to a long oval.

We, as a family, have been putting our family traditions "on the table" at Mom's house for five decades, and all of those have been around that oak table. As we grew to adulthood, the next wave was the grandchildren, and then great-grandchildren. If that table could talk ...

This Thanksgiving, our newest family member will be introduced to roundtable family holidays. He is just six months old and making his debut to New Mexico and grandma's Thanksgiving.

It's not quite like the days of old when "over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go" offered images of horse-drawn sleighs and piles of snow.
We've evolved to pickup trucks, baby car seats, long miles of paved highways in a snow-free Southwest. But the destination promises the same as the song:

Over the river, and through the wood -
Now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Enjoy the holiday however you spend it. You are making memories for your family to treasure in the next generations

More On Joe Delk's Patriotic Fiddle

Several editions of The Westerner ago I wrote about Joe Delk's activities on behalf of rural New Mexicans and posted a picture of Joe playing the National Anthem at the PRCA Turquoise Circuit Finals.

Dona Ana County rancher and author Steve Wilmeth saw Joe perform our anthem at the Cowboys For Cancer Research annual dinner and dance and wrote the following:


Amazing . . . . Anthem

Through a few moments of grace on Friday night, a very powerful performance was experienced by the attendants of the Cowboy for Cancer dinner dance at Dickerson’s Barn. The mandatory recognition of supporters, contributors, and active fundraising events had been concluded and the Delk Family Band had stepped to the stage for the commencement of the dance. As folks milled around talking and anticipating this very popular part of the evening, the sound of a lone fiddle drifted through the room and all eyes and ears turned to the stage. Joe Delk was the musician and the tune was none other than the National Anthem. Within moments the crowd was hushed and standing. By the end of the first stanza, part of the crowd was softly singing the words, and, by the end of the second, there were few dry eyes in the hall. By that time, it was just Mr. Delk and his fiddle in the spotlight. The mesmerized crowd might as well have been a hundred miles away as he concentrated and played. When the last note lifted away and was gone, the band struck up a two step and the dance began.

Wow! What a powerful performance it was. What an unsuspected gift and what an interesting response that came from the audience. Those who were there to witness such an unexpected salute to America will likely never forget it. For a moment, there was a unity of spirit and a remembrance of values. There was an emotion that was totally unexpected. It was an emotion that words didn’t prompt. It was a purely impromptu reminder that hope doesn’t come in packaged words or the pledge of new ideas. It comes from honest human endeavors that are self driven. It comes from the heart and it comes from independent and free Americans who still think for themselves. Thank you, Joe Delk. Your gift was special . . .

It's The Pitts: Picture This

Lee Pitts

If I didn't make my living as a writer I think I'd like to be a cartoonist. There's really only one thing holding me back: I can't draw. (There are some critics who say I can't write either but that hasn't stopped me from being a writer!)

I am a cartoon aficionado and the day Gary Larson retired his Far Side cartoon was a very sad day indeed around our place. I try reading Sunday comics but newspapers are downsizing and the first thing they are cutting are the cartoon strips. As a result, they aren't as good as they used to be. I can read eight pages of cartoon strips in any major Sunday paper and barely break a smile. That's why I admire the work of cowboy cartoonists like Jerry Palen, Mad Jack Hanks and Earl. It's a great gift, this ability to make a person smile, and rare is the week that I don't get a good guffaw from their cartoons.

Although I'm no artist I could "draw" upon my experiences to come up with punch lines. So, I've come up with what I call do-it-yourself cartoons for publications on austerity budgets. I supply the words and you do the art. For example, draw a picture of a feedlot steer with a packinghouse in the background. Here's the caption: "Hmm, they bring us all the delicious food we can eat and we don't have to do any work. I wonder, what's the catch?"

Got the idea? Good. Here's another. Under the heading, "Why people don't have elephants for pets," draw a picture of an urbanite picking up after her petite pooch with a little plastic bag. Or how about this one: Two chimpanzees are sitting in a tree at a zoo watching a PETA protest. One chimp asks, "Where did we go wrong? Too much inbreeding, perhaps?" In a similar vein, be sure to draw this one in color. A hunter is wearing camo pants, camo shirt, camo jacket, a camo gun, camouflage boots... with a bright orange vest and orange cap. One deer says to the other, "Does he think we're color blind? The idiot must have dressed himself this morning."

Sharpen your pencil and let's try a few farm animal cartoons. A young bull calf, with an ear tag in each ear and a nose ring turns to his buddy and says, "I wanted a tongue stud but my mother wouldn't let me." Here's another. At that moment when a preg-checking vet has his arm in a cow up to his shoulder the cow says, "If that pervert would just ask, I'd be glad to pee on a stick." On a related matter, draw a picture of a masculine bull smoking a cigarette with the caption: "I'd like to kill the fella who invented artificial insemination." I can also envision a cow after being unloaded on a new ranch turning to the realtor and saying, "I was hoping for it to be all on one level, something with a view, a pool perhaps, less rocks and more grass." For the more cosmopolitan crowd you could draw a Kobe beef animal in Japan being fed Bud Light under the caption, "Kinda defeats the purpose, don't you think?"

Perhaps you are better at drawing birds. If so, under your picture of a group of geese flying in V formation add this caption: "Would a little variety be too much to ask? For once could we fly in a B, or maybe even a D?" Or, two turkeys playing Russian Roulette on the day before Thanksgiving. "Go ahead," one says. "What have you got to lose?" Here's a bird cartoon I think cattle ranchers might get a laugh out of: two buzzards are sitting in the middle of the road sharing a road kill. One buzzard turns to the other and says, "Do you notice that after awhile it all starts to taste like chicken?"

The following cartoons are for advanced artists only. Two hunting dogs are baying at the base of a tree and looking down on them is the biggest, most ferocious mountain lion in the world. One dog turns to the other and says, "You ever get the idea we might be barking up the wrong tree?" Or how about a pack of wolves dining on Wyoming lamb with the caption, "Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?"

Now you know why I'm a writer and not a cartoonist. If none of these cartoons failed to bring a smile to your face don't blame me. After all, you drew your own conclusions.

Thousands turn out for King's funeral - video

Second Amendment Protects All Americans, Supreme Court Told

Gun rights advocates have sketched out arguments they hope will convince the U.S. Supreme Court that no state can be a Second Amendment-free zone. In a 73-page legal brief filed on Monday, the groups representing four Chicago residents asked the Supreme Court to overturn the city's extremely restrictive firearms laws, some of the most severe in the nation. "It is unfathomable that the states are constitutionally limited in their regulation of medical decisions or intimate relations, because these matters touch upon personal autonomy, but are unrestrained in their ability to trample upon the enumerated right to arms designed to enable self-preservation," says the brief, written by attorneys Alan Gura of Alexandria, Va. and David Sigale of Lisle, Ill. on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation. Translation: Even though abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, courts have nevertheless declared it to be a fundamental right. Shouldn't the Second Amendment, which originally was requested by more states than the First Amendment was, receive at least equal treatment? Much of the brief -- the vast majority, in fact -- reads more like a history textbook than appellate writing. Gura and his co-counsel use that space to recount, in exhaustive detail, how the post-Civil War measure called the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to protect anyone's fundamental rights from being infringed by state governments. Their argument, which I wrote about last month, traces the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges or immunities" concept through American history and offers contemporaneous evidence that it protects gun rights against infringements by states and municipalities...read more

You can view the petitioners brief here.

The EPA's Paranoid Style

Dr. Alan Carlin, a 37-year agency veteran, was muzzled earlier this spring. Dr. Carlin offered a report poking holes in the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming. His superior, Al McGartland, complained the paper did "not help the legal or policy case" for Team Obama's decision to regulate carbon, told him to "move on to other issues," and forbade him from discussing it outside the office. Now come Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, married, and each with more than 20 years tenure at the EPA. They too are dismayed by Democrats' approach to climate, though for different reasons. Dedicated environmentalists, they created a 10-minute YouTube video arguing Congress's convoluted cap-and-trade bill was a "big lie" that is too weak. They instead propose imposing taxes, lots of them, on fossil fuels. Their views aren't new. Earlier this year the duo sent a letter to Congress making the same case. The video has been out for some time, and the pair got clearance from the EPA before they ran it. Mr. Zabel in the opening notes that "nothing in this video is intended to represent the views of EPA or the Obama Administration." It wasn't until the couple ran a high-profile op-ed in the Washington Post in October that the agency nerved out. Meet the Obama EPA, and its new suppressing, paranoid style. It was the president who once ripped the Bush administration for silencing scientific critics, and it was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson who began her tenure promising the agency would operate like a "fishbowl." But that was before EPA realized how vastly unpopular is its plan to usurp Congress and regulate the economy on its own, based on its bizarre finding that CO2 is a danger to health. Faced with unhappy members of Congress, dissenting employees, an opposition business community, and a backlash on the science, Mrs. Jackson is no longer a fan of open government. The goal now is to rush the agency regulations through as quickly as possible, squashing threatening dissent and deflecting troublesome questions...read more

EPA Workers Question Obama Gag Order - Video

Lawsuit Abuse Charge by Western Lawmakers Enrages Enviro Groups

Poor government oversight has allowed advocacy groups to squander taxpayer money on frivolous lawsuits that drain the budgets of federal land management agencies without the knowledge of the public or Congress, a group of Western lawmakers told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter released this week. Specifically, members of the Congressional Western Caucus charge that environmental groups have used the Equal Access to Justice Act to win back millions of dollars in attorney fees for lawsuits filed against the Forest Service and other federal agencies. But environmental groups, while endorsing recommendations for greater public access to EAJA records, said the research supporting the claims, done by a Wyoming lawyer and former Interior special assistant in the Reagan administration, is spurious and greatly misrepresents the share of funding they receive under the act and a similar program called the Justice Fund. Budd-Falen's research, however, remains posted on the Web site of the Idaho-based Western Legacy Alliance, which helped fund her work and lobbied the Congressional Western Caucus to investigate. Alliance member Jeff Faulkner, in a statement, went so far as to accuse environmentalists of "shaking down federal government programs so they can access taxpayer dollars to fund their radical agendas." But Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of eight groups targeted by Budd-Falen and the Congressional Western Caucus, said the claims against the nonprofit groups are outrageous. Among other things, Suckling said the letter's claim of EAJA abuse by environmental groups "is sheer nonsense, as it fails to cite even a single example of abuse."...read more

Go here to view the lawmakers' letter.

Should private cattle graze on public lands?

It's a battle that has ranchers pitted against environmentalists. An ongoing legal dispute over grazing practices in the Malheur National Forest has many Eastern Oregon ranchers worried about their livelihoods and the future of their ranches. Environmentalists are concerned grazing on certain parts of the public forest is degrading habitat for threatened fish. The dispute was sparked by a lawsuit filed by the Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association against the U.S. Forest Service. ONDA would like to see the Forest Service remove grazing in certain areas along Forest Service land along the John Day River, an area important for steelhead habitat. The ranchers found out the only way to have a voice in the debate was to file a lawsuit. So, they are also suing the Forest Service, whose representatives did not return calls for comment. Brent Fenty, the executive director of ONDA, said grazing ruins riparian areas, kills cover that shades streams and keeps the water temperatures low, which fish need to survive. “For us, it's straightforward,” Fenty said. “Our expectation in the short term is we want the U.S. Forest Service, charged with managing grazing, to comply with their own laws and regulations to protect stream health and native fish. In the long term, we hope to protect the most important areas of fish habitat.”...read more

A Leviathan of Land

...With this reinvigorated discussion of how big is too big, it is worthwhile to remind Americans of just how massive the Federal government already was before our current woes began. There are few more striking measures of the government’s size than the land mass of the Federal estate. The vast majority of federal lands fall within one of four agencies: the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service. At over 258 million acres, the Bureau of Land Management alone is bigger than France and Germany combined. When combined with the other aforementioned agencies, the land area is equal that of ten European nations as shown in the accompanying graph...The Foundry

Pine Beetles Not a Good Reason for Climate Change Legislation

Last week Senator Max Baucus joined several mainstream environmentalists in adding pine beetle outbreaks to a long list of things that can be blamed on climate change. Baucus is referring to the recent breakout of pine beetles in Montana. These insects bore their way into pine tress and lay their eggs inside the tree; the larvae of the beetles feed off the bark and this eventually kills the trees. The beetles thrive in climates that are dryer and warmer than usual for that region, and this has led environmentalists to link the outbreaks in the Western United States and Canada to climate change; many have called it a climate change catastrophe. However if we look at the history of outbreaks in the western mountain states, the climate change argument is on very shaky ground. Montana has been hit by pine beetle outbreaks on and off since the 1920s so this is nothing new for the state. An even earlier outbreak is documented from 1894 to 1908 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Since Co2 concentrations were considerably lower around the turn of the century, it does not follow that a reduction in Co2 will eliminate the pine beetle problem. According to a recent study done by the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, these outbreaks should not be regarded as a crisis: “There is no evidence to support the idea that current levels of bark beetle or defoliator activity in Colorado’s lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests are unnaturally high” and that “Historic photos and tree-ring evidence also document extensive insect outbreaks prior to the 20th century.” Furthermore, there are more factors than just temperature which cause outbreaks of pine beetles. According to Dave Thom, a natural resources specialist with the Black Hills National Forest, the density of the forest is a major contributor, “As the trees get more dense, they are less able to resist bark-beetle infestations. When you take increasingly dense trees and add the drought, the intersection causes weakened trees that are more susceptible to beetle attack. That phenomenon can happen regardless of a few degrees of change in climate, measured on a global scale.”...read more

And why are our Forests so dense? Because of environmental lawsuits and policies instigated by the same environmentalists who are now blaming the infestation on global warming.

Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions

The Earth’s oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday’s issue of Nature. The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable “carbon sink” as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans’ chemistry, the study found. “The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb,” said the study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology...read more

A climate threat, rising from the soil

Across a patch of pineapples shrouded in smoke, Idris Hadrianyani battled a menace that has left his family sleepless and sick -- and has wrought as much damage on the planet as has exhaust from all the cars and trucks in the United States. Against the advancing flames, he waved a hose with a handmade nozzle confected from a plastic soda bottle. The lopsided struggle is part of a battle against one of the biggest, and most overlooked, causes of global climate change: a vast and often smoldering layer of coal-black peat that has made Indonesia the world's third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States. Peat, formed over thousands of years from decomposed trees, grass and scrub, contains gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide, which used to stay locked in the ground. It is now drying and disintegrating, as once-soggy swamps are shorn of trees and drained by canals, and when it burns, carbon dioxide gushes into the atmosphere. Amid often-acrimonious debate over how to curb global warming ahead of a critical U.N. conference next month in Copenhagen, "peat is the big elephant in the room," said Agus Purnomo, head of Indonesia's National Council on Climate Change...read more

Fight Climate Change With Free Condoms, U.N. Population Fund Says

The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday. The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions." "As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the report said. On Wednesday, one analyst criticized the U.N. Population Fund's pronouncements as alarmist and unhelpful. "It requires a major leap of imagination to believe that free condoms will cool down the climate," said Caroline Boin, a policy analyst at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. She also questioned earlier efforts by the agency to control the world's population...read more

Corn-based ethanol producer says it will soon compete with gasoline

The nation's largest producer of corn-based ethanol said it has slashed the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs and that it will be able to compete with gasoline in two years. POET, which currently produces 1.5 billion gallons a year of ethanol from corn, said its one-year old pilot plant has reduced the cost of making ethanol from corn cobs from $4.13 a gallon to $2.35 a gallon by cutting capital costs and using an improved "cocktail" of enzymes. Moreover the company said that it can use a byproduct called lignin as fuel and that it would provide all the energy needed for the cellulosic plant as well as 80 percent of the energy that would be needed by a conventional corn-based distillery making twice the amount of ethanol. "Two years ago I would have told you this was a long shot," said POET chief executive Jeff Broin. "Now I'll tell you that we will produce cellulosic ethanol commercially in two years." POET launched the cellulosic ethanol pilot plant one year ago in Scotland, South Dakota and Broin said that the plant had figured out how to cut capital costs by 40 percent, cut the amount of energy used in pre-treatment stages and lowered enzyme costs...read more

Studying Fertilizers To Cut Greenhouse Gases

gricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have found that using alternative types of fertilizers can cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, at least in one part of the country. They are currently examining whether the alternatives offer similar benefits nationwide. Nitrogen fertilizers are often a necessity for ensuring sufficient crop yields, but their use leads to release of nitrous oxide, a major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Fertilizer use is one reason an estimated 78 percent of the nation's nitrous oxide emissions come from agriculture, according to Ardell Halvorson, a soil scientist at the ARS Soil Plant Nutrient Research Laboratory in Fort Collins, Colo. Halvorson compared nitrous oxide emissions from corn fields treated with either a conventional nitrogen fertilizer (urea) or either of two specially formulated urea fertilizers-one with "controlled release" polymer-coated pellets, and the other with inhibitors added to "stabilize" the urea to keep more of it in the soil as ammonium for a longer period. In a two-year experiment at Fort Collins, he collected the emissions using static vented chambers, similar to small "pillbox" structures placed over the soil. He chose a no-till cropping system because it's known to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He found that the controlled-release fertilizer cut nitrous oxide emissions by a third, and that the stabilized fertilizer cut them almost in half...read more

Fed court upholds Maine's trapping regulations concerning Canada lynx species

A federal court ruling on Tuesday upheld Maine's trapping regulations by denying a request from two animal welfare organizations for a permanent injunction because they failed to prove Canada lynx as a species is irreparably harmed under the regulations. The ruling from U.S. District Court Chief Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. came nearly 15 months after the Animal Welfare Institute and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine filed the case against Roland D. Martin, commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. "The department and the Office of the Maine Attorney General are pleased that Chief Judge Woodcock let stand Maine trapping regulations, and rejected claims that trapping is detrimental to the Canada lynx species," department spokeswoman Deborah Turcotte wrote in a report Thursday evening...read more

‘The Light of Day’ Exposes the Green Movement’s Roots in Tyranny

This book, by emerging author James Byrd, paints a telling portrait of the true agenda of the Green Movement. It successfully exposes the underlying agenda of collective power in the hands of the State; at the expense of the individual. Mr. Byrd creates a world of dynamic characters, their interrelations, and the societies in which they are cast. It is a powerful first book, by an author who has a firm grasp of the way in which an oppressive government uses propaganda and fear to control the general population. The Light of Day is the story of Jeff O’Hara and his struggle for personal freedom and the realization that the things most worth having sometimes require the greatest sacrifice. The Light of Day is a must read for anyone who is concerned with the veracity and motives of the modern environmental movement. The reader will find themselves cast into a world that may not be far off, where the needs of the individual are superseded by the ‘virtues’ of nature. It is a gripping first novel and a testament to the integrity of the human spirit...read more

U.S. food safety likely to get overhaul in 2010

A U.S. Senate committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to increase government oversight of food safety but the first significant overhaul in 50 years may not happen until 2010. Pressure to overhaul the food safety system has grown following several high-profile outbreaks involving lettuce, peppers, peanuts and spinach since 2006 that have sickened thousands and killed several. The Senate bill would expand U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of the food supply and shift its focus toward preventing, rather than reacting, to foodborne outbreaks. FDA would have the power to order recalls, increase inspection rates and require all facilities to have a food safety plan. The Senate bill is similar to legislation passed by the House in July in many key areas. One area where they differ is the Senate bill does not include a yearly fee to help pay for the increased oversight...read more

Idaho Power's cloud seeding efforts keep water flowing over dams

Cloud seeding once was seen similar to well divining, medicine shows and miracle healers. But today Idaho Power Co. is investing up to $1 million to seed the clouds above Idaho's mountains - in hopes of increasing the snowpack that holds the water that will drive the hydroelectric turbines to produce the cheapest power the company can get. The Boise utility is not alone. Eastern Idaho counties and businesses have put together a coalition to pay for cloud seeding in the Upper Snake River Basin. They estimate their limited efforts already have increased the snowpack there by 7 percent - about half as much as Idaho Power hopes for. "I feel really good about it," said Paul Romrell, a Fremont County commissioner who heads the coalition. "Our reservoirs levels are in better condition than they've been in for years." The basic technology has been around for a while. Silver iodide is sprayed into the clouds, pulling the moisture out to form ice crystals that drop and fall on the earth as snow or rain...read more

Mad Science? Growing Meat Without Animals

Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep an actual chicken. And in fact scientists have since figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock. Pork chops or burgers cultivated in labs could eliminate contamination problems that regularly generate headlines these days, as well as address environmental concerns that come with industrial livestock farms. To grow meat in labs from satellite cells, the researchers suggested current tissue-engineering techniques, where stem cells are often embedded in synthetic three-dimensional biodegradable matrixes that can present the chemical and physical environments that cells need to develop properly. Other key factors would involve electrically stimulating and mechanically stretching the muscles to exercise them, helping them mature properly, and perhaps growing other cells alongside the satellite cells to provide necessary molecular cues. So far past scientists have grown only small nuggets of skeletal muscle, about half the size of a thumbnail. Such tidbits could be used in sauces or pizzas, Post and colleagues explained recently in the online edition of the journal Trends in Food Science & Technology, but creating a steak would demand larger-scale production...read more

Song Of The Day #185

This morning on Ranch Radio is Ernest Tubb & Red Foley and their 1952 recording of Too Old To Cut The Mustard.

It's available on the 4 disc box set Texas Troubadour (99 songs and a booklet for $25.98).

Albert Perez 1922-2009

ALBUQUERQUE — And the Lord said, “Good job, my shepherd — now come on home.” Friday, Nov. 13, 2009.
It is a sad day for the Albert Perez family — but what a great day in Heaven. There, it’s just breaking daylight. The sky is magenta, pickup engines are being revved, helicopter blades are starting their roll, cowboys are saddled up on fresh horses. Laughter and raucous conversation fill the chilly air. This could be the best coyote hunt ever. And life will continue on here, as it should, but not without dear memories held closely and safely to our hearts. Albert Perez had many loves — family, friends, sheep, ranching, rain (damn, it’s dry), sheep, hunting, fishing, sports (let’s go Aggies!), sheep, a good day’s work, bologna on white bread (again, Albert?), Corinne’s roast leg of lamb, sheep; and one deep, abiding hate most worthy of mention — any live coyote.
Albert was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., on May 28, 1922, to parents Ramon and Ysaura Perez. The family moved to New Mexico in 1927, where they began assembling ranches near Yeso, Pastura, and Pintada. Here Albert’s siblings, Anna, Carmen, Ramon, and Alice were born. At the age of seven, Albert was already camping with sheep bands. He attended school in a one-room schoolhouse in Buchanan and in Vaughn, where he graduated from high school in 1941, then joined uncles, Narciso and Manuel, and a couple other hired hands in fencing the entire ranch. He left the ranch to attend New Mexico A&M (now NMSU) for a short time, but returned when World War II began. Albert met Corinne Ribera, the light of his life, when his sister brought her out to the ranch from Albuquerque to ride horses. They married on Aug. 30, 1947, and continued with a partnership, friendship, and love that lasted 62 years. After living in Flagstaff for a short time, the couple moved to the ranch at Pintada, and proceeded to raise their family. Eventually they moved to Vaughn, where Albert was a longtime member of the Vaughn School Board. In addition, Albert was chairman of the Guadalupe County Soil and Water Conservation District for 30 years, and was honored with the New Mexico Wool Growers’ 2000 Sheepman of the Year. Albert was the consummate rancher and steward of the land. As with any good shepherd, the care of his livestock and family came first, his pasture and water shortly behind. He led by example — his life, his hearty laugh (AhhOOOF!), his honor and love are all the lessons we need carry on. Adios y a Dios, Alberto.
Albert is survived by his wife of 62 years, Corinne; son Albert (Tibo) Perez, and wife, Robin, of Taos; son, Narciso Perez, of Albuquerque; daughter, Cambria Masci, and husband, Greg, of Gallup; daughter, Pier, and husband, Lane, of San Diego; grandchildren, Cassidy Nunn, and husband, James, of Montrose, Colo., Kendall Perez, of Greeley, Colo., Sean Perez, of Las Cruces, and Giuliano Masci, of Gallup; sisters, Anna Osle, of Albuquerque, and Alice Perez, of Vaughn; and numerous nieces, nephews, in-laws, out-laws, and other beautiful friends he thought of as family. In addition to his parents, Ramon and Ysaura, Albert was preceded in death by his brother, Ramon, and a sister, Carmen.
Pallbearers will be Vincent Perez, Dominic Perez, Bruce Dereta, Frank Perez, John Spensieri and Carlos Armendariz. Honorary pallbearers are Mannie Aguilar, Alfredo Flores, Charlie Serrano, Butch Del Curto, Gino Lujan, Jack Achen, Jim Sachse, Earl Sena, Sec Rivera, Brahaim Hindi Sr., Alex Gazolas, Norbert Archibeque, Andy Cordova, Charles Schoolcraft, Johnny Madril and Ernest Perez. Rosary will be Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009, at 7 p.m., at French Mortuary, 10500 Lomas Blvd., Albuquerque. Funeral services are scheduled for Friday, Nov. 20, 2009, at 10 a.m., at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Vaughn. Please visit our online guestbook for Albert at RememberTheirStory.com.

Feds buy green cars, auction rejects

If you missed out on Washington's cash incentive program to trade in your old clunker, Uncle Sam still has a deal for you: The government will sell you rejects from its own fleet, even as it makes dealers scrap all those old cars that were collected from the public. The sale of the federal castoffs at auction is nothing new; deals for the consumer mean income for the government. But in swapping out old government cars for new models under the economic stimulus package, officials also are claiming environmental benefits that don't add up. The General Services Administration used stimulus money to buy 17,246 new vehicles, including more than 3,000 hybrids, for an impressive 40 percent improvement in fuel efficiency over the old models, the agency says. It said that translates into a decline of 334 million pounds of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the next seven years, the difference between the emission levels of the old cars and their replacements. There's no question the federal fleet is greener. But the environmental claim doesn't take into account that most of the old wheels still will be on the roads, driven by people who bought them at auction...read more

What a nice image this provides: Feds drive around in shiny new vehicles while the public makes due with old clunkers.

I'd say mighty typical of what's happening today.

EPA, BLM dispute slows progress on Superfund site

Bureaucratic snags threaten to slow cleanup of the state's dirtiest abandoned mine, a Superfund site in southern Oregon that leaches 5 million gallons of fish-killing, acid rock drainage into nearby creeks each year. The Formosa mine, a source of copper and zinc until 1993, is on a mix of private and public land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management about 25 miles south of Roseburg. The BLM says none of the contamination comes from its land, which includes thousands of feet of mine tunnels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, overseeing the site under the federal Superfund cleanup program, says it's clear that a significant portion does. The EPA won't go forward with the testing needed to begin cleanup on the BLM's portion of the land without the BLM agreeing to pay for it. But the BLM won't agree to pay, saying doing so could set a precedent and put the agency on the hook for cleanup costs estimated to run up to $50 million. The impasse looks likely to delay testing on the BLM land and related cleanup work by at least two years, said Larry Tuttle, an activist who helped put Formosa on the Superfund list in 2007 after a 13-year battle to get it cleaned up...read more

We certainly can't set a precedent that a federal agency must pay to clean up it's own mess. No, no, that money is for those shiny new cars.

Forest Service should change firefighting policies, report says

Sharply questioning the U.S. Forest Service's aggressiveness, the Los Angeles County Fire Department says in a report on the deadly Station fire that the federal agency should change its policies to allow night flying by water-dropping helicopters and make greater use of local reinforcements to attack any blaze in the Angeles National Forest. In the report, a review of the first five days of the Station fire, County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman urges the Board of Supervisors to lobby the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Congress to alter the Forest Service's practices to ensure "a timely appropriate response to wildfires" in the Angeles. The report suggests that a fiercer air assault by the Forest Service -- and by the county at one crucial point -- might have kept the Station fire small. It says the Forest Service must change its approach from "taking what the fire will give us" -- a defensive posture -- to "hitting the fire early and hard." Unlike the county and Los Angeles city fire departments, the Forest Service does not deploy water-dropping aircraft at night, because of safety worries. County helicopters helped contain the Station fire to 15 acres during its first day, after it broke out at the edge of the forest above La Cañada Flintridge. Because the fire was burning on federal land, the Forest Service later took control and the choppers were sent home. After Forest Service commanders rolled back their response, the fire began to spread overnight, and no helicopters returned until about two hours after first light on the critical second day, The Times has reported...read more