Interior Sec., Ariz. congressman visit border

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (gree-HAHL'-vuh) of Arizona assessed the progress of homeland security projects at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Mexican border Saturday. Both men met with employees of the Interior and Homeland Security Departments and inspected border fencing and surveillance towers at the national park. When border security projects are completed, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument will host about five miles of pedestrian fence, 26 miles of vehicle barriers and 10 surveillance towers with cameras and relay systems that make up the virtual fence project. Salazar told reporters that deterring unlawful activity along the border is the best option for preventing damage to cultural and natural resources and minimizing risks to park visitors and employees. AP

That doesn't tell us much, however this article says:

Salazar said the issues are complex. "We have issues of drug cartels and lawlessness that need to be addressed. We have issues of security along the border and we need to make sure we're protecting our lands for people in the United States." Salazar said many improvements have been made since Eggle's death. Vehicle barricades, for instance, have drastically reduces(sic)immigrant traffic, he said. But he and Grijalva said they believe more needs to be done to improve security for those who work in the park.

So issues pertaining to drug cartels, lawlessness and border security "need to be addressed." I can only interpret that to mean those activities are still occurring and haven't been addressed. He didn't, after all, say these illegal activities "have been addressed." This confirms what the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, The Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce and rancher/author Steve Wilmeth have been trying to tell Senator Bingaman. Keep in mind 95% of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has been wilderness since the 70's.

Salazar says vehicle barriers have "drastically" reduced "immigrant traffic" but that "more needs to be done" to protect monument employees. To that I have several questions: If the vehicle barriers have "drastically" reduced the traffickers why must more be done? Perhaps it wasn't so drastic after all. And why no mention of the federal agency that provides for out border security, the Border Patrol? Is it because they are not allowed to operate in the monument because of it's wilderness designation? Mr. Secretary, is'nt it wilderness that makes this issue so "complex"?

Big Bend binational park plan stirs again

A proposal first touted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create an international park along the U.S.-Mexico border may be closer to reality than ever before. Secretary of the Interior Ken Sa lazar said Friday that his department is steadily working toward a viable plan to turn the sprawling Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande in West Texas into a unified park across the border. "The vision President Roosevelt had back in 1935 É is still true today," Salazar said during a visit to the 801,000-acre desert park. "We have our eyes on Big Bend National Park." But the goal -- a binational park that preserves both biologically sensitive lands and wildlife migration paths and allows easy tourist access from one park to the other -- has some big obstacles in its path, including issues of immigration and border security, the secretary said...read more

COMMENT: It will be interesting to see how they work out the border security issues. A Park, unlike a Monument, takes an act of Congress so the Texas delegation will get to weigh in on this.

Court favors sage grouse in Mont. grazing lawsuit

The U.S. Forest Service must re-examine how livestock grazing affects sage grouse habitat in southwestern Montana after an appeals court ruled its original assessment was not reliable. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Forest Service Tuesday to prepare a new environmental assessment for its livestock allotments in the 48,000-acre Antelope Basin. Tens of thousands of acres have been identified as sage grouse habitat, but few of the chicken-sized birds can be found there. Michael Garrity, of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, says the ruling means the Forest Service must ensure that grazing will not harm the sage grouse's recovery. The Forest Service did not immediately return a call for comment. AP

Florida on guard against giant snails

They're not as menacing as Burmese pythons proliferating in the Everglades, but giant African snails are targets of the government too. The invasive mollusks are considered a major plant pest and a potential public health threat because they can spread diseases, including meningitis. Now federal and state authorities are seeking to prevent the large, slimy, shell-toting snails from reestablishing themselves in Florida. Once established, agricultural officials said, the mollusks "can create a giant swath of destruction." Known as Achatina fulica, the species is one of the world's largest land snails. They can grow to 8 inches long and 4.5 inches in diameter. It is illegal to import the snails into the United States without a permit. The snail has not been an issue in Florida for several decades. In 1966, a child smuggled three snails into the Miami area as pets. His grandmother later released them into a garden, and by 1973, the population had grown to more than 18,000, officials said. Over the next decade, officials spent more than $1 million to eradicate them. That effort is considered the only successful giant African snail eradication on record...read more

UN climate change claims on rainforests were wrong, study suggests

A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation. The findings appear to disprove claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland. The IPCC has already faced intense criticism for using a report by environmental lobby group WWF as the basis for its claim, which in turn had failed to cite the original source of the research. Scientists have now spoken out against the 40% figure contained in the IPCC report and say that recent research is suggesting that the rainforest may be more resilient to climate change than had been previously thought. Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a member of the IPCC, said the latest study on the Amazon's response to drought highlighted the errors in the previous claims. He said: "The way the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct." The new study, conducted by researchers at Boston University and published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data of the Amazon rainforest to study the effects of a major drought in 2005 when rainfall fell to the lowest level in living memory...read more

Government rebuked over global warming nursery rhyme adverts

Two nursery rhyme adverts commissioned by the Government to raise awareness of climate change have been banned for overstating the risks. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the adverts – which were based on the children's poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub – made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming. In definitely asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought the adverts went beyond mainstream scientific consensus, the watchdog said. The two posters created on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change juxtaposed adapted extracts from the nursery rhymes with prose warnings about the dangers of global warning. One began: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.” Beneath was written: “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.” The second advert read: "Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub — a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.” It was captioned: “Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”...read more

Green Jobs Mirage

The Department of Energy has spent just 7 percent of the $37 billion it received from the stimulus for clean-energy subsidies, and already the Obama administration is pushing for another billion-dollar bailout for "green" industries. Last week in Georgia, the president unveiled a $6 billion "cash for caulkers" program, which would defray the cost of energy-efficiency retrofits in homes and businesses. He said the program is a good idea because these "green jobs" can't be outsourced. To illustrate his point, Mr. Obama claimed, "It's very hard to ship windows from China." It's not as hard as the president thinks. With a simple Google search, I quickly found the Guang Zhou Hans Building Materials Technology Co. Ltd., Zhongshan Good Life Sun Sheet Co. Ltd. and Zehao Windows Manufactory Ltd., all of which export energy-efficient windows for the international market. This wouldn't be the first time the Obama administration used taxpayer money to send green jobs overseas. According to a recent report from the American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop, 1,219 of the 1,807 wind turbines funded by the stimulus were manufactured in foreign countries. The report prompted four Democratic senators to send a letter last week to the Obama administration demanding a cessation of the wind-energy grants. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Thursday to investigate the slow pace of stimulus spending on green energy. Patricia Denton, testifying on behalf the Government Accountability Office, told the senators that the backlog in DOE's environmental outlays was caused by - wait for it - environmental regulations...read more

The Wind-Energy Cover-Up

Barack Obama promised many things on his way into office. Key among these was transparency and a vow to banish lobbyists from insider roles in the policy process. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute has confirmed that both promises are being aggressively violated. In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Obama told Americans on no fewer than eight occasions to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany" to see his model for successful "green jobs" policies, and what we should expect here. Some Spanish academics and experts on that country's wind- and solar-energy policies and outcomes took Mr. Obama up on his invitation, revealing Spain's policies to be economic and employment disasters. The political embarrassment to the administration was obvious, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asked about the Spanish study at a press conference, and the president hurriedly substituted Denmark for Spain in his stump speech. Team Obama was not amused, and they decided to do something about it. The crew that campaigned on change pulled out the oldest plan in the book - attack the messenger. The U.S. government's response to foreign academics, assessing the impact in their own country of that foreign government's policies, was to come after them in a move that internal e-mails say was unprecedented. They also show it was coordinated with the lobbyists for "Big Wind" and the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP). What emerged was an ideological hodgepodge of curious and unsupported claims published under the name of two young non-economist wind advocates. These taxpayer-funded employees offered green dogma in oddly strident terms and, along the way, a senior Obama political appointee may well have misled Congress...read more

Oregon high court says Klamath Basin farmers may be entitled to payment over water

The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday kept alive claims by Klamath Basin farmers that the federal government should pay them for shutting off water to crops in 2001 to help protected fish survive a drought. A federal appeals court had asked the state Supreme Court for guidance on a 1905 state law that gave water to the Klamath Reclamation Project, a federal irrigation project. The state Supreme Court decided that while the law does not give farmers a property interest in the federally owned water, it does not preclude it either. To resolve the issue, federal courts need to look to water contracts between farmers and the Klamath Reclamation Project, the Oregon justices said. In 2001, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut off water to most of the 200,000 acres of the project straddling the Oregon-California border to maintain water in its main reservoir for endangered suckers and in the Klamath River for threatened salmon. Farmers face the prospect of another shut-off this year, with snowpacks and reservoir levels far below normal. Bill Ganong, a lawyer for the farmers, said they were happy that the Oregon justices agreed that the water could not be separated from ownership of the land, and that they laid out a roadmap for federal courts to consider the contracts in deciding the property interest issue. The Court of Federal Claims had rejected the farmers' case, saying they had no property interest in the water. Farmers appealed. The case goes back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District. To be decided are whether the farmers have a property right to the water, and if so, how much money it's worth...read more

Water shortages may hit northern Rockies

Much of the nation may be snow-weary, but farmers and ranchers who rely on winter snowpack in the northern Rockies for irrigation during the dry months of the growing season could face water shortages this summer unless more snow arrives soon. Wet spring and summer conditions in 2008 and 2009 helped pull the region out of a decade-long drought, but now hydrologists are once again reporting below-average mountain snowpack throughout much of the northern Rockies. As of early March, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, snowpack was at or near record low levels in many locations from northeastern Utah northward along and near the Idaho border with Montana and Wyoming. In Spokane, Wash., the winter of 2009-10 has been the least snowy on record, with a mere 13.7 inches of snowfall recorded so far, according to the National Weather Service. The city usually averages more than 46 inches of snow each winter. Experts are concerned that it could be a long summer for irrigators unless the region experiences the kinds of snowfalls that have buried other parts of the country in recent weeks...read more

Song Of The Day #261

Ranch Radio will get your heart started and your foot tappin' this Monday am with a song about how I could have been a rich man. It's by the bluegrass group Steep Canyon Rangers, is on this CD, and explains everything.

Yes, if Sweet Sharon had just pitched me a little slack I'd be a very wealthy man today.

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Maybe it's the boots and hat

by Julie Carter

Like a lot of cowboys, Blayke sometimes found himself supporting his cowboy habit with a real job.

This time it was working construction by day and riding colts at night. He had leased a place with a lighted arena near Colorado Springs, Colo. It allowed him to make some extra money riding the horses and it gave him a place to get away from the city chaos he endured all day in his job.

In the course of his work, he met a guy who invited him to dinner with some "high class doctors" at the famous five-star Broadmoor Resort. Blayke knew this was where "all the rich people hung out." He was advised to dress up for the evening.

True to his cowboy nature, he broke out the old Resistol Black Gold hat, starched up a white shirt, a new pair of Wranglers and even wore his best boots.

Even with the effort, he recognized at dinner that he was underdressed for the occasion.

The doctors, surgeons and more, were wearing "fancy suits and all had gals with them that were 15 years younger wearing furs and dinner dresses."

Blayke survived dinner, although it threatened to confound him with five forks, cloth napkins and fine china. After dinner, the men retired to a "smoking room" for cigars and brandy. Conversations centered on money and investments.

With a financial portfolio that totaled a modest checking account and some cash in his pocket, it didn't take Blayke long to head to a place he could feel at home. Sidling up to the bar, he ordered a shot of Crown. When he found out it was free, he had another.

Noting that the doctors had deserted "all those dressed-up gals," Blayke soon had plenty of lovely company sitting next to him drinking shots. Within the hour, they had kicked off their high heels, let their hair down, and had come "unstarched."

It was then Blayke's cowboy brain kicked in and he suggested they all go down to the Broadmoor Lake and go skinny dipping. The bartender, quite entertained by the cowboy and ladies, handed them a bottle as they headed to the water.

The party was going swimmingly, so to speak, until the security guard spotted them. When he headed their direction, they grabbed their clothes and outran him to the parking lot. They jumped in Blayke's pickup and raced away, finding a place down the street to pull over and get dressed.

Not ready to give up the party, they located a honky tonk and Blayke proudly escorted the gals inside, now dressed to the hilt in furs and wet hair.

One of them was even barefooted as she had forgotten to grab her shoes.

Blayke felt certain that would be last time the docs would desert their women to drink brandy and smoke cigars. Either way, it had worked well for him.

City gals

Jerry was the kind of cowboy that women and men alike would notice and recognize as the genuine article.

He always wore good boots, good hats and George Strait starched jeans. There was no mistaking him for anything but the real deal.

Women of all types were attracted to him. One time, responding to some friendly overtures from a citified lady lawyer, he told her up front that he was happy as a loner, but if she wanted to go along for the ride, she would go in his world.

No secrets from the onset, but after a while the lady began to miss the bright-light activities of her world. She suggested they go to some clubs, fancy restaurants or some shows.

All of this met with no action from Jerry.

Riding along in his truck one evening, sharing the current dating dilemma with his buddy, he made the comment that sometimes things just didn't work out between cowboys and city girls.

"You just can't please some women," he said. "I already took this gal to two bull-nut fries and a steer roping. What more could she want?"

And that is why women never fantasize about being swept off their feet by a CPA.

Julie, unstarched, can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net

It's The Pitts: Grandpa's Saddle

by Lee Pitts

A cowboy's life has always been defined by what he did with his most valued possession... his saddle. The greatest humiliation in life for a cowboy was to be broke and forced to sell his saddle. When an old cowboy retired it was a tradition that he would hang his saddle with a rope from a barn rafter and when he made it to the final buzzer in life his friends would plant him in the ground and sack his saddle.

I've always felt that the greatest compliment you could hand out in life was to give a person your saddle when you could no longer climb aboard. That's why my grandpa's centerfire rig is now enshrined in my home. Not that it is real pretty to look at or anything. There are no silver conchas on it or words that indicate he was the world champion of anything. To visitors my grandpa's saddle probably looks like any old piece of leather that had been drug underneath a horse or covered in calf scours. But it was the saddle my grandpa sat astride when he rode herd over our local rodeo and the one he tied to when he won the team roping at the county fair. I have a much treasured picture of me sitting in that saddle when I was just three years old. That saddle has always been much more to me than just something you threw over a horse's back and I don't care how broke I ever get you'll not see me selling it.

I'm ashamed to say I can't tell you who made my grandfather's saddle because the stamp of the craftsman was long ago worn shiny smooth, just like the seat and skirts. The flowers tooled in leather long ago lost their bloom. It could have been made by any number of countless saddle makers that made some towns famous, like Visalia, Leddy Brothers of Fort Worth or Capriola of Elko. Most western saddles carry the return address of a real cow town like Pueblo, Cheyenne, Miles City, El Paso or Ellensburg. For all I know my grandpa's saddle could just be a no-name brand that the maker wasn’t proud enough to put his name on, but it's still priceless to me.

Up until a few years ago I used my grandpa's saddle every week and although the wool lining is yellow from sweat, and patchy in places, I can honestly say that its cottonwood tree was always kind to both horse and rider. Cowboy's saddles were not always that way, you know? The first Western saddles were made in Mexico, out of rawhide that felt more like iron. It was said that a Mexican saddle could eat a hole into a horse's spine and a pair of leather breeches at the same time. A sore backed horse was said to be "branded with a map of Mexico."

I must admit my eyes get a little misty when I attend the funeral of an old cowpoke friend and his saddle has been placed front and center in the church. Fitting, I think, because that’s where most of them attended services. Under a big blue sky, riding a good pony sitting in their leather covered rocking chair.

The trade has progressed to the point that today's western saddle may even be more comfortable than a rocking chair, and certainly more expensive. A good saddle can still cost more than a month's wages and I don't know if that means cowboys are paid too little, or saddles cost too much? Knowing how much work goes into a good saddle I’d have to say it’s the former, and not the latter.

Whoever made my grandpa's saddle built it to last. The only new leather on it was put there by the local saddle maker. A stirrup leather broke during calving season and I took it in for repairs. The saddle maker, obviously from the old school, took one look at my well-worn saddle and said he'd have it ready the very next day. And he did. It seems he had an unwritten rule that cowboy's saddles always took precedence over those that belonged to dudes and recreational riders. The saddle maker also said he could tell from the cut-off saddle strings, wrapped horn, and spur tracks in the seat that the owner had been a cowboy with a lot of courage and character.

Song Of The Day #260

Our Gospel tune on Ranch Radio this Sunday morning is Be Still Moses by the bluegrass group Steep Canyon Rangers. Check out their CD here.

Wilderness On The Border? 12 Articles On Border Violence

Go here to see my previous posts on this issue.

Please keep in mind what I previously wrote:

All of this violence is to control routes into the U.S. for human and drug trafficking. So as you read these posts ask yourself: Why would anyone deem it in the public interest to designate Wilderness in close proximity to our southern border? Why limit the use of motorized vehicles and mechanical equipment by federal, state and local law enforcement on over 400 square miles of southern NM?

This series is followed by two additional posts: One about Salazar visiting a wilderness area thoroughly destroyed by illegal trafficking and the other is two video reports where you can actually hear the 911 calls from our citizens on a violent event and the other where you can hear the officers on our side of the border reporting on the event.

It's really a shame I'm having to post about this at all.

Mexican military copter over U.S. neighborhood The Zapata County sheriff Thursday was questioning why a Mexican military helicopter was hovering over homes on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. It was one of the more jarring incidents of the fourth week of border tensions sparked by drug killings, and rumors of such killings, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he'd reviewed photos of the chopper flown by armed personnel Tuesday over a residential area known as Falcon Heights-Falcon Village near the binational Falcon Lake, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line. He said the helicopter appeared to have the insignia of the Mexican navy. “It's always been said that the Mexican military does in fact ... that there have been incursions,” Gonzalez said. “But this is not New Mexico or Arizona. Here we've got a river; there's a boundary line. And then of course having Falcon Lake, Falcon Dam, it's a lot wider. It's not just a trickle of a river, it's an actual dam. You know where the boundary's at.” The sighting came amid ongoing fighting between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, Los Zetas. The mounting death toll and crisis of fear in cities across from the Texas border have drawn global attention, as has a news blackout in affected cities due to the kidnappings of eight Mexican journalists, at least one of whom was killed...

Perry: State Looking Into Mexican Border Incursion Gov. Rick Perry said Friday state and federal authorities are trying to get answers about the Mexican military helicopter that crossed the Texas-Mexico border late Wednesday afternoon. U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that a Mexican military helicopter crossed the border near Falcon Dam in Zapata County before returning to Mexico without landing. The Mexican army and navy are both involved in anti-drug trafficking operations in Mexican border cities. In a prepared statement Friday, Perry called for better communication between U.S. and Mexican authorities along the border. “As violence escalates in Mexican border cities, it’s critically important for Texas, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement to communicate and appropriately coordinate our efforts to combat border crime and protect legitimate cross-border trade and travel,” Perry said...

Photos released of Mexican helicopter flying over Falcon HeightsAuthorities have released photos showing a Mexican military helicopter flying on the American side of the border. Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo “Sigi” Gonzalez said the photos and eyewitness accounts prove helicopter flew unauthorized into American airspace on Tuesday evening. The alleged incursion happened near Falcon Dam in the rural community of Falcon Heights. Witnesses said the chopper had the Mexican navy logo, armed men inside and the cargo ramp down. The chopper reportedly spent at least 15 minutes in the area before crossing back into Mexico.

Mexican Helicopter Flies over S. Texas - US gave permission A Mexican military helicopter which flew low over rural south Texas earlier this week, alarming residents, had permission to be in US air space, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said today. The military helicopter, clearly marked with the insignia of the Mexican Navy, flew over Zapata County Texas Wednesday afternoon, alarming residents and lighting up the switchboard at local law enforcement offices. With the uptick in drug related violence in northern Mexico, and the alleged involvement of Mexican military personnel in some of that drug activity, the appearance of Mexican military aircraft over the U.S. prompts fears. "We were aware of it," Dovalina said of the Mexican helicopter's flight near Falcon Lake. "They notified the liaison between their government and our government, we gave them permission to cross over."...

Shooting linked to smuggling ring, police say A man shot multiple times Thursday evening at a Moreno Valley house where two others were killed may have been a victim of human smugglers' increasing violence against immigrants, authorities said Friday. The two shooting victims who died were found inside the house where police say undocumented immigrants were held while waiting for their families to pay for their release. The wounded man was able to escape and ran to a cell phone store nearly two miles away. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they are seeing a preference among smugglers for holding immigrants in the Inland region rather Los Angeles. The officials say smugglers in general are becoming more violent and are demanding more money once the immigrants have been brought across the border...

U.S. kidnapping cases sheds light on roots of current Gulf-Zeta tensions Imurias Machado Treviño allegedly ran with a crew that kidnapped, beat and in at least one case killed drug dealers operating in Hidalgo County. Taking their orders from a top Zeta lieutenant, the group has been linked to seven abductions between August and October 2008, a stockpile of weapons found in Mission and a broad-daylight shootout in a San Juan medical plaza — all part of a campaign to expand the drug trafficking organization’s reach into South Texas...

Kidnapped, smuggled and worse The smuggler threatened to kill 4-year-old Nayli if he didn't receive $11,500 from her parents — immediately. He had sneaked the girl across the Mexican border nearly a month earlier and now was holding her for ransom somewhere near Los Angeles. "Mommy, I don't want to be here anymore," Nayli said through tears when the smuggler put her on the phone. Though Nayli's young age makes her case unique, kidnapping illegal immigrants for ransom is common as they cross the border into Southern California — a harrowing testament to the violent nature of smuggling rings. Smugglers make deals and break them. They hold men, women and children in locked stash houses, while using violence and threats to extort money from their relatives. The kidnapped immigrants have been beaten, starved, raped, even killed, said Miguel Unzueta, who oversees the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Los Angeles. Independent coyotes still operate all along the border, but law enforcement officers say highly sophisticated criminal networks and drug-trafficking cartels have taken over much of the trade...

Six Slain at Wake in Border City Six people were killed and five others were wounded here when gunmen opened fire at the wake for a young man killed three days ago in this northern border city, sources in the Chihuahua state Attorney General’s Office said Friday. The attack occurred shortly after 9:00 p.m. Thursday at a home in southeastern Ciudad Juarez. At the time of the attack, a group of family and friends were paying their final respects to Aaron Alberto Flores, who was killed March 9 while sitting in his vehicle outside a 24-hour convenience store. Authorities have not yet identified the six victims. In statements to Efe, the family members said several gunmen got out of two vehicles and entered the room where the minor’s remains were on view. The assailants fired at the people attending the wake, killing five men and a woman and wounding five others...

Mexico drug cartel uses rogue reporters to intimidate media A powerful drug cartel is buying off journalists in northern Mexico to work as spies and smother coverage of a spike in killings on the U.S. border in the latest attack on the media in Mexico. Hitmen from the Gulf cartel based over the border from Texas are paying reporters around $500 a month and showering them with liquor and prostitutes to intimidate and silence colleagues at radio stations and newspapers in towns near the Laredo-Brownsville area, journalists and editors say. A turf war that has erupted over the past three weeks around the manufacturing city of Reynosa has gone almost completely unreported despite more than 100 deaths, in a news blackout made more notable by the intense media coverage of other drug war flashpoints around the country. "Our newsrooms have been infiltrated by these reporters, they monitor what we write, they know where we live. With this system, the narcos have direct control over us," said a local newspaper editor who declined to be named for safety...

US-born capo, drug lord's brother fight for cartel Authorities say a U.S.-born hitman is fighting the brother of a deceased drug lord for control of the Beltran-Leyva cartel, marking what may be the first time an American has risen to the very top ranks of Mexican gangs. Ramon Pequeno, head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico's federal police, said Tuesday that Texas-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, nicknamed "La Barbie," is battling Hector Beltran Leyva for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel. Valdez Villarreal was born in the border city of Laredo, Texas, and has built a reputation as one of the most brutal enforcers employed by Mexican drug gangs. Late last week, the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey warned Americans to avoid traveling by road between Monterrey and the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, citing a "heightened risk of violence" on those highways...

Red Cross is latest victim of Mexican drug war Red Cross clinics in some parts of Mexico are refusing to treat people wounded by gunshots after finding themselves caught in the drug war, with cartel hit men intercepting ambulances to seize patients and even killing a Red Cross worker this week. In drug-plagued Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast, police started escorting ambulances and guarding Red Cross clinics after a Red Cross dispatcher was killed Sunday in crossfire by assailants who followed a wounded man to a clinic to finish him off. Maria Genoveva Rogers is believed to be the first Red Cross worker killed since President Felipe Calderon launched his drug war in 2006...

Immigrants Returned Through Presidio to Avoid Violence Beginning today illegal immigrants who are eligible to voluntarily return to Mexico will now go through the Presidio port of entry, instead of El Paso. Border patrol officials hope to prevent the Mexican citizens from being subjected to the violence in Juarez and surrounding areas. Once a day, everyday of the week, a bus will travel from El Paso to Presidio to carry the Mexican citizens who have requested voluntary return to Mexico. Officials say this modified program began today and will continue indefinitely to help reduce the risk for Mexican nationals.

COMMENT: It's not safe enough to return the illegal immigrants but it is safe enough to create a 400 square mile zone where law enforcement may not enter?

100's of emergency 9-1-1 calls follow cartel shootout (watch & listen to two video reports)

We have new information on the violence happening across the border in our sister city. Nuevo Laredo officials have been denying over and over that there is any kind of violence occurring there. We have obtained 911-dispatch audio of the night of Friday, February 26Th. That’s the first night of the major shootouts across the border. Our Noraida Negron has all the details in a story you will only see here on eight. Just that night alone 911 dispatch received hundreds of calls in a matter of three hours. The audio you are about to hear is just from a span of one hour. Residents who live in Laredo along the riverbanks were calling 911 talking about explosions and multiple gunfights. read more





Officials across the border have been very reluctant to admit to the violence, but on Wednesday night we presented you with recordings from the night of February 19th as gunfights broke out in Nuevo Laredo. We have more audio recordings from that night. This time we get to hear what police officers were saying to each other in their radio transmissions. [link]

Salazar to tour dangerous border area

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will tour the U.S.-Mexico border Saturday at a national monument that has been deemed so dangerous more than half is closed to the public. Salazar will spend nearly two hours at the border of Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument after chatting with employees at the Kris Eggle Visitor Center, which is named after a park ranger who was killed by drug runners in 2002. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has argued for public land agencies and Homeland Security to do more to secure the vast stretches of border abutting federally controlled areas. He also has raised concerns about conflicts between Interior officials and border agents. Robert Eggle, whose son was killed on U.S. soil, will accompany Salazar on the trip and said Friday that he hopes to encourage the secretary to take a deeper look at the problems along public lands on the border and to staff up the area to tackle the influx of crossers. Eggle says even eight years after his son's murder, there hasn't been enough done to halt the drug cartels that are increasingly controlling part of the national monument, and he's still sore that federal officials didn't see his son's death as a catalyst to take major action there. "I personally am outraged," Robert Eggle said, "that there was no outrage expressed by any level of government, be it Congress or the president or the secretary of state, never any expression of outrage that an American, a federal law enforcement officer well inside the U.S. could be killed by spillover Mexican violence."...read more

COMMENT: The key here will be who briefs the Secretary. Will they show him the previous studies showing the destruction of the resource by traffickers, the abandoned vehicles, the map showing the traffickers prefer Wilderness area, etc.? For an excellent video presentation on these internal federal studies go here.

Note to readers

First, Firefox was fighting with blogger.com and I couldn't save or publish anything. I tried everything I knew and then on the outside chance it was a Firefox problem tried using Internet Explorer. Turned out it worked fine using IE, even though it's awful unhandy for the way I do things. Then just about the time I was getting used to using IE again, my ms flared up and my left leg started firing off. That means I can't get under my desk without getting pretty bruised up. That's fine with me, especially when I'm as mad as I am right now, but Sweet Sharon objects (I tell the docs she beats me and a couple of them actually believed me).

So, you're getting a shortened version of The Westerner this morning, and it's all Sweet Sharon's fault.

Besides, Bert Ancell jumped me out at the Bingaman hearing for not getting the blog up early enough for him to read before he left the house.

So Bert is partly to blame...but it's mostly Sweet Sharon.

Troopers deternine death by "animal attack", "most likely" wolves

Troopers Determine Death in Chignik Lake is from Animal Attack

(CHIGNIK LAKE, Alaska)-- Investigation has determined that Candice Berner's death was non-criminal in nature. An autopsy conducted today confirmed Ms. Berner died from injuries sustained in an animal attack. According to the State Medical Examiner, the manner of death is "accidental" and the cause of death is "multiple injuries due to animal mauling". After conferring with state biologists and the community of Chignik Lake, it has been concluded that the animals most likely responsible for the attack are wolves. The Alaska State Troopers'(AST) death investigation regarding this incident is closed.

AST is providing assistance to the Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) as it addresses public safety concerns regarding wolf activity close to the community of Chignik Lake under the ADF&G Commissioner's statutory authority. A trooper pilot and an R-44 helicopter are en route to Chignik Lake to assist Fish and Game efforts. Barring any weather or logistical issues, a trooper, as well as a representative from ADF&G, will attend a public meeting in Chignik Lake tonight to address ongoing response efforts and concerns of local residents. ADN

Villagers unnerved by fearless wolves after teacher's death

Villagers in Chignik Lake were on patrol Wednesday, hunting for wolves they blame in the death of a 32-year-old schoolteacher while she was jogging on an isolated road this week. Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, villagers said, an armed group of men was out roaming on snowmachines in search of tracks left by wolves, which people say have been coming too close to town lately. "We approached them last night, but we ended up losing them," said Fred Shangin, 32, who is among the hunters. "They were right by the village again. They started running, we started chasing them but they came up to a creek we couldn't get across." Villagers say people are on edge, concerned with the boldness of wolves in the wake of Berner's death. Four people riding snowmachines along the road came across her body about 6:30 p.m. Monday. Gregory Kalmakoff, 23, said by phone Wednesday he and the others had been out riding at Portage Bay and were on their way back. "There was a blood spot on the road," he said. "I turned around, looked and there was drag marks going down a little hill." There were wolf tracks in the new snow and footprints left by a person, he said. It appeared something had been dragged off the road, said Kalmakoff's cousin, 24-year-old Jacob Kalmakoff, who troopers say was among those who discovered the body. "We seen her gloves on the road where she was running," Kalmakoff said. "She didn't get away too far from them; they took her down pretty fast. You could see a blood trail of her body getting drug down the hill." "After the wolves came back, they took her up to the village," he said. "The wolves weren't scared of nothing. They were just circling them down there, trying to look for an opportunity to get back in there." Alaska State Troopers say there was predation on the body but they haven't concluded whether it was before or after death. Investigators told Berner's family in Pennsylvania that she had been killed in an animal attack, possibly by wolves...read more

Deer, mountain lions the targets of proposed bill

Deer and mountain lions, beware. The Nebraska Legislature is gunning for you. Lawmakers advanced a bill Thursday aimed at reducing the overpopulation of deer in certain parts of the state. They also approved an amendment allowing the shooting of mountain lions that are preying on livestock or threatening humans. Among its controversial provisions, it would have allowed landowners to "spotlight" deer at night with high-powered flashlights and would have granted them a $25 tax credit for shooting deer...read more

COMMENT: It's against the law to spotlight deer?

Be a Cowboy Days guest at a retro Wild West wedding

You're invited to an usual wedding. The groom is an upper-crusty Bostonian with a persnickety Victorian mom visiting New Mexico for the first time. The bride is a Las Cruces rancher's daughter whose widowed Spanish mom wonders if the groom is after her land grant. Save the date: 1895. Get ready to time travel and be a guest at a retro Wild West wedding this weekend during the 11th annual Cowboy Days at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum (NMFRHM), 4100 Dripping Springs Road. Visitors will be able to check out the bridal party and guests in period costumes and ask questions about the matrimonial ceremonies and customs of yesteryear at Living History Reenactments from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the NMFRHM Horse and Cattle Barn. " The idea is to learn what it was like for people living in New Mexico in 1895," said the museum's exhibit designer Megan Walker, who will portray the groom's sister. f you're not in the mood for an old-time marriage, there will be lots more to do, from gunfight reenactments and rodeo-style events to horse shows, cowboy poets, authors and musicians, arts and crafts, demonstrations, cowpoke grub and plant sales during Cowboy Days, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday...read more

Sushi: Endangered whale and horse meat

It's a whale of a legal tale, but no laughing matter for The Hump, a Santa Monica, California sushi restaurant and sushi chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto who are charged with serving Sei whale to undercover customers investigating the fishy -- actually, mammal -- caper. The Sei whale is a federally protected marine animal. That makes catching and selling sei whale meat against the law. What makes this case so brazen, however, is that Yamamoto is charged (see below) with not simply a single offense of selling whale meat to sushi customers, but that it happened multiple times…sometimes together with horse meat. No, not sea horse meat. Real horse meat. The kind that live on land, run around farms, and have ponies that you or your children may have ridden. That kind of horse meat...read more

Cap 'n Trade device for rich greenies - Cartoon

COMMENT: Would inserting the device in the gas producing area qualify as a green job?

Song Of The Day #259

Ranch Radio will feature two more songs which charted in 1960 and which are a little more to the liking of the head honcho. First is the Buck Owens' recording Above and Beyond, followed by Skeets McDonald performing This Old Heart.

Since the ol' ms and the computer are both acting up this morning, you can do your own search for their collections.

Wolf attack may have killed teacher

Authorities were in an Alaska Peninsula village Tuesday investigating whether a 32-year-old schoolteacher, found dead off a road leading out of town, was killed in a wolf attack, according to state and local officials. The body of Candice Berner of Slippery Rock, Pa., was discovered Monday evening off a roughly 7-mile gravel road leading to the Chignik Lake airstrip. Berner's father, Bob Berner, reached in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, said Alaska State Troopers told the family their daughter had been killed in an "animal attack, possibly a wolf attack." Troopers told him it was highly unusual and still under investigation, with the body on its way to Anchorage for an autopsy, he said. "They wanted to make sure that nothing happened prior to the animal bite," Berner said. Berner described his daughter as "small and mighty," a woman who liked to box, lift weights and run. She was training for a race and could get into a meditative state when running, he said. Troopers would not comment on the cause of death, saying the investigation is ongoing and that they are awaiting the results of the autopsy. Spokeswoman Megan Peters said the body showed signs of predation but declined to provide further details. The body was found on regional corporation land within the borders of the Alaska Peninsula Wildlife Refuge and therefore was not in federal jurisdiction, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service...read more

Senate approves bill to condemn federal land

The Utah Senate has agreed to challenge Washington by condemning federal lands that the state needs to access state school-trust lands for mineral developments. HB143 strikes at what proponents say is an uncaring federal government that's increasingly restrictive on land uses. Lawmakers acknowledged a tough court fight if the state claims federal land, but backers said it's worth the estimated $3 million legal bill for potentially billions in mineral revenues that would help fund education. "There is phenomenal wealth that is in our ground that could be enjoyed by the children of this state if only we could get to it, said Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George. But the Senate also passed a companion bill, HB324, dedicating money from a state land-exchange fund for the legal costs, and some Democrats objected. "That $3 million would be so much better expended at a million dollars a year in our public education now," said Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City. Lawmakers who want to condemn federal land say Congress reneged on a deal at statehood that offered 5 percent of the revenues from sales of federal lands. Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, said that argument won't hold up in court because Utah also agreed to give up any claims to the federal lands as a condition of statehood. Nonetheless, he voted for the bills because, he said, there may be a legitimate constitutional claim that Utah did not come into the Union on equal footing with other states because of land restrictions...read more

BLM acquires more land for prairie chicken

The Bureau of Land Management and The Conservation Fund have protected 7,440 acres of land about 35 miles east of Roswell for key habitat for the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. The land is within a 58,000-acre Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) in Chaves County. “There are few things we do in our professional lives that are as critical and long-lasting as today’s acquisition for the prairie-chicken,” said Doug Burger, Pecos District Manager for the BLM. “The Conservation Fund was extremely helpful in working with the landowner to accomplish the acquisition and we want to express our deepest admiration and thanks for their efforts.” The Conservation Fund negotiated the purchase of the land. When the sale was finalized on March 3, the Fund sold it to the BLM, which received funding from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to complete the transaction. The LWCF funding was provided to the BLM with strong support from New Mexico Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall. “We’re especially pleased to partner with the BLM to protect one of the best strongholds for the lesser prairie-chicken in the nation,” said Mike Ford, director of the southwest office of The Conservation Fund. “Senators Bingaman and Udall championed this project in Congress and we greatly appreciate their support and commitment to preserving the state’s natural legacy.”...read more

COMMENT: Let's see, there is a document floating around Interior listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken Preserve as a potential National Monument; the head of the Southwest Region for the Conservation Fund is a former NM BLMer; and NM BLM gets allocated over a million bucks to add acreage to the preserve. I'd say we have a National Monument in the making.

No plans for new national monuments in Montana

In an exchange with U.S. Sen. Jon Tester on Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his agency has no plans to create a new national monument in Montana or buy up private land in the Missouri Breaks area east of Fort Benton. "There have been no directions from the White House that we move forward on monument designation," Salazar told Tester at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Interior Subcommittee. The exchange stems from publicity last week over an Interior Department internal memo on potential monument designations and acquisitions, part of which was leaked last week. The leaked memo had a list of areas in the West that "may be good candidates for National Monument designation under the Antiquities Act," which allows the president to establish national monuments...read more

Bishop: Outing memo brought needed denials

Washington Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appeared before Congress again Tuesday to testify on his department's budget request only to face another question about whether President Barack Obama was angling to designate any new national monuments in the West. It has been nearly three weeks since Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, released a memo he says showed the Obama administration may have plans to use a century-old law to unilaterally convert federal lands (including two potential sites in Utah) to national monuments - a claim that has brought repeated denials from Salazar. That may be exactly what Western lawmakers wanted: high-profile denials. "The fact that they said they will not do anything yet and they will confer with local governments, that's a major change, and that's a plus," Bishop said Tuesday. "So, yeah, I think outing them kind of helped out here. I would take that not necessarily as a win, but at least it's something that moves forward the public process." Salazar and his spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff, repeatedly have said that the document Bishop released - identifying 14 potential Western monuments, including Utah's Cedar Mesa and San Rafael Swell - simply was the result of brainstorming and no action was forthcoming. Now, even if the Obama administration wanted to name a national monument, it would have a hard time doing so using the 1906 Antiquities Act unless it gained the backing of local officials...read more

The Wrong Kind of Green

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal? At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed. Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair--president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995--was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters. Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups...read more

Forest Service assesses effects of Wilderness on firefighting

Turning Basalt Mountain into Wilderness wouldn't prohibit firefighting there but it would eliminate opportunities to reduce dead trees and fuels that have built up for decades, the top official in the White River National Forest said Wednesday. Basalt firefighters and Wilderness activists disagreed with parts of the assessment made by Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams, showing how difficult it is to sort through some implications of the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign. In a location like Basalt Mountain, the decision to fight a fire will be made most of the time, Fitzwilliams said. “Whether that's Wilderness or not, the response is probably going to be the same,” he said. Fire Chief Scott Thompson said that, with all due respect to the Forest Service, the written rules and the application of rules aren't always the same. Written rules that appear to provide flexibility can actually provide an extra hurdle. The fire department typically handles the first response to wild land fires on Basalt Mountain. Requiring an extra step of approval to fight a fire in a Wilderness area might take “hours or days,” Thompson said. He said his assessment comes from practical, in the field experience in dealing with the Forest Service on Wilderness issues for 15 years as a former Pitkin County deputy sheriff and for 10 years as the fire chief. That experience indicates it won't always be a speedy process to get approval to fight a fire in Wilderness. And that, he said, could result in a catastrophic fire for the homeowners of Basalt...read more

Bush Interior secretary discusses transformation to enthusiastic environmentalist

In 2000, Lynn Scarlett left the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, to serve eight years in the Bush administration as assistant secretary of the Interior, steward for 500 million acres in public land. She later led the department after the resignation of Secretary Gale Norton, amid tumult over land policy and science's role. Scarlett, 60, recently sat down in a Santa Barbara office to discuss her transformation from conservative conservationist to enthusiastic environmentalist. On President George W. Bush's interest in environmental issues. . . .All my interaction with the president was seeing a person who really cared about conservation. The public image is very different from my personal perception. Now, having said that, I don't want to be making the comment -- because I think it would be . . . foolish -- to say that conservation was a priority for the administration. There certainly were many players for whom environmental matters and conservation were somewhere lower along the totem pole. Or not just low on the totem pole, but even antithetical to their interests. This gets to an observation I have about modern conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives -- with four decades of relentless critique of environmental laws, what they call "command and control" -- have come to conflate a critique of the tools for a critique of the value set. And so I had people on the Hill say to me, "I don't do environment." I think it's something that conservatives have not grappled with and must grapple with to be relevant in the 21st century. . . . Environment is about human health as much as it's about ecological health, it's about spiritual well-being, it's about physical well-being. And right now very few -- not all -- but very few conservatives have much constructive to say on that topic...read more

New Green Curriculum Unveiled for USDA Forest Service Job Corps

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today unveiled a new direction for the USDA Forest Service Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers (CCCs) that will train underserved youth for jobs in the emerging green economy. The green curriculum announced today will expand opportunities and pathways out of poverty through the promotion of public service, sustainable lifestyles, and vocational skills that will enable young people to compete for green jobs. USDA operates 28 CCCs across 18 states with a capacity of 6,200 students...read more

COMMENT: These poor kids. They already have two strikes against them and then the FS fills them full of this green jobs bunk. Take their carpentry course on "green construction". The carpenters around here are glad to find work of any kind, no matter the color. Tell them to "go green" and they will laugh in your face. They just want "green" in their pocket and that is mighty hard to come by right now.

I always figured the FS could do a better job than most in working with these urban kids. I'll have to rethink that if they keep up with this politically correct crap.

CDC taps into shopper card data to track food-borne illness

As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time -- the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries. With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat. Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile. Shopper cards have been around for more than a decade, offering customers discounts in exchange for letting supermarkets track their buying habits. The cards are used to build customer loyalty and help stores market their products. Some privacy advocates, though, are troubled. Longtime shopper-card critic Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she worries that the practice could lead to a switch from a voluntary system to mandatory use of such cards. "That sends chills down my spine," she said...read more

Molly, the Three Legged Pony (Video)

Baxter Black: Modern ranchers retain early pioneer qualities

One of the qualities that characterizes dedicated ranchers and farmers is a joyous commitment to hard work. It's sort of an odd combination of curiosity, independence and bravado. They actually crave the struggle, like long-distance runners crave the race. They love their job. Ranching is not a sport. It pits man against all that nature can throw at him year after year. It takes a hardheaded person to keep pushing back. That's how frontiers were conquered and the West was won. Today's ranchers possess the same qualities exemplified by the 18th- and 19th-century pioneers. The origin of the word pioneer comes from the Native American language Pi, as in "pie in the sky," and "near," meaning "it's just over the next hill, Mother!" g guns or toting regulations. Ranchers battle the same obstacles encountered by the early settlers - drought, blizzard, disease, despair, and predators, including wild ones and those packing guns or toting regulations...read more

Song Of The Day #258

Ranch Radio figures there must have been a whole herd of Honky Tonk Girls around in 1960. Two of the top songs that year were I'm Just A Honky Tonk Girl by Lorreta Lynn and Honky Tonk Girl by Johnny Cash. Lynn's self-penned song was the first released by Zero records and the one which sent her on her way in the music industry.

Lynn's song is available on her 3 disc box set Honky Tonk Girl: The Loretta Lynn Collection and the Cash tune is on his 12 track CD Now, There Was a Song!.

2010 International Property Rights Index (IRPI) Released

The Property Rights Alliance is proud to announce the release of the 2010 International Property Rights Index (IRPI), which measures the intellectual and physical property rights of 125 nations from around the world. This year, sixty-two international organizations partnered with the Property Rights Alliance and its Hernando de Soto Fellowship program to produce the fourth annual IPRI. To view the report in its entirety visit www.internationalpropertyrightsindex.org.
The IPRI uses three primary areas of property rights to create a composite score: Legal and Political Environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Most importantly, the IPRI emphasizes the great economic differences between countries with strong property rights and those without. Nations falling in the first quintile enjoy an average national GDP per capita of $35, 676; almost double that of the second quintile with an average of $20, 087. The third, fourth, and fifth quintiles average $9,375, $4,699, and $4,437 respectively. “With regard to private property rights, PRA continues to champion the idea that physical and intellectual property are equally important in nature, and must be protected” states Kelsey Zahourek, PRA executive director. “Property rights contribute to increased levels of stability and provide people with the knowledge and comfort that their property will remain theirs.”...read more

COMMENT: Sadly, 14 countries rank higher than the US when it comes to protecting property rights.

NY Supreme Court Votes to Evict Residents and Close Businesses

In summary, a private developer in New York wants to build a $4.9 billion dollar pro-basketball arena smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn. In order to do so, residents of that neighborhood are being evicted on grounds that the neighborhood has been “blighted”, a precedent set by the infamous case Kelo v. The City of New London (2005). Needless to say, the residents of the neighborhood believe they are being unfairly evicted and took their complaints to the New York Supreme Court. After nearly six years of battling developer Bruce Ratner, the neighbors received a final hit this week as the Supreme Court handed down its decision. As was reported in the New York Daily News, judges gave the Atlantic Yards arena project the go-ahead on Monday (March 1). Though the tenants technically have a few months before they have to be out of their apartments and condos, Ratner announced that he plans on breaking ground as early as March 11. But the residents refuse to go quietly. One tenant exclaimed, “It feels like I live in a state run by crooks!” To some New Yorkers, however, the greatest loss is not the residential property, but Freddy’s Bar and Backroom – rated one of the Best Bars in Brooklyn by the New York Times and Esquire – which also sits smack in the middle of Ratner’s targeted area for development...read more

Obama may limit fishing

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters. This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters. That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning. "Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored. Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be...read more

UN to review errors made by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility. A team of the world’s leading scientists will investigate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and ask why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming. The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The review will be led by Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chairman of the Interacademy Council and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been asked to investigate the internal processes of the IPCC and will not consider the overarching question of whether it was right to claim that human activities were very likely to be causing global warming...read more

COMMENT: It's just a process problem, don't ya see.

The Heat is On: Desert Tortoises and Survival

Though the Mojave Desert tortoise has thrived in the southwestern United States for thousands of years, its population has severely declined over the last four decades. A new USGS documentary, titled The Heat is On: Desert Tortoises and Survival, explains why this important indicator of desert ecosystem health is declining and what scientists are doing to save them. Mojave tortoises were first listed as a threatened species in 1990. Widespread and rapid declines in tortoise numbers have made them a top priority for federal research and are driving efforts to recover the species. The desert tortoise will not be removed from the endangered species list until its population stabilizes or increases over 25 years. “Scientific research about the tortoise population across the entire Mojave Desert allows us to put together a more complete picture of the tortoise’s habitat needs and reasons for its decline,” said Todd Esque, USGS research ecologist, who is featured in the documentary. “Researching the decline of this reptile can tell us a lot about the overall health of the desert.” Declines are due to habitat loss associated with urban development, utility corridors, highway mortality, off-road vehicle use and recreational activities. Also, populations of predators like coyotes and ravens have grown exponentially, subsidized by human food sources. Power lines provide artificial nesting perches for ravens, and invasive plant species compete for scarce resources and fuel fires that destroy the habitat. Diseases, such as upper respiratory tract disease, have also played a major role in tortoise declines...read more

Trial dates set in southern Utah Indian artifacts cases

Trial dates were set Monday for a number of defendants facing charges of stealing and selling artifacts from federal and protected lands, with the government resolving to move its case forward in spite of the death of its confidential source. The future of the case and the 20-plus defendants who are looking for resolutions was questioned after the suicide death of the government's confidential source, Ted Gardiner, whose recordings are believed to have made up the bulk of the prosecution's case. Prosecutors would not identify Gardiner as their source during Monday's hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Samuel Alba, but prosecutor Richard McKelvie said the man known as "the source" was "deceased as of last week" and that the death was not "fatal to any of our cases." "We plan to go forward with the case," McKelvie said. "The only difference is the manner in which we proffer the evidence."...read more

Tribe seeks 37 acres of Olympic National Park

Just ask members of the Hoh Tribe: The river that carries their name is shoving them right out of their reservation. The Hoh are a tiny tribe of fewer than 300 members, with an even smaller reservation — only a mile square when it was created in 1893. And the reservation is besieged by water from three directions: Storm surges barrel in from the Pacific. The river floods nearly every winter. And then there's the torrential rain: The Hoh live in one of the rainiest places in the lower forty-eight. The tribe's community center and many members' homes on the reservation are encircled by sandbags to hold back the water that is too often at their doors. Some homes have even been abandoned. As chunks of their reservation wash away, the Hoh have turned to Congress for help, seeking legislation to deed a chunk of Olympic National Park to the tribe to move the remote, isolated reservation to higher ground. The tribe has worked for several years to acquire a safe homeland for its people and a viable land base for economic development. The tribe has purchased about 260 acres to move some of its reservation out of the flood zone, and has taken title to 160 acres transferred to the tribe from the state Department of Natural Resources. The tribe now is seeking 37 acres of national-park land, to be deeded into trust as part of its reservation, through an act of Congress...read more

The Stimulus Bill’s Hidden Attack on What We Eat, Drink, and Smoke

One of the more extreme proposals floated early in the national health care debate was the idea of taxing soda and other sugary beverages. That trial balloon was almost immediately shot down by the American public, but the Obama administration is attempting to achieve, by subterfuge, soda taxes and a lot of other ways to micromanage our lives in the name of public health—whether or not ObamaCare passes. The mechanism is buried in last year’s $862-billion-and-counting stimulus bill, and works by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that should be promoting economic growth to instead pay lobbyists to push for higher taxes and nanny-state controls over our lives. It’s on pages 66 and 67 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created a $1 billion “Prevention and Wellness Fund.” In a 14-page guidance for grant applicants, the CDC details tactics that grant applicants should include in their plans. It includes “counter-advertising” against targeted products, complete tobacco usage bans, limiting “unhealthy food availability” (the really bad stuff like “whole milk, sugar sweetened beverages, high-fat snacks”), and of course taxes (or in CDC lingo: “changing relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy items”). A supplemental document explains in more detail what the targets are, including restricting availability of soft drinks “in homes, schools, work sites, and communities.” It also recommends local zoning changes to put fast food restaurants out of business, trans-fat bans, salt regulation, and food taxes. They even suggest a TV ban of sorts, recommending: “specific regulations/policies that limit television and other screen media.”...read more

Amid tough times, poaching is on rise in Arizona

The nation's crummy economy may be claiming a new class of victims: Arizona's wildlife. State Game and Fish agents are not certain of the reason, but they've seen a dramatic spike in complaints about wildlife violations and poaching in the past year, and they think an unfavorable economy may have something to do with it. Their theory: At a time when many Arizonans find themselves in a financial squeeze, some have resorted to the illegal taking of edible game for food, while others are killing for profit. A third group actually may be reporting violators in hopes of getting financial rewards, which also could help explain the notable increase in reports of violations. Whatever the culprit, this much is clear: There were 768 reports of Game and Fish violations in 2009, up 70 percent from 2008 and more than double the year before that. In 2009, the state also paid a record amount in rewards to people who tipped investigators to violations...read more

Mountain lion invades home, mother and two children rescued

An apparently malnourished young mountain lion invaded a Chaffee County residence Thursday afternoon, killing one dog and briefly trapping a mother and her two children inside the house until sheriffs deputies could evacuate them. The incident began just after 4 p.m. The lion chased a small dog through a pet door into the home, which is located about 9 miles northwest of Salida. Homeowner Michelle Bese and two children, ages 2 and 5, were in the house when the lion entered. Bese said at first she did not know if it was a coyote or lion until another dog confronted the lion and she could tell what it was. She grabbed her 5-year-old and ran to the back bedroom where the 2-year-old was sleeping, and called 911. Chaffee County Sheriff's deputies helped Bese and her children escape through a bedroom window. They also opened the home's front and rear doors to provide the lion with an opportunity to leave...read more

HT: Outdoor Press Room

Coyote sneaks up on girls playing in backyard

Two 10-year-old girls were startled by a coyote that apparently sneaked up on them while they were playing in a backyard. One girl ran and the other climbed a tree. They were even more startled when the coyote briefly chased one girl, then sniffed around the base of the tree before ambling off into the nearby woods. No one was hurt, but the girls were shaken up. "It was pretty scary for them," said Janet Sahni, one girl's mother. "I get it that we live with them, that we coexist and share space. But it seems like an incident that could have turned out worse." Sahni's daughter, Juliana, was playing in the backyard of their home in the Westlake neighborhood, with her friend, Sarah May-Varas, around 5 p.m. Friday. They were "giving a pine tree a haircut" with a pair of scissors when they heard rustling in the greenspace adjacent to their yard. "When Juliana turned around, a coyote was standing only about two feet away," Sahni said. "So she ran toward the house -- and he chased her for about five feet."...read more

Camels thrived in South Texas

When Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War in the 1850s, before he became president of the Confederacy, he had a novel idea to use camels to carry supplies to frontier forts in the Southwest, between Texas and California. Davis convinced Congress in 1855 to spend $30,000 to study using Arabian camels. Maj. Henry Wayne was sent to the Middle East to buy the camels. They would be brought to Texas on the ship “Supply” commanded by Navy Lt. David Dixon Porter. Wayne and Dixon made their way around the Middle East buying camels. They bought 34 one-humped and two-humped camels and hired five handlers to make the trip. After the animals were loaded, Lt. Porter wrote Washington that the camel deck was scrubbed daily and the whitewash brush kept going. The camels liked the salty taste of the whitewash. They arrived at Indianola on Matagorda Bay on May 14, 1856. There were Arabic handlers in flowing robes and 34 two-hump Bactrians, one-hump Arabians, and the crossbred mule camels called “booghdee.” Maj. Wayne demonstrated the camel’s strength. A camel was made to kneel and two bales of hay were placed on his back. They weighed 600 pounds. People expected the camel to fall over, but then two more bales were strapped on the camel’s back for a load of 1,200 pounds. To the crowd’s amazement, the camel rose and trotted off. “Lord almighty,” said a man. “That would take two mules and a wagon, easy.” “Hell, four,” said another...read more