Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
December 15, 2017 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 59 • No. 12
Grading Trump
BY LEE PITTS
Don’t judge people by their relatives.
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NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
e’ve lived with Donald Trump as President for almost a year now and it seems like a good time to assess his performance thus far. Grading his proficiency depends upon your vantage point. If you’re a stock investor, coal miner, Rush Limbaugh, or the Donald himself, you probably think he’s done a rip-roaring job. If you’re a farmer or rancher your view is probably less complimentary. A good percentage of ranchers were thrilled when President Trump withdrew America from the Paris Climate Accord but if you’re an NCBA member you’re probably mad at him for also withdrawing us from the TPPA trade agreement. In my opinion, Trump’s biggest accomplishment thus far is replacing conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with another conservative, Neil Gorsuch. I look forward to many more such appointments and if it comes to pass, a staunchly conservative Supreme Court will be Trump’s lasting legacy. I admit it’s been disappointing to discover that Trump is like other politicians in that he promised way more than he could deliver. For example, during the campaign he said, “We are going to ask every de-
partment head and government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days.” Once in office he merely asked the agencies to “reorganize”. On balancing the federal budget he promised, “It can be done. ... It will take place and it will go relatively quickly.” But by October 20th Trump was cheering a budget that would most definitely NOT balance the budget. He also promised we could eliminate the federal debt in eight years but the Senate Budget bill he eventually
championed only added to it. I have no doubt that Trump sincerely meant to make good on his promises but he seems to have forgotten that Congress makes the laws, not the President. Still, there were many things he could have done for the ag community but didn’t, like pardoning the Hammonds. There was a pleasant buzz when Trump took over and started issuing executive orders right and left but lately he seems to have been bogged down by too much Tweeting, White House infighting and staff members quitting.
From an agricultural vantage point, here’s how we grade Trump so far.
Geography... C A year ago I wrote about my fears about what a Trump presidency would mean for the West in an article titled My Forgotten Country. I wrote, “It’s easy to see who put Trump in the White House. There are 3,141 counties in the USA. Trump won 3,084 of them and Clinton won 57. It was a clear case of the city versus the country. I saw one poll that showed 75 percent of ranchers voted for Trump. Most of us in agriculture were so elated that Hillary got beat that we hadn’t given much thought as to what a Trump presidency would mean for agriculture. It’s fair to say that Trump owes us.” So far, it seems, those fears were well grounded. In the first continued on page two
The Curious Recovery of a ‘Threatened’ Bat Species ROB GORDON / DAILYSIGNAL.COM
Lots More Lesser Long-Nosed Bats
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Even Fish and Wildlife acknowledges that its original claim about the bat’s “threatened” status has been a subject of “debate as to [its] legitimacy… .” Now, it says there are 100,000 of these bats in the U.S. and even more in Mexico. There are not 14 roosts in the U.S., but reportedly 75. This would be a big deal if these big numbers reflected successful efforts to improve the bat’s abundance or distribution, but they don’t. Fish and Wildlife states that the new numbers “in large part, reflect a better approach to survey and monitoring in subsequent years.” For those who do not speak bureaucratese, that means they were way off in the first place. Further, Fish and Wildlife assumed cattle and fire to be serious threats by consuming the flowering plants that produce the nectar that these bats—which don’t eat insects— consume. Turns out, they were found not to be as problematic as the agency thought. Essentially, everything forming the rationale for adding the bat to the endangered-species list was wrong.
f it were true, it would be good news. Unfortunately, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s claim that the lesser longnosed bat has “recovered” so well that it can be removed from the endangered-species list is definitely not worth the paper on which the proposed rule delisting it is printed. (At about $480 a page for 11 and a half pages, that’s about $5,500 just to print the fib.) Worse still, Fish and Wildlife may be seeking to eliminate potentially thorny legal problems that come with a federally regulated species by making threats to the bat along the U.S.-Mexico border just bureaucratically vanish. When the Fish and Wildlife Service proclaimed the bat “threatened,” it asserted there were only about 500 of the species and that it had only 14 known roosts—places like caves or old mine entrances, where the bats congregate when not fluttering about. (Apparently, not all bats are opposed to mining.) Back in 1988, Fish and Wildlife contended that these low numbers, in combination with threats from livestock grazing and fires, were pushing the species toward extinction.
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The Duke And I
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received tons of feedback to the column I wrote about meeting celebrity animal stars like Jet Deck, Peppy San Badger, Bertha the Elephant, Poco Bueno and Borden’s Elsie the Cow. Okay, so I only received one letter in response, but it was a long one. In that missive the writer wanted to know what famous people I’d met and if I considered myself a “celebrity”. I should say so! People used to line up to meet me at book signings. Okay, so only one person lined up. But in my 65 years I have managed to meet a few notable celebrities. The most valuable piece in my collection of people is a photo of me and Ronald Reagan as I presented him the honorary state farmer degree when I was President of the California FFA and he was Governor of California. The second most valuable item is a book written by Nolan Ryan that he autographed for me after my buddy E.C. made it possible for me to eat lunch with Nolan and his wonderful wife. E.C got me the book as an apology because the photo he took of me and Nolan “didn’t turn out.” That happens to me a lot as I’m not what you’d call photogenic. I still think the beef industry should have made Nolan our permanent “pitchman”. I got to meet one of my favorite authors, James Michener, at a Texas Brangus sale, and we have a cocktail napkin signed by Joe Dimaggio. What a gentleman he was! As were my two all-time favorite rodeo cowboys: Gene Rambo and Larry Mahan. When I was writing feature stories for Cowboys and Country Magazine I got to interview stars like Lynn Anderson, Randy Owen and Rex Allen. I also had a radio relationship with Paul Harvey and I have a drawer full of cassettes of him reading my essays. I’ve always been more interested in collecting celebrities in the cattle and horse trades than in seeing Hollywood stars and I
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