Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
February 15, 2018 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 60 • No. 2
Danny Boy
BY LEE PITTS
Dirty Dan
Always drink upstream from the herd.
S
exual discrimination; a religious war; unaccountable government agents going rogue; another seemingly innocent man with his hands up being shot by law enforcement. I could be recapping the topics on a typical nightly news show on television. Sadly, I’m not. Women and oppressed minorities have nothing on the western public lands ranchers when it comes to oppression, persecution and ill-treatment.
The War On The West
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
It’s old news that the case against Cliven Bundy and his sons was thrown out of court and all charged dropped. The three along with others were jailed on a laundry list of charges after the paramilitary raid on the Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, in April, 2014. The federal judge dismissed the case because the prosecution withheld key information and ruled that the case could not be tried again due to the actions of the prosecution, which she called “outrageous” and “violated due process rights.” The government and the fake news media wanted you to believe that this whole fiasco was just because Cliven Bundy owed
money for BLM fees. Sure, Bundy owed the money, but this was never really about grazing fees. It was just another skirmish in the ongoing War On The West, orchestrated by federal bureaucrats who overstepped their constitutional and legal authority by a country mile. Casualties on our side in this war have been high: the Coalition for Self Government says the animal unit months authorized by the BLM over the past 65 years declined from four-
teen and a half million to seven million and the decline in the number of permittees fell from 21,081 to 10,187. Pardon us for being a bit sensitive about this issue but the state where this newspaper is published, New Mexico, has seen their number of permittees fall by 65% over the same period. If one ex-federal bureaucrat had his way there’d not be a single public lands rancher left and the West would have long ago waved a white flag.
One of the big reasons the judge threw out the Bundy case was because of the actions of one man whose name was already a dirty word in the lexicon of the West. He’s the arrogant BLM official you saw in the TV news of the Bunkerville standoff parading around shouting orders with his cap on backwards, facial hair that looked like he’d just come off the front lines in Afghanistan, in camo pants, sidearm at the ready by his side, wearing sunglasses that looked like something that a futuristic warrior in a violent video game would wear, sporting a bullet proof vest that said “POLICE” in big letters, and all the while communicating with snipers on a far hill. Daniel Love is the poster boy continued on page two
Environmental Group May Have to Register as Foreign Agents BY KEVIN MOONEY / WASHINGTON EXAMINER
T
he connection between Vladimir Putin’s government and U.S. environmental groups deserves more scrutiny. U.S. environmental activists who are working to halt the production and use of fossil fuels could be required to register as foreign agents if Congress gets serious about enforcing an existing law. There was some potential movement in that direction last October when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would put some teeth into the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law, which was first passed in 1938, calls for individuals and organizations to provide full disclosure when they are working to advance the public policy interests of a foreign government. As the Washington Examiner has reported, Grassley’s proposed legislation would close off an exemption that has allowed lobbyists for foreign interests to avoid registration while providing the U.S. attorney general with additional authority to conduct investigations. While the media remains largely focused on ongoing investigations into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, the connection between Vladimir Putin’s govern-
ment and U.S. environmental groups deserves more scrutiny. Klein Ltd., a Bermuda-based shell corporation run by executives with strong ties to longtime Putin friend Leonid Reiman and Russian energy investment groups including Firebird New Russia Fund and Vimpelcom Ltd., reportedly funneled $23 million to the Sea Change Foundation, according to a detailed 2014 U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee report. Klein’s legal counsel dismisses such charges as “completely false and irresponsible.” But in a letter addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, members of Congress document evidence pointing to a paperless money trail that flows from Russia into U.S. environmental groups through the Sea Change Foundation. The implication is that the Russians have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into willing environmental advocacy groups in an effort to spread propaganda directed against fracking in the U.S. and the technology that makes it possible, according to evidence presented in the letter. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and his colleagues have called on continued on page four
Let’s Sue Someone.
H
i ladies, it’s me, the wife of the slob who usually writes this column. He’s resting now, getting his beauty sleep and believe me, he needs all he can get. Unbeknownst to him, I’m taking over the column this week because what I have to say is much more important than any gibberish he’d have written. Are you keeping up on all the reports of evil athletes, actors, politicians and businessmen who’ve been harassing and discriminating against women? Do you know who you haven’t heard one peep from? The wives of farmers and ranchers that’s who, and yet there is not a group in America who’s been harassed or discriminated against more than us. I consulted with an attorney who said we’d have a great discrimination case in court against our husbands but there’s one small problem. In his words, “You can’t get any blood out of a turnip.” The attorney said we’d need to go after “deeper pockets” and suggested a class action lawsuit. To win we’d have to prove guilt in just one of the following areas: • Hostile work environment- Have you ever been yelled at because some cows leaked through the gap in the fence you were supposed to be blocking? Has your husband ever used foul language in your presence when you accidentally slammed the squeeze chute door on his hand or accidentally vaccinated him against lepto-vibrio? Do you work in a clean environment or are you constantly being bombarded by cow poop? Has he left you in a seedy motel room without feed or water while he went to “an important committee meeting” in a saloon? Are you referred to as “hired help”or a “peon”? If so, you’re rights have been violated. • Missed meals and potty breaks- While on a bull buying trip in your car you informed your husband you needed to pull over at the next rest stop for a biobreak did he tell you to just
continued on page four