LMD February 2020

Page 1

Riding Herd “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

February 15, 2020 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 62 • No. 2

Billionaire’s Land Rush BY LEE PITTS

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

T

hirty three years ago I wrote in this space about “The Buffalo Commons”. It was an idea conceived by two urban studies professors Frank and Deborah Popper, supposedly after an argument the couple had in their car about what should be done with the West. It would be analogous to two ranchers getting together at an auction market cafe in Brush or Ogallala to decide what should be done about that blight on the American landscape called Chicago. In their 1987 article in Planning Magazine called “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust,” the Poppers put forth their plan to transform the Great Plans into a 10-state national reserve where buffalo would roam but not cows. Later the idea would grow to include large populations of grizzlies and super wolves, a blend of the Canadian wolf with Mexican gray wolves that would rendezvous somewhere in the middle for breeding purposes. The Sandhills in Nebraska, for example. At the time I thought the Popper’s idea was ringier than a Salvation Army soldier out in front of the grocery store at Christmas time. Well, guess who is having the last laugh now?

The Great Wealth Transfer

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

Those folks who gave us computers, the Internet and cell phones are now getting a little long in the tooth. Bill Gates looks like a shriveled creosote root and his partner in Microsoft, Paul Allen, has passed on to hippie heaven. So too has Apple’s Steve Jobs. As these tech multi-billionaires

and multi-millionaires write their wills and trusts they are attempting to leave a legacy and one way they are doing so is by buying up huge chunks of land on which to leave their brand. Invariably the land they covet is in the West. In fact, they worship the ground you walk on. With their squandering ways I don’t know how they did it but my generation, the baby boomers, has become the wealthiest generation in American history, now controlling 70 percent of all U.S. disposable income. Now these billionaire boomers and millionaire mobs are about to pass down their wealth which is being called “The Great Wealth Transfer.” The amount of money we’re talking about is twice the amount we thought it would be just ten years ago, thanks to a decade-long run-up in the stock market. It’s now estimated that 45 million U.S. households will transfer $68

TRILLION in wealth over the next 25 years! In many cases the rich are looking at their kids, 35 percent of whom between the ages of 18 and 35 still living at home, and thinking they need to park their wealth in something that is not as easily accessible as stocks, bonds and cash. Something like real estate. Your real estate.

Selling Out This great wealth transfer comes at the the same time that a large percentage of farmers and ranchers are wanting to retire and move to Arizona. In Nebraska, for example, 19 percent of the population is over 65. This gentrification of American farmers and ranchers is especially advanced in the Great Plains, coincidentally the area where the Poppers envisioned their Buffalo Commons. In land auction after land auction in the Midwest the buyer

these days is most often some rich guy who made his money elsewhere and now wants to squirrel it away where the kids can’t squander it. Either that or a green group funded by aging tech gazillionaires who want to kick the cows off and let the buffalo roam. As we look at the future of the cow business the big question will be who will manage the land in the west? Will it be the Nature Conservancy, or a management firm working on behalf of the inheritors who live in a big metro area hundreds of miles away, or sons and daughters who try to make a go of ranching while paying off their siblings and cousins? That will become increasingly more difficult to do surrounded by buffalo and wild horse preserves with bad fences that pay no taxes thereby further decimating the small towns that are trying their darndest to hold the fabric of the west together.

A Good Question Most all of these rich old techies who are leaving their fortunes to liberal green groups really believe that cow farts will destroy the earth some day. So the first thing these techies want to do is replace the cows with bison and in so doing they think they are reducing the continued on page two

Disturbing Reality About Those Trying to Close Fort Huachuca & Crush Rural Arizona BY BRIAN SEASHOLES / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHWESTERN COMMUNITIES COALITION, BENSON, ARIZONA

W

ith the February 2020 deadline approaching when several so-called environmental groups may follow through on their notice of intent sue the Departments of Defense and Interior to restrict Fort Huachuca’s water use, there is the possibility the fort could close for good. Make no mistake; this is these groups’ end game. “Ultimately, the question is, can we shut down Fort Huachuca?” Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, the group leading the most recent threatened lawsuit, asked in 2014. “This area is too fragile to support the fort and its surrounding population,” Mark Larson, president of Maricopa Audubon Society, another of the groups threatening to sue the fort, asserts about the current threatened lawsuit. “Everything but the proving grounds can be moved to other military bases without losing national defense capabilities.” The Center for Biological Diversity and others are trying to close Fort Huachuca with lawsuits to restrict its access to water and by lobbying to have missions moved to military bases in other parts of the country. If either or both of these strategies are successful, it will be increasingly difficult for the Department of

Defense and Congress to justify Fort Huachuca’s continued existence. And it will be easier for opponents of the fort to justify closing it. Closing Fort Huachuca would devastate Cochise County, for which the fort is by far the largest employer and economic contributor, with 21,327 direct and indirect jobs and $2.9 billion in annual economic activity. Moving all but the Electronic Proving Ground to other military bases, as those currently threatening a lawsuit advocate, would be a deathblow to the fort. There are roughly 580 people employed at the proving grounds; 399 civilians, 179 contractors, and 1 military, based on 2012 data. So by extrapolating, moving all but the Electronic Proving Ground would mean the loss to Sierra Vista and Cochise County of 97% of the jobs and economic activity provided by Fort Huachuca, or 20,747 jobs and $2.82 billion in economic activity. This would reduce Sierra Vista to a ghost town, devastate Cochise County, and likely lead to the fort’s closure. Despite the danger to Fort Huachuca, there are some in Sierra Vista, Cochise County and beyond who are responding to the most recent threatened lawsuit with a wait-and-see approach, because this is the ninth legal challenge against the fort since 1994 but the Fort is still going strong. This is a grave miscalculation for several reasons. continued on page three

by LEE PITTS

The Company Tank

A

t the ripe old age of 21 I went to work for a leading livestock newspaper as a field editor. This was at a time when most of the other field editors and breed reps qualified for the senior citizen’s discount at Denny’s. As the youngest person in the trade at the time I was walked on, stabbed in the back and even punched in the face. Really. I was given a company car and an expense account but those costs were subtracted from any commission I made selling advertising in my territory. Unknown to me, my colleagues referred to my territory as the Great Advertising Desert because it was nearly devoid of cattle. It consisted of Southern California, the southern tip of Nevada (which had more endangered turtles than it did cattle), Arizona and Utah. The amount of my speeding tickets in Utah exceeded my ad sales in that great state. While most of the field men drove Lincoln Town cars, which was the greatest road car ever built, I, on the other hand, drove a German tank. Or at least it felt like it. It had the turning radius of a Carnival Cruise ship and I never knew how fast I was going because the speedometer was broke, as was nearly everything else in, or on, that poor excuse for a car we lovingly called ‘The Tank’. I’ve only run out of gas three times in my life and all three were in The Tank because the gas gauge didn’t work either! You could see asphalt through holes in the floorboard, it got two gallons of gas per mile and the tires were balder than my uncle Charles. It had a V-5 engine (a V-8 with three bad pistons), and the air conditioning consisted of rolling down the windows... by hand. There was evidence in the glove box that The Tank had been totaled by at least three insurance companies. Worst of all, the car wreaked of cigarette smoke. A used car salesman told me once that if he turned on a car’s radio and it blared rock and roll he knew the transmission was shot, but if all the ash trays were full and it smelled like smoke it was a rental car. I complained about the car to my boss but he said, “Quit complaining. Back when I began my ca-

continued on page three


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.