Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
March 15, 2017 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 59 • No. 3
She Said What?
Monuments To Themselves I A LEE PITTS
s I remember my high school government-studies class we have three branches of the federal government with a very definite delineation of powers. The legislative branch, Congress, has the power to pass bills and make rules. The President, and his cabinet, is supposed to carry out the instructions of Congress. The President may veto bills but he can’t make laws, that is the job of Congress. The judicial branch is supposed to make sure the laws, foremost the Constitution, are obeyed. So tell me, how can one man make multiple million-acre monuments to himself merely by the signing of his name? Isn’t that the job of Congress? And why does the judicial branch turn a blind eye to these unconstitutional acts?
Antiquated
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
Those of us who actually live in the West, as opposed to easterners who just want to tell us how to live, are well aware of all the tools the bureaucrats have to get rid of ranchers and private property owners. They can revoke long-held water rights and pile so many restrictions on public lands ranchers to make their deeded operations less valuable and uneconomical to operate. They can use wild horses to destroy the range so they have something to blame the denuded landscape on, oth-
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
er than themselves. Or they can use wolves to kill cattle and generally ruin the ambience in cattle country. Any ranchers that survive those tests then has to worry about the Forest Service burning them out. This is all part of not-so-secretive plan to remove ranchers and their livestock from the West. And we haven’t even mentioned vain Presidents who, with a simple signature, can lock up millions of acres in the West as monuments to themselves. Like you, I’ve read for years about something called The Antiquities Act and how 16
Presidents have used it to create more than 140 National Monuments covering nearly 300 million acres, most of them in the West. Did you ever wonder what law gave the President the right to make laws? And why is this law called The Antiquities Act?
Much To His Dismay The Antiquities Act was passed in 1906 and since then only three presidents have NOT used it to lock up land: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. By my count President Obama declared 34 National Monuments
which is one quarter of all Monuments. This included five in one day and two others in a day that locked up a good chunk of Utah and Nevada. Obama, trying to cement his legacy as “The Environmental President”, made the most Monuments of any President. According to the Washington Post he beat out the previous record holder, Franklin Roosevelt, by two. Roosevelt took three terms to create his while Obama only had two terms, much to his dismay. Obama did create some National Monuments in the East, mostly to commemorate African-American history, but the majority were like the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument that spans the border between California and Oregon. When Obama expanded the already huge Monument he said it was to increase the area’s continued on page two
Trump May Upend Carefully Laid Plans for Sage Grouse BY SCOTT STREATER, E&E NEWS REPORTER
W
hen former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that sweeping federal plans designed to save the greater sage grouse had been finalized less than a year and a half ago, she hailed it as an “epic conservation effort” that took years to complete. The Republican governors of Nevada and Wyoming and the Democratic governors of Colorado and Montana stood next to Jewell at the September 2015 ceremony. She revealed that the mottled-brown bird would not be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, in large part because of the federal plans. But the election of President Trump just over a year later has federal and state officials, conservation groups, and others expecting big changes in how the plans are carried out — if they are ever fully implemented. Trump has not publicly addressed the federal sage grouse plans. But Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), Trump’s nominee for Interior secretary, has been a vocal critic, comparing them at one time to Obamacare and saying he wants “state-driven solutions” for managing grouse. Trump cannot simply dismiss the blueprints, which amended 98 Bureau of Land
Management and Forest Service land-use plans to incorporate protective measures covering nearly 70 million acres of sage grouse habitat in 10 Western states. Amending landuse plans requires a lengthy analysis and public comment period. But some observers foresee the Interior and Agriculture departments reopening the land-use plan amendment process to revise the sage grouse plans — an effort that would take years and likely stretch well past Trump’s first term in office. “Obviously, they could restart the planning process tomorrow,” said Sarah Greenberger, who as one of Jewell’s top counselors helped develop the plans. In the short term, the Trump administration is expected to scale back implementation measures, observers say, initially by removing funding for grouse conservation efforts from the president’s fiscal 2018 budget request. And the administration could curtail efforts defending lawsuits against the federal plans. Congress is already moving to block the plans and give states more control. House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) last month filed a bill, H.R. 527, that would give governors the authority continued on page five
remember learning early in life that humans should use all five of their senses, but darn it, mine don’t work any more. I’ve got cataracts on my eyes making the whole world cloudy, I’m going deaf from listening to too many loud auctioneers for 45 years, the feeling in the tips of my fingers has been destroyed by too much hot metal, and in the process of carving some skin cancer from my nose the Doc seemed to have also removed my smeller. My wife is disappointed I can still talk but I can’t get a word in edgewise. I’m 65 going on 95. The other afternoon I was trying to sneak in a nap because my belly ached and just when I was starting to enter la-la land I thought I heard my wife yell, “Where are (mumble, mumble) and what (mumble, mumble) you up to? You’re much (mumble, mumble) quiet.” It always makes my wife nervous when she can’t hear me clanging about because she thinks I’m probably making a big mess she’ll have to clean up. Nine times out of ten she’s right, but not this time. I was a bit irritated at her for interfering with my beauty sleep so I yelled back, “I was trying to take a nap, thank you very much.” Then I thought I heard her reply, “You can’t (mumble, mumble) a nap, it’s (mumble, mumble) in the afternoon!” It was then that I realized that the noise was not emanating from the mouth of my beautiful bride but from my gastrointestinal tract. My stomach was growling. Big time. If I’d have recorded the gastro-music I’m sure it would have become a platinum selling rap song. I was embarrassed to admit to my wife that I’d been carrying on a conversation with my innards but fortunately for me she’s starting to lose her senses too and she couldn’t hear me either. Fearing ridicule, I still haven’t told her that my bowels frequently speak to me. That same day my wife and I were reading the newspaper while we ate supper when, all of a sudden, I heard
continued on page four
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