“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee…”
We all know the words, and we all love the sentiment in this old folk song. Our kids and grandkids probably sing this song in school plays, much as we did at their age. But even as we sing these cherished words, the beauty they represent is slipping away.
Ludwig von Mises, in his preface to Bureaucracy, writes: ”The main issue in present-day social and political conflicts is whether or not man should give away freedom, private initiative, and individual responsibility and surrender to the guardianship of a gigantic apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the socialist state. Should authoritarian totalitarianism be substituted for individualism and democracy?”
This is a searching question, and one we’ve all answered in our own hearts and on our own land with a resounding “no!”. The trouble is, do the proponents of the socialist state listen, and if they don’t, what is our recourse as liberty-loving people of the wide-open ranges?
Every lover of the west should be worried about the unelected bureaucracies driving the Endangered Species Act, the EPA, foolish natural resource policy, restriction of federal land use and endless regulation on hard-working land-owners and businessmen. But even more so, we should be concerned about the seemingly endless stream of borrowed and printed money that funds these unconstitutional hierarchies.
Any businessman or woman knows that money is a driver of action. Therefore, if we cut off the money, we can rein in rampant growth of bureaucracies like the EPA. With an endless stream of printed money and a false sense of security, faraway departments and special interests get to force their will on rural communities and individuals. They can buy media time, sway public opinion and use their money to falsely manipulate the marketplace.
If we elect principled individuals to Congress, who will serve their Constitutionally-mandated duty of controlling the purse and voting against frivolous spending, we can start to beat back these bureaucracies and restore our freedom as agriculturalists.
Congress needs to be held accountable. It’s not enough to blame the President, blame the media or blame our culture – these are all legitimate scapegoats, but they also serve the convenient purpose of absolving us from responsibility when something goes wrong. Congress must be re-elected every two years, and any Congressperson who has not stood firm on his or her principles and the causes we support needs to be challenged in the primaries, and must be rebuked on these votes.
Our government is a democratic republic, intended to represent the people and protect our God-given rights. We have excused well-meaning but ineffectual politicians for long enough, and it’s time to make 2014 the year of fiscal responsibility and free principles. The future of our farms, ranches and children’s agricultural future depends on our ability to require our representatives to truly represent us.
The time to start is now — the future of America the beautiful, with our spacious skies and amber waves of grain — rely on our resolve.
As most Oregonians know, Klamath County (indeed, most of the 2nd District) is in a season of severe drought. Add to this politically motivated backroom deals, and a radical environmentalist agenda with lots of out-of-state clout and capital, and this is a scary situation for rural Oregon.
The problem is simple – we have limited fresh water. Animals and people alike need fresh water for survival, and droughts are part of Earth’s natural cycle. Therefore, we should prepare for such eventualities with dams, reservoirs and other water storage facilities, and we should share the water between all interested parties, not use the strong arm of government to pick politically-correct winners and losers.
Last year, before I was in this Congressional race, I gave a presentation on this topic to the Jackson County Americans for Prosperity group:
And, just last month, Congressman Tom McClintock gave similar thoughts to California Americans For Prosperity:
I hope for the chance to be colleagues in the House with Rep. McClintock and other common-sense conservatives like him. We have to stick up for our food producers, outdoorsmen and others who share and make a living from natural resources. What’s happening in Klamath County and Central California should serve as a warning – we must change our representation and alter our course before it’s too late.
For more information on the specific issues in Klamath County, please read Erika Bentsen’s excellent piece in Western Ag magazine here.
Last week, The Baker City Herald editorial staff wrote, “Rep. Greg Walden has gotten right to the heart of the debate over managing national forest and he only needed to write a four-page bill to do it.”
However, it’s time for a reality check, because although I applaud his effort, it seems clear that Walden only threw this piece of legislative silliness onto the House floor because I am on his heels, chasing his lackluster votes. I have heard for years from hunters, farmers, ranchers, loggers and outdoorsmen worried about their forest access and concerned with the deafness of Washington bureaucrats. They tell me of their frustration in writing endless letters to Walden’s office and their local papers, along with their attempts at “public comment” debacles.
Do you really believe that Representative Walden was suddenly moved by his love for our freedoms as Oregonians, or does this seem politically-motivated to you? Why have our forests been padlocked for years and why has his office been bragging about his ineffectual votes, until now?
The Travel Management Plan comes from an agenda started 10 years ago. That’s when Republicans owned the executive and legislative branches of the federal machine. Yet, this debacle has been growing like a boil beneath the surface and is now, ready to explode. Is this what it takes to get Washington’s attention?
It’s easy to see that this bill is an attempt to score political points without creating real change. Mr. Walden’s bill re-enforces the root problem – a profound disconnect between the boots on the ground and the shiny shoes in the hallowed halls of D.C. He makes the mistake of assuming that keeping power in the federal bureaucracy while giving purely political head-patting bonuses to county commissioners will fix the problem.
As a county commissioner, I can tell you right now that we need much more than this weak attempt – we need ownership, real-world budgets and the ability to open our forests to all kinds of uses without federal overreach.
It’s time for Oregon legislators and our US Congress to explore new options. I believe that we should be transferring all federally managed lands into the various jurisdictions where those lands are contained. We should be giving the resources back to the people with real action, not symbolic four-page bills.
In order to bring back economic vitality, we must sync Oregon’s immense forests with real-world, economic conditions at the local level. A bold strategy, like this, is the only solution big enough to insure the longterm productivity of our vast renewable resources. Washington’s bureaucratic management of natural resources within our state’s boundary is not serving our 2nd Congressional District interests. It’s time for a real change.
The hunters, packers, foresters, campers and OHV users who enjoy these forested areas of Eastern, Central and Southern Oregon, know the history of these lands and know better than others what proper care entails.
Let Oregonians bear the full responsibility for preserving these lands for future generations and allow each of us the privilege of “securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”
When so-called public servants suggest the increase of Federal land management, it’s usually sold to us as a great resource for our communities. We’re told that we’ll get wide open spaces to hunt, fish, hike, access with OHVs and use for countless other pursuits.
Unfortunately, all too often, once the government gets control of our land, it becomes closed to one or more of these activities. They close forest roads under the guise of “environmental protection”, ignoring the fact that keeping these roads clear aids firefighters in the summer fire season. The bureaucrats insist that they know better than we do how to enjoy our wild places, and so they padlock the woods and force us out of land that should rightfully belong to the local community.
More and more forests in Oregon are being closed to OHV traffic, and our current Congressman seems content with making empty statements and meaningless votes. For those of us who love our open places, this is a serious issue, one that is worth fighting for. We will not be content with empty rhetoric – if we aren’t willing to stand up, our kids will never know the freedom of Oregon’s mountains and forests.
As John George of Forest Access for All recently stated in a petition letter: “Further restrictions to open access of our public lands is not acceptable to the general population of Eastern Oregon and is not an acceptable form of land management for our public lands. OHV access has been a primary means of accessing our public lands for the last 100 plus years and is tied directly to the traditions and cultures of our communities…
…Further restrictions in OHV access through a closed forest ‘no cross country travel’ policy severally limits handicapped and elderly citizens’ ability to access currently accessible lands and disallows them from attaining goods and services they have historically utilized for generations. Open OHV access is key to our mining, livestock, timber and sustenance use of these mountains, any further restriction of this access mode puts our already tenuous existence on a continued downward trend. Simple loop trails are acceptable for some user groups and we support the recognition and development of those opportunities for groups, but those systems do not fully meet out the needs of all OHV users on public lands, and should not be looked at as a mitigation opportunity or strategy to address other OHV user concerns.”
The arrogance and shocking lack of concern toward the lifestyles of rural Oregonians is unjust and immoral. Our local economies suffer from these restrictions and our local governments lose tax revenue when our forests are given over the Federal government and padlocked. Our culture is in jeopardy and our freedoms are being constricted every day. I’m proud to stand with the hunters, OHV users, trappers, fishermen and outdoorsmen who are saying that enough is enough. Let’s take back our lands and manage them with integrity, consistency and the Constitution in mind.
As I’ve shared many times, I own a small cattle ranch east of Klamath Falls, and the health and sustainability of rural livelihoods is a very important issue to me. The issues I want to address require serious reform, not small, impotent acts. We need to be willing to stand up for our way of life and the inheritance we want to leave future generations of cattlemen and agriculturalists. The time to address these concerns is now, with firmness, confidence and hope.
Rural Oregonians are demanding change on these five issues, and I stand with you:
1. The Massive Overreach of the EPA
Rural counties in Oregon are struggling to maintain sensible budgets, a reasonable standard of living and viable livelihoods for their citizens – and the Environmental Protection Agency seems bent on making those goals almost impossible. With endless resources, a bully pulpit and an agenda that focuses on good optics rather than sensible policy, the EPA is a dangerously out-of-control force in rural America. As concerned cattlemen and citizens, we need to demand oversight of the EPA and a representative that sees its bureaucratic overreach for what it is – a criminal abuse of power and a force that could easily rob us of our agricultural legacies and freedoms.
Right now, there are very few voices in D.C. demanding reform at the EPA, and those that do are accused of “wanting dirty air and water”. Clearly this is not the case, but rural communities should not be bullied, simply because we have less population (and time) to fight back with. Farmers and ranchers feed America, and our allegiance should be to their interests, not the insatiable appetites of Washington power-brokers.
2. Wolves in Oregon and ESA – Endangered Species Act
By now, everyone has heard the horror stories of good intentions gone awry: wolves attacking livestock outside of Yellowstone, school-children forced to wait for the bus in protective steel cages in New Mexico. These stories are symptoms of a larger problem – a government that refuses to allow the true stewards of the land – farmers, ranchers and other natural resource experts – to have a say in the management of these animals. As people who make our living on the land, we understand how to protect the natural habitats of wildlife, and we can all testify to the protective power of domestic livestock for wild game.
As Western Cattleman recently pointed out, “Environmental groups try to portray farmers and ranchers as enemies of the environment, greedily using the water and other natural resources—to the detriment of wildlife. They try to make it a black and white issue: the farmers against the fish and other endangered species. But as one resident of Klamath Falls stated, agriculture and small family farms are true stewards of the land, caring for wildlife and natural resources as much as they do their domestic production.”
This is an essential point – just as we now understand that loggers were not harming the Spotted Owl, ranchers should not be used as a political whipping boy for a rabid environmentalist cause. In Oregon, we’ve already seen what faulty logic and bad policy can do to a once-thriving timber industry, and we cannot allow that to happen to the family farms and ranches that feed our communities.
3. Property Rights and use of Federal Lands
Every rancher knows that land equals prosperity and success in agriculture. Many farming and ranching families leave little more than land and a legacy of knowledge to their heirs, and this land needs to be protected. Individuals and family farms need the security of knowing that their children and grandchildren can pursue the family business and continue in Oregon’s great tradition of agriculture.
Currently, over 50% of the west is owned by the Federal government, and many ranchers rely on that public land to run their livestock. With the political pressure mounting against American agriculture, however, we need to protect these lands and return them to local power. No bureaucrat in DC should be allowed to revoke grazing rights, and we should be working toward a more free and fair system for future agriculturalists.
4. CWA – Clean Water Act
Current legislation in the form a a House Resolution, H.R. 2421, is titled, “A Bill to To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.” With typical arrogance, the national bureaucracy is investing in new legislative methods to control and regulate your land in untold ways.
This bill redefines the term “Waters of the United States” by removing the word “navigable” and extending legislation to include all “activities affecting these waters”. This creates the potential to restrict farmers, ranchers and other landowners’ property rights. We’ll see massive legislative burdens on local agriculture, more bullying by big-government bureaucrats and more expense for small farms and ranches. It’s very easy for a legislator from the suburbs to enact grandiose clean-water ideals – it’s something else entirely for the farmers and ranchers who have cows to feed, hay to bale, tractors to fix and bills to pay to live up to these unattainable standards.
Ranchers are already over-burdened and over-regulated – we should not be forcing them to comply with even more legislation. Ranchers and farmers understand the value of clean water for themselves and their livestock, and these rules only create false choices and cause unnecessary hardship on an already hard-working community.
5. Water rights, both quantity and quality
Any rancher knows that without water, crops don’t grow, animals don’t survive, and agriculture suffers. In my hometown of Klamath County, we are seeing the devastating effects of politically abused water rights and the massive economic destruction that follows. Western Cowman magazine states that “Environmentalists argue that the Klamath valley should never have been farmed—that farming put too much stress on the land. But as Kimberly Strassel pointed out in her Wall Street Journal article, the West is primarily arid. ‘Its history is one of turning inhospitable areas into thriving communities through prudent and thoughtful relocation of water.
If the Klamath farmers should be moved, why not the residents of San Diego and Los Angeles, not to mention residents of the Southwest and parts of Montana and Wyoming?’ All of these communities survive because of irrigation—water that some people think should go to environmental use.”
Our representatives should be on the forefront of all of these agricultural issues, giving our rural communities a voice and fighting for the rights of those who feed us. Right now, many politicians are conveniently silent, trying to play political games with your livelihood. This is wrong, unjust and immoral. We need to speak up for agriculture and rural America, while we still can.
