Back in the old West a lot of the toughest codgers tried tortoise ranching, but it died out because it took years to drive the herds up to Kansas City or Chicago. On a good day they might cover a mile and a half, but most days they could only drive them about a mile because a herd has to graze. There was no use bringing skinny turtles to market. In frontier towns along the drive it was a always big week when the boys brought a herd through, and people would grab their kids out of the streets in case there was a stampede as the torts got a whiff of the salad bar at the Golden Corral and Saloon.
A lot of people don’t realize it, but Westerners learned to say little and talk slowly so they didn’t run out of things to say during the big tortoise drives. Now that’s part of our Western culture. But then came the barbed wire fences, and the last of the free-grazing tortoise drives stopped because the tortoises didn’t give a s**t about the barbed wire, but the cowboys would have to carry their beer coolers and lawn chairs the long way round and try to catch back up to the stock, and that was just too much work for the world’s laziest f**king ranchers.
The only ones left are the ones who run mixed herds of cattle and tortoises, like Cliven Bundy’s family. If the BLM wins, an historic and traditional American way of life will come to a final, bitter end, and this nation will close a fascinating chapter of its history.
I did not know that.
Why are we even discussing this? This is all settled law. Like immigration law. And the Health Care Employer Mandate deadline. The Attorney General informs us there is no discretion in the enforcement of . . . Never Mind!
I have one word for remaining (and/or aging) tortoise ranchers who are worried about losing their way of life: Escargot.
What you don’t understand is that when you switch from tortoises to snails, there is not that much meat on each one of those blighters, and the industry becomes dependent on an army of exploited immigrant workers in the snail-packing industry. We are going to receive waves of the rural underclass from France.
[voice=Sam Elliot]
Snails. It’s what’s for dinner.
[/voice]
But more seriously, if the TED talk (Anthony Watts had it as a sticky for a while) I linked down in the Cliven Bundy thread is correct, then the federal government shouldn’t be charging grazing fees, it should be paying ranchers to graze on federal land to help maintain the healthy ecosystem and prevent desertification of marginal lands, almost like the way some states pay goat herders to keep undergrowth cleared along highways, but performing a far more important task than merely maintaining roadside aesthetics.
Yes, where are those radical conservative environmentalist wackos? That’s what’s missing.
They keep claiming that every wacko that comes out of the woodwork is a righty (until the embarrassing lefty trail the wacko always leaves makes that too embarrassing for them to continue.) Imagine that, an embarrassed lefty… and we thought that impossible?
Uh… I hate snails.
Where can one go for a straight answer on the Bundy thing?
Some claimed that we has paying Nevada for grazing rights but the Feds asserted ownership of the land and won’t let him graze his cattle for love nor money because of some environmental “offset” for a Chinese solar facility?
Or would he be able to graze his cows if he would pay the Feds their grazing fee? If this is the case, why doesn’t the man just “pay the dime.”
It is my understanding that before Bundy could pay the BLM fee he would have to agree to a slew of provisions that would place him under the Federal government’s thumb. Provisions that drove the neighboring ranches out of business as they would not permit ranching at an economical level. Bundy is essentially saying he refuses to pay the fees not because they are too expensive, but because the restrictions placed upon him in doing so would drive him out of business.
In many ways Bundy’s situation seems analogous to medical providers who agree to take medicare patients. The government will eventually drive those who “deal with the devil” out of business by demanding services at less than cost. And those who refuse the deal, they will eventually feel the boot upon their throat.
It’s the cows that are at fault. They’re illegal migration cows. If they’d only just feed on their own grass this wouldn’t be an issue. Justice Roberts would force ranchers to build fences they’ve never built in the past (it’s just a tax you know.) BTW, cows only regard fences as a deterrent when they have greener grass on their own side. They can jump higher than you can imagine (I’ve seen them go over a ten foot wooden enclosure when they didn’t want to go the way the rancher wanted) but mostly they just walk through them. All barbwire does to a cow is give it a good massage.
I didn’t see the original comment, but I knew who wrote this the minute I read it. 😀
A bit late, but Saturday’s Drudge Report headline is here. Lawmakers from the Western states meet to discuss stripping the federal government of control over Western lands.
Apparently the current regime is so corrupt, inept, abusive, unresponsive, and power mad that a system that has stood for 130 plus years has to be tossed right out the window.