When the Washington Post interpreted a Government Accounting Office (GAO) report, they wrote: “the program that charges ranchers a fee to graze their cattle on public land . . . loses [the government] $123 million a year.” The article then quoted a variety of antigrazing advocates.

What the GAO report actually does say is that ranchers do not have ‘exclusive access to the federal lands, which are managed for multiple purposes or uses.” IT also outlines the formula used to set grazing fees, which includes allowance for the work the rancher does to maintain the area.
http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/Grazing/hikersloggers052106.htm

By Ric Frost 2006
By Ric Frost - Former Policy Analyst New Mexico State University

COMMENT

Ric,
I enjoyed reading your article from all those years ago. Not many people are willing to understand what your were writing about and that unfortunately includes a lot of people who think they are in favor of private property.
wrote an article for Range a few years ago entitled "Just Don't Do It", or something like that. I got one call from an older lady from Carbondale involving a large ranch being put into a C.E., with her brother in charge and maneuvering everything to his own benefit. She seemed to understand what I was talking about but never would follow through. I'm sure the brother is running things for his own benefit and screwing the other siblings to this day. Her father was in failing health and was being told by the brother to put it all in the C.E. and then let him run things.

Thought of this case when I read the article about C.E.s in California in the last issue of Range. Have you seen it? If not, I can e-mail it to you. Once again, they are talking about the California Cattlemen's Assn. and the Farm Bureau going along with this crap of "keeping the ranch intact" and "loving the land too much" to allow the next generation to decide how to use the land. This supports my long-standing theory that the modern ranch is run by the "weakest" of the family members. Darwin talked about survival of the fittest and the C.E. is used to eliminate the "strongest" from wanting to be involved in a ranch where you have to have to ask permission from some urban politically-correct woman "monitor" how many cows you are allowed to run and whether you can change a fence line of repair a corral with used materials, etc. Only the weak limp-wrists are willing to live that way, so the strong ones leave and the parasite stays on the land and kisses officials butts, continuing to be subsidized by the prior efforts of others for the rest of his worthless life. I can give real-life examples of many such cases.

How would you like to be the brother who left the ranch, leaving your lazy ass-kissing brother mis-managing the $3 Million dollar ranch, so you got a few thousand dollars per year for your share of the ranch? You'd have no way to ever get any value out of the ranch, while your lazy brother would be living like a king for the rest of his life. He'd never want to sell it because then he would have to go to work like a normal man. Then, I expect that his lazy, spoiled son would be selected to mis-manage the ranch after he died, so even your kids would never receive any benefit.

This is how I see all these ranches being operated in the future. No wonder some farmers and ranchers have become such a weak and dependent bunch. They could never survive in the real world.

Lewis Anderson

COMMENT

People seem seem to think that tax deductions are "free"- no one pays. Oh, we all pay.

Then we pay again and again to monitor and enforce easements that are often silly to start off with.

There are perpetual monitoring and enforcement costs for easements that are paid for by the public and can be huge, but often ignored.

In addition, if we make a mistake with an easement, place one in the wrong place, the public pays a huge cost for a very long time.

That's yet another problem with perpetual easements- we tend not to do the calculus. Many take a rather pollyannish view of easements.

Jesse Richardson

COMMENT

Lewis makes good points.

Cattlemen's Assoc and Farm Bureau's at the state and national levels have always been shills for USDA/Big Food-Industrial Ag
while paying lip service to independent agriculture -- and stabbing us in the back.
Farm Bureau is an insurance conglomerate -- not interested in agriculture except to the extent it can sell insurance to the serfs working the land.

Lewis is absolutely correct about CEs being a tool to eliminate independent farmers and ranchers and forest owners...
and to ensure the government's newly-acquired ("conserved") land is occupied by feudal-dependents -- 'limp-wrist parasites' -- a perfect description.

The few exceptions I have encountered are honest but naive land owners who have been conned by the CE bunko artists because, as Ric says, their ability to think critically has been compromised by government indoctrination centers -- public schools.

L. (Leo) M. Schwartz, Chairman The Virginia Land Rights Coalition