LMD March 21

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

March 15, 2021 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 63 • No. 3

The Nightmare Has Begun BY LEE PITTS

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he 30-30 lever action rifle is said to have killed more deer than any other firearm. The 3030 has been around for 125 years and is still one of the best hunting rifles and any gun enthusiast has at least one in their arsenal. Well, now there’s a new 30 X 30 we’re quite sure most of you have never heard of and speaking metaphorically, it turns the gun around and starts killing off ranchers, hunters, oil field workers, public lands sheepherders and anyone who owns chunks of private property. You’ve read right here in the past about Agenda 21, The Wildlands Project, the Buffalo Commons and the Green New Deal but Joe Biden’s 30 X 30 could turn out to be the most effective weapon yet for ridding the world of people like you.

The Whitetail’s Revenge

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

Right after he was “elected”, and we’re using that word loosely and begrudgingly, you may recall seeing photos of President Biden at his desk on which were stacked dozens of black leather portfolios, each one containing an Executive Order (EO). So far, Biden has signed more than any of the last three presidents, most of them reversing Executive Orders that President Trump put in place, like Trump’s withdrawing two million acres from the Bear’s Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Restoring those monuments was one of the first actions Biden took on his first day in office. In that stack of portfolios on Biden’s desk was Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Aboard”. The Executive Order

Keep skunks and bankers at a distance. halted new oil and gas leases The Department of the Inon public lands and created a terior issued a “fact sheet” that White House Office of Environ- explains 30 X 30. It says that almental Justice. Under the guise though 60 percent of the land in of controlling our climate Biden the continental United States is also snuck in an enviro’s dream. in a natural state, we are losing He committed his administra- an entire football field worth of tion to protecting 30 percent this land every 30 seconds. As a of U.S. land and coastal seas by result, one-third of all U.S. wild2030 thereby protecting an esti- life is threatened with extincmated one million species that tion and that’s why Biden says supposedly might go extinct that 30 percent of the country’s otherwise. land base must be preserved in Previously, I thought the 30 the next ten years. According to X 30 program was just some to the U.S. Geological Survey, greenie pie-in-the-sky idea that 12% of the land in the U.S. is wasn’t going anywhere until I currently “permanently protectread an article written by Nor- ed” which means we have a long man James for the Liberty Mat- way to go to reach Biden’s 30 ters News Service in their pub- percent goal. lication American Stewards of Norman James wrote, “ProLiberty. ponents argue that preserving According to James, “While 30 percent of America’s land the EO’s language is fuzzy, and oceans is necessary to re“conserving” apparently means verse climate change. Howpreserving these areas in a nat- ever, the science and data do ural or undisturbed state.” And not justify these extreme policy cows aren’t part of this undis- measures.” James says, “ 30 X turbed state. 30 is an unconstitutional policy

Mexico’s Decision to Ban Glyphosate Has Rocked the Agribusiness World BY TIMOTHY A. WISE / COMMONDREAMS.ORG

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exican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador quietly rocked the agribusiness world with his New Year’s Eve decree to phase out use of the herbicide glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified corn. His administration sent an even stronger aftershock two weeks later, clarifying that the government would also phase out GM corn imports in three years and the ban would include not just corn for human consumption but yellow corn destined primarily for livestock. Under NAFTA, the United States has seen a 400% increase in corn exports to Mexico, the vast majority genetically modified yellow dent corn. The bold policy moves fulfill a campaign promise by Mexico’s populist president, whose agricultural policies have begun to favor Mexican producers, particularly small-scale farmers, and protect consumers alarmed by the rise of obesity and chronic diseases associated with high-fat, high-sugar processed foods. In banning glyphosate, the decree cites the precautionary principle and the growing body of scientific research showing the dangers of the chemical, the active ingredient in Bayer/

by LEE PITTS

shift, moving us from a nation founded on private property principles to one controlled by the administrative state.”

To My Dear Cali-phony-a,

Enough Is Enough

ave you lost your ever-loving mind? I used to be proud to tell people I am a fifth generation Californian but now I try to hide the fact because you’ve turned California Dreamin’ into a nightmare. Or a bad joke. Your roads are terrible and your schools are worse. Common decency and courtesy? Forget it. There’s human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco where the median price for a crappy home is a million and a half, and the typical driver on our freeways is texting with one hand, drinking a five dollar cup of Starbuck’s with another and flipping you off with yet another. That doesn’t leave many other hands to drive the car. I know what part of the problem is. You went from an economy that was largely based on agriculture and oil to one ruled by bits and bytes. Needless to say, each attract their own kind of people. Your central valley is still the biggest agriculture phenomenon in the world but the WOOFY’s (well off older folks) who live on the coast who either work for the government or are retired from it, or are professors who teach communism at universities, are trying to shut off the farmer’s water so that they’ll have enough to fill their hot tubs and swimming pools, to water their lawns and succulent gardens and to save the fairy shrimp. You kicked the cows off the land because they supposedly drank too much water and then planted wine grapes and marijuana farms in their place that are sucking our aquifers dry. Self-driving cars can’t come too soon because a large percentage of your drivers are either drunk on wine or stoned on grass. You shut down the offshore oil wells because they’re unsightly. I guess you think huge windmills and solar arrays are pretty to look at as you cruise by in your Smart cars, not once wondering where the power that charged your batteries came from. Many of you snobs in California who have bumper stickers on your Priuses and Teslas saying, “Tear down the

Environmental groups disagree about how much nature is enough to “heal” our planet from all the damage mankind has done to it. One prominent biologist, E.O. Wilson, introduced his idea of “half Earth” in a book he wrote and in it he claimed we needed to protect half the planet from any kind of human intervention. A couple years ago several large green groups, including the National Geographic Society, published a statement calling for 30 percent of the planet to be sustainably managed by 2030 and 50 percent to be sustainably managed by 2050. Although the words “sustainable” and “conserve” are vague, we’re quite confident in saying that the enviro’s definition of “conserve and protect” means NO MORE energy development, forest management, livestock grazing, mineral exploration, development or recreational use. The 30 x 30 program supposedly has three core objectives: “to conserve species threatened by development, to protect ecosystems that offer services like storing carbon, and to restore degraded habitats.” But let’s cut to the chase, its primary objective is to herd all Americans into continued on page two

Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. The government had stopped imports of glyphosate since late 2019, citing the World Health Organization’s warning that the chemical is a “probable carcinogen.” The prohibitions on genetically modified corn, which appear toward the end of the decree, have more profound implications. The immediate ban on permits for cultivation of GM corn formalizes current restrictions, ordered by Mexican courts in 2013 when a citizen lawsuit challenged government permitting of experimental GM corn planting by Monsanto and other multinational seed companies on the grounds of the contamination threat they posed to Mexico’s rich store of native corn varieties. The import ban cites the same environmental threats but goes further, advancing the López Obrador administration’s goals of promoting greater food self-sufficiency in key crops. As the decree states: “[W]ith the objective of achieving self-sufficiency and food sovereignty, our country must be oriented towards establishing sustainable and culturally adequate agricultural production, through the use of agroecological practices and inputs that are safe for human health, the country’s biocultural diversity and the environment, as well as congruent with the agricultural traditions of Mexico.”

Chronicle of a decree foretold Such policies should come as no surprise. In his campaign, López Obrador committed to such measures. Unprecedented support from continued on page four

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