LMD Nov 2020

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

November 15, 2020 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 62 • No. 11

Missing Pieces LEE PITTS

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he Digest publisher, Caren Cowan, is as connected as anyone in the borderlands. Her extended family has ranched in Arizona and New Mexico for generations. One of her credible sources recently told her that the drug cartels are now smuggling workers across the border to work at major meatpacking plants. The source said the packers are paying the cartels $12,000 a head! The packer then provides housing and food and the employees work off the debt over time... with interest of course. Caren passed this tip along to me hoping I could verify it knowing that it would be a blockbuster exclusive. So I called packer friends of mine to confirm the story and even talked with a couple illegals to see if they had heard anything like this. But the deeper I dug the more I had a nagging feeling I’d heard this story before. Then it hit me... I’d already written this story!

Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.

partly because he promised to build a border wall which a majority of people find most appealing. But our dirty little secret here in America is that while we rant and rave about illegal aliens they are mowing our lawns, bussing the tables at our favorite restaurants, reroofing our houses and perhaps most importantly, they are harvesting our crops and putting food on our tables. The beef business is no different. You can cuss the illegals but without the them there’s a good chance the beef business in America would be caput! The fact of the matter is, illegal immigrants play a vital role in our economy. In Arizona alone employers depend on one million foreign workers, a third of whom are illegal, to work in low-wage jobs Americans won’t do. If you were a meatpacker and a large chunk of your illegal workforce was out on sick leave due to Covid 19 and the President ordered you to reopen your plants but you could find no Americans willing to do the work, in desperation might you not try to recruit workers from Mexico and Central America? The real problem is the BIG FOUR meatpackers have concentrated their business in behemoth plants that must be fed a constant supply of low wage workers to labor in cold, dangerous and crowded plants. And these plants go through people faster than a bad chimichanga.

ecutors indicted Tyson and six ties these days that are plowed employees, including two exec- under or left rotting in the field utives, and in December 2001, because the farmers couldn’t three of those employees pled find anyone willing to harvest guilty and were fired. The in- them, the beef industry also has dictment charged that “Tyson a major bottleneck that could had a corporate culture that cripple our industry at any time. condoned such behavior,” but You as a rancher can do everyduring the trial Tyson insisted thing right, buy the best bulls that the illegal activity case was and have the best performing limited to a handful of man- cattle in the feedlot but if you agers who had been operating can’t get them processed at outside of company policy. Said a packing plant it will all have a Tyson spokesman, ‘’No one in been for nought. We could end the corporate offices knew of up like the pig farmers in Minthis.’’ nesota who, according to The And a jury came to the same Star Tribune, were having to euconclusion. Tyson, the company, thanize as many as 10,000 hogs per day because there was no was found not guilty. After reading my story I real- place to get them processed. ized that if the federal government couldn’t get the goods on It’s Not That Simple All For Nought Tyson, or any of the other three On August 3 of last year a When I regained my memo- major packers, it was doubtful gunman walked into a crowded ry I searched my filing cabinets that I could build a case with Wal Mart in El Paso Texas, and and sure enough, I found that my limited resources. But the killed 22 people and wounded 20 years ago I wrote a story in exercise was good because it 26 others to halt what he called this newspaper about the Justice made me realize that just as “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Department filing a 36 count with many other ag commodi- President Trump was elected continued on page two indictment accusing Tyson of arranging to transport illegal immigrants across the border and a country desperately in need of affordable helping them to get counterfeit building materials), and entire watersheds work papers for jobs at 15 Tyson (upon which Colorado and Wyoming complants in 9 states from 1994 to munities depend for their water supplies). We 2001. It was the largest case in have lost an untold number of wild animals, history brought against a major with minimum estimates being in the tens of American company involving thousands of dead deer, elk, mountain sheep, BY HARRIET HAGEMAN, NCLALEGAL.ORG the smuggling of immigrants. coyotes, small mammals, and birds. The longImmigration and Naturalne fundamental problem with term environmental consequences of these catization Service undercover having agencies in Washington, astrophic forest fires are incalculable. agents worked on the case for DC issue thousands of regulaThese fires are tragic beyond measure, but 30 months and eventually prostions that apply to everyone and the real tragedy is that they were only made everywhere in the country is that there is simply possible by the National Forest Service and its no way for them to consider the thousands of decision to block access to and management of ways in which their one-size-fits-all approach 58.5 million acres of Forest Service lands (1/3 can go wrong. One area especially rife with of the entire National Forest inventory), the peril is in the management of our federal lands. vast majority of which are located in the interiOn October 24, 2020, Estes Park, Colorado, or west (with Colorado being home to 4.2 milhome of the iconic Stanley Hotel and gateway lion of such roadless areas and Wyoming havto the Rocky Mountain National Park, was ing another 3.2 million). It was in 2001 that the evacuated. There were three fires bearing down Forest Service adopted a regulation—known on the small mountain community. The Cam- as the “Roadless Rule” (66 Fed.Reg. 3244)— eron Peak Fire began on August 13, 2020, and, barring all road construction and maintenance, at over 207,000 acres, is the largest in Colora- thereby preventing not only the access necesdo history. The CalWood Fire began October sary for proper management of these lands but 17, 2020, and is close to 10,000 acres. The apt- ensuring that when a fire started, there would ly named East Troublesome Fire began on Oc- be limited access to prevent the uncontrollable tober 14, 2020, and grew to over 170,000 acres conflagrations we are experiencing now. in ten days, burning as many as 6,000 acres The Forest Service was warned that the per hour as of October 23. The nearby Mullen Roadless Rule would have devastating effects Fire in Wyoming is over 175.000 acres. By way on forest health and the environment. Accordof comparison, Rhode Island is 988,864 acres, ing to an April 1999 GAO Report entitled so these four fires have already consumed over “Catastrophic Wildfire Threats,” “[t]he most half of the land area of an entire state. extensive and serious problem related to the These fires have destroyed homes and other health of national forests in the interior West structures, millions of trees, millions of board continued on page four feet of what could have been usable lumber (in

Bad Regulations Destroy Our Environment

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

O

by LEE PITTS

Impaired Memory

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hen I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not. Now that I’m a senior citizen I can’t remember things I didn’t know I’d forgotten. As a writer I often have ideas for a column and in the past they were etched into my photographic memory and I could remember them days later, but now if I don’t write them down immediately the film never gets developed. I don’t even have the memory of a goldfish which is three seconds. I’m so concerned about my memory loss that I made an appointment to talk about it with my doctor but by the time I got face to face with him I forgot what I was there for. That’s why a recent letter from my friend Monte Mills was so appreciated. Monte’s name may strike a chord with some of you. In my neck of the woods if you have an affair that celebrates our western culture and you want to hire a band for country entertainment, Monte Mills and his Lucky Horseshoe Band is the first name that comes to mind. Monte is a fabulous performer and you never know who he might drag along as a guest in his band. It might be a old member of Merle Haggard’s band or a young girl who plays the fiddle better than Charlie Daniels did and sings like a songbird. I first met Monte decades ago when I hired him as my horseshoer. After one visit I never used anyone else. Not only was Monte a great horseshoer but my horse Gentleman liked Monte’s crude dog tricks. So did I. I don’t know if Monte’s most recent story is a true one or fabricated but it sure sounds like something that could’ve happened. I better tell it while I can still remember it. It seems that Cooter had just left the sale barn in Butte, Montana, and as he left the building he reached into his right pant’s pocket for his truck keys and got that sick feeling all of us elderly Americans get when we lose something. Cooter gave himself a rather intimate TSA pat down and couldn’t find his keys in

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LMD Nov 2020 by Livestock Publishers - Issuu