| This is that vast expanse that those traveling a distance across our country fly over in their commercial airliners, speeding over a panorama below with little thought of those who call it home. In the great Western states of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington (and substantial parts of other states like Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, etc.), one must drive the roads of the states in order to learn the people and culture that live there. These people and this culture who are the producers are struggling mightily, on the brink of extinction at the hands of regulation that those in the East who are the consumers. Hundreds, if not thousands of towns are drying up and blowing away like the tumbleweed. Worse by far than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the scope of this cultural genocide reaches out an encompasses ranchers, the timber industry, miners, farmers, and recreationists. To take the pulse of our America and her freedom, one must put his or her ear to the ground and listen ... to the sound of silence that is increasing at a perilous rate in flyover country. |
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| America MUST be told what is
happening out West in the lands that lay in 'flyover country'! Snow Job, Corrution, Collusion, and Insider Deals with the Bureau of Land Management December 12, 2001 For Immediate Release: The Bureau of Land Management is allowing Gary Snow of Fallon, Nevada, and Bud Johns and his son of Silver Peak, Nevada, to run cattle with BLM temporary non-renewable so-called "permits" on Wayne Hage's and Ben Colvin's ranches. Hage and Colvin are well-respected Nevada ranchers who have resisted federal "takings" of their private property through bureaucratic enforcement of regulatory schemes. Ben Colvin in a telephone interview from Goldfield, Nevada, said, "In the mid-1990s I let Bud Johns run his cattle on my ranch as a favor to help him out when he was out of feed. This was before the BLM had revoked my so-called "grazing permit." I was doing him a favor so he could have some feed close to home." Johns owns a ranch on the west side of Colvin called the Yellow Hills Allotment. Colvin continued, "He (Johns) has been big buddies with the BLM for sometime. When he called me and told me he was putting cattle on my ranch I told him, "Don't do that, Bud, while I am in this legal battle with the BLM." Colvin stated, "This is how BLM pits one rancher against another. Greed wins out over principle. Bud Johns and his son are modern-day Benedict Arnolds, in my book." Johns and his son are now running approximately 150 head with permission for 200 head of cattle on Colvin's ranch at this time. The BLM gathered 62 head of Colvin's cattle this past July and finally was able to sell them after several failed attempts through a silent/secret bid auction from their Wild Horse and Burro Palomino Valley Facility north of Sparks, Nevada, on November 13, 2001. The buyer was a 19-year old man with his grandmother's credit card, who tried later to return the cattle. The BLM would not accept them back. Gary Snow another BLM parasite has now put cattle with BLM "permission" on to Wayne Hage's Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah, Nevada. Hage has been in a long running showdown over private property rights to Nevada range with the Forest Service and BLM. Dave Horton, attorney for Ben Colvin, said, "Hage won several landmark decisions in favor of the rancher's rights to graze and the fact that the public lands are no longer public lands after they have been adjudicated. Public Lands, as defined in several Supreme Court decisions, are lands that have no prior claim to them by any kind of entryman whether prospector or a rancher with grazing rights. Therefore, after adjudication of the grazing rights, which were based upon state water law, the lands were no longer "public" although the public still had access rights to recreation, hunting and mineral location preserved." Gary Snow, who feeds wild horses at his Fallon, Nevada, feedlot, and is well compensated by taxpayer dollars, has now been allowed to put approximately 350 head of cattle on Hage's ranch. Snow also accepted 62 head of Ben Colvin's seized cattle from the BLM to his Fallon Auction Yard earlier this year. Gallagher Livestock Auction in Fallon refused to allow the BLM to sell the cattle at their yards. Now the BLM has paid off Gary Snow by bestowing grazing rights so he can use Wayne Hage's ranching property. David Holmgren, Chairman of the Nevada Live Stock Association and Ranching Representative of the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood said, "This raises questions and allegations of corruption, collusion and insider deals that need to be answered by further investigation. It certainly smacks of a potential payoff to Mr. Snow." Holmgren went on to say, "First the BLM drives the rancher off his adjudicated grazing right through arbitrary and capricious regulatory schemes and then ironically quotes the same regulations to say the forage is mandated to be grazed. What they leave out is that the forage is mandated to be grazed by the owner of the ranch. It is not the BLM who is to do the grazing, but the owner and operator of the ranch who holds the appurtenant grazing rights." "No wonder the BLM officials continue to claim that the majority of ranchers support them. If ranchers oppose the BLM's tyranny they are persecuted and run out of business. If they aid and abet the BLM's tyranny they are paid off with the spoils," stated Daniel Hansen, Vice-Chairman of the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood. "Obviously, they are not worried about conservation, there is plenty of forage on the range. The BLM's concern is fascist control of the ranchers, which means, private enterprise under strict government regulation." These revelations about BLM corruption come on the heels of Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton's trip to Las Vegas this week. Norton was interviewed on the Rusty Humphries KKOH talk radio program on December 11, 2001, emanating from Reno. It was clear from the questions by callers and Norton's responses that she was completely unaware and uninformed about the BLM/Ben Colvin case. "I let Secretary Norton know that I had faxed all of the information on Ben Colvin's case directly to her office. Apparently, the censors in her office did not give the information to her," said Janine Hansen, Executive Director of the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood. "I asked her to read former Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth-Hage's Final Report on the Hearing on the Jarbidge Road from the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. This report traces the legal history of the land and explains how the Forest Service and BLM are violating the ranchers' property rights. Norton seems to be out of touch with the real issues in Nevada. Nothing has changed under President Bush, in fact, it is worse." Mr. Humphries said he would forward the information to Secretary Gale Norton pertaining to Colvin's situation. Norton was in Nevada to answer concerns over the large decline in tourism, "I will do what I can to let the public know they should come out and visit their public lands." "That provides us with an interesting dilemma. The federal bureaucracy, the BLM and Forest Service, are closing roads, many of which have been open and accessible to the public for over 100 years. How is this going to help tourism in Nevada? However, the more important question is, shouldn't Secretary Norton be more concerned about the corruption flourishing within the Bureau of Land Management which is part of the U.S. Department of Interior and her responsibility?" stated O.Q. 'Chris' Johnson, Chairman of the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood. Nevada Committee for Full Statehood P.O. Box 656 Sparks, Nevada 89432 775-352-8262 Fax 775-352-8262 For further information contact: Ben Colvin 775-485-6366 or 775-482-4101 Dave Holmgren 775-530-5313 Janine Hansen 775-352-8262 |
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| Voice of the People
America’s resources are being prostituted January 6, 2002 Voice of the People By Julie Kay Smithson London, Ohio The entire scope of what is happening (and has been happening since the 1960s) in "flyover country," as the American West is often called, is only recently being understood by mainstream America. This is due to many reasons, not the least of which is the failure to prominently report the dirty deals and political footballs that those who drive Washington politicians have made with America's resource providers. The agenda is collateral. America's natural resources are not being "protected" for the sake of "endangered species" or "clean water." They are being held hostage by terrorists who have been on our own turf for decades, working under the smokescreen of "environmentalism." Those with unlimited power are addicted to power. They can never have enough, and in their addiction, they look at the world's population, which they tout as being 90 percent too much. If they could have their "vision," the planet would be one big playground for the rich and powerful. Those left would be in abject servitude to their masters. Property rights is the same as keeping resource providing in the hands of middle-class working America. No one will care for a farm or ranch or forest or mine or ski resort like its owner, who stands to lose the most if it is not well cared for. A home with an owner is almost always better cared for than one inhabited by a procession of renters. Let's begin 2002 with a heightened awareness of and hunger for the truth about our country and where she has been led, and let's help her back from the brink of being prostituted for greed's sake by those who hold the mortgage! http://www.herald-dispatch.com/2002/January/06/OPletter.htm
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