OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND, PUT HEAD IN GROUND.

                YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON AMERICANS TO DO
                           THE RIGHT THING - AFTER THEY HAVE
                                        TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE.
                                                       Winston Churchill

     My how the innocents can be led to the slaughter.  If you don't see it coming it is over quickly.  We are so free from the various agencies of the Federal Government and whims, regulations, and actions they take in other parts of the country.  Very little of Kansas and the Plains are owned or controlled by the Federal government. Consequently, we are blissfully ignorant of how divisive they can be towards the individual farmer, rancher, and land owner.
     Every issue of RANGE MAGAZINE that I receive fuels the resentment that I have for out of control public agencies and the manipulation of them by groups and well heeled individuals with their legions of lawyers and lawsuits.  Yet when someone here reads the magazine they are so shocked that they think it is not true and that the publication is a radical rag.  Yet Range Magazine prints the verifiable truth.  It is their investigative reporters that have uncovered multitudes of unethical and illegal practices.  They also report on the ranchers who are stripped of their rights, properties, and some put into prison.
     How can the government 'of the people' turn into the enemy of it's own citizens?  Power and greed!  The concept that has been the back bone of the US Forest Service that was created and signed into law by Teddy Roosevelt known as 'Multiple Use' has been done away with.  The management of our public lands has been hijacked by interests that are dedicated to destroying the grazing rights of the ranchers that have been leasing the public lands for generations.
      Between special interest groups, political appointees, radical organizations, and a man with the resources to file and pursue lawsuits for decades has driven families off the land.  The resultant mismanagement by our natural resources is creating the largest disaster in years.  Accumulating each season the burning of the west is a result of pop science and political hacking.
     The lie of the Spotted Owl put hundreds of loggers, logging companies and the economies that depended on them out of business.  The 'fragile' owl has been found thriving in second growth timber which had not even been look for before.
     Government employees deliberately cut fence and let cattle into areas off limits for grazing repeatedly so ranchers would be fined and barred from running lease lands again.  Even putting into prison a rancher and son who backfired their ranch to keep the Federal Forest's fire from destroying their property because the back fire crossed into the federal area marginally.  Pictures of US Forestry service fire units staying off private ground paints a terrible picture of politics gone wild. When the private fire resources would fight on into public lands but the reverse was not true.  Who paid the taxes for the federal units in the first place?
     Huge stands of diseased timber stand without a concerted effort to clear them, to prevent future fires, will continue the string of huge fires that have plagued the west.  I have written in the past that the size, severity and scope of the fires in the West has yet to be realized.
      As bad as the last several fires seasons have been we have not seen the worst.  It was published in al Qaeda sites to spread the Jihad to the Western United States.  Many of the fires that the country has suffered have not had the sources identified.  It is not unreasonable to assume that if our own arsonists have started many fires, that those who openly wage war on us will also.
     We will never get a handle on the fires or any other problem until this country puts petty politics aside and start acting like a free nation again.
     If we continue to elect those who have no interest in what is best for their constituents and only follow power politics, we can expect more disasters.
     The drought in the west is having severe consequences because the infrastructure to hold water for these times have been dismantled by radical environmental groups one law suit at a time.  The water to keep agriculture running in California has been diverted around to 'save' a rare bait fish.
      Putting our heads in the sand will still have the same result it always has.  When the head is pulled out everyone will say "how did this happen?"