Today's Stories

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

October 27, 2008

The Story of Bob the Rancher

Is Ranching Sustainable?

By GEORGE WUERTHNER

I hear often from livestock proponents that ranching is an economically sustainable use of western rangelands. Unfortunately many interested in conservation also believe this myth, and it has unfortunate public policy implications. As University of Montana economist Tom Power has noted, most people have a rear view mirror of their local and regional economies. They almost never know what is happening in the present and their ability to predict the future is even less accurate.

Ranching is doomed in the West by rising land values. Ranching, like all agriculture, persists on marginal land—lands that can’t provide a higher monetary return doing something else—usually real estate development. When land prices rise to the point that one cannot reasonably be expected to return sufficient profit to pay a mortgage on such property running cows, growing wheat or whatever, it signals the end of that industry—even though it may take a long time for the industry to completely disappear from the regional landscape. It is this long lingering death that fools people into believing ranching is sustainable.

With regards to ranching in the West, land values have already marginalized the industry. Few are buying ranches in the West to raise cows, or at least to make a profit raising cows. Today’s ranch purchaser is usually an amenity buyer who is more interested in seeing elk and catching trout than returning a profit from a livestock operation. For instance one recent study of ranching in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem found that most new ranch owners had earned their fortunes in other business endeavors. The ranch was a vacation home—a trophy to signal success—rather than a viable livestock operation. In many cases, if a cattle operation persists, it’s a tax write off rather than a source of income. Traditional ranching in the West is on life support and dying.

This was brought home to me a number of years ago when I was on a tour of a ranch along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. The rancher, who I’ll call Bob, had grown up on the ranch which his grandfather had homesteaded. His Dad inherited the ranch and passed it on to Bob. The fact that that three generations of Bob’s family had lived on the land was “proof” of its sustainability—or at least that is what Bob claimed.

However as we spent the day together Bob indirectly offered much evidence to suggest that ranching was not economically and socially sustainable, even as he asserted over and over again about how sustainable ranching was.

The first hint that ranching might not be sustainable occurred when we visited a bluff overlooking the river that flowed through the center of the ranch. Bob told how when his Dad was a kid there had been six families living in that river valley. But the low productivity of the land meant one needed a huge spread of land to just break even on ranching. The homesteads were simply too small to support an economically viable ranching operation. Gradually each family gave up ranching and sold their property to Bob’s grandfather and later his Dad so that today where once there were seven families living along this stretch of river beneath the mountain front, there was only one—Bob’s.

Later we were discussing his youth, and Bob told us how he used to ride a horse to the local schoolhouse three miles down the road from the ranch. Today the school is closed due to declining enrollment (all those families that left the valley and other nearby valleys were no longer sending their kids to the local school). Bob’s kids had to ride an hour or more on a bus to get to the nearest school. Bob lamented how he felt badly for his kids who couldn’t participate in a lot of school extra curriculum activities like after school sports teams because they had to get on the bus to get home. If they didn’t ride the bus home, it meant Bob and his wife would have to pick them up—a two hours round trip from the ranch—something they just wouldn’t do very often. His kids felt socially isolated and were not happy living on the ranch.

But it wasn’t only his kids who were socially isolated. Bob’s wife longed to move into Great Falls. She hated driving more than an hour just to shop for groceries. As the only “wife” living in that isolated valley, she also missed having social contact with other women.

In addition to the closure of the school, there was a decline in other essential services as well. Without a lot of ranches to support a large animal vet, Bob had to depend on a veterinarian who lived a long distance from his ranch and had only infrequent visits. The same thing applied to medical help. When Bob was a kid, there was a “country: doctor who attended to the needs of all the far flung ranching families, but with fewer families, Bob’s family often had to drive into Great Falls to attend to even simple medical needs.

Bob then confided that even though the ranch he inherited was formed from the “bones” of six other homesteads, it still wasn’t really large enough to run the number of cattle he really needed to succeed financially. With three kids that he was hoping would go off to college, his ranch, though considered a good sized spread by Montana standards, still could not produce enough income to pay for things considered essential by today’s standards like a college education for his kids. Paying for college, much less braces for teeth, computers, and other “necessities” of today’s family expectations was not something that his grandfather and father had to factor into the family budget.

But unlike his grandfather or even his father, Bob could not expand the ranch by buying additional lands. Land values had risen due to demand for amenity ranches and prices were now far above what any one could reasonably pay back raising livestock. Bob was “stuck” in time with a ranch suitable for a 1950 lifestyle with expectations and financial obligations of a 2000 lifestyle. And because it was a long ways from the ranch to a sizeable town where other employment options were available, Bob’s wife couldn’t take on a job to provide a second income—which is how most traditional ranchers are surviving at all these days.

To make matters worse from Bob’s perspective, he increasingly had to make minor changes in his ranch operations due to environmental concerns. For instance in the past he could drain the river to fed his thirty hayfields. But today there were endangered fish in the river, and he was under pressure to reduce his water usage. Of course, one could suggest that if Bob really internalized all the environmental costs of his livestock operation he wouldn’t’ be in business another day. But times change slowly and he has only had to make some minor adjustments to appease environmental regulators, but even these minor new costs were hurting what was really a marginal economic operation. In the past, he could “externalize: all these costs on to society and the land’s wildlife, but people was increasingly saying they wanted Bob to pay the real cost of raising cows in the arid West, and these “new” costs were cutting into his bottom line.

It’s been a few years since I was on Bob’s ranch, however, I ran into him recently at another event. When I inquired how things were going with the family, he told me that his wife had moved into Great Falls with the kids so they could attend high school and participate in things like after school sports. With a second house mortgage to support in the city, and those college tuitions to pay, Bob found it increasingly difficult to make the ranch financially solvent. At first Bob’s wife and kids would come out to the ranch on weekends and in the summer, but over time, these visits became fewer and farther apart. Eventually Bob’s wife met another man in Great Falls whom she married. Recently Bob sold his “sustainable” ranch to an amenity buyer. He remained on the ranch as its manager.

Bob is still insisting that ranching is sustainable—though he is now the ranch manager instead of the ranch owner. The new owner is more interested in elk and trout than cows. Bob still gets to play cowboy running some cows, though far less than in his Daddy’s day. And it’s not cows that are supporting the ranch now, rather money earned elsewhere in the economy. Bob will probably go to his grave thinking that ranching is sustainable, but his circumstances suggest otherwise.

What Bob described to me was all the reasons why ranching was not sustainable. They are economic as well as social. And they are being repeated over and over throughout the West. Unlike the gold placer deposits that disappear quickly, and with it a mining town, ranching is dying a slow death, cut by cut, but it’s terminally ill. It’s just taking a long time to die, and this fools people into believing that there’s a future for ranching.

This has major public policy implications. Many people resist land use planning and zoning believing because they believe there is an alternative—namely that ranching will protect open space. But in a region with rising land values, counting on ranching to preserve open space is a fool’s game. If people are genuinely interested in preserving open space, important wildlife habitat, and public access to the land, they are going to have to bite the bullet and buy it—either with conservation easements or outright fee purchase. That is the only way to preserve what we have now into the future.

George Wuerthner is editor of Welfare Ranching: The Environmental Impacts of Subsidized Public Lands Grazing

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