Bureau of Land Management

Tonight’s news showed a story about a Rancher who’s family has grazed their cattle across government land for over one hundred years. Certainly not uncommon unless you consider that the government has never bothered to collect grazing fee’s until recently and has based their calculations on the 100+ year debt which puts the money owed at over $1,000,000. Not exactly pocket change for most and certainly not for ranchers that have been fighting drought, loss of cattle, etc. Now, I’m not suggesting that this fellow doesn’t owe the government money, after all, he is using the peoples land to make a profit so he certainly should pay his fair share, but the question is for exactly how long a time should he pay?

I also have a much more simple question. Has the Govt. BLM collected all the oil leases that have been unpaid for the past 100+ years from all the oil producers? And if not, why not? I mean after all, we are now allowing those same corporations to contribute everything they want to political campaigns, so shouldn’t we require them to settle up all their debts to the government BEFORE they give their money away to someone else? Certainly, if they have money to give away they have money to pay up to all of us! Another good example of the GAO needing to post a regular balance sheet of each corporation that shows their outstanding debts to the citizens in the form of taxes and fees.

The government has gotten very good about going after the private citizen for all sorts of things. We learned tonight that the IRS has garnished a woman’s wages for mistaken Social Security payments that were made to her parents when she was five years old. We are talking about money that was paid over thirty years ago and it wasn’t her debt, it was her parents! Fortunately there are a few Congressmen that are demanding an explanation from the Social Security Administration and the IRS. Certainly a shame that rancher isn’t getting that kind of support from his elected representative.

Seems to be just another validation for all those nuts that want to overthrow the government. Of course, right now some of them aren’t looking quite so nutty and it reminds me of one of the best quotes of Ronald Regan, "I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts." As well as his other quote "Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." The present administration would be wise to remember that, especially in these times when the recovery could be stifled by such foolish missteps as we are seeing out of these Federal Agencies.

Our government spends an exhaustive amount of time criticizing other countries on humanity issues, among many others. I can think of few actions more inhumane that steeling a person’s hard earned money or trying to destroy a business built by a family and successfully operated for over 100 years. I am reminded of one last Regan quote, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Please take the time to explain that to your children; our combined future will certainly depend upon it!