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February 5, 2016
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opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
‘Poverty Promoters’
taking over rural West
By ANDY BENTZ
For the Capital Press
T
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
O ur V iew
It’s time for Western politicians to speak up
T
he silence is deafening. In
Oregon, Washington and
California the governors and
most members of the congressional
delegations have been silent on
the crisis created by the piss-poor
management of federal lands in the
West.
When the issue comes up, one or
the other will chirp about how there
needs to be more “engagement” or
some other sort of blather meant to
divert the issue.
In fact, the level of engagement
is clear. The federal government,
with help and cooperation from the
states and their leaders, is acre-by-
acre taking over management of not
just public lands but nearly all lands
in the West. The federal government
owns 51 percent of the land in 11
Western states, and acts as though it
owns the rest. With an agenda based
on stopping farming, ranching, oil
and gas exploration and mining, the
federal agencies — the Bureau of
Land Management, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, the Environmental
Protection Agency and the U.S.
Forest Service among them — have
been methodically shutting down or
dictating the circumstances under
which farmers, ranchers and others
who have built the Western economy
for more than a century will be
allowed to stay.
The northern spotted owl, the
greater sage grouse, the gray wolf —
the Mazama pocket gopher, for crying
out loud — and hundreds of local
“species” that need “protection” seem
to be nothing more than a front to
stop economic activities in the forests,
ields and prairies across the West.
Yet, with one or two exceptions,
we hear nothing from our governors,
members of the U.S. Senate
and members of the House of
Representatives about this crisis. Rep.
Greg Walden is a rare exception. The
Oregon Republican has spoken about
the oppression of the West on the
loor of the House.
Oh, the others issue some press
release or statement about the Bundy
brothers and how they need to be
kicked off the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge in Harney County,
Ore. As an aside, it looks to us like
the FBI even fumbled the simple
job of ending that siege, waiting for
weeks and then killing one of the men
during a trafic stop. Maybe they were
sending a message to anyone else
thinking of protesting, just like when
a federal prosecutor charged ranchers
Dwight and Steven Hammond under
a terrorism law that would put them
in jail for ive years for burning 139
federally owned acres to get rid of
weeds.
But the real issue isn’t the
Hammonds, the Bundys or the
takeover of a couple of federal
buildings in rural Oregon.
The real issue is right out the door
of every rural resident. The real issue
is what impact the federal and state
governments will have on land you
own, land you pay taxes on and land
you love. The real issue is whether
any bureaucrat sitting in a wood-
paneled ofice in Washington, D.C.,
has the right, or the moral authority,
to tell a landowner what he, or she,
can or can’t do.
We want to know why governors
and U.S. senators who say they
represent all of the people of
Washington, Oregon and California
are silent on such a fundamental
issue in the West. We want to know
why they bow and curtsy to their
urban, environmentally conscious
constituents — and others around
the nation — and stiff arm their rural
constituents.
Oh, they cook up ways to keep
rural economies on life support
after allowing the feds to shut down
or curtail commercial logging,
mining and ranching. They set up
“programs” to take scrap wood and
brush and convert it into “biofuel” and
call it a “green” industry while the
forests become overgrown and prone
to disastrous ires and lumber mills are
shut down, costing thousands of good-
paying jobs. That would laughable
if it weren’t so pitifully transparent.
Then the politicians stand around
with their hands in their pockets with
not so much as a peep while millions
of acres of Oregon and elsewhere in
the West are poorly “managed” and
locked up.
We are appalled and disappointed
at the way the rural West gets the
shaft while the urbanites stroke
checks for the campaign funds of
Western politicians. For example,
according to the Federal Election
Commission, in the irst three
quarters of last year Oregon Sen.
Ron Wyden received $4.54 million
in campaign money. Of those
donations, 368 donors from New
York, New Jersey and Connecticut
gave $714,742 and 261 donors from
California — including one Beverly
Hills family that gave $23,700 —
donated a total of $418,819. Even
Barbra Streisand donated. That’s
about 25 percent of the total. What is
he doing — or not doing, in the case
of sticking up for rural Westerners
— that makes the moneyed elite
so willing to help ill his campaign
coffers?
And don’t think this is about
Wyden or Democrats only.
Republicans who have stood by
and let the Western economies be
eviscerated are no better.
This is a call to action. This is a
call for our elected representatives
to stand up on their back legs and
tell the elite in New York, Beverly
Hills, Seattle, Portland, San
Francisco, Washington, D.C., and
elsewhere that the rural Western
economy will not be shut down to
become a playground for the rich.
Tell them that millions of acres of
Malheur County, Ore., will not be
locked up as “wilderness” and the
rest of the rural Western economy
will not remain under attack.
Now is the time not just to
speak up but to act, to demand
that our “representatives” in the
state capitols and in Washington,
D.C., free the rural West from
burdensome over regulation, and
end the attacks on farmers and
ranchers, many of whom have been
stewards of the land for generations.
Government officials say they
want to “protect” the land. That’s
not true. They want to control it,
and the lives of rural Americans
with it.
It’s up to our elected officials to
get off their duffs and stop them.
he West and the in-
dustries that created
our communities have
been under assault for over
30 years. The federal land
that historically made them
prosperous has been man-
aged under the inluence of
environmental and conser-
vation “Poverty Promoters”
for enough years to make no
mistake in the results of their
agenda — poverty.
Poor land health, reduced
grazing, runaway numbers of
feral horses and their associ-
ated land damage, invasive
plant species, very little log-
ging on federal lands, with all
resulting in unhealthy range-
lands and forests leading to
massive ires every year.
Not a very good report
card, is it? In most Western
states, there is little invest-
ment being made in mineral
exploration along with the
lost opportunities for mining
and the jobs and tax income
that any productive uses pro-
duce. The result — poverty.
The human cleansing of
the rural West has been in
motion for years, with no jobs
and no hope for a productive
future. Children must leave to
make a living and cannot re-
turn home and raise a family.
The rural counties and cities
struggle to maintain a basic
level of services that make
their communities livable.
There is no way to invite
new investment or job oppor-
tunities, but for the low-pay-
ing service sector. Schools
struggle and down-size with
decaying facilities. Those that
remain by choice or lack of
options sink further into pov-
erty, hoping the government
will backill their shrinking
tax base at the expense of the
state’s more populated coun-
ties. The result — poverty.
Public lands are supposed
to be managed for multiple
uses; that includes everyone,
economic sustainability, local
and federal tax production,
Tribal needs and wellbe-
ing, recreation, wildlife and
healthy lands. Environmental
groups want all uses off the
land but for limited recre-
ation, because they say, “It is
only fair that each state has a
certain percent of land mass in
a special designation.”
Wow, that is some logic.
Even stranger is that the activ-
ities they claim to want in the
special designations like mon-
uments can be done today and
forever in the future as the land
is now. The existing road sys-
tems allow the land to be acces-
sible to everyone in the United
States, young and old, disabled
or healthy, rich or poor, urban
or rural, not just for their inter-
est group members.
These groups will always
point to their funded economic
reports and claim their studies
show local towns are better off
if the land surrounding them
would just have a “wilderness”
or “monument” designation.
Their studies at best are naive
number manipulation and at
worst economic malpractice.
Special interest groups
masquerading as environ-
mental “fundraising organi-
zations” have sued their way
Guest
comment
Andy Bentz
into control of the public’s
lands. This cottage industry
was made possible by their
ability to recover legal cost
with your tax dollars using the
Equal Access to Justice Act.
Another way to look at this is
you get to pay them for suing
you. Nice system for their bud-
gets. The result — poverty.
They want no value coming
from the land that is not direct-
ly related to their hobbies and
wants like hiking, backpacking
and the associated purchase of
clothing and gear they manu-
facture, most often in foreign
factories that care next to noth-
ing about their employees and
don’t pay taxes in the U.S. The
result — poverty.
Environmental
interest
groups see federal managed
lands as their private play-
ground. Monuments and
wilderness areas are a thinly
veiled land grab for only those
with money. This does not
meet the multiple use man-
dates that say the land is sup-
posed to be managed for all
uses and people, rich or poor.
They have paralyzed land
management agencies with
their litigation to the point
that no management is occur-
ring. There is no lexibility al-
lowed in management plans to
promote land health, prevent
wildires or help communities
be self-sustaining.
Adopted rules and policies
to combat the litigation have
made planning and permit-
ting take too long and cost too
much money to be economi-
cal.
We see the frustration
played out in rural commu-
nities with harsh words and
misguided anger at the “fed-
eral government” when that
energy should be focused to-
wards the groups that cause
the conditions they are frus-
trated with.
It is time that the counties
and cities of the rural West are
allowed to pay for their own
needed services and become
net exporters of taxes again.
Rural America wants to be
sustainable and produce real
value for all citizens. They
can and are willing to do the
hard work of helping feed our
nation, produce the wood i-
ber to house our nation, locate
and mine the needed mineral,
gas and oil and geothermal
resources so we can be safer
from foreign nations that do
not have our interests at heart.
We can do this while protect-
ing and improving the land
and beautiful spaces we are
all blessed to be stewards of.
Let’s start building Ameri-
ca again and not be driven un-
der by “Poverty Promoters.”
Andy Bentz is the manag-
ing member of Bentz Solu-
tions LLC, a consulting group
based in Ontario, Ore. Bentz
Solutions works with natural
resource industries in govern-
mental and public relations
in the Western U.S. He is part
of the third generation of a
ranching family in Southeast
Oregon and retired as the
sheriff of Malheur County in
2011.
Readers’ views
‘Thuggery’ to
blame for death
OK, so maybe mov-
ing in and taking over the
Malheur Wildlife Refuge
in Oregon wasn’t the wis-
est, best approach for pa-
triotic justice seekers to
use to show support for
their imprisoned broth-
ers, nor in any other at-
tempts to appeal to those
far-more-permanent gov-
ernment occupiers for
“redress of grievances,” a
right secured and suppos-
edly guaranteed to us all
within the freedom docu-
ments founding our nation.
Again, given everything
that (governmentally) we
the American people are
presently up against, the
sit-in probably wasn’t the
smartest tactic. Personal-
ly, I have to wonder if the
group might even have had
some outside “help” nudg-
ing them in that futile di-
rection. It wouldn’t be the
first time.
At any rate, though
— and much more im-
portantly — I ask that we
compare these folks’ au-
dacious “crime,” carried
out non-violently, even
respectfully, to what was
soon to come against them
from a conspiring cadre
of paid “public servants”
from the FBI and from
many Oregon state, county
and local officials.
Is there any possible
fair comparison between
the courageous (even if
misguided) actions of this
unorganized citizen group
and the murderous, con-
niving thuggery that took
place at the massive high-
way stake-out, the totally
unprovoked and unneces-
sary execution of an en-
trapped citizen there in the
snow — that along with the
absolute horrific barrage
of weaponry that rained
down upon the equally
non-combative passengers
still inside the now de-
ceased man’s truck?! (And
rogue government agen-
cies like this preach to us
about evil terrorism?!)
May Heaven deliver us
all, as I believe it certain-
ly did the survivors of this
latest, demonic assault.
Just when will be the
right and efficacious time
for the people of this land
to begin to rein in and hold
accountable these types of
out-of-control
“authori-
ties” obviously drunk with
power and bent on destroy-
ing our lives and liveli-
hood?
Carol Asher
Kamiah, Idaho
Letter missed
point on civil
disobedience
Kelly Niemi’s piece had
humorous tones, but unfortu-
nately was not funny. It illus-
trated the misunderstanding
many white Americans have
about race relations in this
country. Its implication that
black people “cause all kinds
of havoc” is ignorant.
What Black Lives Mat-
ter and the group of ranch-
ers in Oregon have in com-
mon is civil disobedience.
To belittle that is to forget
our history, and dishonors
the very founding of our
country.
Ryan Power
Sebastopol, Calif.
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