Plan For Tomorrow

Some insurance company back in the day used the “Plan for Tomorrow” slogan and it seems the United States government has done just that and nothing more. Plan for Tomorrow … not next week … not next month … not next decade or the next 50 years. Just ... tomorrow.

The Japanese and Chinese are very good at planning for the next century. Most everything they do is predicated on the idea of what impact their action today will have on their country 50...100 years from now.

As Americans, if we have money to pay rent or mortgage, buy groceries and clothing, have a nice car (or two), and can buy the occasional “toy,” we are OK with that. “Let the government take care of itself.”

We don't concern ourselves with the everyday, mundane workings of our elected officials.

In fact most Americans 18 to 40 don't have the slightest clue what goes on in Washington, D.C. And very few in that age bracket have any interest in the goings-on in Helena. (They are more into TV reality shows, Sunday night football and Xbox, whatever that is).

This country is in dire straits, yet we keep electing the same incompetent, politically-correct-restricted people time after time. This political correct thing has turned around and struck us like a rattle snake in the bushes. And it's twice as deadly.

I will make an exception here if you'll permit me. In my humble opinion Representative Steve Daines has shown some certain sense of intestinal fortitude in the way he has voted on a couple controversial issues. He has Montana's back. The question is this: Is he too good a person to be able to survive in the cutthroat “good-ol' boy” environment rampant in the “sacred walls of Congress?” I hope so. Let me be the first to say “Daines for President.”

But I digress.

No one planned 75 years ahead when Social Security was first implemented, and look where it is today. Virtually bankrupt.

No one looked ahead 100 years when the income tax was foisted upon us. It was supposed to be a firm, forever 2% on all Americans. What happened with that?

The buffalo herd in Yellowstone Park was supposed to be capped at 500 animals. Some desk-bound government official decided that was a figure the park could handle along with all the other animals therein. Today they number on the north-side of 3,300 animals. These extra bison are now being dumped out of the park and onto other government locals much to the dismay of ranchers who border the CMR and the several reservations where buffalo are being shipped.

As to the aspect of Plan for Tomorrow: The FWP wants to put buffalo on the CMR. The APF already has a sizable herd bordering the CMR. Of the 500,000 buffalo in the United States, Ted Turner owns 11% (55,000) of that number on his 14 properties in Kansas, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho and South Dakota.

What are those numbers going to escalate to within the next 40 years if free-roaming buffalo are allowed to free-roam over a large portion of Northeast Montana.

How can the American Prairie Reserve expect to control a 10,000 animal herd and keep it at those numbers? How large will the CMR herd get in 40 years of FWP mis-management? Will they do what no other buffalo owners have done and castrate the males to control population? Anyone who knows buffalo and have worked around same, know the bulls are very protective of their body parts and look on neutering with great dis-favor.

The bank accounts of all the Northeastern ranchers and farmers lumped together would not nearly equal the checkbook balance of even one of the “darlings” of the APR.

It's been said: You can't fight city hall.

Whomever said that is wrong. We can fight city hall if every one of us does our part in tightening the controls on the FWP. Seems to me they think they are omnipotent. We need to show them they are not.

Footnote: Thanks to the work of Sierra Dawn Stoneberg-Holt of sending out e-mails and calling folks, there were a good number of anti-CMR buffalo in attendance at the semi-clandestine meeting held in Lewistown last weekend.

Sierra told me she thought this meeting was very productive and gave kudos to the FWP for, at last, letting all the many dissenters speak their piece.

That's it for now folks. Thanks for listening