Ranchers are being subsidized by taxpayers

The system in contributing to the income/wealth gap. Adjustments need to be made in the tax code.

I know people get mad at me when I tell them that I was a huge fan of Ronald Reagan. I voted for him twice and I believed that supply side and trickle down. Never in my life was I so wrong, and it took me almost 30 years to realize that this good man who started to attack waste and government inefficiency probably single handedly started the destruction of the American middle class. All the while he was creating this massive fail, he was making the best foreign policy decisions than any other president 30 years before his presidency.

The problem is that the solution is not going to be over night. It starts with raising the tax rates on the highest brackets, lowering the estate tax exemptions, increasing enforcement of diversion of corporate profits off shore. Eliminating subsidies and tax loopholes which have corporation paying the lowest amount since wwII. It must be combined with increases in the minimum wage......not overnight, but a decade long plan to return the rates to the mid sixty real dollar value. It will take massive campaign financing reform because both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of being nothing more than prostitutes for special interests.
It also will take a constant effort by Americans to attack the propaganda which has allowed folks with low intelligence to be manipulated and fleeced of their family's economic future, all the while being diverted about gun rights, abortion, and wars which cannot be paid. This country will begin to fight this battle, but the media is being bought up, the internet will be restricted, the police state will expand as American citizens will become the victim, not like this scofflaw, but for standing up against the oligarchy which in my opinion has never been as strong in this country since the British made us a colony of England to be milked like a cow, as we now chew our cud, we will need leadership and activism from all Americans....we are at war....and the American middle class has been losing.....we WILL win the battle.

Look...there's a whole book available.

WELFARE RANCHING: THE SUBSIDIZED DESTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN WEST

http://www.publiclandsranching.org/book.htm

The majority of the American public does not know that livestock grazing in the arid West has caused more damage than the chainsaw and bulldozer combined. Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West is a seven-pound book featuring 346 pages of articles and photographs by expert authors and photographers on the severe negative impacts of livestock grazing on western public lands. Selected articles and photographs are available online below. You can also click here to buy Welfare Ranching at a discount.

The public lands of the United States are a hallmark of our democracy and harbor some of the greatest resources of our nation. Federally managed lands-owned by all Americans-total 623 million acres, or more than 25 percent of the U.S. land base. There are four major federal land agencies-the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), the National Park Service (NPS), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). State agencies and other government departments oversee millions of acres of additional public land.

The vast majority of the federal public lands are in the western United States, where they serve as sources of clean water, recreation, scenic beauty, and inspiration. The public lands are wildlife habitat and in many cases provide the only remaining suitable environments for jeopardized species. On the large blocks of acreage provided by the public lands, restoration and maintenance of landscape-scale ecological processes-such as wildfires-are feasible and desirable. Elsewhere, the prerogatives of commercial enterprise and other human needs usually dominate.

Unfortunately, resource exploitation of various kinds has driven public lands management for many decades. Mining, logging, oil and gas drilling, and even farming have occurred and continue to occur on public lands. But the most widespread commercial use of western public lands is livestock production. Nearly all public lands that have any forage potential for livestock are leased for grazing. This includes 90 percent of BLM lands, 69 percent of USFS lands, and a surprising number of wildlife refuges and national parks. This land-your public land-is frequently managed as if it were a private feedlot rather than the common heritage of all Americans.

Next time you go out to visit your public lands and encounter a fence you must cross, a gate you must open, a campground fouled with cow manure, a trout stream trampled by cows, a hay meadow rather than a natural wetland, weeds instead of native grasses, cattle and sheep instead of prairie dogs, remember, this is your land. Do you like what you see?

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

-Woody Guthrie

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I read a comment on another thread from someone who had hiked on public land and was chased off at the point of a gun by an irate rancher.