New West Analysis
Montana Governor’s Defiance of Feds Has Few Parallels
Whether stunt or brinkmanship, Schweitzer's letter to Interior advocating breaking federal law and killing wolves has serious implications.By Brodie Farquhar, 2-21-11
GOV. BRIAN SCHWEITZER
There are plenty of opportunities for governors and presidents to get cross-wise with each other, particularly in the West, where so much of the land is managed by federal land agencies like the Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife.
In most cases, squabbles among state and federal executives get worked out in the courts, through Congress or in the “bully pulpits” that governors and presidents use to persuade, cajole, denounce or otherwise set the stage for closed-door negotiations.
What we saw recently in Montana are all of the above, as well as something radically different.
In defiance of the federal Endangered Species Act, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has ordered state officials to kill whole packs of gray wolves in response to attacks on livestock or elks.
As of Friday morning, there were no reports of ranchers killing wolves or of state game officials gunning down entire wolf packs, so it could be argued that Schweitzer’s letter to Interior is, so far, a dramatic performance on the bully pulpit of state, regional and national media. However, when bullets begin to fly and dead wolves begin to pile up, this goes well beyond media gamesmanship and political brinksmanship.
Indeed, Schweitzer’s action would then move toward and even beyond the political neighborhood of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block two black students from enrolling. Now after giving a short speech, Wallace stepped away and the students enrolled, so this incident was a bit of political theater. It was a case of limited political defiance – limited because the last time there was unlimited defiance of federal authority, that was a matter rather firmly resolved at Gettysburg and Appomattox.
Now I am not equating the fate of wolves with the fate of young, black students challenging the segregated South. However, there is a common thread here, and that is federal primacy over states and the rule of law. Can the federal government tolerate such open defiance – even if it is hugely popular with the citizens of Montana and surrounding states?
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, who has his own wolf issues with the federal government, recognizes that Schweitzer is standing on a slippery slope. Mead, a former chief federal prosecutor in Wyoming, has stated that he believes a solution lies within federal legislation, and/or a new phase of negotiations with U.S. Fish & Wildlife officials.
“I think you have to be cautious about telling people to go break federal law,” Mead said in a brief interview with the Casper Star-Tribune. We concur.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Add your comment below
I hope for all hope this is not political theater. Way too much money has been spent in courts and this needs to stop. Let the states manage the wolf like every other big game animal within the state. Add value to an animal and it will never be endangered.
The fact is, the involved Western states, and their game departments, and their sportspeople, bent over backwards to accommodate wolves. Sure, they were bent over and held there by the law, an unbelievably crummy example of Congressional stupidity, but they bent.
But you can bend only so far before something breaks, and broken here is nothing less than the public trust in a free society.
Congress needs to change the law. Everyone recognizes that, even the environmental groups who oppose any changes because it will mean the end of their abusive power trip. Schweitzer is trying to send a message to his side of the aisle that they better get with the program on reform, or it will cost them elections and make the reform even, um, better.
Montana isn’t being used as a “sacrifice zone” for the greater good by the federal government. In fact it is the ranchers themselves have been sacrificing Montana’s public lands for far too long—that’s the real “sacrifice.”
Overgrazing, subsidized taxpayer payments to ranchers, and the ranchers’ reluctance to learn new predator-friendly ranching techniques are the real “sacrifice” here. The Montana public are sacrificing their public lands and tax dollars to these ranchers for their desire to protect their sweet deal at the public expense.
Ranchers are up in arms because they are unwilling to invest more to protect their tasty and dumb animals that they leave on public lands without any human oversight. Instead of watching their herds more responsibly, ranchers would rather leave those animals as tempting treats on public lands for wolves. Then when wolves eat a few cattle, the ranchers go ballistic—and they’ve talked the Governor into giving them a license to kill. How sad, when the solution really lies in the ranchers learning to change their own behavior, instead of going postal and wiping out wolves.
Contrary to Skinner, ranchers haven’t “bent over backwards” to accommodate wolves. Ranchers have done nothing but complain.
If ranchers would invest their vitriolic energy in adjusting their ranching practices, they wouldn’t have a problem with wolves.
Several farsighted ranchers in Montana and Wyoming have done just that, and are actually receiving a higher price for their beef, which is marketed as “predator friendly.” But other ranchers would rather just complain and shoot then learn new techniques.
This has nothing to do with a “free society” or “state’s rights.” It has everything to do with ranchers being reluctant to learn new ranching skills, and adapting to the new reality. And now Schweitzer has bought into this myth and given the ranchers a blessing to blast away. How sad.
-Jon Cheever
More liberal propaganda.
I see the ol John Cheever wannabe is at it again, trying to run everyone off the land but himself....
The liberals tell you that government can do it better than anyone. The list of stuff that they have ruled by law over time is long and no more than a litany of what not to do and how not to do it. Government can do a job as poorly as we will allow. And does. Every day. Schweitzer has had his fill and is not going to go quietly in the night. He is a scrapper, and is in a scrap.
As long as you don't have to compete, you are the monopoly provider, you have political horsepower to continue failure, you have the power to tax at the point of a gun, you can go on indefinitely or until the money runs out. The money ran out in Wisconsin, to keep on doing things the same old way. Union bargaining on who gets to do what to whom and when was not letting the trains run on time and probably some not to run at all. The same has happened with land owners in Montana, only it is their patience that ran out, and they are gamely trying to ensure that their money does not go down a wolf gullet to salve the guilt of the genocidal elite in the urban centers where the vast majority of New West residents live and work. Killing customs and cultures, and moving people on is and has been the way to gain land for your own benefit in the New West for a long time. Ask any Native American. Wolves are urban titillation and not to be messed with. Or so we have been told and have seen in litigation. Evidently the Governor feels differently. Nobody is out to extirpate wolves from Montana. All they want is to control their numbers, and the monetary damage to livestock and pet owners. States are about dominion over a landscape. That is why there are boundaries around them. The Governor is "the man" inside that boundary, elected to preserve the dominion of the State in a Federal democracy, and carry out the law as passed by the State legislature and adjudicated by the State courts. His job IS to take on the Feds. Or they will take his power piece by piece. Nature of the Beast.
Farquhar pulls the race card with a caveat, and then continues to compare the Governor's defiance with the Civil War and the South. Thomas Jefferson believed that revolution was cathartic, and was needed on a more regular basis than we have experience. But he was a Southern man, a slave holder, and a bit of a rebel renaissance man. The wolf issue is that re-intoduction was paid for by misappropriated Pittman-Robertson funds by a scofflaw Clinton Administration. The "good ole boy" Clinton sleight of hand, syrupy smooth bullshit was bought by the likes of Farquhar, and an illegally obtained and introduced exotic sub species of wolf was planted right into an area of easy pickings and slow wolf reoccupation of former lands. Instant gratification wolf introduction. Titillation for Wolf Faeries. Money flowed. NGOs milked the deal like a home stalled Jersey cow. Montana got a huge influx of outside money to influence societal change with surrogate wildlife introduction. All in all, a rather dishonest endeavor using vast sums of public money to make societal change to a degree that tilted the balance, and changed Montana's center of gravity. That is causing the pendulum to swing in a different arc, and Schweitzer is riding that ball as it begins to knock over pins only recently thought to be cemented in the firmament. Success can be fatal, in the long term.
Dictatorial policy from Federal Tzars run by the Administration, Tzars who exist on the fringes of regulation and law, and are now being subjected to in depth financial review as to where the money comes from to pay them and for their actions, is running into the old State's Rights issue. If the power is not specifically given to the Administrative Branch, the States have the right to NOT go along, claiming that the issue is a right reserved for States. The Courts are beginning to think the "commerce clause" has been stretched to the breaking point. We shall see. The Governor is challenging the Administration. They need it. An Administration needs to be challenged daily, because they are going to try to step over the line anywhere, anytime, anyplace it gives them advantage. The Nature of the Beast. A dog gets one free bite. Administrations should get none.
I wonder though if we have just become a country of bad boys--and a few bad girls.
Hate of wolves, hate of women, hate of Negro or "Gay" or Muslim
or any other group one group finds "different" should be out of style.
It is always based on fear.
Read "To Kill a Mockingbird"
I think you forgot the biggest one trending for about the last 20 years. That would be "hate of white middle-class straight christian males".....