955
Bring Back the Cattle
Bring Back the Loggers
Bring Back the Manufacturers
"America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age. We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce." Pat Buchanan
Our ranges are turning to desert from lack of organics and the soil's inability to sustain a well-functioning water cycle.
The forests are dying and burning from drought and overcrowded conditions that result in nutrient and water starvation, creating the ponderosa equivalent of a starving African child.
Tens of thousands of U.S. family farms and ranches and community wood products companies have gone out of business. Countless rural communities are either sad ghosts of their former productive and neighborly selves, or are dependent on mega-stores, strip malls and wealthy strangers to hire their once independent people as service servants.
America is losing 80,000 manufacturing jobs a month to other nations.
In the 1970s we ran a $75 billion trade deficit.
In the 1980s we ran an $843 billion trade deficit.
In the 1990s we ran a $1.7 trillion trade deficit.
Unless something changes drastically the deficit is expected to reach $6 trillion this decade.
According to Pat Choate, author of "Agents of Influence," we are now dependent on other countries for: Medicines and pharmaceuticals: 72 percent, Metalworking machinery: 51 percent, Engines and power equipment: 56 percent, Computer equipment: 70 percent, Communications equipment: 67 percent, Semiconductors and electronics: 64 percent, oil: 56 percent, to name a few.
Studies indicate that approximately 83 percent of the goods on Wal-Mart shelves are produced in other countries.
In 2002 alone, we had a $484 billion trade deficit, $103 billion of it with China. In 2002, China ran up its largest trade surpluses with us in electrical machinery, computers, toys, games, footwear, furniture, clothing, plastics, articles of iron and steel, vehicles, optical and photographic equipment, and other manufactures.
At the end of May, 2003 our trade deficit with China had already soared to $120 billion, by far the largest trade gap between two nations in history.
Are more Americans better off as a result of the past decades of what is called "free trade?"
Are the western landscapes and the plants and creatures within them better off as a result of the past decades of what is called the "environmentalist movement?"
In the words of Bill O'Reilly, "you decide (after checking out facts vs. propaganda, of course)."
The theory promoted by the (radical) environmentalist movement is that with enough "rest," the western ranges will return to presettlement grandeur. If the forests are left alone, those skinny ponderosas growing a foot apart will develop into magnificent "old-growth" giants.
The theory promoted by so-called free-traders is that today's free trade strengthens the economy and naturally reduces the need for government.
How is it then, that in the first half of the century taxes were only three to four percent of earnings? Today, taxes in all their forms at all levels of government, including permits, licenses, etc. consume more than half of every dollar earned.
The last thirty years have proven conclusively that the LESS productive activity occurs in the U.S., the MORE government grows.
The telephone book for Navajo and Apache Counties is open before me. In order to watch over, control and care for approximately 170,000 citizens, there are four and a half pages of state government numbers, eight pages of federal government numbers and six and a quarter pages of school and college numbers. Then there are the town, county and tribal numbers.
So are our communities safer, cleaner and more prosperous with all this "help" that wasn't available 50 years ago?
The fact is, man cannot live by government alone. As a former president, I forget who, said earlier in the century, "If government supports the people, in the end, who will support the government?"
Pat Buchanan writes that at the beginning of World War I, the 13 agricultural colonies on the eastern seaboard had become the richest nation on earth with the highest standard of living, a republic that produced 96 percent of all it consumed while exporting 8 percent of its GNP, an industrial colossus that manufactured more than Britain, France, and Germany combined.
By the 1950s, one in every three working Americans was employed in manufacturing and had created the largest comfortable middle class the world had ever known.
Today the manufacturing base has slipped to 12 percent, and slipping right along with it is the once vast middle class with the good wages that enabled them to support a family and save for the future.
Our current trends are flirting with disaster for this country by sapping the health, character and energy of a once vital people and turning them into wards of the state.
It's not too late to revitalize our nation. And we can start right here at home, armed with new knowledge and new technologies that can avoid the mistakes of the past.
Bring back the historic property rights of the farm and ranch families who settled in isolated areas and created the wealth that built the towns and cities.
Bring back the cattle. Lots of them. Drive them in massive chewing, stomping and fertilizing herds across the vast dying forests and ranges to break up the capped soil and create organics, smooth out the erosion cuts, mow the tall clumps of dead grass, and revitalize soil that has been sterilized by fire. What a physical fitness experience and learning process it could be for thousands of flabby, couch-potato kids reared on soft drinks, potato chips and the repetitious verses of the 'over-logging', 'over-grazing' song, written by simple minds FOR simple minds.
Bring back the loggers to revitalize the forests and the economies of our families and communities. A potential treasure chest and open, sunny, grassy forests with healthy trees await us in the White Mountains.
Bring back the manufacturers, not only in the White Mountains where inventive and ambitious Americans are able to create incredibly useful products from our wasting wood resources, but all over America where towns have been turned into welfare centers by the hemorrhage of production and manufacturing jobs out of the country.
Remember the words of Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the American economy. As first Treasury Secretary, he delivered in 1791 the "Report on Manufactures," one of America's great state papers. Reflecting on how close his country had come to losing its liberty, Hamilton wrote, "Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation sought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of a national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense."
Think of those words as you buy your apples from New Zealand, your shoes from China, your computer from Japan and your wood from Canada and Sweden.
Payson.cc © 2003 Carrol Cox
Payson Arizona Editorial and Opinions on National USA / World / and Local News Issues