Laugh now.
The moral of the joke about the little bird:
[1] Not everyone who s**ts on you is your enemy.
[2] Not everyone who gets you out of s**t is your friend.
[3] And when you're in deep s**t, it's best to keep your mouth shut!
It is ironic that these guys are holed up in a bird sanctuary.
Matt Taibbi describes these weird birds at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
This link examines the Refuge Occupationhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/how-the-west-wasn-t-won
The link goes into the economic aspects of grazing on BLM land. This is where that little bird happy in nestled its warmth should keep its mouth shut. I expect that it will not be the Feds that run them off the bird sanctuary but ranchers that really don't want the spotlight shown on their business founded on public land grazing. There is an economic issue here.
From the link:
" In 1983 a rancher’s monthly cost for grazing one cow and one calf was, per arcane BLM criteria, $1.40. Today it’s $1.69. A 2015 study by a Tucson-based advocacy group, the Center for Biological Diversity, found that if public-lands ranchers were leasing similar private land at prevailing market rates, they’d be paying nearly 15 times as much per cow. It appears that the U.S. loses money supporting ranchers: A 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that in 2004 agencies had spent $144 million on grazing programs while only $21 million in grazing fees were collected."
"As 2016 begins, 27,000 American livestock producers hold federal grazing permits. They constitute roughly 3 percent of all cattlemen nationwide and are standard bearers for a fading occupation."
I'm sure that the economic analysis gets complicated.
Government subsidized enterprises have a relationship to international trade. This one is interesting. More interesting the more it is examined.
Tweet on you happy little birds in your (my) warm bird sanctuary.
I have actually been to this sanctuary in a beautiful remote place. Perhaps the upside of their occupation will be that more people visit this public treasure. The focus of media is currently the building but it looks out on to a pond filled with wildlife.
There should be a webcam there. For us to virtually enjoy the view of the real wildlife there not the humans. Other wildlife refuges have webcams for this purpose.
http://www.fws.gov/refuges/about/webcams.html
I can understand subsidizing the small American family farmer to some extent that it preserves and important American heritage. A few western farmers being subsidized excessively to preserve a myth is not justified. How many being subsidized are not big agri business.
The situation demands some scrutiny.
It looks like the old big business seeking perks under the disguise of them really being for small business. Big business cattle barons will probably be looking at opening the season on small game birds to protect their turf through their own system of wildlife management?
Rank and file steel workers and auto workers also had an American heritage way of life also. But they worked for big business not for themselves off the land like the small farmer. One thing they all had in common was common man status and a standard of living that was determined by government related issues that either advanced or extracted from their class.
This is an example of what the invaders are calling attention to regarding the bigger issue of public lands beyond their claimed rights:
Grazing is a privilege not a right says the Supreme Court. Public lands belong to the Federal Government. Calling attention to their claims is counter productive to the bigger boys in the cattle grazing on public lands special interests. Perhaps the silver lining in this situation is the public attention that the more fundamental issue gets.Tweet on in your warm pile and see what that gets you in terms of things you can't shoot except your feet in your mouths. It is just another example of people not being smart enough to act in their own self interest come back to bite them.
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