Sheriff Richard Mack at the Catron County Freedom Rally.
What would happen if we elected a REAL
Sheriff? Sheriff Richard Mack
was in Reserve for a rally at the Catron County Fairgrounds on 5 September,
2009 and answered
all our questions about what a real, OathKeeping sheriff can do for the People of Catron
County.
Clay Douglas, publisher of the Free American magazine was
in attendance and was so motivated by Sheriff Mack's presentation that he
decided to purchase this Domain and run for Catron County Sheriff in the next
election as an Oath Keeper who will protect and defend this County's People
against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Clay
Douglas agrees with Sheriff Mack's introduction in his book where he
quotes Thomas Jefferson. . . .
America is at the threshold of what appears to be utter
despotism. People from every state and countryside are begging to
be left alone and treated as freemen. Thomas Jefferson opined,
When all government shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all
power, it will render powerless the checks provided and will be come as
venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
Well, President Jefferson was right and now what do we do about it?
Who will stop this "
venal and
oppressive government" as
Jefferson so firmly warned us?
This book is written to and for every citizen, each
police officer, every peace officer, and especially every sheriff in
America; that all of us come to the understanding that the sheriff
indeed has the authority, the power, and the duty to end "venal and
oppressive government." The conclusion is thus inescapable; the
County Sheriff is our nation's Last Line of Defense, for the
preservation and return to, fundamental and individual liberty.
Sheriff, you are the People's Last Hope.
When you connect with this astounding truth, your People in your county
or parish reconnect with freedom. This principle is what makes the
position of sheriff such a high and noble office.
Or write to: Sheriff Mack P.O. Box 971 Pima, AZ 85543
Catron County, New Mexico
A Blueprint For The Destruction Of Rural
America?
"People are suffering. These are proud folks who wont ride welfare
and they have nothing left. We have suffered a lot of causalities. Some
turned to the bottle, some blew their brains out, and many gave up and
went away." Gary Harris, The last sawmiller in Catron County
Catron County, New Mexico; Commissioner Auggie Shellhorn is a big
man, rugged, callused and tough from years of ranching high county and
fighting forest fires with "Hot Shot" teams. He faces a task equal to
his size and spirit in rescuing his economically ravaged county. Auggie
stops his aging pickup truck on a slight rise overlooking a large
abandoned and rusting sawmill, the ruins of the industry that was the
very lifeblood of his community. He sighs heavily, "When the mill was
running, everyone that wanted to work had a job. People could afford to
raise their families here and our country could afford to provide a
decent education for the children. But, that is all gone, gone thanks to
the spotted own, The Gila Watch, and Kieran Suckling, Dave Foreman, and
Peter Galvin." Shellhorn is silent for a few moments then perks up.
"Someday, and we pray it is soon, America is going to need our timber
again. So the County bought the mill. Its our investment in the future.
We gotta believe in it."
From the old mill we drive into the county seat at Reserve, New
Mexico and enter Uncle Bills, a local saloon that proudly displays its
motto. "Kids that hunt, fish and trap dont mug little old ladies!"
Auggie introduced me as a writer for Range Magazine and Paragon
Foundation which eased the tense looks I was getting from the grizzly
clientele. The heated and controversial U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
wolf reintroduction hearings were scheduled to be held in Reserve, so
big city journalists had beleaguered the tiny population while trying to
pry radical remarks from them. It seemed that everybody in the bar had a
Sixty Minutes II, Discovery or CBS camera stuck in their face over the
past week. "We sure are glad we finally got some press in town thatll
tell our side of the story" smiled a tiny lady tipping her beer mug to
me. "We just bout had enough of them "wolfers."
Catron County indeed has had enough of the media and the "wolfers."
The citizens have been assailed without mercy, without pity, from
environmentalists, the Federal Government, and biased media for over a
decade.
The economy is totally devastated, the school system de-funded and
most sadly Catron has lost its greatest treasure, the children. As
communities declined, families leave, and with the families go the
children. Shellhorn relates "The Spotted owl didnt just effect The
Sawmill workers. Truckers, fallers, planters, thinners, construction
workers lost their jobs. We lost so many children because of families
moving away, that we shrunk from a 12 to a 6-man football team. 1n 1998
only 8 boys and one girl graduated from the Reserve High School. Before
the spotted owl, our graduating class was 20 to 25. We have such limited
funds for education that we have had to shorten the school week to four
days."
Evidently, the county has been singled out as a testing ground for
every new land-taking concept based on the Endangered Species Act.
Perhaps it is even more than a random singling out. Perhaps it is as
Rancher Hugh McKeen believes, "a federal test-bed for like-actions in
other rural communities." The actions by the U.S. Forest Service The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and federal courts have been so
continuous, so uncompromising, that they could be interpreted as a
deliberate retaliation for the Herculean independence displayed by the
Catron County citizens and their government. These good people have
resisted, and still defy the heavy hand of the federal government on
their personal lives and lands.
Catron County caught the nations attention with their effort to
return to a regulation-free life. It birthed the county independence
movement. It was the first to pass statutes resisting federal reign over
national land within its boundaries. The message has been plain: Get the
federal government out of our peoples lives.
Jim Catron, the County attorney, is a fourth-generation New Mexican
and a distant relative of Thomas Benton Catron, for whom Catron County
is named. "There is a culture in the American West," he says. "It lives
and it breathes and it is under assault in the name of environmental
protection. In the name of environmental conservation, were attempting
to destroy the last vestige of people who resist central government in
the world. If those one-worlders and those federal imperialists really
believe theyve got us whipped, that the final resistance to centralized
government is over, theyre wrong. We dont use bullets and swords; now we
use lawsuits and injunctions. When these people see government getting
strong enough to push them off their lands, destroy their culture and
their livelihoods, when these people see the federal government
protecting owls and fish instead of humans, they tend to fight back."
Reserve with its empty streets and boarded up windows seems an
unlikely place to ferment a rebellion and the citizens certainly dont
see themselves as revolutionaries. They are common working folks who
were pushed against the wall, put out of work, and watched their lives
being destroyed by over-zealous regulatory agencies and environmentalist
lawsuits. Their county leaders merely passed ordinances they believed
would defend the citizens livelihoods. It hasnt worked. Instead federal
agencies continue tightening the noose to the point of perceptible
discrimination.
Back in Uncle Bills bar, Gary Harris, owner of the last tiny,
one-man sawmill in Catron County explains how absurd the Forest Service
regulations have became. "We had a fire in the Gilas a couple years
back. 16,000 acres of prime large trees burned. Out of that the Forest
service only allowed five acres of Douglas fir to be salvaged. We only
cut for two weeks. As we were salvaging, the enviros got a court order
to quit cutting and quit skidding the burned timber. So the rest, and it
was prime wood, simply rotted. Outside of that, the forest service has
only had one timber sale in ten years. It is ridiculous. We have 60%
more acreage in tree cover today than in 1935. We are surrounded by
timber, but people are building houses with lumber trucked in from
Canada."
Gary stares into his beer for a long moment, shakes his head, turns
to me with a somber face, and said "Look here is how it is. No timber
for sale, after the wolf reintroduction ranching will dry up, the wolves
have limited game to eat, so after the deer, and elk are gone, well lose
our hunter income. It boils down to the fact that ways to make a living
are disappearing. People are suffering. These are proud folks who wont
ride welfare and they have nothing left. We have suffered a lot of
causalities. Some turned to the bottle, some blew their brains out, and
many gave up and went away. I guess Its got me too. Im out of wood to
cut so Im closing my mill."
The wolf reintroduction into the Gila Wilderness is viewed most by
Catron citizens as the final kiss-of-death to the countys economy. Con
Allred, old-time rancher, and former New Mexico State Representative
sits by the window at the Golden Girls cafe in Glenwood, a small village
down the road from Reserve, drinking coffee and talking politics. He
sums up the dilemma posed by the wolves. "We have almost no deer left
and the elk population so small the wolves will wipe them out fast. Well
lose our hunters and the damn wolves will continue killing our cattle."
Cons son, Darrell, a rancher, and realtor specializing in ranches,
adds to his dads observations. "Nobody wants to purchase a working ranch
where wolves are a threat to livestock. The effect is that ranching
properties are drastically devalued. Those folks who need to sell are
going to be forced to subdivide. This pristine land will be turned into
a sprawl of summer home subdivisions. We dont want that; wed like to see
the old ranches kept intact. By reintroducing the wolf, the
environmentalists and federal agencies are instrumental in increasing
the population pressure on our resources and destroying the land."
Catron County resisted the Mexican Grey Wolf reintroduction plan to
the bitter end. In March they hosted a rally in Glenwood to provide
alternative information on the reintroduction program. A thousand
peaceful folks from all walks of showed up for the meeting to protest
the wolf reintroduction. The major media swarmed the assembly obviously
hoping to further reinforce the "violent redneck" image of the Catron
folks that has been carefully choreographed by Federal agencies, and
environmentalist-driven media over the last decade. They seemed
disappointed that noting happened. An Albuquerque newspaper reported the
rally as "remarkably sedate." A TV station in Albuquerque showed five
seconds of the Glenwood rally, then allowed an environmentalist
considerable air time on how ranchers destroy the land. The other major
media was incredibly biased and distorted. Skewed sound bites and a
prejudiced notion of what was going to be reported was painfully
obvious. The only media that gave an accurate accounting of the events
was small, independent press.
The final inputs into the Wolf Reintroduction Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) was conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
shortly after the Glenwood Rally. The hearings were conducted in Reserve
and Silver City, New Mexico. The hearings were extraordinary tense.
Shortly before the hearings, a pack of reintroduced wolves had been
lured across the New Mexico-Arizona border by baiting with elk and dear
cadavers. Once in New Mexico, the pack promptly started killing
livestock.
Bud Collins and his partner Judy Cummings of the Cross Y ranch that
straddles the state line were hit first. The pack first ripped a fetus
from a cow, ate it, then killed the cow. A few days later the pack
downed a 1400-pound bull on soothing iron Mesa. The wolf pack seemed
unafraid of the two hunters who happened upon the scene of its kill,
"calm and reluctant to leave," according to a sheriffs report. Buds
Collins said, "The wolves dont appear to be afraid of humans and seem to
prefer hanging around the ranch line camp. Its very disconcerting," he
said. "Its hard to get the horses to come up here anymore."
Judys take on the slaying of the Cross Y livestock was one of shock
and betrayal. She was new to ranching and had invested a lifetime of
savings from her former position as a Vice President of The Bank of
America in California. She had transitioned from gray flannel business
suits, to jeans and boots. Ms. Cummings was a life member of Defenders
of Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, and the Environmental Defense Fund.
"Suddenly reality hit me," Judy said. "All the green groups I had been
contributing to were working with the government to put me and every
rancher like me out of business!"
The wolves killed the bull about two miles from the Glenwood
Elementary School. Then a solitary male was spied several times
wandering through the tiny Village of Alma eating pet cats and hanging
around the school bus stop. The alarmed communities were suddenly held
hostage by the rogue wolf and fear that the pack might attack a child.
The threat was so real that they kept their children inside.
It was under these incensed conditions that the final EIS was held.
The Wolf reintroduction team, after presenting formal statements turned
the meeting over to a professional facilitator and set stone-faced and
mute in their chairs refusing to answer or in any way acknowledge
questions from the hundreds of angry people in the audience. Dozens of
representatives from New Mexico agencies, county commissioners, city
officials, hunters, ranchers, mothers and children stood and voiced to
the emotionless panel of U.S. Fish And Wildlife employees that they did
not want the wolves reintroduced into their backyards.
None of this outpouring of citizens against the wolf reintroduction
was heeded. Shortly after the hearings, the wolves were unleashed. As
Auggie Commissioner Shellhorn says. "Sooner or later, one of the
hand-raised wolves is going to attack a human. Maybe then the government
will listen to us."
Is Catron County a blueprint for the destruction of rural America?
Certainly the havoc wreaked there can be effectively applied anywhere.
It would be simple because the fiats to effectively accomplish such a
plan are in place. Use the Endangered Species Act to shut down major
industries and destroy the tax base. When the tax base is destroyed,
funding for schools and public services are vastly diminished. Working
people are forced to leave for lack of employment. Private lands found
to be habitat for endangered species would be so devalued that owners
would be forced to sell them to governmental agencies or nonprofit
groups like The Nature Conservancy further reducing the tax base.
Private citizens cannot afford to defend themselves against the power,
might and the unlimited monetary resources of the Federal Government and
a judicial system that seems to have predetermined the course of
environmental-takings law suits.
The destruction blueprint used in Catron county is starting to
happen again. This time on 500 privately owned farms near London, Ohio.
Read about in the next Range.
Authors Note: In writing this article I thought of my good friend
and mentor in Constitutional law, Alabama Attorney Frank Bailey. I was
telling Frank about the problems in Catron County and he innocently said
"Well, The government cannot take private property with a species that
they protect, so why dont they simply pay the ranchers for thier
livestock and let the wolves eat them." Frank, and all you other good
folks, I hope this scribbling will give you a real view of what is
happening to our rights.
J. Zane Walley, Journalist-Photographer
P.O. 161
Lincoln, New Mexico 88338
Ofc: 505-653-4024
Cell 505-420-2841
Fax: 505 434-4658
frc@pvtnetworks.net
{ The current sheriff in Catron County has been in office since 2007
and has purchased a domain, but has not managed to get a website up yet.
You can find his "official" domain at:
www.catroncountysheriffsdepartment.com }
