Told You So – Thoughts From The Middle of Nowhere

I told you the other day that <a href="http://www.sarpysam.com/archives/2898-Nothing.html"><a href="http://governor.mt.gov/governor/govbio.asp">Gov. Brian Schweitzer</a> knew he couldn't help</a> the Morgans and <a href="http://karbonkountymoos.com/">Karen</a> but just didn't want to tell them to their face. <a href="http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/10/08/news/state/20-brucellosis.txt">Today's article about the situation</a> just confirms that. n n<blockquote>A Bridger ranching family that had to slaughter all its stock because of a cattle disease won't get additional money from the state as reimbursement. n n<a href="http://governor.mt.gov/governor/govbio.asp">Gov. Brian Schweitzer</a> said Friday that he cannot legally give the couple any state money. n n"I am not sure how I can indemnify them beyond what they've already been paid," Schweitzer said.</blockquote> n nI'm fully convinced the Governor knew this going into the meeting but just didn't want to have to tell the Morgans that. I can understand not wanting to give people bad news to their face, but the Governor should have been a man and gave them the real facts at the meeting instead of leaving them dangle. n nSomething else interesting in the article. If the state reimburses somebody for a brucellosis infected herd, the Feds just reduce the amount they pay by the amount the states pay. n n<blockquote>There is a catch: If a state chooses to pay a rancher some money for the loss of a herd, APHIS will subtract that amount from the sum the agency offers, said Marty Zaluski, the Montana state veterinarian.</blockquote> n nSo in a way you can't fault the Governor for all of this. The Feds have it set up to hobble the states in this. Even if Montana were to set up a special fund to pay ranchers for their loss, the Feds would just pay less for the herd so the rancher would get less. As usual the Government gets you coming and going. n nI said from the very beginning of this, how much do you pay for a herd of cows? How do you value it? How do you value the intangibles like good breeding that you have been working on for years? By market value they got a fair price. n n<blockquote>The amount the Morgans received works out to about $1,600 per cow-calf pair. n nThat same week, similar cow-calf pairs sold for $1,300, according to information from the Billings Livestock Commission.</blockquote> n nBut, like Sandy Morgan says: n n<blockquote>But that comparison isn't fair, Sandy Morgan said. Typically, ranchers sell their calves in October or November. They don't sell quality cows nor quality calves in the middle of the summer.</blockquote> n nWhen all this happened it is not the time of year somebody would liquidate their herd so it's hard to compare the price they received with true market value of the herd, but again I ask, how can you value the intangibles fairly? Was <a href="http://karbonkountymoos.com/">Karen's</a> intangible value more or less than the Morgan's and should one or the other receive more money for their cows? Tough questions if you ask me. n nI guess I turn my thoughts back to another point I made in the very beginning. Why is it necessary to slaughter the whole herd for a few infected animals? Why couldn't we just get rid of the infected animals and do follow up monitoring on the rest of the herd that was all ready vaccinated for Brucellosis? There was only I believe 6 cows in the herd infected. That's all the loss would have been as long as no other critters showed up. Why slaughter a whole herd when it isn't necessary is beyond me. Slaughtering a whole herd is not how Brucellosis was wiped out in the state. Getting rid of infected animals and retesting herds is how Montana became brucellosis free. Why can't the same strategy be used now? This dumb cowboy will never know. n nThe goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief. Jacques Ellul