Havre Daily News - 4/5/02
Give us some facts to back your opinion
by Hugo Tureck

Editor's note: The following is an open letter to Dale Strouf, District 111 director of the Montana Farm Bureau Federation

You recently wrote a letter to the Havre Daily News that was highly critical of an editorial that supported the Missouri River Breaks National Monument. This editorial also called to task Dennis Rehberg and his recent attempt to remove private lands from the monument.

In your letter, you accuse the newspaper of having "irresponsibly attacked Congressman Denny Rehberg and carelessly misstated his position on the Missouri River Breaks National Monument." You also question the Daily News' interpretation of the Antiquities Act.

Finally, you accuse our government of planning to force the private landowners within the monument to sell their lands to the government. You state that: "There are plenty of cases where the government has pressured the landowner to be a willing seller by taking away public grazing leases and putting stringent regulations on the surrounding public land leased by the private landowner. In that case, the landowner who is 'holding out' eventually has no choice but to sell their land to the government."

You cite no facts nor make any logical arguments to support your claims of newspaper error and government malfeasance. Rather you attempt to lend credibility to your claims by noting your leadership position within the Montana Farm Bureau and your personal conversations with Rep. Rehberg. What you have accomplished by doing this is to put not only your credibility at risk but also that of the Farm Bureau and Rep. Rehberg.

On a lighter note, Denny Rehberg's press release about removing private property from the monument was reported on by a number of Montana newspapers. In all fairness to the Daily News, you would have to accuse all of the newspapers that reported the story with being irresponsible as they all made the same interpretation of the press release. Either there is a conspiracy among state newspapers to purposely misstate Rehberg's position or the good representative has a small problem with communicating.

On a more serious note, you state that: "The constitutional experts at the Daily News need to take their own editorial advice and get their facts straight." You in no way present facts or even an argument as to why their interpretation of the Antiquities Act is wrong. The intellectually honest approach would have been to cite data and present logical arguments for the reader to consider. Your caustic remark, while cute, does not allow the reader to consider the merit of your accusation.

It is your last accusation that I find most troubling. When you state that there are "plenty of cases where the government has pressured the landowner," you are accusing your government and mine of engaging in a systematic abuse of public lands ranchers. As a public lands rancher myself, I have never had any such experience.

More importantly, if our government is doing such pressuring, I can assure you that the news media, including the Havre Daily News, would make it front-page coverage. I can also assure you that the overwhelming majority of the public would also demand that our government stop abusing its citizens and their private property rights.

There is just one small problem to overcome before concerned citizens can act. We need to see the facts so that we can determine the truth. We need to know if your interpretation is right. You want us to believe you without seeing the facts, without determining if you are telling the truth. Most of us have been led down that path before and we now want more. What we want are the names of these "victims" so that we can check the public record to determine the truth for ourselves without depending upon you, the Montana Farm Bureau, or even Rep. Rehberg to tell us the truth.

Mr. Strouf, please call the Montana Farm Bureau, of which you are a director, and ask them to use their vast resources to list those "plenty of cases" so that we can check the facts. Mr. Strouf, please make another personal phone call to Denny Rehberg begging him to use his resources to list the "plenty of cases" so that we as a public can check this out. Tell them that not only your credibility but their credibility is on the line.

Hugo Tureck, a rancher in Coffee Creek, chaired the Bureau of Land Management's Central Montana Resource Advisory Council when it held public meetings to find out what the public wanted done to protect the Upper Missouri Breaks.