Bill Gow, a conservative cattle rancher who enthusiastically voted for Donald Trump in 2016, is only reluctantly voting for him again in 2020 after learning that the Trump administration has cleared the way for a Canadian gas company to seize Gow’s land through eminent domain in order to build an export pipeline that will in no way benefit the United States or its people.
Because Joe Biden is a considerably worse candidate than Trump, especially with Kamala Harris as his running mate, Gow is still going to grit his teeth and pull the lever for Trump. But it really is voting for the lesser of two evils type of scenario for Gow, as the Trump swamp is on the verge of stripping Gow of his livelihood.
The owner of a large cattle ranch in the rolling hills of southern Oregon, Gow started with almost nothing in life. The son of “a drunk” from Klamath Falls, Gow worked for years in the iron industry to fund his undergraduate studies in agriculture, which he used to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a cattle rancher.
Gow eventually realized that dream along with his growing family upon purchasing a 2,500-acre cattle ranch along the Umpqua River. It is on this land that Gow, for the past 35 years, has built and grown his beef business, as well as facilitated his family’s love for horses.
Around 2004, however, a Canadian company decided that it wanted to plow right through Gow’s land in order to build a gas pipeline, which would purportedly, if it ever came to fruition, supply North American natural gas to Asia. None of the gas in the pipeline would serve Americans, it is important to note, but rather it would all flow overseas from a new shipping port also slated to be built in Coos Bay along the Oregon coast.
Gow and his neighbors, along with many unlikely allies in the “hippie” and environmentalist movements, have been fighting this pipeline for years, so far with miraculous success. But once Trump took the helm in 2016, the game changed and the pipeline is now more a reality than ever before.
Trump cares more about corporations than he does the average American
Like many other things that the Trump administration has fast-tracked, the pipeline project was given an accelerated boost by key Trump administration figures who are using their lobbying powers to finally get the project done, enriching themselves and their investors at the expense of Gow and his family ranch.
It has been a long, hard fight that Gow thought would eventually go away, especially once Trump was elected. But the opposite turned out to be true, with Trump and his allies now paving the way for a swift takeover of Gow’s land.
The story is a heartbreakingly labored one – you can read it in full at The Washington Standard, which republished it with permission from Sons of Liberty Media – but suffice it to say that the swamp is still alive and kicking under Trump, and some might argue freshly invigorated due to his influence.
In a recent online vote, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in a 2-1 online vote – two of these votes were from Trump appointees – approved the construction of the pipeline on Gow’s land. And while the state of Oregon had long been the only thing left in the way of the highly controversial project, Trump himself made sure to deal with that by signing an executive order overriding Oregon’s withholding of two key permits that would have allowed the project to advance much sooner.
For more related news about the Trump administration, be sure to check out Trump.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.