Dark Days

Up front I state that I do not support government investment in private business. I see the role of government being to the door to the private sector and protecting the public from the unsavory element that sometimes leeches on to good private developers.

In the case of Big Sky hog producers, the government is the majority shareholder. I appreciate that it was the previous government that created the scenario and the current government inherited the problem. However, as a major shareholder the government should have been more diligent in protecting the public interest in this corporation. When the commodity market showed a decline in pork sales and profit margins diminished, government should have watched with caution our public investment and stepped in if necessary.

Farmers have been raised on permit books and marketing boards. Now we have farmers at the brink of bankruptcy because they believed that delivering grain to a corporation that is majority government owned was a safe contract and there was no indication that the corporation was in trouble. Worse yet would be watching others sell their product at a higher price to the same corporation and getting paid after the corporation went into receivership.

I know if this was a private corporation that every creditor would be sucking wind. But is the line blurred because the major shareholder is government?

The Land of the Living Skies is cloaked with nimbus clouds.