- Fish and wildlife on Federal lands were (with only a few minor exceptions)
under the         jurisdiction of State government.

- Logging, grazing, hunting, fishing, and trapping were understood to be
"sustainable uses" of "renewable" natural resources.

- Federal agencies and Federal employees understood their responsibility to
rural communities and the need for management of resources for their
sustainability and the good of the Nation.  (This however has never been
true of the National Park Service that has from the start in the late 19th
century seen itself as founded and funded to eradicate hunting, fishing,
trapping, logging, grazing, and simple citizen access to the PUBLIC LANDS
known as National Parks.)

- Federal managers understood the clear meaning of the 5th Amendment to wit,
"nor shall private    property be taken for public USE (my capitalization),
without just compensation."

- Animal "welfare" meant county or city dog pounds and taking your pet to a
vet and "conservation" meant the wise management and sustained use of
natural resources to benefit all people and to finance governmental
management.

In the early 1970's a "Perfect Storm" of governmental vulnerability and
radical activism came together in this national environment.  Richard Nixon
was President and concerned with "healing" the turbulence and social unrest
that resulted from Viet Nam and calming inflation.  Democrats controlled the
House of Representatives and the US Senate had evolved into a "House of
Lords" where incumbency and dependence on national NGO support all but
erased any assertion of state or local interest in what they pursued or
opposed.  This period spawned an abundance of Environmental and Animal
Rights NGO's that have all grown richer, more powerful, and more influential
to this day.  A short list would contain The Wilderness Society, The Sierra
Club, The Nature Conservancy, The Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society
of the US, The Natural Resources Defense Council, Animal Welfare Institute,
The Animal Protection Institute, The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, PETA,
ALF, ELF, and I include The National Wildlife Federation and The Audubon
Society and sadly even Ducks Unlimited and other such fence straddlers such
as The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Trout Unlimited. Some of the things
we are dealing with today began in this period of the 70's thanks to these
groups lobbying and/or quiet support:

1972 - The Marine Mammal Protection Act (sponsored by a US Senator from
Arkansas up for reelection that boasted that the best thing about those
critters was that there weren't any within a thousand miles of Arkansas so
no "Razorback" would be affected by any and all the Arkansas
"environmentalists" would love it) put ALL marine mammals (polar bears,
manatees, sea otters, seals, whales, etc.) under Federal authority no matter
whether they were in state jurisdictions or not.  This was particularly
harmful to state fisheries (thanks to seal/sea lion/sea otter predation),
state boating (manatees), and high seas fisheries (by allowing uncontrolled
seal and whale and other marine mammal predation and numbers to increase and
further impact distressed commercial fisheries). While promising to allow
management and uses to continue when these animals reached "optimum
sustainable populations" no such action has ever been taken.  To this day,
none of these animals are managed or used in any way or amenable to any
state or community or international fisheries, needs.  Incidental-take of
porpoises in tuna nets or impacts of super abundant seals, sea lions, and
certain whales like minkes on commercial fish species and those species'
food chains (cod, salmon, lobsters, flounder, etc.) are politically
incorrect subjects ignored by researchers, bureaucrats, the media, and
politicians.

1972 - The USA signs a Migratory Bird Treaty with Japan.  Bird species that
had formerly been excluded from similar Treaties with Mexico and Canada such
as cormorants and hawk and owls are simply named without fanfare on this
Treaty thereby taking them from state jurisdiction and placing them under
exclusive Federal authority.  Today, super abundant cormorant populations
ravage hatcheries, commercial fisheries, sport fisheries, and aquatic
habitats generally.  Similarly hawks and owls (like marine mammals) go
unmentioned as to the effects of their high populations on songbirds, game
birds, mammals, and animal husbandry both in total and in keeping distressed
populations like certain songbirds in a distressed (or worse) condition.
Remember these super abundant hawks and owls when I get to the "Endangered"
plovers and terns providing the legal excuse for Federal intervention in
your live, communities, livelihoods, and future here in Eastern Colorado.
Management is non-existent for hawks and owls and cormorant "control" is
expensive and all but impossible for government or individuals under Federal
restrictions and, like wolf control, given the magnitude and cost of
controls under current and future overpopulations.  As with the Marine
Mammal Protection Act and the subsequent Endangered Species and Animal
Welfare Acts, state government and/or state bureaucracy cautions or
objections to these changes were non-existent or tepid at best.


1973 - The Endangered Species Act was passed.  While studiously avoiding the
clear implications of its' basis in a UN Convention recognized as a "Treaty"
so that under the US Constitution a Treaty "shall be the supreme Law of the
Land", the US Senate and President enthusiastically passed and signed the
Act to great fanfare with talk of species like eagles and elephants.  There
was no indication of:

- Declared Critical Habitats "taking private property without compensation".

- Sub-species, then Races, then Populations, then Population Segments, then
Distinct Population Segments of individual species being listed separately.

- Butterflies and mice and isopods being used effectively to stop roads and
hospitals and necessary dam maintenance resulting in the loss of human life
and property.

- Wolves (in spite of abundance in Alaska and Asia and Europe) being forced
into the Rocky Mountain states and the Great Lakes states and the Southwest
and Carolinas to ravage game populations, domestic stock, pets, hunting, and
human safety with no recourse.

- The subtle perversion of state fish and wildlife agencies from defenders
of state authorities, answerable to state politicians and therefore you and
I, into Federal subcontractors responsible (like University professors and
state highway administrators) for assuring that the school and/or state
"gets every nickel due to us as soon as it is available" from Federal
programs.

- Any model or intention of the current travesty of Listing under the Act -
the polar bear. 

When the Act was passed 35 years ago, uninformed
environmental claims were that there were "only" 5,000 polar bears (this
intentional low-ball estimate was intended to generate sympathy and support
for no polar bear hunting or importation of trophies).  The Marine Mammal
Protection Act has prohibited any Alaskan harvest, even though desired and
justified, and made the importation of polar bear hides or parts from
nations that conduct annual harvests all but impossible.  Today, with a
grudging claim of 25,000 polar bears worldwide (still a lowball estimate)
the Secretary of the Interior proposes to "List" polar bears because of
recent claims of ICE thinning. This is being done to lay the basis for a
Recovery Plan that names Global Warming as the culprit here and (as spotted
owl was to logging and the snail darter was to a dam) thereby provide the
Movement lawyers with a precedent to enforce Kyoto by such ploys as going
into US Court to increase new vehicle mileage requirements, stop road
building, enforce public transportation, reduce industry, et al because the
emissions "cause" Global Warming that is endangering (under The Act) the
polar bear according to it's Recovery Plan.  If you doubt this, think back
to the impact of Listing the spotted owl on logging and roads and local
economies.  This latest precedent of hypothesizing about a healthy animal
populations' candidacy for Listing based on assumed projections of the
condition of one element of their habitat is insidious to say the least.

1973 Roe v. Wade is decided by the US Supreme Court.  Setting aside the
simultaneous national actions of elevating animal legal protections while
eliminating certain legal protections for humans, focus for a second on the
rationale for the decision of the majority.   The Justices cited The
Griswold Decision's right to privacy (1965) as being based in large measure
on Justice Douglas' assertion that "specific guarantees in the Bill of
Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations".  In a separate dissent, Chief
Justice Rehnquist and Justice White rightly observed that in Roe v. Wade
"The court simply fashions a new constitutional right" as an "exercise of
raw judicial power."  This increasingly accepted habit of the Court to
fashion "new" rights and powers has greatly aided the raw expansion of
Federal powers at the expense of state and local authority, and the
assumption of governmental authority over private property owners and
citizens of practically every stripe in the intervening 30 plus years that
concern us here.  Remember that this bizarre legal notion of the ideas of
whoever is in power writing and enforcing the "law of the land" has been
implemented by Justices (judges) "approved" by a vote of the US Senators now
elected by "the people thereof" instead of the "State Legislature".

1976 The Animal Welfare Act was passed.  This expanded the notion that
animals were under the authority of the Federal government and not private
property subject at best to reasonable state and local restrictions based on
the safety, health, and welfare of human members of the communities.  It
laid the groundwork for taking Wild Horses from state jurisdiction (1981),
Federal control subverting state authority over everything from dog breeding
and clipping dogs' ears or bobbing their tails to the current national
prohibition against horse slaughter.  National attempts to prohibit hunting
methods (bear baiting, hunting with dogs, trapping, etc.) or cockfighting or
to limit the numbers of pets or to indeed (currently through the courts)
declare certain animals as having the "rights of human citizens" (The Great
Ape Campaign) thereby setting the stage for eliminating animal ownership,
animal control, animal management, and animal use.

Other Acts such as The Wilderness Act (1964) and Conventions such as the
International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (1946) took on a new
power and meaning in this environment.  The synergism between, say, placing
all marine mammals under complete protection from management and use and US
policies regarding the rights of whaling nations to harvest abundant whale
species either for food or to protect their fish stocks: or for Wilderness
Declarations to increase Wilderness Areas in size and number while losing
any need for any justification other than raw political power in the face of
decreasing game populations and increasing catastrophic fires was dramatic
to say the least. Mention of changes on National Forests or BLM lands or in
marine fishery regulations in this regard could easily take a day to
explain.

Before we go on to mention examples of current Environmental and Animal
Rights aberrations throughout American Society, we should keep in mind this
foregoing history and what it wrought:

- US Senators that no longer represent states but themselves and national
supporters (NGO's) as they approve Treaties, confirm judges, and pass
legislation.

- A well-financed Federal government that is posting a 100-year record of
growth.

- State governments and state bureaucrats that are increasingly obedient to
national agendas (because of the promise of funds AND to avoid being
targeted as "anti-protection") that not only diminish the state but
increasingly disadvantage rural Americans as national population trends and
the concept that political power trumps Constitutional Guarantees meant to
protect true societal minorities like hunters and ranchers, etc. emphasize
urban values and notions nationally.

- A US Supreme Court that is open to changing interpretations based on
"penumbras formed by emanations" of the compact between the "governed" (who
wrote the Constitution) and the government that is thereby created within
limits to carry it out.

- Immense Environmental and Animal Rights NGO financial power and political
influence affecting the media, schools, institutions, international
relations, and government.

- An all-powerful Federal government bureaucracy tightly allied with Federal
politicians, state bureaucracies, Universities, the UN, and NGO's.

- An extensive community of lawyers, lobbyists, and fundraisers navigating a
sea of laws, regulations, programs, lawsuits, agreements, easements,
conventions, and intertwined legal authorities incomprehensible to all but a
few and unintelligible to nearly all who try to learn about it on their own.

- Billions of dollars in grants, tax preferences, payments, easements,
resale of property to government, and all manner of incomes dependent on and
intertwined with continued and growing Federal Environmental and Animal
Rights controls of property and human activities.  The lobby groups this
created are far larger and more varied than most people understand.

We could talk now about wolves or about polar bears or about Section 7 or
about Federal or state agencies but time is limited.  Instead let's talk
about the Federal presence here in the Platte River Valleys in the three
states.

Ranchers and farmers are every bit as much endangered by the Environmental
and Animal Rights Movement as are hunters and fishermen and pet owners and
loggers and so many others.  In the case of farmers and ranchers in the
Platte River Valley, you were in the crosshairs right from the get-go.  I
remember one coffee break shortly after my transfer to Washington back in
the 70's.  A fellow that was working with growing the endangered species
program and who had been involved with getting Federal protection for
cormorants perked up when another guy asked me about my work as a Special
Agent when I was stationed in Grand Island, Nebraska.  Before I could talk
about Nebraska the endangered species guy went off about how "those farmers"
were using up all the water "out there" with their sprinkler systems and how
that needed to be stopped.  I thought it was lucky that the only endangered
species "out there" was the whooping cranes and they just rested there
occasionally on their way North or South: otherwise this fellow and his
chums at the UN (we knew then how they were all working together back in
those days) would shut them down by declaring the area an International
Wetland or some sort of Imperiled Ecosystem.  Little did I foresee what was
in store for the Platte Valleys.

You are under Federal controls over water and farm practices because the
Federal government has declared that Platte River water, and the groundwater
associated with it, is necessary for the survival of four endangered
species - the Whooping Crane, the Interior Least Tern, the Piping Plover,
and the Pallid Sturgeon.  Your interstate compacts and water rights under
state laws and historic uses are just a few of the things now subject to
Federal bureaucratic oversight and regulatory enforcement spawned by the ESA
and manipulated by Federal bureaucrats.  Let's look at these four species
and the biological and political reasons that make them the venue for this
Federal intrusion.

Whooping Cranes have been poster-children for the endangered species program
for decades before there was an ESA gleam in a politician's eye.  I often
"babysat" them when I was a US Game Management Agent stationed in Grand
Island, Nebraska.  The thing to remember here is that the Platte River
drainage is migratory habitat for these birds.  They breed in Canada and
winter in Texas.  The importance of the Platte and associated wetlands,
although historic, is not biologically critical.  To use this transitory use
for which alternate stops are available both N and S in their migration is
really a political masterstroke as this well-known and long-accepted
endangered bird's "requirements" are politically incorrect to question.
They could get by just fine on less surface water in Nebraska and they are
quite capable of stopping further North (South Dakota) or South
(Kansas/Oklahoma) in fields, pastures, and wet areas as they migrate from
Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Interior Least Tern is a Subspecies of the Least Tern.  It is a biological
chimera.  Since the ESA was passed, the evolution of grant availability to
Universities combined with the environmental lawsuits and bureaucratic
agendas have perverted the "science" of taxonomy such that the entire
concept of subspecies and race and populations is merely pandering to
whatever generates funding, positions, tenure, bonuses, salary increases,
and power.  This subspecies is not, nor should it be a matter of national
concern such that taking without compensation and all the rest are applied
because of it. - See the NOTE at the end of the next paragraph. -

Piping Plovers are widespread breeding birds on Atlantic beaches from the
Carolinas to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and So. Canada to and around the Great
Lakes.  They are also found breeding in the Missouri River and Platte River
Valley.  Up until 1962, the authority on "The Birds", Roger Tory Peterson,
described them as two RACES of the same species and that the Birds found
around "the Great lakes and Maritime Canada show intergradations between the
two races".  In other words they are all the same bird but no matter, they
are dynamite land closers.  They close down public Atlantic beaches because
of nests that are usually destroyed by overabundant foxes and raccoons and
cats.  They are used to close down sandpits (actually their preferred
habitat) in Nebraska when use of the pits is what makes them attractive to
the birds.  They never "blackened the skies" and their current distribution
and numbers are not worthy of the societal stoppages they provide various
factions.

NOTE: Instead of providing the basis for Federal power over all the ranchers
and farmers and cities and water in the Platte River Basin, this "tender
concern" for "Piping Plovers and INTERIOR Least Terns", is merely an excuse
for more governmental power and the elimination of state jurisdictions,
local communities, and rural economies.  Long before there is any such
ceding of absolute authority to unanswerable bureaucrats and politicians ask
yourself why they do not and have not "controlled" avian predators (hawks
and owls) and mammalian predators (raccoons, foxes, coyotes, skunks, mink,
etc.) in and around the nesting areas of these birds?  When the Federal
overseers wanted to "establish" a "new" whooping crane population in the
1970's in Grays lake, Idaho; they had no hesitancy to get EPA to "authorize"
1040 (a poison to kill mammals like coyotes, wolves, and other vermin) for
Federal use to kill the coyotes in the area that were eating the young
whooping cranes.  (The use of 1040 to protect livestock had previously been
banned.) What's the difference? The answer is that opposition to sensible
animal "control" and trapping or any mention of doing anything with hawks or
owls trumps Constitutional guarantees of property rights, states rights,
personal freedoms, rural families, and our right to live in peace under a
government WE THE PEOPLE founded and limited to keep us free.  Rural folks
in the Platte Basin are worth less than certain birds or whatever the
powerful Federal government determines it want to use as a basis for more
power.

Pallid Sturgeons were described as having a critical need for the lower
Platte in E. Nebraska.  In fact, these sturgeons are little researched and
are ubiquitous in the Missouri drainage and should be no more than a concern
for Nebraska state fishery programs to census and manage as they see fit in
the lower Platte.  It is heartening to see the tender concern of the Federal
government for these sturgeons.  If only they had similar concern for the
similarly "endangered" shortnosed sturgeon in the Potomac River that was
Listed when The Act was passed and remain so today.  For 20+ years the US
Army Corps of Engineers (who supplies water to DC) has dumped tons of toxic
material in a flow 3' high and 8' wide twice a month for 6 to 8 hours
(usually at night) into the Potomac via underground pipes THROUGH a National
Park with the full knowledge and quiet acquiescence of the US Fish and
Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service and the
Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Maryland and the District
of Columbia ON THE ONLY SPAWNING GROUNDS OF THE "ENDANGERED" SHORTNOSED STURGEON.  This black sludge dumped by the US Army Corps of Engineers etches the rocks along the banks and is a very poisonous effluent from the settling ponds at the water works that still includes dangerous chemicals in the soil
from the secret WW I poison gas and chemical weapons work done on the NW
edge of Washington during the period when the Constitutional amendments that
fund the federal government and made US Senators aristocrats were passed.
The aerial photos of DC in this area during that period on file at the
National Archives have been inexplicably cut up and excised.  When the
Federal government was sued in Federal Court to stop the pollution 5 years
ago, Park Service reports were destroyed and government lawyers delayed and
obfuscated until the litigants had to give up because the cost became
exorbitant.  Anyone else would have been fined and imprisoned for the clear
threat to the "endangered" sturgeons ONLY spawning area but no Federal
employee was even admonished, no state lobbyists nor ANY NGO (State lobby
group?, hunting or fishing conservation group?, NWF?, Sierra?, etc.) joined
in the lawsuit or let out a peep during the lawsuit that went on over two
years.  The USFWS managers fished in that area (put and take for sure),
lobbyists and environmentalists drove by the dumping every day, and
newspapers studiously avoided the topic.   Try that down around the mouth of
the Platte and see if you get the same non-reaction and indifference!
Pallid sturgeons will do fine and move in and out of the Platte as water
levels vary.  Fishery management by state government can more than provide
for their future without hammering farming, ranching, human activities and
development in the Platte basin.

This all came home to me three years ago when I spoke to a group of Nebraska
farmers in Grand Island.  The USFWS and the National Park Service were
trying to restrict their water use and accusing them of over-fertilizing and
thereby polluting the Platte and groundwater.  Both agencies have designs on
land acquisition in that area and discouraging agriculture is favorable to
those plans.  The state government was little or no help.

The real source of the pollution was very likely the 2 million plus birds
(ducks, geese, and cranes) that linger there in migration and often
over-winter.  Their feces in fields and in the lagoons (where they roost at
night) and on the bars in the River is significant but goes unmentioned by
bureaucrats.  While millions of birds repeatedly roosting in the same
lagoons and loafing in the same fields goes unmentioned (like millions of
resident Canada geese in schoolyards and parks do daily), look at the
Feedlot Regs in the Federal Register.  There are two Feedlot Sections: one
for everything except duck and one for ducks.  There are boxcar loads of
research on domestic duck poop to justify Federal control (EPA jurisdiction
and subsequent regulation development) over all domestic flocks of over
5,000 ducks or more.  You need to be licensed, inspected, have double
treatment sprinklers and you are subject to large fines or being put out of
business if you have any runoff even during a storm.  Duck producers are
generally fearful of and reticent to speak about Federal inspectors and the
whole Federal threat to their livelihood.  On the one hand 5,000 domestic
ducks are a big documented pollution and disease problem requiring Federal
controls but on the other hand 2 Million wild birds or even 50 or 100
thousand wintering on a certain refuge pool (check out the water quality
sometime at a Refuge holding lots of birds over the winter) is undocumented
and ignored.  Along those lines, read carefully those current news releases
about the threat of Asian flu.  While the Federal and state bureaucrats are
"checking" wild birds for the flu, ask yourself why there is never any
mention of what they will do if they find it.  Will they kill the infected
flocks as would be done instantly with chickens or turkeys (in England as we
speak) or domestic ducks?  If not: why not?  Will they haze the birds to
disperse them (and any infection)?  What precautions have they taken
vis-à-vis environmental/animal rights' lawsuits to frustrate any necessary
actions to contain an outbreak?  Once again, American citizens are lesser
"animals" than whatever species or "system" the Federal government (like the
worst Kings of old) chooses to make more valuable than some of us or, indeed
eventually, all of us.

Platte River Valley residents are no different than west coast loggers
harmed by the spotted owl or Idaho elk hunters harmed by wolves.  They are
likewise no different than rural Arkansas residents or the Florida airport
runway advocates haunted by the imaginary and not seen for 65 years
Ivory-billed Woodpecker that Congress has allowed USFWS to spend millions on
and courts have allowed to stop all manner of rural enterprise from logging
and fishing to dredging and runway expansions.   We are all victims of the
very government excesses the dangers our Founding Fathers feared.  We have
been lax in defending our rights and that must change but what to do?

Here are a few suggestions:

1.) Support and maintain strong state governments that advocate your
interests.  Think through what it means to eliminate the Electoral College
and what US Senators and Courts have become.  Recently Canada and Britain
have made their House of Lords (the model for our Senate) little more than
ceremonial.  This has resulted in Prime Ministers that rule the Parliament
with no check on what laws they pass except the Courts.  Except all the
Supreme Court Judges are now appointed by the Prime Minister (who controls
the majority of votes in the Parliament by definition) with no check by
anyone else since the House of Lords has been lobotomized.  In our system we
NEED strong state governments, US Senators that represent our state, and
Courts that follow the Constitution.  We do not want to follow Canada and
Britain into the same morass of socialism and Environmental and Animal
Rights controls rampant in Europe, especially Western Europe.

2.) Know your issues.  Forums such as this go a long way in this regard.

3.) Talk to other groups like yours and understand why some things succeed
and some fail and then act accordingly.

4.) Know where your politicians stand.  Help your friends and oppose your
enemies.  To do any less only puts you in a deeper hole and makes
accommodation and compromise more remote and unachievable.

5.) Understand that community values may vary regarding animal treatment and
respect the freedom of others as you want them to respect yours.  Remember
this as the "Red/Blue Split" is discussed and trans-fat bans and dog
ear-clipping bans and horse slaughter bans are ratcheted into place.  Work
to protect the rights of all minorities and they will work to protect your
rights.

6.) Work to resolve real environmental problems as they arise (and there are
admittedly many of them arising all the time) within the bounds of our
Constitution and the freedoms, liberties, and rights that are the envy of
the world.  Work to keep domestic animals as private property and wild
animals as natural resources to be managed and used susatinably and passed
on to future generations.  Rollback the States rights and private property
rights seized by the Federal government in recent years.

7.) Determine your strengths and use them.  Writing, speaking, organizing,
and lobbying, are examples of a few such needs.  Raising the consciousness
of papers and politicians and radio listeners and teachers and bureaucrats
is necessary and effective.

8.) Oppose Federal funding with funds Appropriated by Congress for State
fish and wildlife agencies.  This will only further diminish this important
state function and make it a subcontractor of Federal intentions.  If you
like the ESA and MMPA and the Animal Welfare Act et al, you will LOVE
Federal funding of your state fish and wildlife agency.  Monitor your state
agencies carefully, know what they are doing, and don't defer to them as
"experts".

Questioning your bureaucracy is not improper and telling them what to do
through your elected officials distinguishes us from dictatorships and
socialist societies.  They work for you!

9.) Assure that YOUR NGO's, be they agricultural or environmental or
conservation or whatever, represent YOU.  Too often these NGO employees are
looking to move into a government position or with some politician and all
too often YOUR priorities are set aside for the personal gain of a few.  Don't
let that happen.  Make "your" lobby group or organization work to protect
the rights of others and don't let them tell you it is any more expensive.
All it costs is "guts" and if they don't have that, support those that do.

10.) Cultivate a new generation of heroes.  Just as Teddy Roosevelt is
remembered as starting the US Forest Service and National Wildlife Refuges:
today we need politicians and leaders who will free us from oppression by
wolves and the tyranny of silly subspecies and the taking of our property
for hidden agendas.  Perhaps one of you or one of your children at home will
be such a person.

11.) Restore natural resource management and use education programs in our
state universities.

12.) Restore a professional Federal and (in some places) state bureaucracy.
The Federal agencies are grossly overstaffed and overpaid and too powerful.
That said they are staffed with children of politicians, spouses of
appointees, high-paid officeholders with no duties, radical activists and
the children of high-level managers thanks to the elimination of
qualifications, the elimination of entrance exams, Equal Opportunity quotas,
and political tolerance and abdication of political responsibilities.

13.) Remember two other government debacles of the past century, Prohibition
and Welfare.  Each was begun with high hopes to solve a national dilemma.
Each created unintended consequences and advocacy groups with hidden
agendas.  Prohibition created gangsterism and corruption of an unimaginable
magnitude plus a range of secret lobbyists paying off politicians and
bureaucrats to keep their gravy train running while everyone drank more and
more.  Welfare likewise created not only a dependent segment of society and
a permanent core of lawless areas and criminal behavior while destroying
families and likewise the sociologists and bureaucrats and contractors and
providers and university researchers all lobbied for "more" as the answer.
Today Prohibition has been killed by a Constitutional Amendment (no small
fete ala The Equal Rights Amendment defeat) and one of Rudy Giuliani's
bragging points as he runs for President is that "he reduced the Welfare
rolls in New York by X hundred thousand".  If Prohibition and Welfare can be
defeated and even bragged about (while reducing drunkenness and helping
those truly in need to get back on their feet and encouraging more family
and Church charity) we can defeat The Environmental and Animal Rights
Movement while providing a pleasing and productive environment and treating
animals as we see fit for our benefit in a free and open society where each
of us protects the rights of others who in turn protect our rights.

In closing, I am reminded of a USFWS economist who was working on the
Economic Impact of Listing the spotted owl many years ago.  He was
complaining one Monday about having had to come in over the weekend to work
on the spotted owl Economic Impact document.  When asked why, he responded
"Congress had sent down word on Friday that under no circumstances was the
Economic Impact of Listing the spotted owl due to Congress by Monday to
exceed $100 Million".  Well, he knew then, as we know now that the economic
impact far exceeded $100 Million but this undocumented demand was politics
to be dressed up, like lipstick on a pig.  When he was then asked how do you
do that, he responded with a grin "you just have to redo your thinking".

Maybe we have to do the same.

Jim Beers