by Jack Lee (an equal opportunity offender)
Don Young is a career politician having served 20 terms to date. Representative Young is also a stalwart republican and he’s currently proposing critical legislation we’ve all been looking forward too…HR 991.
Young’s latest bill HR 991 will allow the importation of polar bear carcasses shot in Canada by American trophy hunters, approximately 41 people will benefit by this new law. However, the really good part is this bill (HR 991) will potentially add up to $45,000 in the US Treasury…well, every little bit helps right? Young’s bill was necessary for the 41 hunters of polar bears to get around the fact that the bears are on the endangered species list and can’t otherwise be imported into the USA.
Recently Rep. Young gained notoriety when he said, “Don’t worry about the oil spilling into the Gulf, because the worst spill in U.S. history is “not an environmental disaster, just nature taking its course.” Unfortunately for the gulf nature was helped along with a long list of safety violations by humans.
Glad ol’ Don is on our side, fighting the good fight for polar bear hunters. I know I’ll sleep a lot better knowing Don is doing his part to save America while restoring the unjustly tarnished imagine of republican lawmakers abusing the system with frivolous special interest bills.
I wonder if those big game hunters are on the Congressman’s list of big campaign contributors?
Trophy Hunters — The Bad, The Worse, and The Ugly Easy Target?
I love the smell of polar bear carcass in the morning, it smells like victory! A narrow, special interest bill to be sure, but I have no problem with anyone circumventing the specious endangered species listing for polar bears.
Young should have gone whole hog (or bear) if he had the moxie. Count me fed up with pseudo-science environmental baloney from inept, feel-good, anti-hunting, vegan charlatans who wouldn’t know hard science from stir fried tofu.
Don’t get me wrong, if polar bears were truly endangered I would have no problem banning hunting of the species, much less importation of the remnants of a legal hunt into the USA.
By the way, I have eaten every animal I have ever killed except for the sick and dying and the occasional varmint, which I selfishly left for other critters to eat and gain sustenance. Perhaps I am just a wimp for never having wanted to go the scavenger route, chalk it up to queasiness. I have never been a fan of rat, mouse, squirrel, or roadkill, but I have heard that mouse prepared savory is quite tasty.
True enough, I am not much of a hunter and I am certainly not a trophy hunter. I have little to no interest in that aspect. I prefer fishing and eating what I do not release. It is less messy and less work.
Really, what the heck is wrong with taking a trophy? Why is trophy taking so disparaged? If a hunter only wants to take a pelt, horns, or whatever, so what? What is the big deal? Buzzard, bears, badgers, fox, wolves, lions, cats, vultures, raptors, seagulls, worms, grubs, and flies need to eat too. How many hundreds (if not thousands) of species have benefited from what trophy hunters have left in the field? Not to mention humans who, in many instances, harvest the meat trophy hunters are not interested in. In some areas of Africa trophy hunters are required to, or at least expected to, turn the meat over for human consumption. What is not to like about that?
The elegant cave painters of Lascaux made trophies in the form of great painted art. This art appears to have been central to their culture and religion and represents how they connected to the earth and what they felt it means to be a human being in the mysterious world.
Evidently the cave painters did not have the taxidermy skills it takes to make a pelt or head or complete animal to last 17,000 years. So, why are modern trophy takers denigrated as self centered, ego-tripping murderers? Could it be that they so love and respect the animals they hunt that they feel a deep need to connect to the natural world by preserving a representative part of animals they hunt while leaving the rest to a myriad of nature’s wonderful critters or other humans to eat?
Pie, I guess my beef (No pun intended) is really just because he wrote a bill for 41 people so they could have some fun and take down a big fat polar bear. Hey, don’t get me wrong – I am all for having fun, but considering everything that is going wrong around us, and how we’re getting hammered at the gas pump, how we’re being taxed too much, how too much $$$$ is wasted, how we’re in need of jobs, our education system is falling apart, tuition’s are spiking, where waste, fraud and abuse seems to be the only thing working in Washington and then there are at least a thousand other serious matters, , , and somehow Mr. Young, Congressman for life, can justify writing a bill for 41 guys to bag polar bears and bring em home for a carpet? I don’t even think polar bears are good to eat.
Good grief…what did it cost us taxpayers for Rep. Young, Congressman for life, to write this up, send it to committee and get it to the floor for a vote and then pass it on to the Senate? I’ll bet there’s more than $45k in time invested in this project, which is all the revenue it will generate.
Those 41 hunters were on a legal hunt in Canada. Two of them were veterans wounded in Iraq. It may have been a small and *relatively* expensive victory, but it was a victory. I’ll bet it didn’t cost more than a trip home for Leon Panetta and Nancy Pelosi last week.
Waste? I can’t argue that. How I have to wonder, how much did it cost to pass the legislation to ban the importation of polar bear hides from legal and legitimate hunts in Canada?
Yes, a waste. A total waste forced by stupid, unsubstantiated, draconian, statist laws passed by people who SHOULD have better things to do.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/17/hunters-win-in-vote-about-dead-polar-bears/
Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow republicans
I can agree in principle with the intent of that quote and every die hard republican should comply with it! However, in good conscience I could never comply with it because I’m not a die hard republican.
See…I have a couple of other priorities that get in the way. That part causes me some grief at times, but I think it’s okay.
When it comes to politics my first priority or duty is to my country. My second duty is to my values as a Constitutional conservative. This means to me, you have to be true to the founders and yourself. So, I must stay true to conservative values even if my party or some of its members do not. And last on my list is my allegiance to my political club, the republicans. I owe them exactly what is due and deserved, nothing more. They are far from perfect and it galls me when they stray. But, political organizations are like children and sometimes they need to be pulled up by the boot straps to keep them on the straight and narrow. I see this as a virtue not a vice, but it is guaranteed to get me some flak by the party faithful every now and then. Oh well…