Goodbye, White Fang
Although Sarah Palin didn’t get the chance to shoot the nation’s wolves from an upgraded White House helicopter, she will still get the last laugh as Obama decides to pursue Shrubya’s rancher-friendly policy of delisting wolves from the Northern Rockies from the endangered species list. Although I had thought Obama was shaping up as a Lyndon Johnson, he is now reminding me of Bill Clinton, who pulled the rug out from under Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s attempts to make ranchers and miners pay free market rates for their exploitation of public lands.
Stumble it!
Tags: Brarack Obama, bruce babbitt, endangered species, public lands reform, sarah palin, wolves
March 10th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Just like the farmers get paid if they lose and/or don’t plant crops, the ranchers get paid for any lifestock that might be lost to wolves (and it’s a tiny percentage), so what’s the big deal? This country has a sick obsession with killing, and I’m more than a little disappointed in Obama and Salazar that would continue this cruel practice.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Amen, CodpieceWatch! Actually if you follow my Babbitt link, the best approach would be to charge free market rates for grazing fees on public lands. Lots of ranching operations only exist because of the subsidies, if those were removed, a whole lot of cattle would disappear from BLM lands. And bingo, far fewer wolf/cattle conflicts! We’d pay less money in taxes as the subsidies would disappear and we wouldn’t have to pay for dead livestock.
Beef would go up in price. But that’s the ‘free market,’ right?