Who knew that another long-standing government scandal could be so funny?
Not me. I am too busy wiping away tears from laughing so hard.

by Jim Beers

Allow me a moment to cut through the fog, lies and hidden agendas swarming about Benghazi; IRS political abuses of enemies of the Administration; phone calls and e-mails stored in a giant secret facility in Utah while politicians and bureaucrats deny it,; unprosecuted minority thugs smacking truncheons outside polling places; laws (DOMA, Employer Insurance mandates, etc.) unenforced at the whim of a President; government abortion availability forced far and wide and enabled by “Catholic” politicians scandalizing Catholics with evil justifications for a serious sin and despite the prominence of “the Right to Life” in The Declaration of Independence; constant trickery by the President and his minions (Fast and Furious, UN Treaty negotiations, Health Care proposals to declare incompetency of gun owners, claptrap from the Vice-president, etc.) to gut and eliminate the 2nd Amendment while never touching the words in the Constitution; a federal cautionary racial show-trial run by state officials; and all the steady increases in hidden pass-thru federal grants to favored constituents plus total government spending growth based on whirring money printing presses that portend a future more grim than any of us can imagine.

Allow me to digress from the above and speak of something I know a little more about: federal and state wildlife bureaucrats and their associated remora-like wildlife Non-Government-Organization fund-raisers otherwise known for decades as “our pals”.

The President just gave some islands in Alaska to Russia without any recognition of Alaskan interest. You know, the same Russia we kissed up to four years ago by cancelling a radar station in Poland intended to protect Europe (and us) from nuclear-tipped missiles from Iranian mullahs. The same Russia led by Vladimir Putin that has nothing but contempt for our President and our foreign policies. The islands are heavily-used by migratory birds that winter in and migrate through the United States and Canada but no one; not the federal “wildlife”, not the state “wildlife”, not Audubon, not Ducks Unlimited, not the American Ornithologists Union and not even the esteemed Cornell University that worked so hard secretly with federal land buyers to use secret federal funding to justify buying land all over the South for an extinct bird not seen in 70 years: no one says a word. The ultimate irony that now Russia will be able to develop the oil beneath the islands and their waters at the expense of those birds WHILE US policies forbid such development and US energy costs continue to soar; evidently eludes the general public, the media, the green folks, state and federal bureaucrats and all the bird lover Non-Government-Organizations that reap millions annually with their faux-love of birds.

Adding to this Environment/Animal-Love atmosphere of scandal is further revealed by the article appearing as Attachment # 1. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been passing through millions of secret dollars in grants to Administration-favored recipients to essentially pay for their climate change propaganda tripe and to lay the groundwork for more federal land acquisition and land-use/rural resident control actions. One must admit the formerly-respected USFWS was an appropriate choice for this chicanery. The current (“hear no evil, see no evil speak no evil”) Director of USFWS was in charge of the federal excise tax millions collected from the sale of arms, ammunition and fishing tackle (and by law only for the use of state fish and wildlife agencies for STATE fish and wildlife programs) when $45 to 60 Million was stolen from those funds under President Clinton (per a Government Accounting Office Audit Report to the US House of Representatives’ Resources Committee). That the money was primarily used to capture Canadian wolves and loose them in the Upper Rocky Mountains where their devastation has been catastrophic was bad enough; that state bureaucrats NEVER asked for the funds to be replaced WAS STUNNING. That state bureaucrats have been totally complicit in this federal seizure of state authority and the destruction of large segments of American hunting, ranching and rural American life was worse yet. That Congress had already refused to fund this wolf debacle but USFWS simply went ahead and stole the money and loosed the wolf havoc anyway was just another federal charge never leveled: yet one wonders how much of a precedent it provided to the HHS Secretary’s recent campaign to force businesses and rich donors to illegally finance the federal health care debacle to maintain the fiction of no-cast while enormous health care costs accumulate. Like medieval rule, American law has become no more than what the President says– period.

Add to the above the federal/state connivances to force free-roaming buffalo on rural Americans already reeling from catastrophic federal forest fires; federal land use closures; timber industry destruction; grazing allotment closures and restrictions; disappearing federal/local Revenue Sharing; unaffordable Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes; Wilderness/Roadless Area expansions; federal Historic/Scenic/Wild/Byway/Corridor/Critical Habitat/ Watershed/etc. declarations affecting ALL American property and citizens; disappearing game animals and hunting areas; federal gun and ammo restrictions; expanding federal protections for grizzly bears and their dangers to humans of every stripe; and ditto in spades for Wolves.

As federal bureaucrats admit to thousands of wolves from the Great lakes to the Northwestern US and across the Southwest, federal bureaucrats with their state cronies are touting their willingness to “return management of wolves to the states. Huzzah is heard in state hallways and in the kitchens of a public being hoodwinked, big time. Wolf numbers continue to be a mystery subject to legal dispute that recognizes ONLY the warbles of state and federal bureaucrats. Only yesterday the Minnesota papers declared that state “experts” just discovered a big decrease in Minnesota wolves: only when you read the article do you see that there is no statistical basis for their claim, it was merely a small sample expanded politically beyond any truth for propaganda purposes. The federal offer is meaningless. States cannot eliminate wolves either statewide or locally. Certain harvest methods are susceptible to federal court intervention. Wolves, currently established must be maintained, wolves showing up in new spots are automatically considered federally “Endangered”. Places that have kept out wolves like Texas will have US federal wolves released in the land of Mexico (a member of North American Conservation Organizations as is Canada) just South of the Rio Grande and Big Bend National Park (no-hunting there by the way) where any sane person understands they will move (and reproduce et al) North into the Lone Star state where they will be declared Endangered just like the next wolf in Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, etc., etc. Dealing with USFWS and their state subcontractors is like trying to deal with Al Capone about where his next speakeasy or house of ill-repute will be located. But again I digress.

This was meant to be a cover explanation about Attachment # 2. This was sent to me by several friends and like them I am sick to death of what it reveals. It has been revealed by a surprisingly brave (I will frequent them even more often after this) Cabela’s that the “Medical Device” Excise Tax of 2.3% created in the Obamacare law is being applied to “Sport Fishing Equipment; Fishing Rods and Fishing Poles; Electric Outboard Motors; Fishing Tackle Boxes; Bows, Quivers, Broadheads and Points; and Arrow Shafts.”

This will simply make fishing more expensive and therefore less likely for many to try. More expensive items mean less sales, means less tax collected by federal agencies to apportion to state agencies. Less tax means fewer fishery programs and less responsiveness to public concerns and needs. Less responsiveness serves environmental/animal rights agendas and pushes the existence of state fish AND WILDLFE programs closer to extinction or to publicly-financed illusions about “Native Ecosystems”, “Native Species”, and total central government control of rural America. Yet, why didn’t those federal bureaucrats doing “Gaia’s work” mention that this was coming, much less that it is now the case? Why did it take a surprisingly brave sporting goods chain to tell us? Where were those state bureaucrats that are our friends and that our dads and grand-dads held in high regard? They each have federal tax expert employees and knew this was coming. Where were those Sportfishing, Trout Unlimited, Bass Tournament, Muskie/Walleye/etc. “Unlimiteds”? All these guys (and increasingly gals) knew but didn’t want to anger those doing this. After all, future jobs and grants to say nothing of IRS retaliation or worse could result. If they say they didn’t know, they are too stupid to be doing anything more than periodically sweeping hatchery ponds.

I propose we take a leaf from all these noveau-“scientists” cum bureaucrats regarding forests. Close ‘em down to any use or access and let the fuel build up (as it has) and then let some lightning or terrorist set it off to burn it to the ground. What is “good” for the forest is “good” for the federal/state agencies. When the forest no longer serve the public use of the forests or in these cases the agencies no longer serve the public use of the natural resources of the nation or the state; better that they be abandoned to Natural Destruction to be replaced by government service “of, by and for the People”. Anything less; like wolves carrying rabies, anthrax, smallpox, brucellosis, distemper, parvo, tapeworms, Mad Cow Disease, or Chronic Wasting Disease; guarantees only more scandal, abuse, lies, death and destruction of all we hold dear.

Jim Beers
11 July 2013

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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net