Posted on 09/07/2001 11:55:27 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:31:02 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Grain and potato farmer Ross Fleming won't say no to his share of $20 million in federal aid for Klamath Basin farmers denied water to protect fish, but he figures it won't do much more than put a few groceries on his family's table.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It's tough, but that's Communism and your farms are owned by the Federal government, not you.
Why property is important
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Joseph Farah
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com z
Imagine you have just purchased a two-bedroom condo in New York City. You saved for 10 years to buy it. It is conveniently located, has a beautiful view and you plan to turn one of the bedrooms into a home office for your consulting business. You paid $300,000 for the condo, but you are thrilled to have it.
After signing the check for the down payment, you are all set to move in your furniture, computer and personal effects. You hear a knock at the door.
Two armed agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service want to talk to you about your condo and your plans to run a consulting business from that second bedroom. You see, your condo has been designated as critical habitat for the endangered Manhattan cockroach.
The Manhattan cockroach once roamed freely all over the island, but human activities like the construction of high-rise condominiums, subways and roads have reduced the habitat of the cockroach by over 98.5 percent. Their numbers have fallen drastically, according to a study done by a New York University graduate student in his apartment on 43rd Street and Ninth Avenue. Last August, he discovered 20 roaches in a three-hour period. This year he could only locate 10. From this data, he requested the roach be listed as an endangered species based on a 50 percent reduction in its population. Since no one submitted contrary claims to the FWS, it used this "best available data" and made the listing.
As a result, the FWS agents say that your second bedroom must be set aside for the cockroach. You are not allowed to put any furniture, clothes or computer equipment in that room. You may not vacuum the floor in that room, as you may eliminate the roach's food supply. If you enter the room, you must be careful not to step on, harass, or intimidate any roaches that you might see. Turning on the light suddenly, for instance, frightens the roach and causes it to scurry away. If you do any of these things, it will be considered an unauthorized "taking" of the roach and you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law – a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for each harassed roach.
In addition to setting aside your second bedroom for the roach, you must also allow for a "migration corridor" through your kitchen so that the roach may move from one habitat (your bedroom) to its next nearest habitat (the bedroom of the family next door). The agents inform you that the family next door used a vacuum cleaner in the roach's habitat, accidentally sucking up five roaches into the vacuum cleaner bag. The FWS brought charges, and when the family fought prosecution in court, the government subpoenaed their tax returns, immigration records and old car rental receipts to see if they were good citizens. The family soon complied with all the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.
Being a good citizen yourself, you agree to the conditions, believing that you can live in harmony with one of God's creatures. Weeks pass, and you notice that the roaches are not content to remain in their habitat or in their migration corridor, but tend to get up in your grocery shelves. Your children are afraid to move around the condo and the smell from the second bedroom is getting pretty bad. Since you cannot operate your consulting business from home, you rent office space. But the prices are so high, you soon have to give it up.
You decide that your condo is not worth the trouble, and decide to unload it. You go to a real estate agent to put it up for sale, but discover that since your condo was declared a critical habitat for the Manhattan cockroach, no one wants to live there. The best available offer is $25,000 from the Save the Cockroach Association of Manhattan (SCAM). SCAM is a non-profit organization that buys up cockroach habitat. It bought your next door neighbor's condo for $25,000 and sold it to the federal government the next day for the original pre-habitat price of $300,000.
You find this a bit on the unethical side, but just before you take the $275,000 loss, your upstairs neighbor's waterbed bursts and floods your condo, completely annihilating the population of roaches. Believing it to be a sign from heaven, you begin to mop up in order to begin your life anew when you hear a knock at the door. There you find two armed agents of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It appears your condo has just been designated a wetland.
Sound far-fetched? Maybe for a resident of Manhattan. But the composite of government abuses and environmental horror stories will seem very familiar to residents of Western states. And while no roaches have yet been involved, property owners and their families have had their lives and livelihoods ruined by so-called "endangered" flies, beetles, rats and shellfish.
And that's why you should care about property rights – no matter where you live or what you own.
And the farm bailouts these people were receiving before this water stealing by the government?
Did they not save any of that money? After all, I have been paying taxes, supporting these farmers for years and what do I get in return? Expensive, crappy looking produce. It proves that State-Capitalism, ie; USSR Communism, does not work. What would you call that, certainly not welfare.
In fact, welfare for farmers is about the only welfare that "conservatives" consistently back. Now, aint that strange and HYPOCRITICAL!
LOL! Next comes the slogan "They prentend to pay us, and we pretend to work."
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