Never Forget….

October 3, 2011

As the weekend closes 46 wolves have been slaughtered in the Montana and Idaho hunts and that number is going to skyrocket once the cold weather hits and wolves lose their cover.  Idaho wolf  trapping season begins November 15, the tortures wolves will suffer is beyond measure.  Wolf  families torn apart, their pups killed.

There are vengeful people out hunting wolves.  All you have to do is look at some of the disgusting anti-wolf sites to see the terrible things that are being said. One wanna be “wolf hunter” quoted Wyatt Earp’s famous line from Tombstone:  “You tell ’em I’M coming… and hell’s coming with me, you hear?…”.  Does that even sound rational to you?

There’s a video on YouTube filming a young kid talking about going to Idaho to kill wolves….meanwhile he’s target practicing with a 50 cal.  What??

  Wolf advocates knew this would happen, that’s why we fight so hard to protect them.  It’s a culture war out there and it has little to do with wolves.

Lets not forget who made this all possible. In April of this year 81 US Senators voted to delist wolves via budget rider, stripping wolves in Idaho and Montana of their much-needed ESA protections. It was a bitter betrayal by Senate Democrats.

Interestingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, allowed separate votes on two other riders in the budget bill.  One sought to defund Planned Parenthood and the other Obamacare. Both were defeated.

Wolves weren’t so lucky. The wolf rider didn’t get a separate vote,  it was the only rider left in the budget bill.  ALL Democrat Senators, save three. voted yea. I watched it on C-Span. Lots of camaraderie and smiles.  It was disgusting.  No mention of gutting the ESA or delisting wolves.

Believe it or not,  just one week before they voted to delist wolves via budget rider “Senators Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, Maria Cantwell, Barbara Mikulski, Debbie Stabenow, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Kay Hagan and Barbara Boxer held a press conference” blasting Republicans, for their “tactics” during the budget negotiations.  Apparently they were upset about the budget riders to defund Planned Parenthood and Obamacare but no mention of gray wolves or the ESA.

My message to the Senators, don’t grandstand about something then turn around and do the same thing.  Pot meet kettle.

From the Democrat Daily:

“If the Democratic women in the Senate defeated the use of procedurally unethical tactics to achieve a “radical agenda against women” outside the public debate, they did not succeed in preventing Democratic Senator John Tester’s “divisive policy rider” from stripping endangered species protection from gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains. 

In response to this failure, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) lamented: “It is a shameful day for this nation when both parties unite behind the slaughter of an endangered species—without public hearing or debate.”  The NRDC also noted that “Congress has never before removed an animal from the endangered species list.  By replacing scientific judgment with political calculation, the House and Senate have struck at the very heart of wildlife protection in America.”

Thus, under threat of a government shutdown, unprincipled politicians pursued an “extreme social agenda” not just against women, but also against the environment, the Endangered Species Act, the endangered grey wolf, and all Americans who hope for a future in which the integrity of our ecosystems is still preserved.”

I guess the Senators thought they’d pulled a fast one on the American people. After all, the wolf rider was not mentioned on C-Span before the vote, at least I didn’t hear it. If you were watching you’d never know gray wolves in Montana and Idaho were about to lose their ESA safeguards. It seemed Senators were simply voting on an appropriations bill.  The sad truth?  Democrats, with help from Republicans,  were about to gut the ESA and deliver wolves to brutal state management, all under cover of  a hush-hush budget rider.

And we can’t forget Obama, he signed the bill into law. But then what can we expect from a President who appointed a rancher to head the Interior? A President who delisted gray wolves in the Northern Rockies just a few months into his first term.  In fact he has delisted wolves twice in less than four years, not even George Bush can make that claim.

Make no mistake, if the Democrats had not betrayed wolves, they wouldn’t be facing hunts in Idaho and Montana. Even though hunting and ranching lobbies were pushing hard for hunts, without the help of Congress, they wouldn’t be taking place, at least not this year.  And personally I believe they would have continued to lose in court and they knew it too.  So they partnered up with Western politicians, eager to gain mileage from “wolf wars”. The worst sort of politics.

The Senate could easily have stripped the rider out of the budget bill or allowed an up or down vote on it, as  they did for the other two riders.

 In my opinion, Senators didn’t want to “go on the record” and vote for the wolf delisting rider outright, so they tucked it away in the budget bill.  The ESA was used and abused for political gain. For the first time, a species like the wolf, who has a long history of persecution and ultimately extermination in the West, was removed from the Endangered Species List for political reasons, science be damned.

The wolf delisting rider was inserted by Jon Tester to enhance his “anti-wolf” credentials for the 2012 re-election battle with opponent Denny Rehberg. The two are trying to “out-wolf” each other and are now arguing who should get credit for delisting wolves.

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Senate Democrats Who Voted Yes On Budget Bill/Wolf Delisting Rider

Akaka (D-HI)

Baucus (D-MT)

Begich (D-AK)

Bennet (D-CO)

Bingaman (D-NM)

Blumenthal (D-CT)

Boxer (D-CA)

Brown (D-OH)

Cantwell (D-WA)

Cardin (D-MD)

Carper (D-DE)

Casey (D-PA)

Conrad (D-ND)

Coons (D-DE)

Durbin (D-IL)

Feinstein (D-CA)

Franken (D-MN)

Gillibrand (D-NY)

Hagan (D-NC)

Harkin (D-IA)

Inouye (D-HI)

Johnson (D-SD)

Kerry (D-MA)

Klobuchar (D-MN)

Kohl (D-WI)

Landrieu (D-LA)

Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Lieberman (ID-CT)

Manchin (D-WV)

McCaskill (D-MO)

Menendez (D-NJ)

Merkley (D-OR)

Mikulski (D-MD)

Murray (D-WA)

Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE)

Pryor (D-AR)

Reed (D-RI)

Reid (D-NV)

Roberts (R-KS)

Rockefeller (D-WV)

Schumer (D-NY)

Shaheen (D-NH)

Stabenow (D-MI)

*Tester (D-MT)

Udall (D-CO)

Udall (D-NM)

Warner (D-VA)

Webb (D-VA)

Whitehouse (D-RI)

Remember these Democrat Senators at the polling booth in 2012, they need to be booted out of office. As a matter of fact every Senator who voted yes should not be invited to serve another term. We need politicians who will resist political pandering. Governing by budget rider is wrong and intolerable. Politically delisting wolves and tearing apart the ESA to please special interests is despicable. Now wolves are paying the price of that betrayal.

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Senate Democrats Who Voted No on the Budget Bill/Wolf Rider

Leahy (D-VT)

Levin (D-MI)

Wyden (D-OR)

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Senate Republicans Who Voted Yes on the Budget Bill/ Wolf Delisting Rider

Alexander (R-TN)

Ayotte (R-NH)

Barrasso (R-WY)

Blunt (R-MO)

Boozman (R-AR)

Brown (R-MA)

Burr (R-NC)

Chambliss (R-GA)

Coats (R-IN)

Cochran (R-MS)

Collins (R-ME)

Corker (R-TN)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Enzi (R-WY)

Grassley (R-IA)

Hoeven (R-ND)

Hutchison (R-TX)

Isakson (R-GA)

Johanns (R-NE)

Kirk (R-IL)

Kyl (R-AZ)

Lugar (R-IN)

McCain (R-AZ)

McConnell (R-KY)

Moran (R-KS)

Murkowski (R-AK)

Portman (R-OH)

Roberts (R-KS)

Sessions (R-AL)

Snowe (R-ME)

Thune (R-SD)

Wicker (R-MS)

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Senate Republicans Who Voted No on the Budget/Wolf Delisting Rider

Coburn (R-OK

Crapo (R-ID)

DeMint (R-SC)

Ensign (R-NV)

Graham (R-SC)

Hatch (R-UT)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Johnson (R-WI)

Lee (R-UT)

Paul (R-KY)

Risch (R-ID)

Rubio (R-FL)

Shelby (R-AL)

Toomey (R-PA)

Vitter (R-LA)

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*To be fair, I believe many of these Republicans knew the Democrats had the votes to pass the budget bill/wolf rider.  So, they were free to vote no, not because they were wolf lovers  but to make a statement about their dislike of the budget bill.  Some of the names in the no vote column are not known to be wolf advocates.  My 2 cents.

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Senate Independents Who Voted No on the Budget/Wolf Delisting Rider

Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

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This should never have happened. After eight years of George Bush the country was looking for positive change. I think the promise was “hope and change” but instead we got “more of the same.”

It’s ironic, Bill Clinton oversaw the reintroduction of wolves into the Northern Rockies and Obama is overseeing their destruction.

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Endangered Wolves Sacrificed in Budget Deal

Glenn Hurowitz

Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Posted: 04/11/11 04:09 PM ET

Although Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama stood firm against Republican attempts to repeal clean air and clean water protections, wolves in the Northern Rockies weren’t so lucky.

Under pressure from ranching interests in Montana and Idaho, as well as anti-wolf zealots in those states, Reid and Obama agreed to accept an amendment from Montana Democrat Jon Tester mandating the removal of grey wolves in Idaho and Montana from the endangered species list. For Obama, at least, the move isn’t surprising: his administration backed the Bush administration’s delisting of wolves even though it would allow the two massive states to cut wolf populations to as few as 450 individuals between them.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-hurowitz/endangered-wolves-sacrifi_b_847673.html

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Tester’s howling error

Congressionally delisting wolves could gut the ESA

by George Ochenski

http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/testers-howling-error/Content?oid=1428261

Photo: Courtesy National Park Service

Posted In: Wolf Wars, Howling For Justice, Endangered Species Act

Tags: wolf delisting rider, Senate Democrats , President Obama, Northern Rockies gray wolves, Idaho hunt, Montana hunt, Jon Tester, endangered species act