Poor politicians. Even though most of us consider them lower on the popularity rung than polecats at a church social, they want us to vote for them in November. Anyway, I think we’re lucky to live in the USA because if we had the political history of, say, Syria and Iraq, we’d be sharpening knives and dropping in at campaign headquarters.
Now don’t get upset, but I think I understand ISIS. Why? Because of a couple recent moves by Republicans in Raleigh.
The terrorists’ bottom line is, IMHO, alienation. They don’t have power (or satisfaction), and they want some. Or course, they don’t represent much that I would like represented. But consider what Republicans are planning to do to North Carolina’s saltwater and wildlife resources:
No. 1, in June 2013, after a four-year undercover sting called Operation Something Bruin, 11 men were sentenced for illegally hunting black bears and wild boars. Officers had nabbed 80 perps and charged them with breaking a total of 980 wildlife laws. Two Georgia men were recently added to the list and face one-year active sentences and $100,000 fines.
Pre-trial and post-trial sentiment out west, stoked by a clueless TV reporter, ran against wildlife officers. Two legislators — Sen. Jim Davis (R-Franklin) and Rep. Joe Sam Queen (D-Waynesville) — along with Cherokee chief Michell Hicks, now a member of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, attended a hearing where the guilty parties’ friends ripped the wildlife officers’ “Gestapo” tactics.
Then Rep. Roger West (R-Cherokee) called a special “non-standing select committee” meeting Oct. 8 in Raleigh to examine the agency with a rectoscope, mostly for the folks watching back home, not for votes — a politician wouldn’t do that.
No. 2. Remember the JEA (Joint Enforcement Agreement)? This joining of the state’s marine patrol and National Marine Fisheries Service enforcement officers, ignored for years at the behest of commercial fishermen, would mean two things: more and better cases against rule-breakers and $600,000 from NMFS to the marine patrol every year.
JEA — every state on the Atlantic coast except for North Carolina has one — was a part of the approved 2014 state budget, signed Aug. 7 by none other than Gov. Pat McCrory. But at least 10 Republican legislators sent a letter to Dr. Louis Daniel, director of the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries director, telling him to decline the federal funds. Why? Well, because commercial fishing businesses will have a cow, er, a loggerhead turtle, if Daniel signs the JEA. More enforcement equals more regulation, which they despise.
McCrory, meanwhile, has ignored his own signature on the budget bill, which means John Skvarla, the director of N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, can’t give the JEA green flag to Daniel.
If bears, boars, croakers, specks and stripers ever organize, they might join ISIS.
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