40,000 Horses?

YOU CAN WATCH A THIEF…

My dear grandmother had many sayings that have stuck with me. One that comes to mind today is, “You can watch a thief, but you can’t a liar”. I am sad to say that the Washington Times, a paper that supported me through my travails with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is what has evoked this memory.

The Washington Times has been publishing Letters, Editorials, and Articles supporting the Federal banning of the right of an American to sell a horse to a slaughterhouse and for the slaughterhouse to sell horseflesh or products to anyone else. This is a thinly disguised animal rights “foot-in-the-door” maneuver to set a precedent for banning all animal slaughter either all at once (unlikely) or incrementally (a sure thing).

I have refuted these arguments in writing. See Horses are Animals (28 March) and Autopsy of Propaganda (7 April) on my blogsite http://jimbeers.blogster.com or my website http://www.jimbeers.net Each of these were sent to the Washington Times. Additionally I wrote Capitulation (29 March) that concerned horse slaughter and can be found at the same locations.

The Washington Times does not recognize or publish any argument in favor of American property rights (in a horse) or American business rights (slaughterhouse) or owner rights, or the rights of willing and ready customers or the American economic interest in jobs or currency. All the Times seems to represent and cover is the Federal legislative animal rights push to ban the slaughter of a horse like any other animal at the discretion of the owner. More Federal laws and more Federal jurisdiction and more Federal spending to assuage a bunch of voters at the expense of but a few is a chorus the Times now sings with the Post. The Times should be ashamed.

The day after they published an editorial about how Slaughtering Horses is Cruel, that I refuted to no effect, they ran a Letter from a lady in Maryland that simply thinks everyone should pay a vet to euthanize their horses and bury them (dig a big hole, haul the carcass, and cover over the hole) on their own property like she does. Like all the other things published by the Times about horse slaughter it is lies interspersed with romantic drivel.

The biggest lie interspersed in this latest propaganda piece (and the others) needs to be euthanized once and for all. To wit, “An estimated 40,000 horses are stolen from their owners every year in the United States. Many of these animals end up in slaughter plants.” Bull manure!

I write the following as a former Utah Fish & Game Law Enforcement Officer, a former Minneapolis Policeman, a former US Game Management Agent, and a former intermittent instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia with a lick of common sense.

If there are only three slaughterhouses handling horses as claimed by the equine aficionados and the police cannot prosecute the thieves or slaughterhouse and put them out of business for handling stolen goods, then either the police are complete dolts or the “stolen” horses are going elsewhere. In any case, if stealing is the problem, catch the thieves or better protect your property. Wild claims to justify taking away the liberties of everyone else are all too common today and should only gain credence in socialist rags.

Examples abound. Chicago has a crime/murder problem even though they ban guns so not until guns are also banned in Wisconsin and Indiana and Iowa and Missouri will Chicagoans be safe. Ditto Washington, DC and Massachusetts and New Jersey re: guns and crime excuses. So take away everyone’s guns. A pit bull attacks someone so register and license all dogs and prohibit first these and then those dogs until there are no more dogs. A high school kids steals his Dad’s gun and takes it out, so ban all guns to protect the children. And so it goes. Dominoes and hidden agendas dressed up in half-truths and “concern”.

Only this is not just a hidden agenda disguised as “concern” based on some allegation, no this is a wild exaggeration (40,000) that is then supposed to justify an extreme solution, banning horse slaughter, (for the horse?, for the horse-lovers?, for “our own good”?, to stop crime?, to establish a Brave New World?, to protect property?) for what? Certainly taking away property owners’ rights in a horse (banning sale for slaughter or slaughter for economic profit to the owner and the slaughterer) to protect property is about as bizarre a proposal as I have heard since destroying a village is necessary to save it.

Any police force that can’t detect 40,000 or “many” stolen horses going through THREE slaughterhouse that most must cross state lines to get to therefore evoking Federal jurisdiction as well; well someone tell the Pink Panther and Inspector Clouseau.

Since the Times chooses to persist in publishing this tripe, one can only conclude that they have indeed (as I have been told) hired some activist animal rights radicals that can influence paper policy and content. It has been my experience that where you find them, you also have environmental extremists nesting as well (somewhat like mice and rats). It is sad to see a respected newspaper sink into the same morass of fictions, half-truths, lies, and hidden agendas as the paper that they originally strived to compete with. Once again Washington is becoming a one-paper town in need of a fresh voice to compete with the twins that now control the market.

Jim Beers
9 April 2006