Send comments against roundup and SpayVac® for Wyoming wild horses

Release Date: 07/06/12
Contacts: Sarah Beckwith
307-347-5207

BLM Releases Preliminary EA for North Lander Complex Wild Horse Gather

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Lander Field Office announces that a preliminary environmental assessment (EA) analyzing a proposed wild horse gather in the North Lander Wild Horse Herd Management Area Complex is now available for review.The North Lander Complex is located east of Riverton within Fremont County, Wyo. The proposed gather is expected to take place in fall, 2012.The preliminary EA analyzes four alternatives and is available by visiting the BLM website at: www.blm.gov/wy/st/en/info/NEPA/documents/lfo/N-Lander-gather.html.The 30 day comment period runs from July 9 through August 7, 2012. Comments may be emailed to: BLM_WY_North_Lander_Gather@blm.gov(please include “North Lander Gather EA Comments” in the subject line). Comments may also be mailed to BLM Lander Field Office, Attn: Scott Fluer, 1335 Main Street, Lander, WY, 82520.For more information, visit: www.blm.gov/wy/st/en/info/NEPA/documents/lfo/N-Lander-gather.html, or contact BLM Wild Horse Specialist Scott Fluer at 307-332-8400.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM’s multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.
–BLM–Lander Field Office   1335 Main Street      Lander, WY 82520
Last updated: 07-06-2012

It’s only getting worse

Here is a video message about the American wild horse crisis in February 2010. The numbers are bigger now with 53K wild horses in holding and perhaps 15K left on the range.

Thank you Arlene Gawne and team for bringing this YouTube message to the public.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 we all tried to help The President understand the need to save the mustangs. Sadly he appears to want The New Energy Frontier above and beyond anything else.

If you don’t like what’s going on then contact your representatives and senators because they are your voice in government. Congress funds the rotten Wild Horse and Burro Program under the Bureau of Land Management.

Request a Congressional investigation, forensic accounting and a moratorium on roundups as well as fertility control until the truth comes out that there are hardly any wild horses left out on America’s public land.

This year the EPA passed a fertility control pesticide for use on America’s wild horses and burros. Our indigenous horse has been formally labelled a “pest” by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. We want the erroneous classification reversed. Pests and invasive species are weeded out and disposed of . . .  Why did the EPA sell out?

(Photo © Cat Kindsfather, all rights reserved)

Stop the roundups and the extermination!

Breaking News: Invasion of privacy suppresses free speech

BLM places outrageous conditions on public comment

For immediate release:

WASHINGTON (May 31, 2012)—Protect Mustangs, a Bay Area-based preservation group, asks the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revise their conditions for receiving written comment that requires personal identifying information that BLM says they can not safeguard. What started as an issue jeopardizing public process for people who want helicopters roundups to stop has mushroomed into a free speech issue for all Americans.

“This in an invasion of privacy—a restriction of our rights of free speech,” states Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs. “It will stifle public participation.”

Due to the BLM’s lack of public notice for a public hearing, the preservation group released an alert titled: Government transparency and public process jeopardized. They gathered comments requesting the Nevada public hearing  be rescheduled with 30 days notice and comments against using helicopters and motorized vehicles for roundups and management. Early Tuesday morning the group sent the comments to the Director of BLM in Washington requesting he intervene and reschedule the public hearing. Wild horse photographer, Cat Kindsfather, hand delivered the comments to BLM officials at the hearing.

As a result of Protect Mustangs’ grassroots efforts and the public rallying for their right to comment,  the BLM released the press release announcing they will extend only the written comment period for the use of helicopters and motorized vehicles for roundups and management in Nevada.

BLM also states:

Comments submitted to BLM must include your address, phone number, email, or other personal identifying information in your comment. Please be aware your entire comment–including your personal identifying information–may be made publicly available at any time. While you may request we withhold your personal information from public view, we cannot guarantee we will be able to do so.

The preservation group opposes BLM’s terms for public comment for 2 reasons:

1.) The controversial Nevada public hearing regarding using helicopters and other motorized vehicles for roundups and management, must be held with 30 days notice so the American public may attend and give oral comment as well as written comment.

2.) The BLM must accept written comments and protect personal identifying information if the commenter has requested their information be withheld from public view. Requested personal identifying information should not be excessive.

“Any person who requests that their personal information be safeguarded should have that right to privacy—especially by a government agency,” states Kerry Becklund, director of outreach for Protect Mustangs.

Refusing to keep personal identifying information confidential, stifles the public process because anyone can get a copy of the comments according to BLM protocol. The public wants to know their rights to privacy are ensured.

“Are the BLM’s new written comment conditions intended to suppress public comment?” asks Novak. “It’s a no-brainer that this is going to discourage people. What’s happening to America’s public process and our rights to free speech?”

 

# # #

 

Media Contacts:

Anne Novak, 415-531-8454 Anne@ProtectMustangs.org

Kerry Becklund, 510-502-1913 Kerry@ProtectMustangs.org

Contact Protect Mustangs for interviews, photos or video

 

Links of interest:

Reno NBC affiliate News 4 reports: Wild horse advocates say the BLM jeopardized public process http://www.mynews4.com/news/local/story/Wild-horse-advocates-say-the-BLM-jeopardized/a8kN1TVKZ0WLiaEBaISvDA.cspx

BLM press release with comment guidelines requiring personal identifying information that will not be safeguarded:

http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/info/newsroom/2012/may/carson_city__blm_nevada.html

Protect Mustangs press release: Government transparency and public process jeopardizedhttp://protectmustangs.org/?p=1416

Video of helicopter roundup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_dhnqCijOk&feature=player_embedded

Freedom of speech in the U.S.A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States

Protect Mustangs website: http://protectmustangs.org/

 

Photo © Cynthia Smalley, all rights reserved.

 

 


Mustang advocates ask for federal spending transparency

Calico Roundup (Photo © Cat Kindsfather, all rights reserved)

For immediate release

Outrage over livestock auction companies—paid with tax dollars—to ‘control’ wild horses and burros

WASHINGTON (February 20, 2012)—As the American public prepares their tax returns, Protect Mustangs asks the Department of Interior to disclose why $116,744,281 of taxpayer dollars was paid to 86 contractors from fiscal year 2000 to 2009 for “Wild Horse and Burro ‘Control’ Services“. Besides the more than $13 million paid to a roundup contractor named Dave Cattoor, why was more than $16 million paid to Tadpole Cattle Company, Inc. and more than $15 million paid to Fallon Livestock Auction Inc.?

“Why are livestock auction contractors paid to ‘control’ wild horses and burros?” asks Anne Novak, executive director for Protect Mustangs. “What’s going on? Are America’s living treasures being sold at auctions where kill buyers shop for horse meat?”

“The word ‘auction’ raises the red flag for all horse advocates,” says Kerry Becklund, director of outreach at Protect Mustangs. “Auctions are the first step in the slaughter pipeline—resulting in a cruel death.”

America’s wild horses are particularly vulnerable.  They live in remote regions where they can be rounded up and sold to slaughter. They are not filled with chemicals like domestic horses so their meat could be in high demand on the Asian market.

The preservation group wants to know how many wild horses have been rounded up and sold at slaughter auctions since 2000 under BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife or the Forest Service’s jurisdiction.

Protect Mustangs maintains its adamant stance that no tax dollars should pay for inhumane horse slaughter nor support the barbaric industry in any way.

The preservation group is currently working on meeting their goal of one million signatures to petition President Barack Obama and Congress to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011, S.B. 1176/H.R. 2966—to ensure all horses in America are treated humanely.

“Be the one in a million who ends horse slaughter”, says Novak. “Sign the petition and share it with your friends.”

# # #

Media Contacts:

Anne Novak, 415-531-8454  Anne@ProtectMustangs.org

Kerry Becklund, 510-502-1913  Kerry@ProtectMustangs.org

Contact Protect Mustangs for interviews, photos or video

Links of interest:

Contracts for Wild Horse and Burro Control Services (FY 2000-2009) http://bit.ly/xVlVm5

Contractor handling wild horses: http://bit.ly/xxUzJz

Resources to advocate for horses: http://bit.ly/z99DSm

Saving America’s Horses (film): http://bit.ly/A1gxPJ

The Petition (film): http://www.ThePetitionmovie.com

Change.org Petition to Protect Horses & pass American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-usa-horse-slaughter

Protect Mustangs on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/uDF5JP

Protect Mustangs on Twitter: http://twitter.com/protectmustangs

Protect Mustangs on You Tube: http://www.YouTube.com/ProtectMustangs

Protect Mustangs website: http://www.ProtectMustangs.org

Protect Mustangs is a Bay Area-based preservation group whose mission is to educate the public about the American wild horse, protect and research wild horses on the range and help those who have lost their freedom.


Water wars threatens wild horses

 For immediate release

Water for wildlife in Nevada (Photo © Anne Novak, all rights reserved.)

Assemblyman sponsors A.B. 329 yet received money from Federal Wild Horse and Burro Control Services

RENO (February 19, 2012)—Controversy surrounds Nevada Assemblyman, now running for Senator and longtime rancher Pete Goicoechea due to his sponsorship of A.B. 329.  The bill would redefine wildlife for purposes of access to water to mean any free-living creature that walks, slithers, flies over, or crawls on Nevada soil—except for wild horses and burros.  Advocates believe the bill could zero out American wild horses and burros in Nevada, where most of them currently live.

Wild horse preservation group, Protect Mustangs, questions Assemblyman Goicoecha’s motives in sponsoring this bill, given that he has received $674,591 through Federal contract funds between 2000 and 2009 for “Wild Horse and Burro Control Services”. Goicoechea’s son J.J. is the president of the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association. Is Mr. Goicoechea representing the Nevadans who elected him or special interests?

“We are concerned native wild horses would be wiped out if A.B. 329 is passed,” explains Kerry Becklund, director of outreach for Protect Mustangs. “Indigenous wild horses belong to all of America and must not be removed or killed because special interest groups lobby to prevent them from drinking water in Nevada.”

A.B. 329 reads:

Section 1.  Chapter 532 of NRS is hereby amended by adding thereto a new section to read as follows:

 As used in this title, unless the context otherwise requires, “wildlife” means any wild mammal, wild bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, mollusk or crustacean found naturally in a wild state, whether indigenous to Nevada or not and whether raised in captivity or not. The term does not include any wild horse or burro.

Recently at the January 2012 Legislative Committee on Public Lands Hearing, wild horse photographer Cat Kindsfather represented Protect Mustangs, and testified that based on modern science, wild horses are an indigenous species that deserve access to water in Nevada, along with other wildlife.

According to scientific findings in 2010, Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. and Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D updated their research Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife proving wild horses are indigenous.

The preservation group seeks transparency and answers.  Why is a Nevada Assemblyman who was contracted and paid by the federal government for “Wild Horse and Burro Control Services” sponsoring A.B. 329 to deny the native species the right to drink water in the State, and essentially the right to exist in the State, and what services did Goicoechea provide to the Federal program?

“Attacking wild horses and burros in ‘water wars’ goes against the American public’s wishes,” states Anne Novak, executive director for Protect Mustangs.  “Besides healing the land, they are living symbols of American freedom who must be protected and preserved.”

# # #

Media Contacts:

Anne Novak, 415-531-8454  Anne@ProtectMustangs.org

Kerry Becklund, 510-502-1913  Kerry@ProtectMustangs.org

Contact Protect Mustangs for interviews, photos or video

Links of interest:

A.B. 329: http://leg.state.nv.us/Session/76th2011/Bills/AB/AB329.pdf

Draft letter to Nevada State Engineer from Wildlife Commission against wild horses and burros drinking water: http://bit.ly/yaCNg3

Pete Goicoechea is running for Senator: http://bit.ly/zpKLAX

J.J. Goicoechea, President of Nevada Cattlemen’s Association & rancher complains wild horses: http://bit.ly/zraapE

Science proves wild horses are native: http://protectmustangs.org/?page_id=562

Contracts for Wild Horse and Burro Control Services (FY 2000-2009) http://bit.ly/xVlVm5

Opposition to A.B. 329 (Video at 2011 hearing) http://bit.ly/zlCiU3

Protect Mustangs’ website: http://www.ProtectMustangs.org

 

Protect Mustangs is a Bay Area-based preservation group whose mission is to educate the public about the American wild horse, protect and research wild horses on the range and help those who have lost their freedom.  


Mary Miller-Jordan trained and adopted a mustang

Day 145

Magic Carpet Ride is a buckskin pinto Mustang mare from South Steens OR.

Mary Miller -Jordan developed a partnership with this special Mustang to compete in the Extreme Mustang Makeover “Mustang Magic” 2012.

Luckily Mary was able to adopt “MCR” and bring her home to NC to continue their journey together. This is a video of day 145.

Magic is fueled by Triple Crown Nutrition. Mary is a Helmet advocate proudly partnered with the wonderful www.Riders4Helmets.com campaign .. to follow Magic’s journey visit www.highcottonhorsefarm.com

Congratulations Mary and thank you for the inspiration!

 

Andrew Cohen reports for The Atlantic about the pro-slaughter appointment to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board

The Lasso Tightens Around America’s Wild Horses

FEB 13 2012 –With 45,000 or so wild horses in federal control, the Bureau of Land Management selects a “pro-slaughter cattlewoman” to be the public’s voice on its advisory board.

To wild horse advocates, the ones who fret daily over the worsening plight of the American mustang, Montana’s Republican former senator Conrad Burns holds a special spot in the pantheon of enablers, cynics, scoundrels and villains who have conspired for generations to endanger the health and safety of the herds. In November 2004, at the last minute, it was then-Senator Burns who inserted into a 3,300-page budget appropriations bill a single-paged rider that amended the 1971 Wild Horse Protection Act so it was legal, once again, to slaughter wild horses.

With the subsequent stroke of President George W. Bush’s pen, Burns thus achieved (without any legislative debate) what Wild Horse Annie‘s Act had specifically sought to prevent. By re-authorizing slaughter, Burns had nurtured the political incentive for the feds to capture and control more wild horses. The economics of that, in turn, helped free up more public/private land for more use by the livestock, oil and mining industries. The free market, in other words, was unleashed upon the horses. They never stood a chance. And they still don’t.

 The answers come easier not because they are wiser, but because of the absence of any meaningful dissent or discussion about alternatives.

In November 2006, Kurt Brungardt wrote an important essay in Vanity Fair chronicling most of this story. Back then, rather than undertake a meaningful revision to the Wild Horse Act that would restore some spine to the federal legislation, Congress instead effectively banned the slaughter of all horses on American soil. The legislation didn’t end the slaughter business that Burns had stimulated, of course. It just outsourced it to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. Last fall, Congress conceded defeat; now, U.S. slaughterhouses are re-opening.No one knows how many wild horses have been slaughtered since 2004. Today, for now, the Bureau of Land Management is prohibited from selling wild horses to those who would then “knowingly” sell them to slaughter. As slender a reed of protection as that is for the horses, it’s actually an improvement from the way it was after Burns first struck. But the current status on slaughter doesn’t even purport to answer the bigger question here: What will now happen now, if not eventual slaughter, to the wild horses under federal control?

According to their own figures, the feds now control in pens or fenced pastures at least 45,000 wild horses. Last year, they rounded up over 10,000 wild horses, about the same as the year before . At the same time, however, the government says the number of wild horses roaming free is approximately the same as it was in 2004. Horse advocates believe this latter number is far less than the feds acknowledge but no one knows for sure, which is one reason why the National Academy of Science is currently reviewing the BLM’s wild horse policies.

THE BLM AND THE ADVISORY BOARD

Once dubbed one of the five worst senators by Time, Burns is gone from political office. In 2008, after he was tainted by the Jack Abramoff scandal, he lost his reelection bid. What’s significant here about his career, however, came before he went to Congress. Wikipedia tells us that Burns was a cattle auctioneer before becoming manager of a livestock expo. He was a farm guy; another farm guy, economically and philosophically opposed to wild horses on public land, who was dictating harmful policy about the horses under color and cover of law.

Burns may be Public Enemy Number One to the wild horse folks. But the Bureau of Land Management (the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” as it has been called) is not far behind. And here is one reason why. Last Monday, for example, the BLM announced that it had “made selections for three positions on the National Wild Horse and Bureau Advisory Board,” a group designed under the 1971 Wild Horse Act to advise the bureaucrats on wild horse policies. One of the BLM’s choices for a “public” spot on the Board was Callie Hendrickson.

Here’s how the feds described her:

Ms. Hendrickson is Executive Director, White River and Douglas Creek Conservation Districts, and owner and consultant for E-Z Communications. As executive director of the conservation districts, Ms. Hendrickson has extensive experience in addressing public rangeland health concerns for the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts. Her career is focused on natural resource policy development and education. She has served on the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, Mesa County 4-H Foundation, Mesa County Farm Bureau, and the Mesa County Cattlewomen. Ms. Hendrickson replaces Janet M. Jankura.

Could it be? Yet another farm and livestock soul, purportedly the “public’s” voice on the Horse Board, getting a chance for input into wild horse policy? And not just a cattlewoman with an evidently open mind, mind you, but one who seems already to have expressed a great deal of hostility toward the horses? The Cloud Foundation, for example, a leading horse advocacy group, immediately noted that Hendrickson was part of a group which had intervened against it in a lawsuit brought to better protect a free-roaming herd on Colorado’s Western Slope.

And the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, another one of the nation’s leading horse advocacy groups, formally protested the BLM’s inclusion onto the Board of what the AWHPC called a “pro-slaughter cattlewoman.” To the BLM, the advocates wrote:

Particularly objectionable is the recent appointment of Callie Hendrickson, an outspoken advocate for horse slaughter and lethal management of America’s wild horses, to the “Public Interest” position on the board. At a time when public opinion surveys have reconfirmed the American public’s strong opposition to horse slaughter, Ms. Hendrickson’s appointment to represent “general public interest” is, frankly, appalling.

Ms. Hendrickson… has a history of anti-mustang positions and in favor of slaughter. In fact, she will be a featured speaker at the United Horsemen summit in Oklahoma, which is being organized to plan strategy for resumption of horse slaughter in the U.S. She has also lobbied for removal of wild horses from public lands; endorsed the destruction of “excess” wild horses and the unlimited sale of captured mustangs for slaughter; testified in favor of anti-wild-horse legislation; criticized wild horse advocates [and] supported legislation to block environmental and animal protection organizations from filing lawsuits (internal links omitted by me).

This kind of political and bureaucratic deck-stacking — the BLM truly couldn’t find a neutral new member for the Board? — is a recurring theme in the story of these horses. The people who are responsible for their protection and management typically have enormous conflicts of interest against them. The Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, is a Colorado rancher. The governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead, is a rancher. And the beleaguered, old Wild Horse Protection Act is only as sound as the men and women who interpret and implement it.

THE PROBLEM

Late last week, I asked the BLM to comment on the Hendrickson controversy. Here is the initial response I got back via email from Tom Gorey, a BLM spokesman:

The attempt by activists to discredit the new appointees to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is a typical tactic employed by anti-BLM partisans to push their anti-management agenda by any means possible. Their apocalypse-now, sky-is-falling rhetoric is flagrantly dishonest and is clearly aimed at preventing the BLM from gathering horses from overpopulated herds on the range. The BLM is not ‘managing for extinction.’ There is no conspiracy to put down healthy horses that are in off-the-range holding facilities. Members on our board are qualified based on their knowledge of the law, current program actions, and their commitment to ensuring that healthy horses thrive in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses.

The next day, Gorey sent me another email. Citing the language of the 1971 statute, he wrote that Hendrickson “was found to meet all of the requirements for the General Public appointee. Requirements include a special knowledge about protection of wild horses and burros, management of wildlife, animal husbandry, or natural resource management.” Gorey told me that both the Secretary of the Interior — that would-be rancher Salazar — and the Secretary of Agriculture had signed off on Hendrickson’s appointment.

To Suzanne Roy, of the Horse Preservation Campaign, Hendrickson’s new role is only half the bad news delivered by the BLM last week. The other half was the removal from the Advisory Board of Janet Jankura, whom Hendrickson replaced. According to Roy, Jankura had applied to continue in her “public” spot on the Board but was replaced. Why? Roy suggests it is because Jankura during her tenure pressed “the BLM to document and consider public comments” about the wild horses. Roy also offered some perspective about the board itself:

Last year, the BLM reconfigured the board membership. Previously, there were two slots for livestock/ranching interests. One of those slots was converted to public interest with equine knowledge, meaning that there are now 2 representatives of the public and 1 livestock representative on the board. BLM embraced this change as evidence of their commitment to reforming the program. With the appointment of Hendrickson, the BLM is, in essence, taking back the livestock slot, providing more evidence (as if we needed any more!) that the BLM talks about reform while continuing the same old business as usual.

“Business at usual” at the BLM is not good news for the horses. First, the horses got the shaft during the Reagan Administration, from the brush-clearing California cowboy himself. Next, their situation became materially worse during the administration of George W. Bush, the Connecticut oilman with the cowboy hat. And things look even worse now after three years of President Barack Obama, the politician who campaigned against horse slaughter, but who nevertheless signed last fall’s slaughter bill.

THE SOLUTION

So what is America going to do with all the wild horses it has rounded up to keep America’s public lands available for cattle and sheep? How is the BLM going to continue to justify the continuing costs of keeping the horses penned or pastured? The concern, for wild horse lovers, isn’t just that no one in Washington seems to have a good answer to those questions. The concern is that when the answers finally do come from government they’ll come from folks like Hendrickson, who evidently believe that large-scale slaughter is a valid option.There is no conspiracy, the BLM’s Gorey says, but there doesn’t have to be one to doom the horses. You get enough like-minded people into a bureaucracy, or onto an advisory board, and pretty soon everyone agrees about what ought to be done. The answers come easier not because they are wiser, or because they purport to follow the spirit of the law, but because of the absence of any meaningful dissent or discussion about alternatives. That’s how bad policy gets made, how it sustains itself, and how, eventually, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From the BLM’s newly-constituted Advisory Board to the number of hooves now penned in; from the Interior Secretary’s ranching interests to complaints about the taxpayer costs of keeping so many public horses in captivity; from the resumption of horse slaughter on American soil to the heightened pace of yearly round-ups, there is little that advocates can point to today as a sign that things are going to get better, and not much worse, for the wild horses (who, as I’ve written before, constitute a tiny fraction of all animals ranging public land).

It would take a great many acts of political courage on Capitol Hill to restore some sense of balance to the policy argument over the fate of the horses. It would take an amendment to the 1971 law — a revision that would go against the interests of the powerful livestock and ranching lobbies and their tribunes in state and federal government. And it would take a change in personnel and policy at the Interior Department, and its Bureau of Land Management, to make the executive branch the honest broker that wild horse advocates want it to be.

It would take, in other words, an honest and meaningful national discussion about whether we want to continue to protect our wild horses and precisely how we want our BLM bureaucrats to “manage” them. It’s a debate which horse advocates would welcome — the polling looks good — but which isn’t likely to ever happen. Instead, the spirit of the federal law which protects the wild horses will continue to be whittled away, one Hendrickson or Burns at a time. For the nation’s symbolic horses, their friends are close — but their enemies are closer.

© The Atlantic.

The article is here http://bit.ly/ydKDkD Please share this far and wide so the public knows what’s going on with their tax dollars.