In the latest blog on Huffington Post, best selling author Deanne Stillman discusses the Republican revocation on the ban on slaughtering wild horses.
This is an issue not touched upon by the media.
Here is an excerpt from the post:
For the second time this year, the party led by a guy with a cowboy hat is about to send horses to the slaughterhouse - in spite of huge public opposition that cuts across all lines. The first time, Republican Senator Conrad Burns from Montana reversed 34 years of federal protection for the wild horse with a stealth rider attached to the 05 federal appropriations bill, legalizing sale of mustangs in government pipelines to the lowest bidder.
Because of the Burns rider, 41 wild horses were immediately sent to the rendering plant, with thousands more on the way. After a hard-fought battle that went on for months, the rider was recently undone with the passage of an anti-horse slaughter amendment attached to a different piece of legislation, the 05 Agricultural Appropriations bill, by Republican Senator John Ensign from Nevada and West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd. The 68-29 vote was overwhelmingly in favor of stopping the slaughter of horses in American plants - from which their meat was often shipped to France, the country Republicans ran against in the last election.
But now Republicans are once again trying to wipe out the horse they rode in on. Some members of the Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee (which includes Burns, now linked with Jack Abramoff and named one of the 13 most corrupt Congressmen) are planning to strip the anti-horse slaughter language from the bill, by 4 pm on October 25th, before it leaves a committee conference and heads for Bush's desk. This would relieve the beleaguered Texan from having to deal with legislation that enrages his Big Beef cronies, while simultaneously revoking the reprieve for thousands of mustangs on equine Death Row, many of them stolen by the feds in semi-legal takings on public lands this summer and in past years - and open up the pipelines for continued round-ups until the day comes that the range is completely bereft of our heritage.
Strangely, Texas prides itself on mustang mojo. Yet Bush's homeland has two of the three remaining
horse slaughter plants in the US. And they are all about to get very busy, just as they were decades ago, when hundreds of thousands of horses roamed the Texas range. Today there are NONE, thanks to Dallas cowboys who cleared them out to make room for burgers on the hoof. Not content with taking over the second biggest state in the Union, the cattle lobby now wants the rest of the West - and it's as close as ever to getting it.
To head these horse thieves off at the pass, visit this site NOW and call the listed members of the appropriations subcommittee IMMEDIATELY, especially your representatives, and more especially, those who voted for the amendment; let them know that the Ensign-Byrd amendment must stand - especially since it already passed by a huge margin. With Bushco about to go down, they should not be permitted to take horses with them. For more about how our ranch hand President is riding the American mustang off the stage, please check my recent blogs on this site - here and here - and also my Slate piece for a deeper analysis, as well as Senator Byrd's impassioned anti-slaughter statement. By the way, I love cowboys as much as the next red-blooded American gal, but a cowboy who hates his horse has got to go.
UPDATE: The latest action info, as per the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros:
Please call all the CONFEREES below even if they are not in the state that you reside and ask them to support the above amendment to stop the slaughter of horses in our country. Ask for the staff assistant who is working on the Agricultural bill.
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