As I said earlier, this was Anne Russek's party. Tom, Sheilah, and I
just came as part of the mob! Even so, he is very sensitive to my presence
for some strange reason.
For my small part, I chimed in after he had told a lady that this wasn't his
fault and that there was not much support on the Agriculture committee. At
that I passed up his memo begging other congressmen for support and asked how he
could possibly hide behind the committee when he was actively campaigning for
support! Then I reminded him of his admission that he had not read the
statistics proving the linkage between abuse and slaughter. He immediately
started to pull out his Blackberry and rant about abuse doubling in Illinois.
I knew he would do that, and so I preempted him by jumping to his second point
on the memo. This was his ranting about the unwanted horses accumulating
and costing the government over half a billion dollars to care for by 2016.
I pulled out a chart showing horse slaughter numbers since 1989. I pointed
out that there had been 348,000 horses slaughtered that year, and that according
to his logic these were all horses that were fortunate enough to be saved from
abuse. I then pointed out that the slaughter industry had declined to
under 50,000 last year and said all of the horses above the line are surplus and
unwanted by his reckoning. I said that this left 3,067,719 horses that had
fallen through the abuse safety net of the slaughter industry and must be
wandering around somewhere. I asked him where these horses were being
kept, and how much is it costing the taxpayers to keep them. That got one
of the many reactions of applause that night. His answer started by saying
that 1989 had been a peak year and rambled around for about 5 minutes saying
nothing intelligible.
I have placed my graph in the files section under "Horses
Slaughtered". Anyone is welcome to use it. Again, since I am
doing the reporting for our group, it may look like I am doing a
disproportionate amount of the effort. That is not so, the whole group has
been equally involved. It takes a team. Please if any of you feel
like thanking us, please thank the Virginia team! I think I can speak for
the whole team when I say we don't get ulcers, but we are carriers:)
John
----- Original Message -----
From: cj
To: againstslaughter@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 3:14 PM
Subject: Re: [againstslaughter] Digest Number 872
I am so proud of this group for going before this pig- headed, self- righteous,
sorry excuse of a man and leader! I constantly see things going on here in
America and just believe the whole country is on a land slide and we have people
like Bob Goodlatte to thank for it. I personally think if Goodlatte
refuses to listen to the American outcry that he needs to un-ass his position
and let someone in there that will work for the good of American people! I am so
furious I'd give anything if everyone that supports HR 857 could show up at one
time and give him more hell. God knows he
deserves it! John, thanks for always standing up to this "evil
person".
Grrrr.....
cj