12 April 21
Come On Folks, Join the Reader Supporters
We need a few more people who believe in this project to join those who actually do support it. Truth: The vast majority of RSN readers are not yet supporters. We have to find a way to change that. Jump in and join those who have taken the time to become supporters.
A sincere thank you in advance.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
11 April 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Michael Moore | Are We Finally Ending the Reagan-Thatcher Era of 'Government Is Evil'?
Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page
Moore writes: "Are we finally ending the Reagan-Thatcher era of 'government is evil' that we've lived under for the past 40 years? Can we finally end this reign of terror that has dominated our politics and our lives under both Republican and Democratic administrations?"
They've ruled under the ideology that private, profit-making corporations are always superior to the government, even when it comes to providing critical public services to the people. That anything getting in the way of their profits - be it labor unions or regulations, must be eliminated.
And they've put forward this big lie that biggest scourge we face is THE DEFICIT, caused by government spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and welfare programs (things that actually help people!) but not, of course, by our massive military budget or tax breaks for the rich or giant corporations.
It is this worldview that has been killing us.
But something is now changing. While we haven’t won every primary or every election, WE ARE WINNING THE WAR OF IDEAS.
We appear to be entering a political realignment where the old lies about deficits; about labor; about regulations; and most importantly, about the massive need for government intervention and government spending money to help its citizens, is changing. The political winds have shifted, and they are blowing to the left. And Joe Biden is changing along with it.
But make no mistake - the Democrats have not yet returned to being the party of FDR. There is still a long way to go and many battles to fight. And the next one will be on INFRASTRUCTURE.
In my latest RUMBLE podcast, I'm joined by the Executive Editor of the American Prospect, David Dayen, and we discuss what is in the American Jobs Plan, what we must to do make it better and make sure the vultures at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs don't pilfer it, and how stimulus checks, and free, socialist injections into our arms are boosting our confidence that our government actually CAN serve the people.
I hope you will listen/subscribe/share this podcast for free on Apple, Spotify, RadioPublic, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple: https://apple.co/3s4wMRO
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3dMjfcu
Google: https://bit.ly/3cVADMB
Joe Biden. (photo: Vice)
ALSO SEE: States Step In to Stop Colleges
Holding Transcripts Ransom for Unpaid Bills
Will Biden Cancel Student Loan Debt? As College Costs Spiral, Here's What He's Considering
Jeanine Santucci, USA Today
Santucci writes: "The Biden administration entered the White House with an eye toward relieving the strain of student loan debt, particularly amid the added financial burden of the coronavirus pandemic."
On Day One in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order extending a pause student federal loan payments enacted by the previous administration as part of COVID-19 relief. Liberal activists and lawmakers urged the president to go further and cancel student loan debt, but he has said firmly that he does not believe he has the authority to do so by executive order.
That changed Thursday, when White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden asked his education secretary to explore the president’s authority to cancel student loan debt, a sign he is open to moving left on the issue.
What's next on infrastructure plan: How does Biden plan to get it through Congress?
Critics of student loan debt forgiveness, including conservatives and some liberals, argue that it would unfairly benefit higher-income earners with college educations and that individuals who took out loans have a responsibility to pay them back, regardless of circumstance.
Biden’s push for student loan changes
Though Biden has been hesitant to bypass Congress on canceling student loan debt, he has said since the days of his campaign that the government needs to help those with “debilitating” student debt.
“I understand the impact of debt,” he said at a CNN town hall in February.
Biden said student loans should have 0% interest – a move he enacted alongside the repayment freeze through September. He expanded student loan forgiveness for public-sector workers and canceled debt for students defrauded by for-profit schools.
He’s hesitant to cancel loan debt for those who went to top-tier schools. The federal government should not forgive debt for students who went to elite schools such as "Harvard and Yale and Penn," Biden said.
Trump and Biden froze federal student loans: Should borrowers pay or pause before they thaw?
Thursday, Klain said Biden asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to craft a memo on the president’s executive authority to cancel student loan debt.
“He’ll look at that legal authority, he’ll look at the policy issues around that and he’ll make a decision,” Klain said in an interview with Politico Playbook.
Enacting student loan forgiveness through Congress might be difficult in an evenly split Senate.
College costs are on a steep rise
College costs have steadily risen in recent decades, making the price tag of a higher education all but unaffordable without the assistance of student loans for many.
Students have been told that prosperous lives depend on a higher education. First-year students responding to a UCLA nationwide survey placed a higher importance on making more money and obtaining a better job as reasons for going to college in 2019 than students in the past 45 years. But the high cost of college has increased the debt that graduates have to climb out of as they start their careers.
U.S. News and World Report’s analysis of its ranked national universities shows that in the past 20 years, average tuition at private colleges rose by 144%; at public universities for out-of-state students by 165%; and at public universities for in-state students by 212%.
Data collected by the College Board shows that, after adjusting for inflation, over the past two decades, average tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased by more than $5,000 and at private colleges and universities by more than $13,000 annually.
This school year, the College Board found that the average first-time, full-time student at a public, four-year college has to pay $14,850 in tuition, fees and boarding after grant aid. The average student at a private institution must cover $29,110 after grant aid. This does not include additional costs such as books, supplies and transportation.
Americans hold about $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, according to Federal Reserve data. The average 2019 graduate of private or public colleges holds an average of $28,950 in debt, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.
“The more college costs soar, the more degrees become a measure [of] privilege than competence. Our country would be better off if we made public colleges tuition-free & cancelled student loan debt,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted.
Liberals want Biden to forgive $50,000 in student loan debt
Citing mounting debt for generations of college graduates, Democrats asked Biden to commit to $50,000 in federal student loan forgiveness per borrower, putting pressure on him to bypass Congress through the use of executive action.
Student loan debt reached an all-time high in 2020 of more than $1.7 trillion. The average graduate reached a record in loan debt of more than $30,000 in 2019 for the first time since U.S. News and World Report tracked data, which is more than $6,000 higher in debt on average than a graduate held 10 years prior.
Previous presidents, including Barack Obama and Donald Trump, provided student debt relief.
Biden said student debt forgiveness would need to be justified against other policy priorities.
"Is that is going to be forgiven, rather than use that money to provide money for early education for young children who come from disadvantaged circumstances?" Biden asked at the CNN town hall.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have said they believe the president has the authority to cancel $50,000 in loans, and they urged him to do so immediately.
“Studies show that student debt cancellation can substantially increase Black and Latinx household wealth and help close the racial wealth gap, provide immediate relief to millions who are struggling during this pandemic and recession, and give a boost to our struggling economy through a consumer-driven economic stimulus that can result in greater home-buying rates and housing stability, higher college completion rates, and greater small business formation,” the pair said in a statement last fall.
"Even before the coronavirus pandemic plunged our economy into chaos, student loan borrowers were already in crisis,” Warren said.
Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against Biden’s point that student debt forgiveness might come at the cost of other education programs. “Nowhere does it say we must trade off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both,” she said.
“Many won’t fully feel $10k in forgiveness until after a Biden presidency is over, when they’ve spent 10 years paying off the other $20k+,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Dems should be championing policy that people can feel ASAP. We need to go big.”
John Roberts, seen at the Capitol in Washington. (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)
'Putin-Style Democracy': How Republicans Gerrymander the Map
Tom McCarthy, Guardian UK
McCarthy writes: "Republicans believe they have a great chance to win control of the US House of Representatives in 2022, needing a swing of about six seats to depose Nancy Pelosi as speaker and derail Joe Biden's agenda."
With red states set to gain seats, the GOP is ready to disadvantage Democrats and deliver the US House
epublicans believe they have a great chance to win control of the US House of Representatives in 2022, needing a swing of about six seats to depose Nancy Pelosi as speaker and derail Joe Biden’s agenda.
To help themselves over the top, they are advancing voter suppression laws in almost every state, hoping to minimize Democratic turnout.
But Republicans are also preparing another, arguably more powerful tool, which experts believe could let them take control of the House without winning a single vote beyond their 2020 tally, or for that matter blocking a single Democratic voter.
That tool is redistricting – the redrawing of congressional boundaries, undertaken once every 10 years – and Republicans have unilateral control of it in a critical number of states.
“Public sentiment in 2020 favored Democrats, and Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives,” said Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Princeton gerrymandering project. “[But] because of reapportionment and redistricting, those factors would be enough to cause a change in control of the House even if public opinion were not to change at all.”
While redistricting gives politicians in some states the opportunity to redraw political boundaries, reapportionment means there are more districts to play with. After each US census, each of the 50 states is awarded a share of the 435 House seats based on population. States gain or lose seats in the process.
Owing to population growth, Republican states including Texas, Florida and North Carolina are expected to gain seats before 2022, although the breakdown has not been finalized, with the 2020 census delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Republican-controlled legislatures will have the power to wedge the new districts almost wherever they see fit, with a freedom they would not have enjoyed only 10 years ago, owing to a pair of controversial supreme court rulings.
“The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever been because of the combination of an abandonment of oversight by the courts and the Department of Justice, combined with new supercomputing powers,” said Josh Silver, director of Represent.us. The non-partisan group issued a report this month warning that dozens of states “have an extreme or high threat of having their election districts rigged for the next decade”.
“Frankly,” Silver said, “what we’re seeing around gerrymandering by the authoritarian wing of the Republican party is part of the Putin-style managed democracy they are promoting – that combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering.”
Rules for who controls redistricting vary from state to state. The process can involve state legislatures acting alone, governors or independent commissions. Maps are meant to stand for 10 years, although they are subject to legal challenges that can result in their being thrown out.
The new Republican gerrymandering efforts are expected to focus on urban areas in southern states that are home to a disproportionate number of voters of color – meaning those voters are more likely to be disenfranchised.
In Texas, mapmakers could try to add districts to the growing population centers of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth without increasing representation of the minority and Democratic voters who account for that growth. In Florida they might add Republican voters to a growing Democratic district north of Orlando. In North Carolina, where the Democratic governor is shut out of the process, Republican mapmakers might seek to add a district in the Democratic-leaning Research Triangle, in a way that elects more Republicans.
Republicans could also seek to repay voters of colors in Atlanta who boosted Biden to victory and drove the defeat of two Republican senators in special elections in Georgia in January, by cracking and packing those voters into new districts.
“Republicans could net pick up one seat by rearranging the lines around Black people and other Democrats in the Atlanta area,” Wang said.
Racial gerrymandering – or using race as the central criterion for drawing district lines, as opposed to party identification or some other signifier – remains vulnerable to federal court challenges, unlike gerrymandering along partisan lines, which was declared “beyond the reach of the federal courts” by the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, in 2019.
A separate decision by Roberts’s court, in Shelby County v Holder from 2013, is seen as adding to the likelihood of gerrymandering. The ruling released counties with acute histories of racial discrimination against voters from federal oversight imposed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That means that in 2021, some southern legislators will draw district boundaries without such oversight for the first time in 50 years.
‘Much more national awareness’
Potential legal challenges aside, the success of Republican mapmakers is not a given. Turnout in future elections – higher or lower – could foil expectations based on historic patterns. The partisan mix of voters in any district can change unpredictably. And stretching a map to wring out an extra seat could leave incumbents vulnerable.
Public awareness of such anti-democratic efforts has grown, said Wang, since a 2010 Republican effort called Redmap harvested dozens of “extra” seats.
“There’s much more national awareness of gerrymandering,” Wang said. “And citizen groups are now much more in the mix than they were 10 years ago.”
Silver said the gerrymandering threat has redoubled the urgency of advancing voting rights legislation that passed the US House but has stalled in the Senate.
“This is why we have to pass the For the People Act, which is federal legislation that with one pen stroke by the president would create independent commissions in all 50 states, end voter suppression and restore representative democracy in the United States,” he said.
“We have to stop gerrymandering, or there will be no representative democracy in America, period – only preordained and symbolic election results.”
Guns. (photo: NBC News)
'It's a Very Scary Proposition': Gun-Makers Decry Biden's Plan to End Liability Protections
Alex Seitz-Wald, NBC News
Seitz-Wald writes:
resident Joe Biden would like some divine help on his gun control agenda, but his ask might be surprising.
And gun-makers warn the results could be dire for their industry.
During remarks announcing new executive actions to curb gun violence Thursday, Biden took a detour as he imagined being able to ask God to immediately change one gun law, and it wasn't eliminating assault weapons or "bump stocks."
He would have the almighty let people sue gun-makers.
“This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued. If I get one thing on my list — (if) the Lord came down and said, 'Joe, you get one of these' — give me that one," Biden said at a ceremony at the Rose Garden.
"Most people don’t realize, the only industry in America, billion-dollar industry, that can’t be sued, exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers,” Biden continued.
Biden, who has spent years writing and fighting gun laws in Washington, is referring to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a 2005 law that largely shields firearm manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits when people use their products illegally, such as by shooting someone.
“He wants to drive us out of business,” Mark Oliva, the director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade group, said of Biden. “So it's a very scary proposition, and we take it very seriously.”
The law is not as well known as some other hotly debated proposals like universal background checks or banning assault weapons. But the National Rifle Association called the PLCAA “the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in 20 years" when the law passed and gun control advocates have been trying to repeal it since then.
While many gun control advocates would still put universal background checks at the top of their agenda, repealing the PLCAA would be up there, too — though it admittedly faces a tougher climb in Congress, which is probably why Biden wanted supernatural help.
“The protections are unique in that they are defending the industry from the intended use of their product,” said David Pucino, senior staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center, which promotes gun control. “The industry knows that if the victims got their fair day in court, the industry would lose.”
This law was introduced in response to a flood of litigation seeking to use the courts to reduce guns after a prior attempt at legislation stalled out in Washington and many state capitals.
“These outrageous lawsuits attempting to hold a law-abiding industry responsible for the acts of criminals are a threat to jobs and the economy (and) jeopardize the exercise of constitutionally protected freedoms,” the bill’s sponsor, then-Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, said at the time.
Craig succeeded in stopping the suits. Most litigation against the firearms industry is now dismissed, though the law provided for some exceptions, such as for gun defects or if there are violations of other state or federal laws by the manufacturers.
“The fact is that access to the legal system is what forced the auto industry to build safer cars with airbags and what stopped the tobacco industry from marketing to children. And so the result of that litigation was American lives saved,” said Nicholas Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “It really forecloses access to the justice system for people seeking to hold the industry accountable for irresponsible practices.”
For instance, Suplina said gun-makers could add safety features to prevent children from unintentionally shooting themselves or to make guns harder to steal, but there is little pressure on them to do so.
Kristen Rand, the legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, which promotes gun control, said if the law were changed, suits could likely be brought against gun-makers for selling weapons designed and marketed primarily for killing people, with military-inspired features and advertising.
“The vast majority of guns sold today are high-capacity semi-automatic pistols, assault weapons or really powerful guns like 50-caliber sniper rifles. There's very little market for traditional hunting rifles,” Rand said. “You remove PLCAA, you open up this whole world of mechanisms to hold the manufacturers accountable.”
The firearms industry and gun rights advocates, however, says the protections from litigation are not unique — but the opposition they face from anti-gun groups is.
Biden was wrong, Oliva and fact checkers noted, in saying the firearms industry alone can't be sued. Other industries, such as pharmaceutical makers and airlines, have special immunity from some types of lawsuits, and the gun industry does not have complete impunity.
“The gun industry absolutely can be sued,” said Oliva, of the trade industry group. “You just can't sue a gun-maker because someone criminally misused a gun. That would be like suing Ford because a drunk driver killed someone."
In an ongoing high-profile case in Connecticut, state courts have ruled that victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can sue Remington over the way it marketed the military-style rifle used in the massacre, thanks to a state law that triggered one of the exemptions in PLCAA.
Gun control advocates insist the firearms industry’s protections are unique, pointing to, for instance, the massive multibillion settlements that pharmaceutical companies are now paying out for misuse of their opioid products. And they note the gun industry did just fine before 2005, when the law passed.
But neither side thinks a change is likely. Repealing the protections would be a nonstarter for most Republicans in Congress and their gun rights allies, and it’s not even clear all Democrats in Congress would be on board.
“It would be a very tough fight,” Suplina said. “For us, background checks come first.”
Dr. Scott W. Atlas. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/NYT)
Trump Officials Bragged About Pressuring CDC to Alter COVID Reports, Emails Reveal
Rich Mendez, CNBC
Mendez writes:
ongressional investigators released emails and documents Friday that show Department of Health and Human Services appointees under former President Donald Trump regularly bragged about their efforts to alter staff scientists’ reports on the coronavirus.
Officials tried to rewrite the weekly scientific reports so Trump could use the data to support his political positions on wearing masks and reopening the economy, according to the emails released Friday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus.
“Our investigation has shown that Trump Administration officials engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference in the nation’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions that allowed the virus to spread more rapidly,” said subcommittee Chairman Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Clyburn accused former White House Covid-19 advisor Dr. Scott Atlas of advocating for “policies that would allow the virus to spread widely among many Americans.”
Documents obtained by the panel show that Atlas was “aware of, and may have participated in, efforts to attack reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in order to justify President Trump’s push to reopen,” Clyburn said.
Atlas and other political appointees within HHS succeeded on several occasions in changing language and influencing the tone of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, which offer weekly public updates on scientists’ findings, the panel found. MMWRs are data-based scientific studies that aren’t usually susceptible to political pressure.
The investigation was first launched after reports surfaced that Trump demanded the right to change the CDC’s reports. The emails show Trump administration officials bragging about altering the reports.
“Small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!” former science advisor Paul Alexander wrote in a Sept. 9 email to let then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo know he was successful in changing the opening line of a CDC report about Covid-19 transmission in school children.
Just two days later, Alexander requested Atlas’ help in altering another CDC report on Covid-19 deaths among young people that Alexander said was “timed for the election” in order to keep schools closed.
“Can you help me craft an op-ed,” Alexander wrote to Atlas. “Let us advise the President and get permission to preempt this please for it will run for the weekend so we need to blunt the edge as it is misleading.”
Earlier in the month, Alexander had asked Atlas to draft another op-ed to oppose masks for children and school closures during the pandemic.
“I think a short 400 word op-ed on this will help people push back to school, I do think locking down our kids (and healthy adults) and masking them can dampen their functional immune systems. Do you think this can be done???” Alexander wrote in a Sept. 3 email.
Alexander famously said “we want them infected” in arguing for a herd immunity strategy in a July 4 email that was released by Clyburn’s investigators in December.
In pressing for the same strategy in the fall, Atlas wrote: “Universities should stay open, even when they see an increase in cases… Yes, cases will increase among young people as they socially interact, but that shouldn’t be a cause for panic,” echoing dangerous herd immunity theories, in an op-ed published Sept. 15. A draft of that op-ed was first edited and revised by Alexander, according to a Sept. 8 email.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the president, previously dismissed the idea of letting the coronavirus spread to achieve herd immunity as dangerous “nonsense” last fall.
“Dr. Fauci has no data, no science to back up what he is saying on school reopen, none … he is scaring the nation wrongfully,” Alexander wrote to senior HHS officials last summer, contending that Fauci was scaring parents.
In another example, Trump officials attempted to camouflage Covid-19 case numbers with other statistics to push political talking points.
“I know the President wants us to enumerate the economic cost of not reopening. We need solid estimates to be able to say something like: 50,000 more cancer deaths! 40,000 more heart attacks! 25,000 more suicides!” Caputo wrote to Alexander in a May 16 email. “You need to take ownership of these numbers. This is singularly important to what you and I want to achieve,” Caputo added in a follow-up email.
After the Trump White House appointed Nina Witkofsky as acting CDC chief of staff last summer, Alexander seemed pleased with her influence on the agency.
“The last 2 MMWR reports have been more positive than usual and I find [that] encouraging,” Alexander wrote to Witkofsky in an Aug. 3 email. “Maybe you are having a huge impact and this is tremendous. Well done!”
In more emails, Alexander continuously touted his influence on the agency’s reports. In another example, Alexander bragged about changes to the “key opening sentence” of a report on a Covid outbreak at a Georgia summer camp.
The line highlighted the importance of understanding youth transmission to develop guidance for school. That line was removed and replaced with another line that said there was “limited data” on coronavirus transmission in those under 21 years of age. The CDC explained that the line had been removed and replaced because of “thoughtful comments” from Alexander and CDC leaders.
Dr. Robert Redfield, then-CDC director, said last year that reports released by the agency were not affected by political interference. “At no time has the scientific integrity of the MMWR been compromised. And I can say that under my watch, it will not be compromised,” Redfield testified to the Senate last September.
Redfield did, however, tell news outlets last month that Trump officials repeatedly tried to change MMWRs that they did not like, according to The Washington Post. Then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar denied that charge.
Congressional investigators are seeking more documents from appointees implicated in the emails, and others.
Alexander and Atlas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sunday Song | Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys | Different Drum
Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys, YouTube
Excerpt: "You and I travel to the beat of a different drum. Oh can't you tell by the way I run. Every time you make eyes at me."
Early Linda Ronstadt. (photo: Unknown.)
You and I travel to the beat of a different drum
Oh can't you tell by the way I run
Every time you make eyes at me oh
You cry and moan and say it will work out
But honey child I've got my doubts
You can't see the forest for the trees
Oh don't get me wrong it's not that I knock it
It's just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me
Yes and I ain't saying you ain't pretty
All I'm saying, I'm not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins in on me
So good-bye I'll be leaving
I see no sense in this crying and grieving
We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me
Oh don't get me wrong it's not that I knock it
It's just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me
Yes, and I ain't saying you ain't pretty
All I'm saying, I'm not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins in on me
So good-bye I'll be leaving
I see no sense in this crying and grieving
We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me
Black bear. (photo: NaturesMomentsuk/Shutterstock.com)
Missouri Approves Dangerously High Quota for Black Bear Hunting
Eliza Erskine, One Green Planet
Erskine writes: "According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Missouri approved a dangerously high quota for the first black bear hunt in the state. Planned for October 18-27, 2021, the Missouri Department of Conservation Commission will allow 400 permits and allow 40 bears to be killed."
ccording to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Missouri approved a dangerously high quota for the first black bear hunt in the state. Planned for October 18-27, 2021, the Missouri Department of Conservation Commission will allow 400 permits and allow 40 bears to be killed.
Wendy Keefover, senior strategist for native carnivore protection at the Humane Society of the United States, shared via email, “The Missouri Department of Conservation is awarding a number of permits equal to nearly half of their estimated bear population. We just saw this scenario play out last month when Wisconsin rushed into a despicable, disturbing week-long wolf hunt. Allowing such a high number of permits resulted in hunters going 86% over the designated quota, decimating the population. Sadly, we suspect this same situation will occur in Missouri. This slaughter must stop. Allowing such a massive number of trophy hunters on a previously un-hunted bear population will result in unsustainable mortalities to the black bear population. It will orphan cubs when their mothers are killed, and even allow those cubs to become victims of this vicious hunt, since killing unaccompanied cubs is not prohibited.”
Records obtained by HSUS found that 2,000 comments were against the hunt and 100 were for it. The state voted in December 2020 to allow bear hunting to open. An estimated 800 black bears live in Missouri.
Sign this petition to Ban Hunters From Killing Hibernating Bears and Cubs!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.