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March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
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March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review July 20, 2009 / 28 Tamuz 5769

Government housing, federally funded contraception now the fate of many wild mustangs

By Mark Steyn


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | On Friday, July 17, the House of Representatives met to debate … Go on, take a guess: Health care? The cap-and-tax racket? Stimulus Two? No, none of the above. Don't worry, they're still spending your money. Wild horses couldn't stop them doing that.


And, as a matter of fact, that's the correct answer: wild horses. On Friday, the House passed the Restore Our American Mustangs Act — or ROAM. Like all acronymically cute legislation, its name bears little relation to what it actually does: It's not about "restoring" mustangs. The federal Bureau of Land Management aims for a manageable population of 27,000 wild mustangs. Currently, there are 36,000, and the population doubles every four or five years. To prevent things getting even more out of hand, the BLM keeps another 30,000 mustangs in holding pens — or, if you prefer, managed-care facilities. That's to say, under federal management, one in every two "wild" horses now lives in government housing. The American mustang population is road-testing the impending demographic profile of Japan and Germany: one worker for every retiree.


The welfare mustangs are supposed to be put up for adoption. But, what with the government taking all our money to fund the Barney Frank Institute of Bureaucracy Studies, many of us no longer have the necessary discretionary income to stable a mustang in the rec room. A lot of the nags in managed-care facilities are getting a bit long in the tooth, and thus are unlikely ever to find homes. So, rather than go on attempting to flog near-dead horses, the BLM was considering inviting the seniors to do the decent thing and sign up for "assisted suicide" — or, in the designated euphemism, "death with dignity." In the Netherlands, pretty much everyone over 47 who goes into hospital for a minor hernia winds up getting talked into "death with dignity." And, given that mustangs were introduced to America by the Spanish, it's not inappropriate that they should meet a European end.


ROAM would prohibit this option. In that sense, it would be acronymically more precise to name it REAM — the Restore Elderly American Mustangs Act. Under this legislation, no horses or burros could be, ah, terminated, and they would have to be released from their holding pens after six months. To facilitate the release of the tame "wild horse" population, the act adds to their present 33-million acre habitat (that's bigger than New York State) another 20 million acres — or approximately the size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the total tab at around $700 million — ie, chump change. If you look for it in the line-item budget, it comes down at the bottom under "rounding error." It's a mere ten-and-a-half grand per mustang. If you're wondering why it costs more to keep a horse on 52 million acres of wilderness than it does to stable him at an upscale horse farm in New England, that's because, in order to prevent the mustang population doubling again by 2013 and requiring the annexation of another 50 million acres (i.e., an area the size of Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined), the bill mandates "enhanced" contraception for horses and burros.


John Hinderaker of the Powerline Web site mused on whether this would involve Nancy Pelosi (who's very keen on federally funded contraception) personally installing the enhanced prophylactic device on every stallion. The pay-per-view rights on that would surely be worth $700 million at least. And it would certainly stimulate the American latex industry. Or perhaps we could import them from overseas. I seem to recall the European Union introduced shape and size regulations for a harmonized Euro-condom a few years back, only to have the Germans complain that these things were too small and obviously made for Greeks — or possibly vice-versa, before any Greek readers file a federal hate-crimes suit. Anyway, the point is that somewhere in a European warehouse there are piles of ill-fitting Euro-condoms gathering dust. Surely it's not beyond the wit of Congress to convert a few superfluous GM plants in Michigan into facilities for sewing together unwanted Euro-contraceptives to fit federally condomed mustangs. Just thinking outside the horse box here.


But I digress. The bill also calls for a biennial horse census (presumably run by ACORN) and mandates that government bureaucrats perform home inspections before Americans can adopt wild horses or burros. Presumably this will require a Federal Burro of Investigation or some such.


It's hardly worth batting an eyelid over equine welfare queens. It's a mere drop in the mountain of federal horse manure. But, in their own poignant way, the mustangs are almost too apt a symbol of where we're all headed. The Old West has been succeeded by the new California, in which a bloated government bureaucracy rides herd on the ever more emaciated workhorses of the private sector. And as California goes — and it's going, going, gone — so goes the nation.


There aren't enough of us to pay for all this — for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission. The wealthiest 1 percent already pay 40 percent of all taxes, the top 10 percent pay 70 percent of taxes — and there simply are too few of them — or, more to the point, of you: You'll be surprised what percentage of you fall into "the top 2 percent" by the time Obama is through with you. This isn't merely Swedenization. As that insouciant 19-million acre annexation suggests, when America Swedenizes, it does it on supersized scale. The salient point of that 1,200-page cap-and-trade monstrosity was that, in its final form, it was so huge that at the time the House voted it into law there was no written version of the bill, because Congressional typists were unable to type as fast as Congress can spend: They're legislating on such a scale that the poor bleeding typing fingers of the House stenographers can't keep up. Which means you can't keep up the payments on it all. If you've got a small business, you're wasting your time. You're going to be taxed and regulated into the ground because you're the designated sucker. Tell your kids to forget about the private sector and sign up with the Equine Census Bureau: Jobs for life, early retirement. Government is where it's at. When in ROAM do as the ROAMens do.


In 1971, the United States Congress recognized mustangs as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." And surely nothing captures the essence of the "pioneer spirit" than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives. Welcome to America in the gelded age.


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