This one too is quite rich.
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/7/3/102609
Monday July 3, 2000; 11:20 AM EDT
White House Tried to Use Gun Tax to Ban Hunting
The Clinton administration misappropriated at least $45 million in taxes paid by gun owners, which were supposed to underwrite a "sportsmen's trust fund" but were earmarked instead for a variety of pet causes - including a group dedicated to the elimination of hunting.
The White House's shell game with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service money was first uncovered when the General Accounting Office submitted the results of its investigation into conservation tax expenditures to the House Resources Committee earlier this year.
"In at least one instance, pressure was applied to an employee of the USF&WS," reported American Rifleman Magazine in March, "to fund a grant proposal submitted by a zealous animal rights group, The Fund for Animals, which is dedicated to the elimination of the very hunting heritage that those monies are collected to support."
USF&WS monies were also misspent to bankroll another type of "wildlife," says the magazine, with tax dollars from gun owners going to pay for bureaucrats to travel to Brazil, Holland and Japan and reimbursement for lavish meals, liquor and limousine rentals.
Another Clinton-Gore proposal earmarked $30 million in Duck Stamp fees and hunting excise taxes to turn Palmyra Atoll - located 1,000 miles south of Hawaii - into a national wildlfe refuge. Total number of ducks to be saved: ten - the entire duck population on Palmyra - at $3 million per duck.
This latest Clinton scandal came to light largely through the efforts of one man, James M. Beers, a career civil servant with the USF&WS, who told Congress he smelled a rat when higher-ups began to pressure him to approve the Fund for Animals grant.
Beers refused, noting that the radical anti-gun group wanted to use hunters' tax money to distribute anti-hunting literature in public schools and other public venues.
"I was badgered and intimidated to change my finding," Beers testified. "A few months later I was curtly told I would be moved to a non-existent, lower-grade job in Massachusetts."
Then things got really ugly, Beers said.
"I was locked out of my office, the police came to the building to keep me from entering and I was threatened, in an unmarked envelope left at my front door on a Sunday morning, with the loss of my retirement for five years and the loss of my health coverage forever if I did not retire immediately."
Beers did retire - but then went straight to the authorities.
Mr. Beers, meet Linda Tripp, Betty Lambuth, Dennis Sculimbrene, Johnny Chung and a whole host of other Clinton administration whistleblowers who were similarly victimized for trying to get the truth out.
------------------
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater--1964
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/7/3/102609
Monday July 3, 2000; 11:20 AM EDT
White House Tried to Use Gun Tax to Ban Hunting
The Clinton administration misappropriated at least $45 million in taxes paid by gun owners, which were supposed to underwrite a "sportsmen's trust fund" but were earmarked instead for a variety of pet causes - including a group dedicated to the elimination of hunting.
The White House's shell game with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service money was first uncovered when the General Accounting Office submitted the results of its investigation into conservation tax expenditures to the House Resources Committee earlier this year.
"In at least one instance, pressure was applied to an employee of the USF&WS," reported American Rifleman Magazine in March, "to fund a grant proposal submitted by a zealous animal rights group, The Fund for Animals, which is dedicated to the elimination of the very hunting heritage that those monies are collected to support."
USF&WS monies were also misspent to bankroll another type of "wildlife," says the magazine, with tax dollars from gun owners going to pay for bureaucrats to travel to Brazil, Holland and Japan and reimbursement for lavish meals, liquor and limousine rentals.
Another Clinton-Gore proposal earmarked $30 million in Duck Stamp fees and hunting excise taxes to turn Palmyra Atoll - located 1,000 miles south of Hawaii - into a national wildlfe refuge. Total number of ducks to be saved: ten - the entire duck population on Palmyra - at $3 million per duck.
This latest Clinton scandal came to light largely through the efforts of one man, James M. Beers, a career civil servant with the USF&WS, who told Congress he smelled a rat when higher-ups began to pressure him to approve the Fund for Animals grant.
Beers refused, noting that the radical anti-gun group wanted to use hunters' tax money to distribute anti-hunting literature in public schools and other public venues.
"I was badgered and intimidated to change my finding," Beers testified. "A few months later I was curtly told I would be moved to a non-existent, lower-grade job in Massachusetts."
Then things got really ugly, Beers said.
"I was locked out of my office, the police came to the building to keep me from entering and I was threatened, in an unmarked envelope left at my front door on a Sunday morning, with the loss of my retirement for five years and the loss of my health coverage forever if I did not retire immediately."
Beers did retire - but then went straight to the authorities.
Mr. Beers, meet Linda Tripp, Betty Lambuth, Dennis Sculimbrene, Johnny Chung and a whole host of other Clinton administration whistleblowers who were similarly victimized for trying to get the truth out.
------------------
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater--1964