Allow farmers, hunters to exterminate feral hogs

Feral hogs – wild free-roaming pigs – are the latest in a never-ending series of invasive species having a huge impact on our economy and environment.

Farms in the South and West have been especially besieged by the swine, where their insatiable appetites and scavenging ways account for $1.5 billion in agricultural damage every year.

Their pillaging is not limited to crops as they are altering forests at an unprecedented pace, destroying nutrient-rich topsoil (which results in erosion) while killing and consuming saplings, precious wildflowers and ground dwelling birds. 

They’re virtually uncontrollable as they can have litters of up to 8 piglets several times a year. 

And, they’re coming to a neighborhood near you.

Over the past half-dozen years feral hogs have made a home in the Empire State. So far, they have been found to maintain breeding populations in 6 New York counties, mostly in the central portion of the state. They have also made themselves known elsewhere; including a well-publicized sighting in Allegany State Park in 2009 and incidental appearances throughout Western New York (my trail camera photographed one in the wilds of Allegany County this fall).

The state, for the most part, has been trying to stop them. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture (USDA), has orchestrated numerous roundups and exterminations in an attempt to suppress the invasion. The state legislature even did well for itself in passing a bill this year banning the importation, sale and transfer of Eurasian boars in New York. The law essentially brings to an end canned hunts on game preserves for these beasts – those are places from which boars were escaping into the wild.

While the agency does not officially endorse feral hogs as a dedicated target species, the DEC has allowed, even encouraged, hunters to eradicate any feral hogs that they see in the field while hunting other wild game.

That may soon come to an end.

It was reported in New York Outdoor News last week that the DEC was given power to regulate all things feral hogs and officials are now weighing a ban on the hunting of the animals. They say that targeting and killing the pigs does not help the DEC or USDA in their eradication efforts because it is believed the hunters will scatter the animals, breaking up their passels and making collection by government agents almost impossible.

Outright prohibition of hog harvesting would be one of the worst things that the DEC could do for farming and the very environment it is charged to protect.

Imagine a farmer who sees wild pigs decimating his corn. Under a ban, he could do nothing to stop them. He would have to put in a call to game officers who (already understaffed and underfunded) would have to coordinate the personnel and resources for a roundup. That could take days, maybe weeks. By then, a farm could have incurred thousands of dollars in losses.

Or, think of the tens of thousands of deer hunters in the woods every fall. That army is the very best option New Yorkers have for totally eliminating feral hogs – they are stealthily venturing into areas that typically see little human presence the rest of the year, so they have a good chance of encountering the secretive hogs and, with gun in hand, wiping them out. Were the ban a reality, they would be unable to take aim and would have to report their sightings to the DEC. When would the state get to it? Certainly not in the fall when their attention is on the deer harvest and gleaning revenues from sportsmen.

So, if you are a farmer who cares about the security of your land or a nature lover who cares about the state of our forests, take the time to write the DEC and let them know that banning public extermination of feral hogs will lead to a population explosion and, ultimately, the destruction of our fields and woodlands.  




Gasport resident Bob Confer also writes for the New American at TheNewAmerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobconfer.

This column originally appeared in the 18 November 2013 Greater Niagara Newspapers

THE HIGH COST OF A TWO-INCOME HOUSEHOLD

If there was anything that should have been learned from the Great Recession, it was that it’s not a good idea to keep up with the Joneses. The race to have everything that your peers have, if not have it better than they do, drove Americans to buy things (like houses) they couldn’t afford and, in turn, rack up reams of debt. The collective accumulation of this drove our economy, and countless families, to the brink of destruction.

Despite such a near-Armageddon, Americans have gone back to the old ways of doing things. This is a mutation of the American Dream, one that emphasizes materialism and frivolity over frugality and family. The practice is promoted by pop culture, mass media and academia, who make it seem that every household must have two breadwinners while subtly implying that any family that doesn’t is socially unacceptable (even though stay-at-home parenting/homemaking is one of the most important jobs in the world). 

It’s a silly way to look at things, because if you step back and really take a look at finances of families, the second full-time income really doesn’t work for most of them. It’s only an allusion that it improves their lot in life.

According to the Bureau of labor Statistics, the average salary for an employed worker in the Western New York job market is $42,520.

Suppose you have 2 people from a household gainfully employed in full-time jobs. The second worker would lose approximately $6,500 to federal taxes and another $2,900 to state taxes. Suddenly, that second income is down to $33,120.

Then, there are costs completely unique to maintaining a second full-time job.

The largest, by far, is child care. With no one home to raise the child during the day, you have to pay someone to do it (day care). Once the kid does go to school you’ll have to pay someone to care for the child in the hours between when school lets out and the breadwinners’ evening commute comes to an end. Even while the kid is of school age, you still have to account for child care during the holidays and summer break. According to a report by Child Care Aware, the average annual cost for center-based care is $14,939.

The second largest cost unique to a two-income household, especially in areas like Upstate New York where public transit is lacking for most, is the second car. Does a family really need 2 vehicles? No; for most, car #2 is not a necessity (even though most driveways and garages in WNY will signal otherwise). But they do need it if both parents hold down jobs in completely different communities. The average American car payment ranges between $380 and $460 a month. Let’s pick a number in between ($420 or $5,040/year). Then, we need to add automotive insurance. According to Forbes, the average annual rate in New York is $1,369.  Don’t forget the gasoline ($1,600 per year assuming a 20-mile commute) and maintenance ($1,200).

After taking into consideration those costs that are specific only to possessing the second full time income, that person’s income in terms of actual revenue to the family has dropped all the way to $8,972. It lost 80% of its value!

Does that make the job worth the effort? At the start, it had a wage rate of $20.44. If you break down what the actual value is to the worker because of the ancillary costs to holding that job, that person’s wage works out to be $4.31 per hour ($8,972 divided by 2,080 hours per year).

So, what is a family to do? It’s a big decision to make, for even when looking at the costs and headaches, $8,972 is a lot of money.

Some families could choose to do without it and focus less on keeping up with the Joneses and more on keeping up with their kids. Others could make a very wise decision and abandon the second full-time job and instead pick up a part-time job, which would not require the day care and car care expenses. Doing so would see the worker’s physical paycheck shrink, but his or her family’s financial strength would actually be just as good if not better than it would with a full-time job. 



Gasport resident Bob Confer also writes for the New American at TheNewAmerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobconfer.

This column originally appeared in the 11 November 2013 Greater Niagara Newspapers 

THE FOOD SAFETY MODERNIZATION ACT

Using fear as a tactic to gain control over personal food freedom and agriculture, President Barack Obama in 2011 signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act, claiming that it would prevent the spread of E. coli, Mad Cow disease and the like by empowering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate every facet of a farm’s or food facility’s operations.

It’s not disease that we should fear so much, it’s the government. The act gives the FDA unlimited power and affects farms of all sizes, though not equally. Farms with $25,000 in annual sales are excluded outright from the law; any farm with revenues from $25,001 to $500,000 will face partial exemptions; and any farm above that suffers the full force of the law. It will affect three-quarters of U.S. farms.

Slowly but surely, many aspects of the act have taken effect and are just now affecting farms and their customers. Many more regulations are coming down the pike.

The act requires farms and food producers, large and small, to track the origins of their food, whether they grew it or it was previously distributed. Extensive records must be maintained that show exactly where the fruits and vegetables came from, how they were grown, how they were stored and just who they were sold to.

Based on that, farms would be subject to warrantless searches whereby the FDA would have carte blanche to analyze all of their private records to verify not only appropriate tracking, but allegedly appropriate growing practices, too.

That’s because the FDA thinks that it knows farming better than the farmers do -- the act will allow the agency to regulate how crops and animals are raised and harvested. Those standards and controls have not been finalized (the public comment period ends this month). Be sure that farmers will be forced to abandon practices that have been safely used to feed people for generations.

Scared yet? Consider the act’s police state provision. If the FDA discovers contamination, it is empowered to suppress an outbreak. The FDA would have the ability to quarantine an entire geographic region and prevent the movement of produce in and out of it. If one farm in a given town was shown to provide tainted foods, all other farms in that town would need to cease operations while the government’s investigation takes place. If a shutdown happens during that small and crucial window of time when crops need to be harvested or food producers need to be supplied, the farmers will lose out on their livelihood.

To the farmer, the act amounts to a massive loss of rights --- a sort of Patriot Act for agriculture. It looks at what they do with a fine-toothed comb and demands that they conform to a set of practices laid out by an oppressive federal agency.

To the consumer, the act means higher prices. The new rules and regulations will add to the cost of doing business. Don’t forget, the government has already forced food prices through the roof in recent years thanks to the ill-advised pursuit of ethanol, which caused corn, corn products, and everything that eats corn (chicken, swine, and cattle) to go up in cost.

The act will also limit consumers’ choices. Compliance is made easier for corporate giants (owing to cost, resource, and personnel issues), so many smaller family farms may be forced to sell out to them or limit greatly what the FDA considers “high risk” foodstuff — which include perfectly safe things such as raw milk and organic foods, constant targets of federal ire and military-style raids.

The Food Safety Modernization Act is just another in a long line of attacks on free markets and free people. It’s now the law (even though the federal government has no constitutional jurisdiction over farms and intrastate trade), but, there’s still a chance to stop some of its most dangerous aspects from coming into being. The FDA’s “science-based standards for growing, harvesting, packing, and holding produce on domestic and foreign farms” -- which would define the rules and regulations for all things farming -- are available for review on the FDA’s website and can be commented on until November 15.



Gasport resident Bob Confer also writes for the New American at TheNewAmerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobconfer.

This column originally appeared in the 04 November 2013 Greater Niagara Newspapers 

A LOOK AT PROPOSITIONS 2, 3 AND 6

This week marks the conclusion to my 3-part series breaking down the 6 statewide propositions that New Yorkers will have a chance to vote on this November.

Proposition 2 concerns civil service credits for veterans who became disabled during the course of their war-time duties for the Armed Forces. Current state law gives veterans additional credit on civil service exams (5 points for original appointment and 2 ½ points for a promotion). Disabled veterans are entitled to additional credits (10 points for original appointment and 5 for promotion).

Under the state constitution, veterans are eligible for only one grant of credits. So, if a vet returned to active duty while being employed by the government and became disabled in war, he could not receive the additional credits were he to apply for an appointment or promotion. He would forever be locked in at the 5 and 2 ½ levels and could not achieve the 10 and 5 credit levels.

The proposition would fix that by granting the newly-disabled veteran an exclusion to the one-time-only clause. He would receive the difference between the 2 standings and be fully credited to the 10 and 5 marks.

I’ll be casting a “yes” vote for this measure because we can’t reward disabled veterans enough for their calling to true civil service that they took to a level that most Americans cannot comprehend. They risked life and limb to make a difference (and suffered a loss of the latter). It’s only fitting they be given the full 10 points. I’d go so far to say they deserve many more.

Proposition 3 would allow a 10-year extension (to 2024) of the current exemption to the constitutional debt limits that municipalities enjoy for the construction or reconstruction of sewage facilities. This exemption has been renewed in 10 year increments dating back to 1963.

I will be voting “no” for Prop 3. Constitutional debt limits were set for a reason -- to ensure towns, villages, cities, and counties don’t spend like mad and put undue burden on taxpayers (and future generations) who have to shoulder the debt payments. Even though the Great Recession has allegedly gone, the upstate economy is still in crisis mode, with weakened and dead employers, and families trying to overcome their own financial struggles. We don’t need to add more debt payments to the high taxes faced by all. If you want to add nice things to a community or fix old infrastructure, you must work within your limits and find cuts elsewhere – just as the affected businesses and residents do in their day-to-day lives.

Proposition 6 would increase the maximum age until which state judges may serve as follows: a Justice of the Supreme Court would be eligible for 5 additional 2-year terms after the present retirement age of 70 (3 such terms are currently authorized) and a Judge of the Court of Appeals who reaches the age of 70 while in office would be permitted to remain in service on the Court for up to 10 years beyond the present retirement age of 70.

Proponents of Prop 6 say that it makes no sense to force physically and mentally capable seniors out of a job as is done now, the proposition ensures that the most seasoned and experienced judges remain at the bench, and people live far longer than they did in 1869 when this was last amended.

Opponents of Prop 6 (like me) dislike it for a variety of reasons. It would create a two-tiered system in which state judges can retire later than local judges (whose retirement age of 70 would remain). The proposition would ultimately add more Supreme Court judges to bloated employment rolls (while having the lightest workload of New York judges). Proposition 6 also seems like it was selfishly conceived: The person behind its development and push through the Legislature is Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman ---if the proposition  fails, he has to retire in 2015; if it passes, he can sit for another 4 years.





Gasport resident Bob Confer also writes for the New American at TheNewAmerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobconfer.

This column originally appeared in the 28 October 2013 Greater Niagara Newspapers