This is excerpts from a column that appeared Sunday by Chico Enterprise-Record editor David Little. To say he’s annoyed would be an understatement, especially when he titles it ‘Another startling episode of ‘Your Tax Dollars At Work’ – Anthony
By DAVID LITTLE
I fish and I hunt, which means I send about $200 a year to the state for hunting and fishing licenses, tags, stamps and report cards.
Add my wife, daughter and son to the tab, and our house pays probably $500 a year to the state.
…
It’s a minor annoyance, however, as long as you know that money is going to a good cause. I’d like my money to be spent on increasing the fishing and hunting opportunities for all Californians, and managing fish and game populations so future generations can enjoy the same hunting and fishing traditions, as my children already do.
Money spent by anglers and hunters should benefit fishing and hunting, simple as that.
That’s why I was annoyed Wednesday to see a news release from the state Department of Fish and Game with the subject line: “DFG Launches Climate College to Better Understand, Address Climate Change.”
I learned a lot from this earnest news release. For example, I didn’t know the DFG had a “Climate Science and Renewable Energy Branch.” I always thought the DFG was focused on fish and game, critters and habitat, not windmills and snowpacks. The state has other departments to study that, right?
This Climate College, the DFG proudly noted in its press release, is being launched “to increase climate literacy.” (Huh?) …The release promised “lectures, presentations, online discussions, reading assignments and a final project.” The reward for completing the course? A “certificate of completion.” And “the opportunity to show their final project to DFG leadership.” Oh joy.
…
The release went on to say: “The college is another initiative that keeps California at the forefront of climate-related planning and action.” OK, maybe there’s a place for that in state government. I don’t think it’s the Department of Fish and Game (emphasis on fish and game).
…
When Californians forked over $52.9 million last year for fishing licenses and stamps, and $22.7 million for hunting licenses and tags — a grand total of more than $75 million — I’m betting they didn’t think it would be used to help develop a Climate College or to fund the salary of a person called “Climate Change Adviser.”
==================================================
You can read the press release from DFG here:
DFG Launches Climate College to Better Understand, Address Climate Change
You can visit the “Climate College” here: www.dfg.ca.gov/Climate_and_Energy/Climate_Change/Climate_College/ .
Look at who is involved, its like an episode of Government Gone Wild:
DFG Climate Training Stakeholder Working Group
Not content to have a California Climate College, they have even bigger plans:
The USFWS National Conservation Training Center will roll out the National Climate Academy in October 2012. In the spirit of collaboration DFG is working in partnership with the steering committee to coordinate training activities and materials between the two courses. Both courses compliment each other and build on the need for increased communication and collaboration around climate change.
“You got other, REAL problems, but the fact that you post this nonsense shows that you are oblivious to them.”
No, it is not the place to post articles for those other non AGW grievances. This article is perfectly appropriate for this site. For a state like CA to introduce wasteful spending in a deficit ‘climate’ like they have there, is totally mind blowing to me. If they can waste money on this, there is no end to their stupidity and they deserve the ending they will get.
Ooooh, I can’t wait to see the certificate, i want one of those.
Gee Matt we should be good citizens and not question govt unless of course it something you disagree with. Maybe if eu got off their dead beat buts and did something we wouldn’t have to. Remember the African nation that use to be Liberia? Civil war got to protect the innocent and all that. Bush said not our fight. EU begged him to send troops. What a bunch of hypocrits. Hate american muscle and money until
we say no.
It isn’t often that I get my back up about this stuff but when they start messing with the money spent by hunters and fishermen, it gets my attention. I lived in California for 17 years. I left 20 years ago because I saw the writing on the wall. Best move I ever made. But, I still have deep connections to the state and I have lots of family living there. The hunting and fishing opportunities in California are really spectacular and they have been nurtured by those who enjoy those opportunities. To have their resources squandered on this stupid global brainwash is a crime. Those of us who pay out for tags and licenses every year do so in good faith. That faith has been broken in California. If I still lived in California and I was having to pay the freight for this garbage, I would skip a year, maybe two years. I would hunt in the Steens or the Rubys, hey Colordo has elk and deer. I am sure you always wanted to do a dream hunt somewhere else. Why, Wyoming is going to have some really cheap wolf hunts. It could be fun. And, it is an opportunity to flex your economic muscle and set the record straight. Those whackos in Sacramento need to know who butters their bread.
. . and Liberia originated how exactly? If there is any external power in the world that should be responsible for Liberia it’s the USA. And it is still a member of the UN, so it didn’t used to be Liberia, it still is Liberia.
But back to Matt’s point – fees are not taxes and are usually ringfenced. Taxes may or may not be hypothecated; politicians hate hypothecated taxes, so almost all aren’t.
On the face of it this use of licence fees seems like an abuse. It will have to be left to your US lawyers to figure that one out.
Next, I suggest that policemen should study the effect of climate on crime, instead of gun training or crowd control seminars. One course could address urban heat islands and the effect on crime statistics. Oh, I forgot—there is no UHI effect: cities are actually the same temperature as adjacent rural areas. Mann, Hansen, Madonna and Trenberth said so.
The govt. in CA are really losing it when they start to piss off the people with guns, In the UK, the govt. get worried when they get handbagged by grannies.
You’re all forgetting the DoFG’s crusade to save the delta smelt from evil farmers. Bill Marsh mentioned the ‘Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy’, which had its own little fish, the Babel fish. The delta smelt should be renamed the babble fish, babble being what passes for intelligent discourse amongst those in California who would bankrupt the “Sunshine State” in the name of something which is never defined – “sustainability”.
So PETA and other groups in California still allow people to hunt and fish in California?
Hey guys, Libya is different from Liberia. Libya is large, up on the north coast next to Egypt. Liberia is small, down on the southwest, Atlantic coast of West Africa.
California is three bats left of the moon.
Makes me want to check where my license fees in Virginia go. Like most folks I assume they go so support hunting, fishing and other wildlife resources but I never check. My guess is Kalifornia believes it can get away with diverting funds because people won’t check on where the money goes.
The college does have to do with hunting and fishing. The next step will be to require hunters and fishermen to go there, before they get their licence. It is called a reeducation camp. The last step is to require hunters and fishermen to go there, and then not let them out.
This has actually happened in other parts of the world. However California thinks, “It can’t happen here.” (Frank Zappa)
Agree with Matt.
Income tax isn’t spent just on economic development. Taxes are taxes.
p.s. The idea of a fishing license is alien and bizarre to me.
Would be interesting to see if they are allowed by California law or thats it in their remit to do this with license money,would of thought any monies taken by this agency would be have to used for
the betterment of those paying it in the first place?
Wow, someone will be telling me next that our car tax in the UK does not all go on road maintenance. I wonder if hunting and fishing are related in some strange way to the environment and climate? Tax is tax, you can call it a ‘fee’ you can call it anything you like, it goes into the same coffers. I would also caution Europeans against commenting on Fee/Tax affairs in the US. In Europe they are seen as a necessarry evil, in much of the US they are seen as completely unacceptable except to fund very basic services and the military. Politics in the US are completely different to those of Europe and not really comparable.
And Bosnia, Kosovo, etc.
This is so foreign to what I expect in New Hampshire. I don’t hunt or fish, but don’t grumble about the fairly recent parking permit fee in the White Mountains.
Our Fish & Game department is so strapped for money that they try to get reimbursed from the idiots who go hiking completely unprepared for delays from weather, darkness, lack of maps, etc.
They also refused to admit there are Mountain Lions in NH, we suspect because they don’t want to spend money on educational programs on what to do when you see one. Then one of the rangers saw one and now the official line is the only lions are escaped pets.
F&G does okay with the rest of their stuff. About the only “waste” has been free distribution of “I brake for moose” bumper stickers. And that was a pretty efficient educational project.
Maybe DFG can make one that says “I’d rather be walking.”
Nice to see that ‘Both courses compliment each other’ – perhaps they have a budget to send each other admiring emails or for advertisements telling each other how wonderful they are.
This Climate College, the DFG proudly noted in its press release, is being launched “to increase climate literacy.” …The release promised “lectures, presentations, online discussions, reading assignments and a final project.”
Reading between the lines, that sounds like a program for paid vacations from doing any productive work, except worse than simple amicable corruption as rather a diseducation campaign of indoctrinating with propaganda from the usual dishonest sources.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
— usually attributed to Mark Twain
Advancing partisan agendas is not the proper usage of tax dollars. Anything superficially labeled as “education” sometimes faces an Emperor’s New Clothes situation of almost nobody wanting to seem less than respectful; in reality, some types of educational spending have contributed greatly to the beneficial advancement of industrialized technological civilization — but others are of net harm starting from opportunity costs in allocation of limited economic resources. Bit by bit, waste (and worse than simple waste like this) adds up to contribute to harming the economy and society.
AGW corruption expands until it either meets strong resistance or absorbs all resources available.
I would sue the state of California for violating the reason the money was designated to be collected for.
Maybe even a petition for a ballot initiative to force the state to spend money as designed.
AGW is a social madness that is inherently destructive.
Another misdirected agency–yesterday I read an article (on AOL News) about NASA’s new ship to study the unexpected and completely unexplained ocean salinity changes. NASA? Really? This was linked to global warming (of course). Doesn’t NASA have another job?
Matt,
I recall a cross- country flight during the Arab Oil Embargo of ’73 during which a fellow passenger from Germany was going on and on about the German superiority of this and that and especially of German ideas of government. Not being very politically savvy yet, at the age of 22, I didn’t have much to say to counter that blowhard until he started talking about the superiority of German oil and gas ownership by the state. I finally got him to shut up by simply asking “where are the great German oil discoveries and oilfields around the world? What are the great German innovations in oil extraction and transport”?
By the way Matt, do you happen to recall the reason that there has been a continuous US military presence in in your country since 1945? Those in the know make a good case that our presence is needed now, as much as any time in past.
Matt, your thinking, and that of some of your countrymen whom I have encountered over the years, leads me to believe that the sentiment is correct.
Some people just never get it.
From the Declaration of Independence:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
How much longer are we to suffer the evils of our own government?
Perhaps the chicken or the egg question. Government that has no boundary will propagate its own demise. How can sane-objective scientific minds find or produce any resolve in a centralized system that refuses resolve-solution? Government – “Government is not reason, nor eloquence. It is force. And like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master” George Washington.
You need a license in the States to kill things? For me, killing anything for a laugh is what Americans did, no matter how it’s dressed up. Killing things for entertainment is just wrong. I think that’s why I have such a problem with this blogspot. The science is disappearing and polemic is flowering; in the garden of contributors, all the flowers lean to the right and libertarian. Very scientific.
Is there any country in the world that actually taxes *bread*?
None that I know of.