In the process of posting our honorable Sen. Mello's "reasons" for his nay
vote on sb 55, Ms. Mooring used some colorful descriptions.  Mr. Broome
then responded to Ms. Mooring's post, counselling a calmer approach:
 
>While I can appreciate the feelings you have toward the failure of SB55,
>and I may share your opinions of elected officials who don't seem to
>represent the opinions we'd like them to, I think you're out of line by
>stooping to name-calling.
 
Mr. Broome's advice is no doubt sage, but having suffered through the same
ignorant, unchanging rhetoric from Sen. Mello and other Natural Resource &
Wildlife Commissioners, I empathize with Ms. Mooring completely.  I'm aware
that name-calling accomplishes nothing at best, but logic, fact, and
compelling evidence are equally ineffective on several of our senators.
This sorry state of affairs has almost reduced me to name-calling also, and
has led me to the conclusion that there's something amiss in Sacramento.
All of the nay-sayers have heard the pro-ferret arguments many times over,
and yet we still have the same 'Stubborn Seven', the commissioners who
refuse to change their votes citing the same disproved "reasons" over and
over.  Why?  What could be the cause of this apparent failure to
communicate?
 
Stupidity, deaf ears, apathy, ignorance, extremism, and laziness immediately
spring to mind as possible causes, though accusing our senators of these
undesirable qualities becomes name-calling.  It's also possible that they
have ulterior motives - that they're using the issue as a political lever to
gain some unrelated end - but intentionally preventing 500,000 animals from
being inoculated against rabies (while simultaneously spouting the "rabies
danger" that the animals present) seems an unwise and reckless course of
action to me.
 
In short, until one of our opposing commissioners replies with salient
reasons for continuing to ban domesticated ferrets in CA I can think of
nothing good to say about them.  The odd thing is that they're probably
*not* stupid, extremist, etc., but that only makes their unresponsiveness
*more* frustratingly uncomprehensible.
 
Swampp
[Posted in FML issue 1446]