Posted on 11/11/2011 8:56:00 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
Last year, Wisconsin led the nation in mink farming, producing 833,430 pelts. Texas was the undisputed king of pansies, growing 1.8 million flats of the flowers. And no state harvested more hops than Washington, with 24,336 acres.
This year? Who knows? The government has stopped counting.
Forced to cut its budget, the Agriculture Department has decided to eliminate dozens of reports, including the annual goat census (current population: three million), and the number of catfish on the nation’s fish farms (177 million, not counting the small fry).
The statistics service said it was forced to reduce the frequency of some reports and eliminate others because its budget was cut for the fiscal year that ended in September and it expects further cuts for the current year. The eliminated reports will save $11 million a year.
“These are not cuts we wanted to make, but budget reductions by Congress made it necessary,” said Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.foreignpolicy.com ...
Dreadful! What will we do without this information?
We could have a Goat Gap and not even know it. Our enemies will win.
I don’t know if I can live with this. Should we have #OccupyGoatFarms?
I think this is how ancient Rome was finally done in.
Eat ‘em.
Also, will I still be able to get secret prerelease information on frozen concentrated orange juice production?
Just count the number of muslim men in the country and multiply by 3..........
Well, we can start the count here.
We have four: Jake and Ellwood and Blanche and Rose.
We had three others Earl, Earl and Earl but, sadly, they are deceased.
FYI Goats are very fragile healthwise. Once they get bloat or a blocked urinary tract, there is really nothing anyone can do.
:*-(
Hmm, this could have consequences for the computer industry in Texas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhDhDRvHaGs
13 fainting goats here.
Some thoughts on that. Compared to the OWS gatherings; OGF (Occupy Goat Farms) would:
—smell better
—be more intellectually stimulating
—have better manners
—be around more attractive company
Liberals say its too expensive to count people, so they want to estimate population, especially those areas high in illegals. To save money, they want to use statistics.
So, liberals out there... how about using statistics to count goats? Some of these goats might be illegals! (actually, I suppose its the ornithologists that REALLY want to count illegals).
I’ve come to realize that all these government departments, which sounded so good and logical in seventh grade civics, are merely a means of giving political supporters tax money; which in turn gets creamed back to the politician/party.
It’s easier to cut reports than to fire your Democrat friends and relatives.
This is the same Federal Department which wants to revive the NAID program. National Animal ID. Chip every crreature....reports for every time you move any animal off or back onto your farm.
IE: IF I ride one of my horses off my property & ride for a couple of hours with a neighbor, we both must file a report within 24 hours (Many of my neighbors do not have computers) that says where we are going-why-what route-when we expect to return, etc.
Then when back on the property, a similar report has to be filed, with all the matching information.
Fine for not doing so within 24 hours? $5000 per animal per trip in & trip out.
There is also a push to declare horses COMPANION ANIMALS. That prevents us from breeding them & selling them for more than $500 per horse. Guess I will have to find another way to collect funds for the gelding I have in training that is for sale.
Perhaps $500 in cash & the rest in gift certificates from the local grocery store?????
24 Boers and multiplying... had to stop naming them when i started eating them. :|
If the govt. doesn’t know how many there are that is a good thing and might prevent the govt. from deciding that there are too many of something. The marketplace must decide how many of anything is needed and the marketplace must also decide the value.
Trust the invisible hand. Goat counting comes from central planning which will destroy us.
Ping
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