> Any wonder why I am getting a little testy?
Thank you Jim, for the civics refresher.  I often learn much from you!
I can understand your frustration at seeing the chance of nabbing the CCD 
culprit slipping between our fingers while we wait for an appropriation 
bill.
To get such a bill, we're competing against every other special interest 
group in the Country.  Why are you singling out the native pollinator folk?
Your frustration appears to have led you into a vituperative runaway rant 
unbridled by reason or factuality.

Your diatribe appears to be based upon two complaints:
1.  That funding for research has been slowed down by the native pollinator 
folk, and
2.  That they have laden any introduced bills with pork.
I believe that in my previous post that I illustrated the total lack of 
factual support for either premise, yet you continue!

First, any agricultural appropriations bill is going to have to wait until 
the farm bill passes, so the native pollinator people were not to blame for 
that delay.

Second, I just can't find any native pollinator "pork" in Boxer's Pollinator 
Protection Act.  The other acts involving funding have far less chance of 
passing.

Thirdly, I can't grasp your assertion that CCD is "a single agricultural 
problem."  Since we don't know what causes CCD, we don't know if it is 
indeed a single problem or multiple problems, or unrelated- or totally 
related to native pollinators.  As a biologist, I'd tend to guess that 
anything affecting honeybees on a grand scale will likely be affecting 
native pollinators, and the more people we have looking at the problem, the 
more chance we have at solving it.

> the schemes have now become so grand that terms like "habitat" have been 
> worked into the title of bills.
As a migratory beekeeper, my entire operation is dependent upon "habitat." 
I'm moving my bees this week from one habitat to another.  Beekeeping 
success and habitat go hand in hand.

Jim, I totally agree with you that I would have liked to have seen the 
researchers get a timely emergency appropriation to analyze the samples. 
I'm frustrated with our government and agriculture system in general, 
especially the second-class status that the beekeeping industry suffers. 
However, that doesn't mean that we should trash potential allies at a time 
that we could use all the friends in government that we can get.

Scapegoating of the native pollinator folk is not in the overall interest of 
the beekeeping industry.  I beg you, sir, to decease from your attacks and 
unwarranted criticisms, and to utilize your energies in a more positive 
manner.  Can we all throw our support behind Boxer's Pollinator Protection 
Act, and move on?

Sincerely,
Randy Oliver

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