Expensive Chickens
- Our cash-strapped state government has found a new use for its fleet of aircraft – flying birds into Illinois.
[...] State aircraft are flying to Kansas and transporting prairie chickens back to the Land of Lincoln.
And at a time state lawmakers are looking at raising the state income tax, Illinois state employees have been hiking across Kansas trapping these chickens.
[...] State pilots have flown between Illinois and Kansas not once, not twice but 14 times this year taking prairie chickens to downstate Jasper and Marion counties.
And how much is this costing Illinois taxpayers?
- The feds are chipping in $337,000 toward the program and the state will pay $117,000. Some of the cost to state government may be offset by private fundraising done by the Audubon Society, Simpson said.
That puts the total cost of the program at $455,000 for the next three years.
And they've relocated 91 birds total - that's $1,166 per bird. Birds that could be lured back to Illinois by setting up protected habitats....they could even fly themselves here. Meanwhile, there's no money for important things, like pensions.
Labels: money questions, state politics
posted by SCC at 12:01 AM
38 Comments:
But it's for the birds......
This bullshit is for the birds.
Could we start a fundraiser to rent buses to run all of these stupid, corrupt legislators out of the state....or could we all stop voting for the democrats or both??
Are they at least tasty ? This state is so screwed up. These politicians live in another world .
Green environmentalism and species promotion trump pensions any day. Quit being so greedy and be happy that the prairie chickens are coming back.
Prairie chicken...doe's it taste the same as yard bird?
Prairie chicken, mashed potatoes n' gravy, green's, couple of biscuits and there you go, $1166.00 chicken dinner.
Cheaper at Harold's.
I remember as a kid growing up in the mid 40's, prairie chickens ran wild at foster ave. beach before the outer drive was extended to hollywood ave. Those were the days. Stay safe.
And that ain't chicken feed.
Just goes to show. ....Illinois is for the birds.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get on the plane so he could fly first class. These politicians should horsewhipped! How can this possibly cost this much money? Let's research the kickback on this one!
Retired
What the cluck?
Tom Dart would be proud...
Can I just hop one of those outgoing flights, please?
If they tried, they probably could have gotten private funds to do this. The people of Illinois are generous. They want some control over where the money is spent, and would rather fund these things privately than pay taxes. Raising taxes is just down right irresponsible and creates anger.
Prairie chickens are nicknamed boomers. That's what the Schaumburg baseball team is named.
There are plenty of ghetto chickens in Chicago--pidgeons.
But we'll re-elect these assholes and no one (media ) will call them on their BS spending while crying broke.....
What is going to happen when the hawks ( the real kind, not the ice kind) start eating them... we going to shoot the hawks?
Birds don't even want to stay in this shit hole
My cousin was in a band called Prairie Chickens.
I wonder if the political class are thinking of getting their pilots license and make some money from the state. I can see Dorothy Brown flying chickens into Illinois. She seems to get a piece of just about every easy dollar in the state.
The schaumburg boomers mascot is a prairie chicken.
An old friend tells me that a fertilized prairie chicken egg costs about $1.50 each. So we're paying over $1000 per chicken. Government. You gotta love it.
This is so outrageous that it makes my head spin. Who the hell do these politicians think they are that they can spend tax dollars on this crap when they have failed to pay the state's portion of pension payments for decades. Here's an idea:
Spend every available dollar on paying down the pension debt. Once that is gone and the pension system is once again solvent, then you get to buy your $1166 chickens. Fucking thieving asshats are bankrupting this state. Stop voting Democrat!
Gooble gooble
This went a fowl. What a bunch of peckers in first class and then in Springfield. Some flew the coop. Be careful their love is infectious-you may catch chirpees. It’s a form of a canarial disease.
And Rahm is spending $1m+ on dead ash tree art. Rather than mulch dead trees (that are no longer infested), he's going to have "artists" express themselves.
Lil Herbie 'the Dilla' Pugar just got called up.
It's whose money is it again?
Well damn!
Is the "urban" prairie chicken (pigeon) aka "the flying rat" next on the agenda to be "saved?"
The Chicago and Illinois political class keep lowering the fucking floor on venality in regard to the creative ways they say "fuck you churls" to the tax payers and the people in very real danger of having their worked for and earned retirements reneged on by these fiscal incompetents who spent, stole and willfully mismanaged every red fucking cent they got their misshapen mitts on.
The only curative for Chicago and Illinois is to hang the entirety of the career politician class.
We can't spend our way out of this mess but we can surely stretch enough necks to fix it...
Make Fiscal Malfeasance/Financial Treason by Elected Officials a Capital Offense due to the extraordinary and nigh near irreversible financial harm/fiscal incompetence that was willingly and intentionally inflicted on this city and state.
Local media should be next for giving aid, comfort and running interference for the birth-righted, career politician kleptocrats...
It's pretty obvious that many in local media are being paid off to lay off pursuing certain members of Daley Inc. and Rahm & Co. while beating the shit out of and keeping public opinion hotted-up to a boil against the cares and concerns of rank and file Police, Fire, Teachers and others who are under attack because the yellow-pinky political class has promised to hand the neo corporatist vulture capitalists "all that pension money just sittin' around doin' nuttin'."
The last pools of "other people's money" are muni/state employee pensions. Which is why defined pensions have been vilified as "unsustainable" and in dire need of being "redirected" by politicians like Rahm to their money conjurer campaign funding friends to be "managed" for a "fee."
Just you wait until an entire class of hard-working, never bothered anybody, upright living people start getting the funny feeling that the ballot box in America has been bojanked to keep them from asserting their right to financially competent governance...
That will be the day when all the right people start shooting...
The entrenched corporate and political interests will petition the government to heed THEIR cries and shoot back at the churls trying to set things right.
Heh... Bullshit on USPS, HUD and other non law enforcement/investigatory government agencies being slid into the queue to "purchase" multiple billion rounds of small arms ammo?
National media ain't sayin' shit and they have a mouthful of it...
Interesting times are HERE.
Nothing but thoughts and observations...
Remember we need pension reform.... or as Rahm says it city workers "require" pension reforms.
Fuck these thieving politicians. Of course their pensions don't get " reformed".
We are doomed!
Just what did they do to deserve this? they have been trying to get out of this state for years why not spend the money and transport a few million illegals out of this country you Chicken haters.
Incubate eggs, hatch them and release them if you want to populate a species. It's cheap and easy. Responsible agencies have done it for years. At least in places where clout does not dictate who runs conservation programs. Good grief.
It would be easier to put them on a truck!
These things are just gonna get killed by the wild animals anyway!
What a waste of money!
What "birdbrain" ass hole in Springfield came up with this hare-brained idea?
no money should be spent on anything else until our undefended liabilities are taken care of...you are just going to have to tell everyone else to wait until we are in the black before frivolously giving out cash to these kind of organizations.
Sorry to interrupt the public tirade with the facts. But the Prairie Chicken relocation project is being paid out of funds earmarked for wildlife preservation at both the state and federal level as well as direct public donation. Not one penny, including the lovely airplane rides, comes from general funds (from our income tax). Instead, the state money comes from hunting & fishing licenses and the like. The Federal money comes from a wildlife preservation fund and cannot be used for social services, reducing the debt, etc.
But wait there's more. Prairie Chickens and the habitat they occupy in Jasper and Marion County bring hundreds of ecotourists- birders who want to see this bird and scores of others endemic to native grasslands. There are literally lines forming to view the Prairie Chicken when the population becomes more stable. I know it sounds funny. But it is true.
In fact, nationwide birding (go ahead a laugh at us) generates $107 billion in total economic output. $40 billion in travel and food and 666,000 jobs, $7 billion in federal general fund revenue and $6 billion in state general revenue fund (US Fish & Wildlife study of economic impact of birding in US 2011).
To be against the Prairie Chicken project is to be against jobs, against tourism and economic gain. With Illinois' public share coming from wildlife related fees & registrations, this project has NO cost to the average citizen but a huge economic gain to the state.
Important science and powerful economics.
The greater prairie chicken or pinnated grouse is a large bird in the grouse family. This North American species was once abundant, but has become extremely rare or extinct over much of its range due to habitat loss. Wikipedia
There has to be a Vaneco connection there some where?
Don't be a chicken hater,those birds don't get pensions,so let them have a vacation,it's a luxury for them birds to fly on a plane and be here in Illinois,with us chicken eating loving folks!
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