Smelt Are More Important Than People

In the deranged world of animal rights whackos, the smallest of animals is more important than people. In Mendota, California, population 10,000, the unemployment rate is at 45%. Fresno County, where Mendota is located, has an unemployment rate at 15%. And that is including the seasonal help that is temporarily working to harvest what crops are left.

What does this have to do with animal rights? You see, there's a tiny fish called a delta smelt that the Fish and Wildlife Service says is now endangered. It is being killed by the irrigation pumps so the government shut off the water to Fresno County. The fields are withered but the farmers are still paying the bills for the water.

They have "food lines, hunger lines, people unable to pay their bills, people unable to pay their mortgages, people out of jobs." The State of California has already declared it a disaster area but the federal government has been silent on it so far.

Ben Shapiro, writing at Townhall.com, says Mendota is 94.7 percent Hispanic or Latino. Fresno County as a whole is 47.6 percent Hispanic or Latino. He asked Mendota's mayor, Robert Silva, if he thought this might be racist. "It could be," Silva says. "I can't prove that, but it seems to me that if this happened in New Hampshire or New York City, the relief would be there automatically. As for us, we have to beg agencies. We have to beg them to put food on the table for these people. And they still won't open the spigots."

Silva has a good point. The government acted slowly for Katrina, but still acted. It has done nothing for Mendota or Fresno County. We all know it would have snapped to attention if New York City was in a similar situation.

Shapiro's article is found here.