US Bill 669

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Great news!!

 

[mevstheworld]

http://usark.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26

I personally called 202-225-0691 of the House Subcommittee of Insular Affairs and talked to Megan who told me, "there is NO action scheduled for this Bill. It would need to be re-written or fully amended to be able to come up for another public hearing. As of right now, there is no talk of the Bill being amended, and as I said there is NO action scheduled for this Bill."

I would say after talking to her, that the Bill has been stopped for now.
Rich :)

Thanks 4 the heads up:wink:

 

[str8salt]

Is there anyway to get a second confirmation af the death of this bill. Does saying that there is no scheduled action mean that it is dead or just not scheduled yet. My congress representatives said tht it had been refered to a subcomitte and would be reviewed there before introduction. As far as the invasive species our gal from Guam is responsible for some of travel of one of the greats. The brown snake. A species that would be an actual target for invasive species legislation. Ironic isn't it. Later

 

[Paul_N]

I think we better keep an eye on it. Mr. Firemouth I read on the cichlid forum that you also posted on that this bill was in committee before and died back in Sept. 08. This was resurrected again as we see it now with NO CHANGES. I guess the figured they would let the protests blow over and try to push it through again.

PJIAC seems to be doing some great work on this.

http://www.pijac.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1

 

[Mr.Firemouth]

None of these Bills are ever really dead.
The reason is Environmentalist Lobbyist groups like the Humane Society/Peta/etc.
These groups try to get representatives to sponsor a broad bill that will give them ultimate authority and will also give opponents a great deal of red tape to amend any Bill.
They will indeed do this again! It started back in 1972 with the Lacey Act which the ACA(American Cichlid Association) helped defeat.

Today the victory really came from the Reptile folks. They sent paper mail. All of our emails can be filtered or deleted. Paper Mail must be delivered by Federal Law. Therefore, they actually get the mail.

Next time we will organize a huge letter writing campaign and make 38,000 letters into 1,000,000!

If there are any changes I will know as I follow these Bills closely.

 

[M@ryRuth]

Offering Information

I'm a newbie to this site. I really don't want to discuss H.R. 669. Instead I offer you a little known way to directly track any bill in Congress. The site is WWW.thomas.gov No this is not a joke. The site is an arm of the Library of Congress. (I'm also computer challenged so if the link doesn't work you can type the address into your browser.)

If you want to track the bill for first hand info, go to the site. When the home page loads you'll see a section near the center of the first page that is enclosed by a blue border. In the search box enter the bill number you want to track (in this case H.R. 669). Make sure that you are tracking the bill number by assuring the proper search method is checked. Hit the search button and BINGO there you have it. In case you didn't know there are 26 cosponsorers to the bill and they are named. The last action as of this evening was on 4/23/09.

Again, I'm not qualified to comment on the bill itself. I only want everyone to have first hand information and not totally rely on the news media for information about important matters that affect our lives.

 

[VanGogh121]

The bill is dead, With that being stated, there was a lot of propaganda that surrounded the bill that was in no way accurate and only provided fuel for some misinformed folks.

The bill had every good intention as we are facing a real problem around the world with invasive species. I am sure the folks with Kudzu problems in the south east and the Caulerpa problem in California can attest.

This was heavily debated on one of my local forums, There is several flaws i feel could be fixed in this bill, but it is not all bad and it wasn't the fire and brimstone the NO669.com site depicted. (The end off the hobby) LOL

Specifically, a regional break down of banned species should be an amendment to the bill, second the bill needs a clear direction to black list the species that should not be imported, (ie. choose a board of Scientist, Businessmen, hobbyist and environmentalist to make the decision)

I am sure, if your in this hobby, you enjoy your animals and would not like to see their environment destroyed. We need a solution for a very real problem. I hope there is a solution that everyone and everything can live with.

 

[Paul_N]

This bill was introduced as H.R. 6311 in June of 08'. Saying this bill is dead really means nothing. They can just introduce it again at the next session as another bill, same title, different number. I agree though that as long as they come up with a regional breakdown then it would be a step in the right direction.

 

[cloakerpoked]

The problem (as Paul pointed out a little bit ago) is when you use open ended language for any bill. It's the whole give an inch, take a mile thing. It may not happen right away, but sometimes I wonder how the founding fathers would feel about where our country has come since its inception.

Environmental responsibility is important for all of us as hobbiests and as human beings. Not to say that we are all there, but should certainly try to be. I'm not saying that this bill doesn't, or couldn't have noble aims, but envision a scenario where we elected a President who believed that the reefs were being pillaged, and all imports of that nature should be stopped and ask yourself what they'd need to do to make it happen. The answer is simply appoint a likeminded person to oversee the Department this bill would empower to create its restricted list. Personally, it scares me that 2 men could make decisions that effect millions, without any say or check on their power. Our check on their power is now, not after we pass the law.