For Our Grandchildren/A Tale of Two Pigs

Avman

One of these days I’m going to write a book, for posterity. A book to talk about what life in America is like. I better hurry up and write it before our freedom has been completely taken away. I have the first two paragraphs already written.

Once upon a time, there was a great land where people once stood freely. Where you could grow your own vegetables, and raise animals for food. A place where you could go hunt and be able to feed your family for months on end. A place where as long as you harmed nobody, nobody would harm you. A place where government would stay out of your life. That place once was the United States of America.

I had the pleasure of living in this great land of opportunity. We used to think that it would be horrible to live in a country like Cuba, where, if you were caught killing cattle, your were taken away and your family would never see you again.

As my regular readers are already aware, I don’t like to cuss. It’s unprofessional and it makes a person sound, well, idiotic. Forgive me if a couple of words slip out. You see, I saw a little story that has far reaching implications. It’s so clearly a violation of this man’s rights, and even if it wasn’t, it’s a new low in this abyss of Louisiana history. When a 70 year old man gets arrested for helping people out during Easter, things are really bad.

Angelo Piazza spent the Easter weekend preparing pigs for meals for hurricane evacuated residents living in a trailer park at Spring Bayou, pork he was donating to the residents.He also was cleaning and cutting meat for other residents of Avoyelles Parish. Most, he said, brought him their own pigs for cutting, services he said he does not charge for.

But the nearly 70-year-old Effie area man found himself behind bars April 5, accused by Bob Odom of illegally butchering and selling swine.

“This wasn’t a drug bust but a pig bust,” Piazza said Friday.

Piazza contends that for years he has prepared pork for neighbors, community benefits and churches, giving away services instead of selling them. He said his arrest and the seizure of pork and pigs at his home was politically motivated.

Incredible isn’t it? I mean, that’s what happens in a dictatorship. When a government won’t even let people raise their own swine or cattle to be used for meat, or shared with others, then that government is interfering with one of the most basic necessities of survival. It’s a right that a man has to raise his own food.

But like Iran who won’t let women into sports stadiums for their ‘own protection’, Bob Odom said “We don’t want people getting sick,“. I personally think it’s for other reasons. Perhaps Odom’s family and friends are having bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe Odom thinks he owns Louisiana. Or as one forum poster said “Being that Odom has been feeding at the public trough for so long, he must be particularly sensitive about pigs.” If Bob Odom really was concerned about people getting sick, he’d have resigned a loooooong time ago, he’s been making people sick for far too long.

There should not be one single farmer who would agree with Odom. This should infuriate every last farmer there is, here in Louisiana, and throughout the United States. These people grow food for the rest of us, certainly they use some of the same food for theirselves. It’s something that families have been doing since the beginning of time, and now Bob Odom says no? How can this not be an infringement of human freedom? Somebody please explain to me how it’s not a right to raise pigs for yourself? Or to help neighbors out by cutting their meat for them?

I’ll tell you who else should be visibly upset about this. If you can’t raise your own livestock for food, we’re talking domestic animals, why on earth should a person be allowed to hunt for food, wild game? How safe is it? It’s never had it’s shots, why should you be allowed to hunt wild game if a farmer can’t consume his domestic animals? If this 70 year old man ought to go to jail for helping nieghbors during Easter, then how many hunters ought to go to jail for giving wild deer meat to their friends?

And if it isn’t safe for you to hunt wild game for consumption, then you don’t need to hunt either… so why do you need a gun? After all, the only time the government isn’t responsible for protecting you is when your in the womb. You’re strong enough to die by choice in the womb, but too weak to live your own life, to live without government protection in every aspect of your life outside the womb.

The only people who should vote for Bob Odom this time around is his immediate family, and the handful of people that he’s helping get rich. If Bob Odom doesn’t mind throwing 70 year men in jail for absolutely no reason, then Bob Odom has become delusional and unhinged. The senescent man needs an insane asylum, not another term.

Hey, I made it through this without calling Odom a son, well, it wouldn’t have been a nice thing to say about his momma.

<ADMINNICENAME> @ April 15, 2007