A Response to Kay Simpson of Arkansas

That would be the Kay Simpson who is mentioned in this article from the Arkansas Times. She says that she is literally crying now that the felony animal abuse law passed in Arkansas. She is crying because she doesn't have the resources as head of the Pulaski County Humane Society to conduct a bust of that kind. The law allows law enforcement to "raid" a breeder and it allows devices to avoid any kind of due process of the law.

The American judicial system is supposed to be based on the concept of "guilty until proven innocent." In other words, the accused is required to be allowed full due process of the law. This law has a provision that is as hostile as it gets towards that due process. If a person is accused of mistreating the animals that they own, they have to post some kind of bond, a percentage of the estimated cost of keeping the animals, or lose ownership of those animals. The way that Kay Simpson puts it, most of the owners then "abandon" such animals. What actually happens in many cases is that the shelters get a fresh supply of purebred dogs with many puppies that can be sold out the door in as little as four days, only they call the price tag an "adoption fee."

This way they can scatter a breeder's inventory and make it unrecoverable. Since they also surgically sterilize most of the dogs, they have made that inventory worthless to the breeder. We don't just have a right to breed dogs when the Humane Society feels like letting us, it's a basic human right. What you might call overly strict enforcement is actually a deliberate failure to allow due process of the law before taking property. It is a deliberate attack against a breeder that they want to shut down and I'm building a long list of dirty tactics that are used to do this.

If someone is deprived of the opportunity to do this, too bad. The felony law should never have been passed because its only use is going to be to extort money and property. All authorities involved in this are liable under section 1863 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and the courts still take that Civil Rights Act seriously, at least some of them. Every jurisdiction involved in such busts should know that they may soon be liable for extremely large lawsuits. There should also be criminal penalties and we don't have to be particularly creative to do that. The threat of force under color of law to get property away from people is extortion. Police have gone to jail for it before and hopefully they will again. Also, there is the taking of property for public use without just compensation. It doesn't matter if they immediately destroy that property, the "taking" is in the denial of the use of that property to its owner.

People are slowing down their donations to the shelters in part because the shelter system has proven itself unworthy of the donations by supporting these laws. Kay Simpson should count herself lucky that she can't drive around making a reputation for herself by violating the rights of citizens. She could count herself lucky that she isn't destroying legitimate businesses and making false accusations of abuse. Someone who supports a law like that law that just passed doesn't know the difference anyway. It's above their level of competence. That "brick wall" that Kay Simpson has run into is simple reality. No one has resources to waste on things that violate human rights.

It's Really Ridiculous

Wayne Pacelle approaches the agricultural business in Ohio and says "surrender or we'll beat your ass." Anyone he recruits in a state, he uses against everyone else in the state. If none of them had surrendered to him or accepted bribes he would not have won any states. He wouldn't have had part of the dog breeding community to use against the rest of the dog breeding community, and the recent atrocity in Tennessee is just one example of this.

http://www.agritalk.com/

There is no reward for compromise with the HSUS. They have rewards only for criminal behavior like abusive busts of commercial breeders whose dogs are in good enough shape to turn around and sell within the week. The only threat that they pose is if anyone is damn fool enough to let them have anything that they want. They are a terrorist organization that certainly doesn't deserve anything. They were named in a Department of Homeland Security report and in other reports to Congress, so the United States Congress does know enough about the HSUS that anyone who takes just a minute to think would say "these people are terrorists and don't have an opinion to contribute." Terrorists are criminals. That report is at Rexano under Commentary and Editorials.

If people would think of themselves as deserving of the company of animals and deserving of the use of animals, swindlers like the HSUS would never be able to gain the power that they have. It makes a huge difference what we think of ourselves. Think well of ourselves and each other and no one is going to be looking for anything from the HSUS. We'll already have it. They offer us a bill of goods and we are the ones who own those goods.

Support Your Local Puppy Mill

There are several good reasons to support puppy mills. Not the least is because "puppy mill" should be an innocent term. The idea of a business that mass-produces good dogs should be a blessed one, one that people sing the praises of. I haven't personally worked in one but I know a few things about industry. One of them is that most people who work in factories or "mills" are goodhearted people who work hard to produce a quality product. I was actually surprised to learn how good.

A real humane society would find owners who were in trouble and without threat of punishment, help them out of that trouble. "It's for the sake of the animals" becomes a pretty bleak statement when you know that puppy mill busts are hugely profitable for humane societies. They use the busts to extort money and puppies and then sell those puppies en masse to the public and beg for donations, right in the middle of articles condemning the people who bred them. For shame. Genuine criminal charges should not be able to be bought off this way, by giving money and dogs to a non-governmental agency. This is a conflict of interest and I don't know how prosecutors and police can stand being a part of it.

It is also an outrage when a so-called humane society re-inspects a kennel that has already been inspected by the state. It strips a compliant owner of their place of safety that should be provided for them by the state inspectors. Time and time again the "puppy mill" accusations have been thrown at people and their businesses have been raided right after a state inspection gave them a clean bill of health. There should be a law that if the state says it's clean, it's clean.

There is always something to pick on about someone's care of their animals. The fact is that there is almost always far more to praise than to pick on. Most puppy mill dogs and pups are found in good physical condition and that says a lot. Most likely it says that those dogs and pups were in a good place. It's real easy to say that someone's facility was covered in feces. Just exaggerate. It's also easy to exaggerate about the smell. Or we could decide that a place with a lot of animals is going to have an animal smell and those who have a clue know that's normal.

All people who own pets, who practice animal husbandry, or who hunt have a common interest and a common cause. We need the animals. Human needs and desires are legitimate. We have to remember that. Hunters need the animals for trophies, fur, and meat. Pet owners need the animals to satisfy the need to nurture and share affection. We all need the animals for food, and the farmer (animal husbandry) produces the animals. Treating an animal as an agricultural product is a good thing because farmers work as hard as anyone to treat their animals humanely regardless of species. The term "puppy mill" should be a badge of honor.

Give the HSUS Nothing

The HSUS has succeeded in costing California farmers billions of dollars for their "Proposition 2" that has the government spending money it can't afford to micromanage farmers and force them to spend money that they can't afford. They are basically repealing the science of mass production of animal products and replacing it with whatever. Who wants a cage-free egg after it's rolled around a concrete floor picking up chicken droppings? How about an infant mortality rate for pork producers that exceeds fifty percent? I guess we're going to have to like them apples, 'cause we ain't going to be able to afford pork chops. Raising the price of our food places the interests of animals ahead of the interests of humans.

They want to bring this crap to Ohio. They want to "negotiate." What is there to negotiate about? Giving up less to the HSUS? They are entitled to less than nothing. They should have to pay massive fines for the damage that they've already done. The only thing that they should be "given" is a massive investigation of its fraudulent charitable collecting, which diverts money from legitimate animal-based charities.

The HSUS went around killing animals in their euthanasia van during the Katrina crisis. They have a convicted terrorist on their payroll. He earned his qualifications both by acting as a publicity agent for the terrorist group Animal Liberation Front and by committing terrorist acts on U.S. soil. This is also a point because such actions make it so that legal businesses, legal businesspeople, legal workers in every animal related field are not safe even when they are in compliance with the law. John Goodwin's employment by the HSUS is a large stinking mess of proof that the HSUS uses people who disrespect our legal rights. I'm glad they hired him.

Is there actually something wrong with pet ownership that makes it so that owners of pets have to mind everyone else's business? It's not something wrong with pet ownership. It's a bad mental habit that people get into. They worry too much about the negatives and blow them out of proportion. Of course that attaches to pet ownership and everything else. It narrows a person's comfort zone to that which she or he can control. Maybe it's narcissistic and maybe narcissism is an inevitable result of casting one's self as the hero who can remove all negatives from life. So what's wrong with taking positives and amplifying on them? The love that a person can have for his dog makes it easy to forgive messes and broken screen doors. A love of humanity makes it easy to forgive someone whose worst crime is caring too much.