The HSUS was set to lose their ballot initiative by a narrow margin. The Farm Bureau, the Livestock Care Standards Board, and Governor Ted Strickland had to act quickly to snatch defeat from the slavering jaws of victory on behalf of farmers. They handed the HSUS an unearned victory and now the Farm Bureau is trying to explain it away.
The governor plans to ask or order the Ohio Department of Agriculture to set fees for licensing exotic animal possession. The public is apparently not going to be asked for its input on this in any meaningful way. Licensing fees can make it impossible for a pet owner to own a pet if the state decides to raise those fees too high. This is one of the things that exotic animal owners have been fighting in the legislatures. This is an end run around the legislature. It could be very costly to set this one right. This is way too much of a victory for the carpetbaggers from the HSUS.
These people do not own Ohio or its citizens. They have no right to turn the citizens or their pets over to the control of any pressure group. The pressure that the group exerts is just one of several good reasons not to do it. The HSUS's ideas are not just wrong enough that they have to be forced on people. They are designed to be forced on people. They are designed to persuade those who have a little bit of power to jerk other people around.
If this had been such a good idea, and their best explanations for it are that they were trying a squirrely maneuver, it could have been an open meeting, something that Wayne Pacelle hates. The HSUS has been in more than one secret meeting with California legislatures that violated California law. I've got some news for the Ohio Farm Bureau, too. God will not strike them dead with a bolt of lightning if they do the research and find out what kind of criminal organization the HSUS is, then disseminate the information. I don't think that I've ever seen any evidence that the agricultural "authorities" in Ohio have ever had a bad word to say about the HSUS, which they could if they just looked around the net. They're afraid to try to change the "political climate" that they do so much handwringing about. Had they done the research would they have refused to sit down with the HSUS? I would like to think so.
The Ohio Farm Bureau either didn't bother to take one hour to research the HSUS or they just like it. I'm voting for the "they just like it" because they held a secret meeting and announced the results afterwards. This is the only thing that they could have done to ensure an HSUS victory of some kind in Ohio. They threw exotic animal owners under the bus. This to "protect the viability of Ohio agriculture? What about researching and getting the dirt on the HSUS and using that to protect the viability of Ohio agriculture? What about having the balls to stand up to the HSUS and announce to Ohio that they are going to protect the citizens of Ohio and Ohio agriculture from these fiends?
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
How Do We See Ourselves?
If you judge humanity by its worst people, you see a mostly bad people. If you judge humanity by its best, you see mostly good people. There is a lot of overlap.
We've had two atrocity stories in the last week. In one a man forced his dog to die of starvation and thirst in the heat just a few feet away from water and food. I'm having trouble even believing this. It sounds like a hoax. Photographs can be hoaxed. In the other a man and a friend of his, probably drunk, shot a dog six times for "not settling down." How about pushing all of an animal lover's emotional buttons in one week? There's also the guy who got put away for a parole violation for associating with people who have sex with animals, and as we all know, as we've all been told a thousand times so that we cannot forget, sex between a human and an animal is a lot worse than killing the animal in a hotbox or shooting it six times, so the horror of this heatwave week has been capped off nicely.
I guess that we're supposed to judge an animal activist charity by its best people but the rest of humanity by the worst. If we blind ourselves to the misconduct of a charity to the point that we can't see it when they do wrong, and if we sensitize ourselves to what ordinary human beings do wrong to the point that we can't see the ones who do right, then we have a huge problem.
This is really convenient for the charity. If you put anyone anywhere who has any human decency on the payroll of, for example, the HSUS, and you occasionally hear that this human did something decent, they're golden, aren't they? We become subservient to them. Then we are all rotten little pieces of dirt who are lucky to occasionally be sprinkled with gold by the golden ones (sometimes we get showered with gold, just often enough to make it believable), and we regularly buy indulgences from people whose best qualifications for their jobs include a rotten attitude towards life and humanity, no conscience, no real compassion for humans or animals, and a lot of greed. Check out Martha Stout's "The Sociopath Next Door" for the type.
What does the HSUS tell us about the horrors that they hire, like John Goodwin who teaches college-age people to burn down their own society? Don't judge the HSUS by what Goodwin "used to do" and don't judge Goodwin by what Goodwin "used to do." Judge an ordinary human harshly and forever by something that he did when he was a teenager, or something that he thought of doing when he was a teenager, or something that someone said he did, or something that someone else did that he has no control over. It's all good. It's all profit.
One way to look at a "hoarder" is to understand that he or she has given up their life for the animals, which is exactly what animal activists want us to do. The persecution of hoarders is like the persecution of people who are overly pious and actually want to live a Christian lifestyle. We see both all the time. Even more, it's simply because the so-called hoarder really does care about the animals and keeps them going because the hoarder does what life does. He or she is a real part of the living world. The people who persecute them are something else.
Do we judge ourselves by the worst or the best? At work do I judge myself by the work that I had to leave behind for lack of time or by the way that I straightened things out and made an extra effort for the customers? Did I leave a mess for someone else to clean up or did I clean up more than half of the daily mess? At home do I judge myself for not putting away the dishes or do I judge myself for making sure that all the humans and animals were properly fed and for fixing the bathroom sink?
In the game of life the worst mistake is to let an adversary tally your score. Keep your own score. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Stop taking the blame for others and start giving yourself credit for the good that you do.
We've had two atrocity stories in the last week. In one a man forced his dog to die of starvation and thirst in the heat just a few feet away from water and food. I'm having trouble even believing this. It sounds like a hoax. Photographs can be hoaxed. In the other a man and a friend of his, probably drunk, shot a dog six times for "not settling down." How about pushing all of an animal lover's emotional buttons in one week? There's also the guy who got put away for a parole violation for associating with people who have sex with animals, and as we all know, as we've all been told a thousand times so that we cannot forget, sex between a human and an animal is a lot worse than killing the animal in a hotbox or shooting it six times, so the horror of this heatwave week has been capped off nicely.
I guess that we're supposed to judge an animal activist charity by its best people but the rest of humanity by the worst. If we blind ourselves to the misconduct of a charity to the point that we can't see it when they do wrong, and if we sensitize ourselves to what ordinary human beings do wrong to the point that we can't see the ones who do right, then we have a huge problem.
This is really convenient for the charity. If you put anyone anywhere who has any human decency on the payroll of, for example, the HSUS, and you occasionally hear that this human did something decent, they're golden, aren't they? We become subservient to them. Then we are all rotten little pieces of dirt who are lucky to occasionally be sprinkled with gold by the golden ones (sometimes we get showered with gold, just often enough to make it believable), and we regularly buy indulgences from people whose best qualifications for their jobs include a rotten attitude towards life and humanity, no conscience, no real compassion for humans or animals, and a lot of greed. Check out Martha Stout's "The Sociopath Next Door" for the type.
What does the HSUS tell us about the horrors that they hire, like John Goodwin who teaches college-age people to burn down their own society? Don't judge the HSUS by what Goodwin "used to do" and don't judge Goodwin by what Goodwin "used to do." Judge an ordinary human harshly and forever by something that he did when he was a teenager, or something that he thought of doing when he was a teenager, or something that someone said he did, or something that someone else did that he has no control over. It's all good. It's all profit.
One way to look at a "hoarder" is to understand that he or she has given up their life for the animals, which is exactly what animal activists want us to do. The persecution of hoarders is like the persecution of people who are overly pious and actually want to live a Christian lifestyle. We see both all the time. Even more, it's simply because the so-called hoarder really does care about the animals and keeps them going because the hoarder does what life does. He or she is a real part of the living world. The people who persecute them are something else.
Do we judge ourselves by the worst or the best? At work do I judge myself by the work that I had to leave behind for lack of time or by the way that I straightened things out and made an extra effort for the customers? Did I leave a mess for someone else to clean up or did I clean up more than half of the daily mess? At home do I judge myself for not putting away the dishes or do I judge myself for making sure that all the humans and animals were properly fed and for fixing the bathroom sink?
In the game of life the worst mistake is to let an adversary tally your score. Keep your own score. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Stop taking the blame for others and start giving yourself credit for the good that you do.
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Argument Least Likely to Win
It seems like the argument that "we want our animals" is the least likely to win. There are few of us who are completely free of just a little bit of shame and guilt, just enough to believe that this argument is dead.
Maybe this is actually the best argument to use. If we argue that the HSUS or Humane Society doesn't have the facilities, that implies that it's OK if they have the facilities to take our animals to, or if they round up a volunteer and make temporary facilities. At those facilities a lot of animals have died and gotten pregnant, too.
The argument that we want our animals seems like a weak link. Don't they say to break a chain at its weakest link?
The entire substance of that link is the desire to own and use animals. It is a link in the chain whether we want to admit that to ourselves or not. It breaks first. It needs the most reinforcement. All of the reasons why we might want to run away from it are the reasons why we must cling to it. It's the first thing that they attack. We are as strong as our weakest link and we have only one option in regards to that link. It can't be replaced. It has to be made strong.
Maybe this is actually the best argument to use. If we argue that the HSUS or Humane Society doesn't have the facilities, that implies that it's OK if they have the facilities to take our animals to, or if they round up a volunteer and make temporary facilities. At those facilities a lot of animals have died and gotten pregnant, too.
The argument that we want our animals seems like a weak link. Don't they say to break a chain at its weakest link?
The entire substance of that link is the desire to own and use animals. It is a link in the chain whether we want to admit that to ourselves or not. It breaks first. It needs the most reinforcement. All of the reasons why we might want to run away from it are the reasons why we must cling to it. It's the first thing that they attack. We are as strong as our weakest link and we have only one option in regards to that link. It can't be replaced. It has to be made strong.
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