Disappointment in Ohio

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?