Thank you VERY much!
BUMP!
Posted on 01/30/2007 7:10:41 PM PST by neverdem
Many people may consider the Humane Society of the United States a pussycat. But with 10 million donors and a $120 million budget, it is becoming a tiger among Washington's interest groups.
Just ask Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.). Actually, make that former governor and then-representative. The Humane Society targeted both in last year's elections after Ehrlich supported bear hunting and Pombo supported commercial whaling and trapping in wildlife refuges.
The society also spent lavishly to help pass an initiative in Arizona, fought by agribusiness, that bans inhumane factory farming. And it bested the National Rifle Association on a measure that prohibits the shooting of mourning doves for sport in Michigan.
"They are a worthy opponent," said Andrew Arulanandam of the NRA. "They certainly have a lot of backers with deep pockets."
"They keep us on our toes," agreed Kelli Ludlum of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We need all of our members to counter their growing effectiveness."
The society's newfound prowess was engineered by its 41-year-old president, Wayne Pacelle. The smooth-talking Pacelle (who travels so often that he doesn't own a pet) was the group's top lobbyist before taking over 2 1/2 years ago. He quickly consolidated his power base by merging with two other animal-protection organizations -- the Fund for Animals and the Doris Day Animal League. He also formed a political affiliate, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which spent $500,000 on key races in last year's elections, and established his own political action committee called Humane USA, which funneled an additional $300,000 to pro-animal candidates.
"The organization has committed itself to political activity as never before in its 52-year history," Pacelle said. In addition to collecting the scalps of opponents on Election Day, the society can claim at least...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
EXCERPT:
Other animal rights groups have elected a devious approach – a secret battle. They disguise their goals and methods by disavowing the methods of the militant animal rights movement. Instead of ‘animal rights,’ they call their curriculum ‘humane and environmental education.’ They avoid the term ‘animal rights’ but teach the same value system. Most educators are unaware of this deception. Teachers welcome humane education as a means to prevent violent behavior in some students and environmental curriculum as a means to develop a sensitivity to the environment. More than 20,000 teachers nationwide have bought into this program.
Have their school efforts been successful? Several different student polls have shown steady gains for the acceptance of the animal rights philosophy. The most alarming of these was a 1993 national Gallop poll which demonstrated that 60 percent of American teenagers “support animal rights,” including bans on all laboratory and medical tests that use animals. How have they been able to produce such a striking change in attitude?
The Humane Society of the US with its 1.5 million members calls itself the nation’s largest animal protection organization. Few people know that the HSUS animal protection philosophy is not animal welfare but an animal rights philosophy that says it is morally wrong for humans to use or kill animals and that they have been guided by that philosophy since 1980.2
Furthermore, HSUS has set as its goal the abolition of animals in laboratory research and education.3,4,5 In recent years, HSUS elected to call themselves ‘animal protectionists’ to disassociate their group from the bad press that the Animal Liberation Front and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have brought to the animal rights movement. HSUS shares the same animal rights philosophy and goal of abolishing the use of animals in laboratory research as militant animal rights groups, but they differ in tactics and timetable for reaching that goal. Their tactic is to slowly but progressively wean society away from using animals.
In order to avoid the extremist label HSUS has deliberately sought to project a ‘moderate’ image and hide the animal rights message under animal protectionism and the guise of humane and environmental education. Many of the HSUS projects are laudable and could be described as animal welfare. They work very hard to keep that image. Corporate donations and the respect of the education community are dependant on that image. However, their hidden agenda is to get people to give animals the same respect they give humans. What better method to accomplish a change in societal values than by incorporating it into a nationwide elementary school curriculum on humane and environmental education?
Is HSUS a Trojan Horse being covertly carried into the citadel of elementary education?6
HSUS has endeavored to establish itself as The Authority in humane and environmental education. Indeed, the organization has won several awards for KIND News; has had the Adopt-a-Teacher program placed in the 1992 Environmental Success Index; and had a field representatives appointed to the prestigious National Environmental Education Advisory Council of the Environmental Protection Agency.
To help establish this reputation, HSUS created the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education, a separate youth education division. NAHEE had a 1992 budget of $940,000 and 14 full-time staff , an increase of 31 percent over the 1991 budget. The goals for NAHEE were articulated in the 1992 HSUS annual report: “ ... NAHEE strives to ensure that humane attitudes become a viable part of mainstream education and environmental perspectives. ... NAHEE continues to monitor and evaluate new children’s books, children’s magazines, and newspapers as well as all major elementary and secondary teaching magazines and newspapers to encourage the promotion of humane values in publications other than our own.”7
Indeed, NAHEE has been successful in influencing other publications as evidenced by a series of three grossly misleading articles biased against using animals in medical research which appeared in the nine-million circulation Weekly Reader and its companion for middle schools Current Science.6 NAHEE’s influence even extends beyond the USA as they have sent their educational materials to 13 foreign countries.
It is clear that HSUS has been acknowledged as The Authority and is being warmly welcomed through the educational gates of Troy by unsuspecting teachers and administrators who thought they weregetting ‘humane and environmental education’ but ended up with those elements mixed with a subtle animal rights message that says it is wrong for humans to kill, capture, or use animals for any reason. It is a message that elevates respect for animals to the same plane as respect for humans. This is a brilliant tactic as respect and consideration for animals is a hallmark of animal welfare. HSUS has reduced the difference between animal rights and animal welfare to the degree of respect and consideration given animals, thus blurring the difference between the two.
NAHEE’s primary effort is directed at publishing and distributing a classroom newspaper covering laudable humane and environmental themes laced with a heavy dose of respect for animals, endangered species, and an emphasis on not harming animals.
Kids In Nature’s Defense (KIND News) is published at three reading levels for children in grades one through six and is read by more than 600,000 children in 20,000 classrooms nationwide. KIND News does not cover controversial animal rights issues. However, the accompanying teachers’ guide (KIND Teacher) brings up animal rights issues without identifying them as such. KIND Teacher indoctrinates children by having the teacher lead discussions on the use of animals in dissection, the use of wild animals in laboratory research, the use of animals in product safety testing, the keeping of wild animals in zoos and circuses, the capture and sale of wild birds, hunting, trapping, and rodeos.8 KIND Teacher also promotes the students to form KIND Clubs and engage in club projects. The nature of the project and the agenda is determined by the club and club president. Given the HSUS emotional and strongly–held position on these issues, can we expect a balanced presentation?
The HSUS Student Action Guide, NAHEE’s newspaper for middle and secondary students, is more direct as it openly seeks to promote activism by forming Earth-Animal Protection Clubs. These clubs target a number of animal rights issues, including laboratory animal research, product safety testing, dissection, animals in science fairs, zoos, animals in entertainment, hunting, trapping, and dolphin-safe tuna. The students are referred to HSUS to obtain specific misleading materials on these issues as well as animal research and so-called alternatives to animal research.
More at link
Pombo was enemy number one to the enviros and they did get there man
The "Humane Society" of Bozeman, MT, run by a former Ted Turner associate....has recently STOLEN property from an acquaintance of ours......brazenly just started development ON LAND THEY DO NOT OWN.....they're not making themselves very well liked in that little town these days.
bttt!
Thank you VERY much!
BUMP!
Just ordered it. Beautiful pictures on your site too.
pinging you on our favorite subject!
You're right, but I think it should be specified that the Humane Society of the United States is not the same as your local humane society. They've long been recognized as the at-least-semi-radical group that they are.
I caution the multitude of animal lovers here (myself among them) that the local "humane society" that cares for the less fortunate animals in your neighborhood is not associated with the HSUS. I say this because your local branch probably needs money for supplies to take care of the animals while the HSUS (a "humane society" in name only) needs no money as they're very well stocked and only exist to push a radical agenda.
I came close to posting that article today, but had other things to do.
A lot of freepers are on to PETA, but the HSUS is 10 times more dangerous and much more well financed. A lot of freepers still think the HSUS is an "animal protection" organization. I keep preaching about this, but most people don't want to know the truth.
It's way past time for an investigation into the HSUS. They have some big supporters, but are not untouchable.
BTW, as part of my job, I researched Tennessee bills yesterday and the HSUS has tentacles in every state legislature.
Thanks for the ping, keep pinging me, please.
URL: http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion/article/0,1375,VCS_125_5300365,00.html
Animal cruelty laws making major gains
By Wayne Pacelle
January 24, 2007
The Democrats have now taken control of Congress because, as President Bush memorably put it, Republicans took a "thumpin'" in the fall elections. But that wasn't the only "thumpin'" that occurred in November.
In congressional contests and statewide ballot campaigns, the 2006 election brought decisive victories for the cause of animal protection — and left the callous to lick their own wounds for a change.
In Arizona, despite the best efforts of the National Pork Producers Council and other agribusiness interests, 62 percent of voters approved a measure to ban inhumane factory farming practices. In Michigan, meanwhile, the National Rifle Association puffed up its chest to promote a referendum to allow shooting of mourning doves for sport. Sixty-nine percent of voters answered with a firm "no," routing the NRA in one of its own supposed strongholds.
Throw in the defeat of two longtime opponents of animal welfare — California's Richard Pombo, the chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana — and you have the markers of a reform movement on the rise. To borrow an image from our opponents, they make mighty impressive trophies on the wall.
Focused historically on direct care of animals in need, the animal protection movement has amped up its political engagement in recent years. State lawmakers in 2006 passed nearly 70 laws to improve the welfare of animals, inspired in large part by the Humane Society of the United States with its nearly 10 million members and constituents and an annual budget of $120 million.
Add to that some 6,000 other animal welfare groups, including a few others with large operations and multimillion- dollar budgets, and the growing influence of the cause becomes even more apparent.
As I pointed out once in a friendly exchange with political strategist Karl Rove, the HSUS alone has about 20,000 members and constituents in every congressional district. That's more even than the NRA, and the convictions of animal advocates run deep.
Rove didn't seem quite convinced. But when a traditionally conservative state like Arizona votes to prohibit the cruelty of mass confinement hog farming, and a "sportsmen's" state like Michigan votes overwhelmingly (and in all 83 counties) to impose a ban on shooting doves, maybe he and other political operatives will take note.
Ballot issues are perhaps the best measure of the appeal of any cause because they focus the debate and call for a straight up-or-down vote on a given matter. And in the last decade, when animal-protection issues have been put to voters, the people of this country have consistently taken the side of reform — passing 19 statewide measures in recent years to outlaw such abhorrent practices as cockfighting, bear baiting, hound hunting, horse slaughter, aerial hunting of wolves, use of steel-jawed leghold traps and confinement of animals in crates on factory farms.
Few other causes have a record of such success. Despite the enormous financial advantages of animal-use industries and their trade groups, they don't seem to welcome open debate and direct democracy. They do best in the clubby comfort zones of backrooms and big-time lobby firms.
Arizona illustrates the dangers for these industries when their practices are brought into full view. There HSUS championed a measure banning the merciless confinement of veal calves and pigs in cages so small that the creatures cannot even turn around. Factory farm interests across America made the defeat of this reform their highest priority, holding nothing back.
Yet, for all the industry's money, all its propaganda, and, in the final weeks, all its disreputable tactics, in the end, it came down to a simple question of humanity. The great majority of Arizonans saw factory farming for the cruel and dishonorable thing it is, and voted for a better way.
Opposition to animal cruelty is, after all, a universal value, and the goal of animal advocates is to hold this compassionate country to its own professed standards. And in so many cases, it couldn't be an easier call.
In the coming congressional session, we will urge lawmakers to make staged animal fighting a federal felony; to outlaw the slaughter of 100,000 healthy American horses as delicacies for foreign restaurants; to crack down the abuse of dogs in puppy mills; and to ban the trade in primates and other exotic animals for the pet trade, among other reforms.
All of these initiatives are aimed at needless and tawdry industries — what decent person would care to defend them? And who would wish to continue such cruelties except the people who profit by them?
The politics of animal protection are sometimes complex, but the principles are always simple: Cruelty to animals is wrong and inexcusable. When animal suffering can be prevented, the law should not be silent. Kindness to animals makes us better people, and laws protecting animals from cruelty make us a better country. Politicians across American share this conviction, and they can be certain that voters stand ready to support them.
We have always known that the prevention of cruelty is a worthy cause. Now we know that it is a winning cause as well.
— Wayne Pacelle is the president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, the nation's largest animal protection organization.
We are fighting the battles in Virginia, as HSUS tries to insidiously control the ownership of dogs and prevent hunting. They already helped drive Maryland's Bob Ehrlich, a good governor for rural people, out of office, as the article mentions. Do you know anything about Pacelle? He doesn't come across like the usual wild-eyed terrorist, like Ingrid Newkirk and her insane friends, so he does a lot more damage than the PETA idiots.
There's lots of info out there on Pacelle.
Here's some, but there's much more, for someone with time to research it:
Wayne Pacelle
Biography
In 2004 Wayne Pacelle was named president of the world’s richest animal-rights organization, the Humane Society of the United States. Pacelle, a strict vegan, joined HSUS in 1994 after working at the anti-hunting group the Fund for Animals for six years.
There he helped Paul Watson and his violent Sea Shepherd Conservation Society raise money for ships, and assisted Alex Pacheco and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as they ran an undercover investigation of a primate research lab.
Pacelle’s goal is to create “a National Rifle Association of the animal rights movement.” He is in charge of HSUS’s many ballot initiative campaigns, winning 17 of the 22 in which he has been involved. His biggest win was in Florida, where an initiative passed that gave constitutional rights to pregnant pigs.
Florida farmers were banned from using “gestation crates.” Many farmers killed their animals as a result and the pork industry in Florida is almost extinct. He plans campaigns against gestation crates in other states, and is already organizing in California and New Jersey.
At the 1996 HSUS annual meeting, Pacelle announced that the ballot initiative would be used for all manner of legislation in the future, including “companion animal issues and laboratory animal issues.” These operations, he says, “pay dividends and serve as a training ground for activists.” Pacelle’s wife, Kirsten Rosenberg, works for Ark Trust, now the HSUS Hollywood office.
Background
President, Humane Society of the United States; former Executive Dir. & National Dir., the Fund For Animals; former president, Animal Rights Alliance; former chairman, Animal Rights Network Inc.; former editor, The Animals’ Agenda magazine
Associated Organizations and Foundations
Thanks for the link.
I wonder where they stand on the Human issue of abortion/infanticide?
ALEX PACHECO
For Alex Pacheco, co-founder and chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a single horrifying event provided the impetus to become an activist.
"Once, on a college break, I visited a slaughterhouse where my friend was working. Among other horrors, I saw workers slit a live sow's belly open, pull out her unborn piglets and play catch with them. It turned my stomach and turned me vegetarian," wrote Pacheco in a PETA newsletter.
After that incident, the theological student abandoned dreams of the priesthood and has since pursued the protection of animals with religious devotion.
He launched his career as an activist with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a non-governmental watchdog group. Its members ride the ocean on a renovated fishing boat called the Sea Shepherd, tracking whale, seal and fishing operations to monitor their compliance with international and domestic laws.
Pacheco was a member of the Sea Shepherd crew during its encounter with the Sierra, an outlaw whaling ship that may have killed up to 25,000 whales between 1968 and 1979, according to Society estimates. In 1979, the Sea Shepherd caught up with the Sierra off of the coast of Portugal. With its concrete-reinforced bow, the Sea Shepherd charged the Sierra, colliding with it three times. Pacheco was later named "Crew Member of the Year" for his efforts during that expedition.
His breakthrough occurred two years later with the first successful prosecution in the United States of a scientist on charges of cruelty to animals. Posing as an assistant in the Silver Springs laboratory of Maryland researcher Edward Taub, Pacheco documented the substandard treatment of several monkeys.
His report painted a picture of rodents and cockroaches running freely through the laboratory as sick monkeys languished in their cages. Taub had paralyzed one of the arms of half of the monkeys in order to test their responses to cigarette lighter burns and other stimuli.
His role in Taub's conviction launched Pacheco into a high-profile position that benefited PETA, the then-fledgling organization that he launched in 1980 with activist Ingrid Newkirk.
Nineteen years later, PETA has grown into the largest animal rights organization in the United States, with more than half a million members. Pacheco is credited with successfully courting celebrities to join the fight against PETA's targets: factory farms, laboratories, the fur trade and the entertainment industry. Indeed, it was largely through PETA's efforts that fur popularity declined in the early 1990s.
PETA's critics range from mocking to deadly serious. There is the web site entitled "People Eating Tasty Animals". There are also the threats against Pacheco's life.
Even an article in the liberal magazine Utne Reader criticizes PETA's stance on fur. "It's not hard to see that the attacks on fur-wearing females (as opposed to leather-wearing men) play simultaneously on cheap populism and cheaper sexism. You can scream at women in mink coats emerging from ritzy department stores and be fairly certain they're not going to physically retaliate...It would be more interesting to watch zoophiles gathered in front of a biker bar, hollering slogans at the leather-sporting clientele as they swagger up to their Harleys. But we're not likely to see that anytime soon, are we?" wrote Richard Ryan.
Through all of the criticism, Pacheco has remained constant in his dedication to promoting the humane treatment of animals. "Every action you take, every letter you write, every time you speak up for animals, it gives them another chance to live in peace," wrote Pacheco in a PETA newsletter. "Please never miss an opportunity to make a difference."
i recall reading a few years ago about how the humane society board was taken over a leftist and they put a full blown socialist in charge. i have never given them a penny again.
HSUS update
And what are the people doing about it? Not liking these punks won't cut it.
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