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Nationwide Call Day on Monday-- HR2811

Kathy. I had no idea HSUS had made so many emotionally based/biased statements in writing (writing is "words that stay"). So educating persons about the HSUS is important. Personally, I've never seen an advertisement on tv for our local humane society, but have seen hsus spots on tv, asking persons to neuter/spay, adopt...if it wasn't for those awareness campaigns, then a lot more animals would have been thrown away over the years. They don't give money to local humane societies, but I never read in their mission report where that was part of their mission. It's going to be a tricky to keep it to one fight at a time. try this from another perspective

if I am joe schmoe, who has fuzzy warm hearted feelings for humane societys in general, and someone who is concerned about losing their python business comes on strong at me about the bad hsus, chances are they'll alienate me before they can ever get around to saying a word about pythons.
Most people I've run across in mainstream tend to 'shut down and not absorb any information' when they're told something bad about anything/anyone they have feelings for/about. Post 39 has some straight forward information about HSUS, relevant to the fight at hand, politely delivered. It does not bring up past baggage, nor does it slam HSUS particuliarly hard. It is a considerate, well word-smithed press release.

Kind of ironic the parent organization of HSUS, AHA, was responsible for child labor laws, amongst other things, such as "be kind to animals week".

Thanks for the rant, it fell on open ears. From what I'm interpreting here, HSUS has never done a single thing that was of any meritous value. dp
 
Sorry, I was a little unclear.

I agree that we don't want our fight with HSUS to target THE GENERAL PUBLIC. At least, not at the same time we try to deliver pro - reptile arguments. They should be two separate battles, because, as you say, we don't want to confuse or alienate those who could become allies, or at least, become less hostile towards us. The crowd that I REALLY aim my anti - HSUS (and anti PETA, anti Defenders of Wildlife, etc.) towards are the reptile keepers and any other exotic animal keepers. Those are the people presently targeted by these organizations, and who already believe in our rights to keep our pets.

I don't believe that HSUS has done NO good as far as helping dogs and cats. I just think they have done more harm than good. From my research, I believe that prior to the early or mid '70s, they were more closely allied to local shelters, and helped them. When Bill and I did some research several years ago for our article on them (http://cornutopia.com/Corn Utopia on the Web/- LURKING ENEMY Cornutopia corn snakes cornsnakes.htm), this is what we found:

"...The HSUS got fat and prosperous capitalizing on our concern for the plight of homeless animals by bombarding us with tear-jerking fundraising campaigns. Its assets naturally attracted humaniac extremist groups like PETA that wished to tap into the war chest of funds. Radical animal rights proponents thoroughly infiltrated the HSUS and instilled their idealistic views as representing the whole organization’s doctrine. Then a subtle ‘coup’ occurred in 1973, warranted by the changing leadership because “the costs of running a local animal control operation [was] drawing off funds needed elsewhere”. (< That quote is from the HSUS’ own website!) They literally declared that supporting the small Humane Society shelters across the U.S. was 'stealing' the money needed to pursue their own new humaniac agendas..."

That info is a few years old now. I have not checked their site to see if the quote is still there. Also, I have not reviewed their ads lately, but I seem to remember that most of their ads for "spay, neuter, adopt" are primarily a plea to send money to HSUS. I could be wrong, because I admit that I am also emotional about them at this point. But at least I ADMIT that, and would admit that they DO some good as a by - product of trying to get more money to run their political agenda.

Their ads for donations probably do some good to encourage adoption, too - I'll give them that. And whatever grants they send for projects at local shelters probably help a little, too. But, skeptic that I am, I believe those grants probably are more to keep local shelters quiet about the fact that they don't get any REAL support from HSUS (as in "keep your mouth shut or you won't be eligible for any grants"), rather than any altruistic motive.

Here I am again, with another long rant! Those people are not good for my stress levels, lol!
 
On a lighter note, I had a patient today from pediatric intensive care, a 22 day old boy. Proudly displaying a plush snake hanging from his incubator!!! Probably the only baby in Florida with THAT right now...
 
I seem to have deleted the new email from USARK- has good news in it! If someone else still has it, please put it up!!
 
Here ya go!

USARK e-mail said:
HR2811 Passes Full Committee

This Just in from the House Judiciary Committee Regarding HR2811 Markup:

The full committee has just considered H.R. 2811.

Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) asked that his statement be placed into the record.

Full Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) mentioned the recent python related death and stated the bill was needed to prevent any further accidents. He announced his support of the bill about to be amended.

Bill Co-Sponsor Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) offered his amendment to narrow the scope of the bill to 2 "real threats" to the restoration of the Everglades. He added the bill was needed because of the still pending petition to add pythons to the Lacey Act... 3 years after being submitted to USFWS by the South Florida Water Management District.

The Rooney Amendment to include only the Burmese and the African Rock Pythons was then passed by voice vote.

The amended bill HR2811 was then passed by voice vote.



As promised by Committee Staff, Rep. Rooney's Staff and Rep. Meek's Staff, HR2811 was amended to limit the scope of the bill to only two snakes. Staff renewed their commitment to work with USARK over the August recess to hammer out language for an amendment prior to a vote on the House Floor allowing the captive bred trade of the affected snakes to continue. USARK is dedicated to making sure all the Burm and Afrock breeders will be able to continue to operate their businesses. We will work hard to preserve your place as a legal business concern within the Reptile Nation Family.

HR2811 had bi-partisan support and flew through the Subcommittee and Full Committee even with hundreds of calls and faxes opposing it. Fortunately, USARK was able to convince Committee Staff and the Sponsors that this Bill would be incredibly damaging to an entire sector of the economy if not amended. To their credit they listened. They had not heard our side of this issue before. It seemed to them a very simple bill. We illustrated our concerns and they understood it was not necessary to destroy the Reptile Industry over this issue. They did not have to listen. The votes were overwhelmingly there to pass HR2811 intact.

USARK would like to thank Congressman Meek and his staff, majority and minority Judiciary Committee Staff, Congressman Rooney and his Staff, Congressman Gohmert and his Staff, and Congressman Scott and his staff for listening to the concerns of the Reptile Nation and for working with us in good faith. We look forward to continuing to work to fine tune this bill through the month of August.

This is a real Victory for the Reptile Nation! This whole situation could easily have led to the end of the Reptile Community. Thanks to the hard work of the Reptile Nation we have turned a bad situation good. Animal Rights organizations can no longer slander us at will. Washington now wants to know where we stand on these issues. We are working hard to make sure they understand the realities behind what we do, not the fairy tales being bandied about as if they are fact. We now have a voice... the voice of the Reptile Nation! You are now being heard loud and clear. Thank you for all the support!

WITHOUT YOU THIS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE!!!

Click here to donate $10 with dollar for dollar matching from Zoo Med

http://usark.org/donate.php

Click here to Join The Reptile Nation with dollar for dollar matching from Zoo Med

http://www.usark.org/join.php
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Robbie, thought everyone should see it if they hadn't. Unfortunately I deleted a bunch of emails from the iPhone, and it deleted them from my gmail as well. Never noticed it synced like that before...
 
kathylove said:
I have looked up a lot of this info over the years, but can't tell you exactly where to find the info - you can research it on the Web for yourself
Click to expand...

kathylove said:
But at least I ADMIT that, and would admit that they DO some good as a by - product of trying to get more money...
Their ads for donations probably do some good to encourage adoption...
And whatever grants they send for projects at local shelters probably help...
Click to expand...


" I'm researching, it may take a few days, Please allow me a 'grace period' before I get back to you on that. Thank you for encouraging me to do my own homework on this.
 
No problem! If you find some SPECIFIC info or quotes that either support them, or damn them, please post your results here. I am open minded enough to give them any due they REALLY deserve - I am just not expecting to find a lot to praise.

One thing that makes research really difficult is that so many sites are run by organizations with agendas of one kind or another. And it can sometimes be difficult to ferret out just how unbiased the info is. Even info from government agencies can be very biased. We just have to see what the competing sides say, and then use our own logic and experience to decide whom we should believe.

Good luck on your search - let us know how it goes!
 
kathylove said:
No problem! If you find some SPECIFIC info or quotes that either support them, or damn them, please post your results here. I am open minded enough to give them any due they REALLY deserve - I am just not expecting to find a lot to praise.

One thing that makes research really difficult is that so many sites are run by organizations with agendas of one kind or another. And it can sometimes be difficult to ferret out just how unbiased the info is. Even info from government agencies can be very biased. We just have to see what the competing sides say, and then use our own logic and experience to decide whom we should believe.

Good luck on your search - let us know how it goes!
Click to expand...



Kathy-
Thanks for the encouragement. I'd read your website's research documentary on the HSUS some 6 months back, before I'd seen you at a reptile show, and felt upset you had no corn/Snakes with you, but then you explained you felt it was too much stress on corn/snakes for You to take them to a show, and stressing animals out is one of the things that HSUS is against- So there you are, doing something that the humane society endorses,...being humane. So banning the species P.m.b. from import to Florida is quite laughable; evidently HSUS isn't familiar with P.m.m., or P.m.pimbura... but they din't hear it from me.


Going into this research project, I had the option to fill my heart with no love nor hate towards the HSUS,
but I don't believe there's too many extant readers amongst us whom doesn't have a regret or two for something we might have said at one time or another during our lives, the only difference between us and the HSUS is there isn't a pappa-rawzy to record everything we say. Folks mess up and the incorrect words come out sometimes, so I'm glad I don't live my life in front of a camera,
Before I go on my hunt of HSUS without an agenda, I feel it important to point out my extraction, because it may contain some relevancy towards "what's to come"

This is my Dad, in 1931, when his Uncle showed/taught him how to drive. The lesson went from Fall River Massachewsits to Wells Beach, Maine. From home to his grandpaws place on the beach. It's not really a beach, it's all pebbles where there should be sand, with the ocassional tourmaline crystal or lobster shell. But I digress. Anyways, on his drive up the coast, he found an Eastern Milk/Snake, and his grandpaw let him keep it, hence it was indoctrinated into the family. It ate chicken necks, which seems to be thing to say of Cornsnakes.com Classic Threads Revisited merit, so there.



Bill_n_MilkSnake_1931.jpg


Dad has never been denied embracing the ecological world around him. throughout his life there've all sorts of creepie crawly things, theres a picture of him somewhere as a 5 year old, sleeping with the head of a swordfish. It fascinated him for awhile, until it went bad. He went off and enlisted and met my mom, who was on her way back also on the Queen Mary, he was returning from a us conflict, my mom had spent the summer in France as her mom was teaching French to speak Spanish. Anyways, they met, she went back to Bennington, and he came by later and they drove to Florida, where they found an Indigo snake on the Tamiami Trail ...so they drove back together and "Floyd" ate many chicken necks along his way through life. Before me and my sibling came along, Mom had developed quite a relationship with Floyd, and was known as the "Snake Woman" in Fall River, Mass...

picture taken 1956

Mom_n_Floyd.jpg


Floyd was a legal household member back in those days. Floyd moved to Florida with the family briefly in 1965, before being donated a New England Aquarium, where he lived to the ripe old age of 38. During his life, Floyd interacted with over 10,000 children during school-group out of the cage meetings. Opinions of and interest in snakes had increased positively, and the region needed Floyd back. Today the aquarium has an Anaconda, and somewhat regrettably sometimes for the staff, there is no direct interaction between the snake and a busload of school kids. Floyd also ate chicken necks for much of his lifetime.
So the hunt for HSUS goes on...
Part two in awhile...
 
Nice trip down memory lane!

A few years ago, I got together all of our old family movies (on the old reels back then!) and still photos that we could find, and had them put together on a DVD. You want to preserve all of that old stuff - can't replace it!

Waiting to hear what you find out about HSUS...
 
That press release ALONE should be enough to leave any reptile keeper....

totally DISGUSTED with HSUS. They say:

"...The sale of exotic pets has caused an ecological and public safety disaster in the United States that will ultimately cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars as local, state and federal governments contend with the costs of containment of exotic species...."

It says "exotic pets", but then the rest of the whole release discusses pythons and anacondas only. The whole "public safety disaster" they mention is backed by what they SAY are 4 deaths from pet pythons since 2006 - I don't remember hearing about the others, and they don't say whether that is worldwide, or just the U.S., so it means nothing. How many other popular hobbies or industries could claim only 4 deaths worldwide in almost 4 years, even if it IS true and not a manufactured "fact"?

And the "ecological disaster" they are saying (at first) comes from "exotic pets", but the rest of the article tries to make you believe it comes from pythons. Not only I am unaware of any python becoming established in the wild, other than the Burmese which is about to become banned as an import, but even then, nobody has established exactly WHAT ecological damage they have caused. Yes, they will certainly eat some endangered animals. But they will also eat the artificially abundant raccoons (that do very well in disturbed areas), and the raccoons are REALLY decimating endangered birds and reptiles. If HSUS TRULY wanted a scientific, instead of emotional, perspective, they would study how many endangered species the pythons are eating, vs. how many raccoons and other over abundant predators they are eating. THEN they would compare those numbers to the numbers eaten by feral cats and pigs, and compare them all to each other. ONLY THEN would you have a true idea of the RELATIVE damage caused by the pythons, compared to other animals that HSUS and the government don't seem concerned about. But they obviously have no interest in cold, hard, facts. The whole release is nothing but emotional propaganda, disguised as factual.

Groups like HSUS, PETA, and Defenders of Wildlife, etc, are very divisive because of their extreme views. There was a time when I supported conservation associations such the Conservancy. But because the more extreme organizations supported trash like HR 669, which sought to totally destroy our hobby / industry, and they managed to get more admirable groups such as the Conservancy, to rally behind them in that legislation, I now have a more jaundiced eye towards ALL conservation societies, viewing them ALL as the potential enemy. If you take a look at the old threads (maybe even at the beginning of this thread) about HR 669, you will find SOMEWHERE a list of organizations that supported it. Almost all conservation groups did, unfortunately. So it has now come to the point of survival - I personally will not support ANY conservation group UNLESS they have a publicly stated policy of supporting captive breeding of pet reptiles (or any pets, for that matter). If they don't come right out and support us on their website or some other public place, then I have no interest in supporting them. Many shows (including Daytona) have had auctions in the past to support various conservation groups. And I always donated something for their auctions. But my limited resources need to go to US ARK, PIJAC, and if there is anything left, to conservation groups which are willing to support US. And I will speak out against those who have declared themselves our enemies whenever I can, convincing others to withhold funds from them whenever possible. It is the least I can do to help in our own survival.
 
Here are a few other hobbies.

Sky Diving:
WikiAnswers said:
In 2006, 21 deaths in the USA - out of 2.1 MILLION reported skydives. (Not all skydives are tracked, but every fatality is...)


In 2005 there were 27 deaths, and 2.1 million reported skydives.
Click to expand...

Monster Truck Rallys:

http://www.momlogic.com/2009/01/are_monster_truck_rallies_safe.php

Horseback Riding through the ages...

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-horse-accidents

Myself, I do not see how 12 people in 20 years (a quote given in initial media reports of the 2 year olds death) counts as a public menace. How many of those people were random Joe's walking down the street when out of nowhere a burm attacked them? I am not saying it's okay if a family member is killed, or the keeper, but it is a calculated risk, much the same as owning a firearm, a large dog breed, a horse or an ATV. In addition, actions of the owner can basically reduce the risk to practically nothing....

And also...

You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Kathy Love again.
Click to expand...
 
Dave,

Here is an interesting site from another thread - maybe you already found it? Be sure to read quotes page. And remember that a lot of humaniacs end up on the boards of other similar organizations over time. But you would have to research to find which might have been with the HSUS previously. Other parts of the site are quite interesting, too.

Have fun!

http://www.animalscam.com/quotes.cfm
 
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