Categories
Critters

HSUS, Best Friends, and ASPCA next actions

Wayne Pacelle responded to the recent events with SB 161. Evidently the plan of the HSUS, Best Friends Society, and ASPCA is to focus on the Constitutional Amendment that protects citizen initiatives. The organizations also plan to monitor whether there is improvement for dogs in the puppy mills in Missouri. If there is no real improvement, the organizations plan to respond with another citizen initiative, but this time, one hopefully protected from legislative mucking about.

This confirms that there won’t be a move to bring about a referendum to veto SB 161. Disappointing but understandable. With the burn out and apathy I’m seeing demonstrated by various pundits, it may be difficult to bring about a referendum, especially with the actions of HSMO and MAAL.

This is not a happy state, though, either for dogs or voters. I genuinely believe that the lives for dogs in large scale commercial breeding operations will not improve with SB 161, regardless of extra money given to the Department of Agriculture. Even before SB 161 was signed by the Governor, the Department of Agriculture was making noise that the real problem in Missouri is the unlicensed breeders. We know differently, but this just demonstrates that business will proceed as usual in the Department. I don’t expect to see an improvement in transparency, nor do I expect to see an improvement in application of the now weakened regulations.

Additionally, no matter how Governor Nixon and the representatives tried to spin it, SB 161 does not reflect the will of the people. The people’s vote was trodden in the political mechanization that resulted in SB 161.

Categories
People

Apathy

Posted on Facebook…

bedraggled kitten on sidewalk with image of human walking away from it behind

The quote in the poster is from Helen Keller:

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

Categories
Critters Legal, Laws, and Regs Voting

This fight is not over

I see that Missouri Farmers Care has moved on from fighting for the puppy mills and is now fighting for genetically modified foods. I expect next we’ll see an article about the healthful benefits of CAFO manure lagoons.

Governor Nixon signed SB 161. That’s all that’s happened. He signed a bill that gutted Proposition B. Oh, a few token provisions have been left, but you and I know that the breeders will find their way around these new provisions. I do not expect to see much change in the large scale commercial dog breeding operations in this state.

I remember, either from an article or during the House or Senate debates, someone asking one of the SB 113/SB 161 folks, “Were the breeders asked about the new SB 161 provisions, and if so, were they happy with them? Did they agree with them?” How very nice for agribusiness in Missouri that they have the final say on regulations impacting on them. Most businesses just have to accept what comes their way, but not agribusiness. Not in Missouri.

Regardless of the hypocrisy, and the total disregard for the voters—not to mention Nixon’s patronizing attitude about what we voters “meant” and how SB 161 is “good enough”—this fight is not over.

I imagine there might be legal challenges to the new law, especially the emergency provision. We also know there’s at least one ballot item being put forward for 2012 that will prevent such arrogant brushing aside of the voters wishes in the future. In the meantime, though, I am following my plan on exposing large scale commercial breeders to the world.

The breeders will never know if that person who contacts them about the puppies they’re selling online is a genuine buyer, or someone checking to see what excuse they give for not allowing the potential buyer to visit.

The FTC and the Missouri Attorney General work to protect consumers from deliberate misrepresentation and fraud. That cute little web site that states the breeder is a small family breeder with only a few dogs, better have exactly that, or they will find themselves at the end of an FTC and/or Missouri Attorney General complaint.

Starting the day after Proposition B would have gone into effect, every bad breeder that should be closed down, and would have been closed down under Proposition B’s more stringent guidelines will be exposed to the world—along with the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s laxity in enforcing true standards. With each publication, the names of the representatives, and Governor Nixon’s, will be included in the coverage—as a reminder of what they have enabled.

I also plan on spending a lot of time among the boxes of inspection records at the Department of Agriculture in Jefferson City. We’ll see exactly what that 1.1 million of extra money designated by Nixon buys us. It better buy us a lot, and not just fluff pieces on web sites.

I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to say, “Oh, well, we tried. Buck up, poochies”. This isn’t the end of the fight, it is only the beginning.

Categories
Places Political

Poor, Black, and Ugly

Missouri’s Governor Nixon asked the Missouri Attorney General to file suit in court to block the Army Corps of Engineers from blowing up the Birds Point Levee.

Blowing the levee will flood farmland and about 100 homes in Missouri, but not blowing the levee could very well endanger the entire town of Cairo, Illinois. A few years back, I wrote about Cairo, Illinois the town that pulls you in, as it pushes you away.

When Time covered Cairo, Illinois last year it described the town as poor, black, and ugly. It is, indeed, very poor and predominately black, but I cannot find it ugly. Or if I do, it’s an ugliness that reflects the south and our history and the civil rights fight and all that is both good and bad about this part of the country.

I guess the best description I have of Cairo is that it is a very real town.

Of course, none of this matters to the Missouri governor who wants to protect the farmland of Missourians. Missourians who happened to know they were building farms on lands designated as spillway, and that there was a potential for the Corps to breach the levee if flood proportions matched that of the 1937 floods. Well, we’re about to pass the levels of the 1937 floods.

But then again, who wants to save a town that’s poor, black, and ugly?

Categories
Documents Legal, Laws, and Regs

The money game

One of the problems I kept running into when preparing stories for this site is the fact that Missouri’s Department of Agriculture seems to have abysmal data systems. Every Sunshine Law request, no matter how small, exceeded whatever amount of money I had set as a cap for the request.

Now it would seem the same problem occurs elsewhere in state government. When asked about Lt. Governor Kinder’s calendar, journalists were first told the entries were not available. Later, though, it was discovered that the entries were available, but the cost would be well over several thousand dollars in order to get the information.

I had turned in a Sunshine Law violation complaint to the Attorney General’s office and was told by the person who responded that my main concern seemed to be not that the information wasn’t available, but that the cost was too high. According to the AG office rep, high cost to access the information does not form a Sunshine Law violation. However, when the price tag is invariably high—too high for the average person—cost does form a barrier against transparency.

Either Missouri has the worst data systems in the country—in which case there’s another first we can’t take pride in—or cost is being used as a barrier to information.