Do your part to support terrorism, environmental degradation and economic collapse: leave on a few more lights, pour diesel fuel into a trout stream, and join the Republican Party. || Hat tip to Steve H. for the video link!
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Energy Wasting Day
Two Milion Acres Put into Wilderness Protection
Copper-Salmon Wilderness, Oregon
Yesterday Barack Obama signed into law the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, which will extend permanent protection for 2 million acres of wilderness land while extending further protections to 26 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) territories that will be part of a new National Landscape Conservation System.
Said Obama at the signing of the legislation yesterday:
"This legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments and wilderness areas for granted, but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share. That's something all Americans can support."
Wilderness lands now offered permanent protection include Oregon's Mount Hood and part of Virginia's Jefferson National Forest, along with sites in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Utah and West Virginia.
The new National Landscape Conservation System includes areas of archaeological and cultural significance including Canyons of Ancients National Monument in southwest Colorado, and Agua Fria National Monument in Arizona, Nevada's Black Rock Desert National Conservation Area and California's King Range National Conservation Area.
The Landscape Conservation System will protect critical habitat for fish and wildlife and provides access to world-class hunting and fishing, while offering recreational opporunities for self-guided adventurers.
The legislation signed into law yesterday also authorizes additional funding to protect ecologically valuable coastal areas and estuaries.
To learn more about the new The National Landscape Conservation System, click here.
To see a map of the areas covered, click here (really big PDF).
The Jefferson National Forest, Virginia.
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In Their Own Words
All text taken directly from online Christian fundamentalist forums and read outloud.
This is the kind of stuff Sarah Palin salutes. God bless her.
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Graceful Dance
Graceful Dance is an acrylic
painted on a 6x8 canvas panel.
$98.00. Shipping $5.95.
To purchase contact me at
How to Tame a Lion Poisoner
Link
Over the course of the last 20 years, Africa's lion population has crashed from 200,000 to 30,000, and the numbers continue to drop fast.
One of the big reasons is that an American company -- FMC -- has sold a highly toxic, tasteless pesticide to African countries where herders are using it to indiscriminately wipe out all predators -- lions, cheetahas, leopards, hyenhas, etc.
Though FMC says it no longer sells Furadan (carbofuran) in Kenya, and is now trying to buy up stock that may still be on shelves, FMC has not said it will stop selling the drug in neighboring African countries or around the world.
To be clear, Furadan is such a horrible chemical that in July 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency initiated action to ban the chemical's use in the U.S. as it presented unacceptable dietary risks, especially to children, from consuming food or water with carbofuran residue in it or on it.
Want to help take action?
Send an email to Jim Fitzwater, FMC's corporate flak at james.fitzwater@fmc.com or call him directly at 215.299.6633.
Your message does not have to be long, and it does not help to be rude. It is enough to simply say that you want FMC to stop making this toxic poison, and that you are passing on this notice to 20 of your friends.
Make some heat, and maybe FMC will yet see the light!
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Monday, March 30, 2009
GOP Ideology Has Gutted Our Economy
Back in September, I wrote a piece on this blog entitled Dog Food Economics and the Wall Street Bailout in which I noted that "Back in the Clinton era, I spent eight years ... trying to derail misguided efforts to privatize Social Security.I noted then that the companies that had been pushing for Social Security privatization -- Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs -- were now insolvent and headed to the knackers knife.
How ironic was that?
What I didn't know was that while no one was looking, the right-wing ideologues had moved off of Social Security privatization in order to quietly privatize the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC).
What's the PBGC?
The PBGC is the agency that was created in 1974 to make good on defined benefit pension plan committments when companies go broke.
The PBGC is funded by insurance premiums paid for by defined benefit pension plan sponsors, by the assets of pension plans that have been taken over, and by investment income; no money comes from general tax revenue.
Only one thing: the PBGC does not actually pay out all of the money the bankrupted companies once promised. Instead, the PBGC pays out 60 cents on the dollar. To put it another way, if your company goes broke, and your pension is taken over by the PBGC, you are going to live on quite a lot less than you had planned in retirement.
In the past, the PBGC's investment income has been pretty rock-solid, largely due to the fact that PBGC money put its money into bonds.
The lunatics running the show in the last days of the Bush Administration, however, decided to move much of the PBGC's asset base into the stock market. The stock market, of course, promptly crashed, wiping out scores of billions of PBGC revenue.
How much did the Bush ideologues cost the PBGC? The PBGC will not say, other than to note that they lost 23% of their stock portfolio by September 30th -- well before the stock market began an even deeper and faster rush to the bottom.
Zvi Bodie, a Boston University finance professor who is an expert on the PBGC, says PBGC stock losses may ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers several hundred billion dollars.
He likens the PBGC's investment strategy to that of a company that insures against hurricane damage taking their portfolio and investing in beachfront property.
And what genius thought this was a good idea?
None other than Charles Millard, a former executive of Lehman Brothers who was appointed by George W. Bush. Millard's former company, of course, is now insolvent, defunct, and out of business.
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Crowning Glories.......
Have I told you that my class in creating head pieces is available now?
It is offered, online, at That Creative Place
and is available as an instant downloadable class....so you can create in your own time....
but what's useful is that I am always available by email or on the forum at That Creative Place,
if you have any questions or comments, so it's really like taking a private class from me.
I just LOVE head dresses!! I call them "Crowning Glories".
Day at the Beach
Day at the Beach. Acrylic on 16x20
stretched canvas. $268.00. Shipping
$7.95. To purchase contact me at
Turn off the Damn Computer and Go Outside!
Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.
People aged 45 to 54 averaged the most daily screen time at just over nine-and-a-half hours. The study did not include anyone under the age of 18.
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Tripping Over the Dog
According to the Center for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, more than 86,000 Americans end up in hospital emergency rooms every year due to falls involving cats and dogs.For the record, nearly 90% of the injuries were dog-related, and females were more than twice as likely as males to be injured.
The most common injuries and the highest injury rates were for fractures and contusions/abrasions, and the highest fracture rates occurred among persons aged 75 and older. Twenty-six percent of falls involving dogs occurred while persons were walking them, and the most frequent circumstances were falling or tripping over a dog (31.3%) and being pushed or pulled by a dog (21.2%). Falling over a pet item (e.g., a toy or food bowl) accounted for 8.8% of fall injuries. Approximately 38.7% involved other or unknown circumstances.
Not said: How many people died from tripping over a dog or a dog toy.
My bet is that more people are killed by tripping over a dog than are actually killed by dog bites.
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A Rabid Bobcat Walks Into a Bar ...
From The Arizona Republic:
COTTONWOOD - A bobcat walked into a roadside bar in Cottonwood.
What happened next was not a joke but "pandemonium": two or three minutes of chivalry, cellphone cameras and people jumping on top of pool tables to get out of the way.
When it was over, two people were scratched and bleeding, and the bobcat was gunned down by police in a parking lot on Main Street.
All that's left now is a barroom story that is sure to become legend.
And a series of rabies-vaccine shots.
"This was a rabid animal," said Zen Mocarski of the Arizona Game and Fish office in Kingman. "You've seen the cartoon Tasmanian Devil? That's a bobcat with rabies."
.... At about 11:40, three people walked out of the Chaparral, a neighborhood bar with signs for Schlitz, Budweiser and Coors over the entrance. Tuesday is free-pool night.
"I said goodnight," said bartender Scott Hughes, 41. "Next thing I know, they are running back in, followed by the bobcat.
"One jumped on the pool table, and two more jumped onto the bar."
The bar's video camera recorded what happened next.
The bobcat chased two people around a pool table.
Then, the animal stopped.
That's when people took out their cellphone cameras to get a picture.
Hughes told Kyle Hicks that he should not get too close to the bobcat.
"A bartender is supposed to command authority," Hughes said. "But he didn't listen to me."
In the video, Hughes can be seen reaching down to move Hicks.
That's when the cat jumped on Hicks' face, scratching him under his left eye and behind his right ear.
"Yeah, it didn't feel too good," Hicks said.
Hicks then knocked the animal to the ground.
"Look up 'pandemonium' in the dictionary," Hughes said. "That's what this bar was."
The 20 or so patrons started scrambling toward the back door. But so did the bobcat, which was now looking for a way out.
That's when Derek Oliver showed you can find a good man late at night in a Cottonwood bar.
"He was coming right towards two women," Oliver said. "So, I pushed them out of the way. That's when he got me. It wrapped itself around my leg."
Worse yet, the bobcat was moving up Oliver's leg.
"I punched it in the face real good," Oliver said.
The animal laid still for a moment, then it ran back out the front door.
By this time, police had arrived and found the animal in the parking lot.
"It started walking towards one of my officers," said Sgt. Gary Eisenga of the Cottonwood Police Department.
The officer shot the animal, killing it.
Witnesses said they heard three shots.
"We've had calls to that bar before, but never for a bobcat," Eisenga said.
By Thursday afternoon, Hicks had received his first of five rabies shots.
"In the arm," Hicks said. "They don't do it in the abdomen anymore. Thank God."
To which I can add: Only in America.
Of couse, these things happen. Rabid bobcat attacks make the news again and again. Ditto rabid coyotes, rabid fox, and rabid raccoons.
Me? I have no fear of rabid animals. The trick is to stay out of the bars.
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Sunday, March 29, 2009
A gesture of community....little awards....
Bonnie Jones has generously given me this award!
Thank you, Bonnie!
When all around us we read of stress and worry, of economic disaster and we see overwhelming evidence of greed, I find this world of blogging to be a sweet haven of support, generosity and community. These awards are really a lovely way to say...." take a look at this person's self expression!
They have charmed me and I think they will charm you too." These awards are a perfect example of the openheartedness that is the blogging community.
By giving this award to 8 other blogging sites, I am saying:
"These blogs invest and believe in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships.
These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers am to be and to find friends.
They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. The hope is that when the ribbons of this award are cut, even more friendships are propagated.
Please give attention to these writers!"
And now I pass this award on to 8 blogs that I feel you will love to visit....
When you accept this award, you must post the meaning of it on your blog and pass it on to 8 more.
And so I honor......
Tales from the Labyrinth
3rd Eye Muse
Angela Harris
Moa Romig Boyles
The Heart of Words
Tumblefish studio
Lisa Gatz
Pearl
And Patee has awarded me with the Kreativ Blogger Award. Mahalo, Pat!
I pass this award on to:
Just another day on earth
Gufobardo
Angel Feather Designs
Robins Egg Bleu
Romanti Cheemonzioni
Ilgirasogno
The Dark Raven's Nest
I Serve My Dogs
Thomas McGuane writes in (of all places) The Wall Street Journal:
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The dogs are everything, and they want to hunt, too. Bird dogs plead with you to imagine the great things you could be doing together. Their delight is a lesson in the bliss of living. As Bob Dylan says, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” I serve my dogs and in return, they glom the sofa.Read the whole thing.
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Saturday, March 28, 2009
Cool Dude
Cool Dude is a little man not quite ready to
give up the good life. Acrylic on 6x8 canvas
panel. $98.00. Shipping $5.95.
To purchase contact me at
Seven Little Ladies.....
Our seven little ladies will be coming to enjoy Easter week here in Kawela Bay.
I can't wait until they arrive....8 more days.
Kenley 6 months
Presley 5 yrs.
Bella 7 yr.
Ava 5 yrs.
Kobain 8 yr.
Blaize 11 yr.
Aidan 14 yr.
All 7 of them!
Battery Cage Dogs are the AKC's Cash Machine
ABC TV's Nightline program will be featuring a "state of the art" puppy mill tonight.
Some promotional video is up right now, however. Check it out.
The owner of this establishment is correct, in that he is running a state-of-the-art commercial dog breeding facility with a high-tech waste management system.
This is what a pretty good commercial dog breeding facility looks like: Small dogs (toy breeds and terriers) raised like chickens in battery cages.
And, for the record, this is what the AKC wants more of ... provided they are all AKC registered puppies, of course.
And why does the AKC want more commercial facilities breeding AKC dogs?
Simple: it needs more commercial kennel registrations in order to subsidize dog shows, which are not paying their way.
In the minutes of the September, 2006 AKC Board meeting (link to PDF file), Ron Menaker notes that the AKC has been registering puppy mill dogs "for the past 122 years" and "we have collected millions of dollars" as a result.
In short: Get over it!
And why does the AKC snuggle up to the puppy mill industry?
The Board of the AKC is rather blunt about the problem: though the AKC made a profit of several million dollars last year, it is not enough, as registration numbers are trending sharply downward and "events" are costing millions more than they are bringing in.
"Events," of course, is a euphemism for dog shows.
In short, because rosette-chasing is a money-losing proposition for the American Kennel Club, they need more puppy mill registrations in order to subsidize dog shows.
As recently as September of 2008, AKC President Ron Menaker wrote:
Some promotional video is up right now, however. Check it out.
The owner of this establishment is correct, in that he is running a state-of-the-art commercial dog breeding facility with a high-tech waste management system.
This is what a pretty good commercial dog breeding facility looks like: Small dogs (toy breeds and terriers) raised like chickens in battery cages.
And, for the record, this is what the AKC wants more of ... provided they are all AKC registered puppies, of course.
And why does the AKC want more commercial facilities breeding AKC dogs?
Simple: it needs more commercial kennel registrations in order to subsidize dog shows, which are not paying their way.
In the minutes of the September, 2006 AKC Board meeting (link to PDF file), Ron Menaker notes that the AKC has been registering puppy mill dogs "for the past 122 years" and "we have collected millions of dollars" as a result.
In short: Get over it!
And why does the AKC snuggle up to the puppy mill industry?
The Board of the AKC is rather blunt about the problem: though the AKC made a profit of several million dollars last year, it is not enough, as registration numbers are trending sharply downward and "events" are costing millions more than they are bringing in.
"Events," of course, is a euphemism for dog shows.
In short, because rosette-chasing is a money-losing proposition for the American Kennel Club, they need more puppy mill registrations in order to subsidize dog shows.
As recently as September of 2008, AKC President Ron Menaker wrote:
Today, there are at least 30 All-Breed registries in addition to the AKC, whose combined registration numbers exceed that of the AKC. If this trend is allowed to continue, if we do not stop the hemorrhaging of declining registrations, we will no longer be the premier registry in the world, let alone in our country.
Management has been directed by the Board to aggressively pursue all dogs eligible for AKC registration....
.... AKC used to dominate the marketplace. Even places like Macy’s and Gimbels sold AKC puppies. Many pet owners who bought these puppies, and I was one of them, tried their hand at showing and breeding. These owners who purchased their first purebred from a retail outlet, not only added to AKC’s registrations, but those who wanted to advance in the sport, then sought out fanciers to continue their
journey....
....Last year less than one half of our revenues came from registrations. Dog registrations peaked at 1.5 million in 1992. By the end of 2008 it is projected we will register only 725,000 dogs. This is a staggering 53% decline....
.... If the current trend continues and dog registrations decline to 250,000 over the next several years, AKC will face an annual revenue shortfall of $40 million. To put this in perspective, if this scenario occurred, and we relied solely on raising the event service fees to make up for this revenue shortfall, the fee would be a staggering $20 per entry.
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True American Genius
This is Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area make of techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Wow.
A true American genius. Hats off!
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Baby Spoon
Baby Spoon is number 3
of a series of items for baby
with a ribbon theme. 5X7
acrylic on canvas panel.
$30.00. Shipping $4.95.
To purchase contact me at
Does It Have a Kung-Fu Grip?
I booted on my computer this morning find the above email from Amazon. I do not think I have bought anything through Amazon that would suggest my political inclinations at the moment (in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies), but there it is nonetheless.
The text reads:
In many ways, senator Barack Obama is the closest thing to a superhero, someone who has literally inspired millions of people simultaneously to step past fear, to be brave enough to hope, and to go past cynicism and imagine... Read more
You do not have to be a genius to imagine that in the near future there will entire web sites featuring this little fellow in compromising positions with Barbie, Ken and My Little Pony. Let the games begin!
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Malthus and the Sparrow
When Rev. Thomas Malthus wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society" in 1798, the population of Britain was about 11 million.
At the time Malthus thought Britain was pretty close to its agricultural production threshold and that a doubling of Great Britain's population to 22 million was "probably a greater increase than could with reason be expected."
To suppose that Britain could feed a population double this size again (or 44 million people), would be "impossible to suppose," said Malthus, and this impossibility "must be evident to those who have the slightest acquaintance with agricultural subjects".
Of course, Malthus was wrong about agriculture.
Rev. Malthus failed to anticipate the degree to which outputs could be increased in Great Britain -- and all over the world -- thanks to machinery, fertilizer, modern farming practices, genetic improvements, and irrigation.
Today Great Britain has a population of over 60 million people and they are not starving. In fact, all over the world food production has risen faster than population growth, and this has been true for most of the last 200 years.
While increased agricultural outputs have been good for humans (less starvation) and generally good for wildlife (less wild lands put under the plow), there are increasing signs that not all is well.
Across the world many species of once-common wild birds are in decline. This is true not only in North America but in Europe as well.
The British are certainly taking a hard look at the situation. The British government monitors wild bird populations as a key measure of environmental health and they have noted fairly precipitous declines in their field and forest birds.
Now comes the latest news: reports from across Europe that populations of common house sparrows are in rapid decline. In fact, the decline in the house sparrow population has been so steep that it has now been put on the "red list" in the U.K.
No one is quite sure why house sparrows are in decline.
An observed decline in the number of eggs in house sparrow nests is an important clue. The size of the clutches of songbirds (passerines) and most raptors rises and falls in direct relationship to how much food is available (yes, birds understood and believed Malthus long before we did). A small clutch of eggs is typically a sign of a decline in one or more critical food components. One theory of house sparrow decline is that the phenomenon is linked to loss of critical insectivorous habitat. Insects are a critical component of house sparrow diets immediately after hatching.
Why are the insects disappearing?
One factor may be the rapid decline in British hedgerows. During a single 10-year period (1984-1993), more than one-third of all of the hedgerows in the United Kingdom were lost -- a whopping 121,875 miles of destruction. At least another 96,000 miles of hedgerow were lost in England from 1945 to 1984.
British hedgerows are fabulously vibrant ecosystems supporting myriad plant and insect species in dense thickets. An analysis of hedgerows has found a close correlation between the age of a hedgerow and its plant diversity, with some British hedgerows estimated to be as much as 1,000 years old. As hedgerows have vanished, so too have seeds and insects that once sprang from these hedgerows.
Why are the hedgerows disappearing so rapidly?
Much of the blame lies with agricultural policy and the desire to boost agricultural outputs by plowing edge-to-edge with ever-larger farm machinery. In addition, as more and more people have moved into the countryside to live on mini-estates, hedgerows have fallen to new housing developments and road widening.
Though a 1997 law was enacted in the U.K. to try to slow hedgerow destruction, the bulldozers continue to do their work. The decline in hedgerows across much of Europe may, in fact, prove to be a critical factor pushing the house sparrow over the edge.
The good news is that the population growth in Europe which first spurred the push to boost agricultural productivity, is finally slowing. The U.K., with a population of 60 million today, is expected to effectively achieve zero population growth around 2025. Much of the rest of Europe is headed the same way.
The bad news is that human population growth has pushed a great deal of the natural landscape of Europe right to the edge and changing land use patterns may be pushing it past the tipping point in some areas.
As more and more people move out of urban cores and into far off suburbs and once-rural areas, less and less land is available for agricultural production. In order to keep food production up, the land must be farmed more and more intensively in order to wrestle the same outputs from a declining number of acres.
The result, as we see in both the U.K, and the U.S., is the loss of hedgerows and shelter belt forests, increased incursions into the few large blocks of forest that remain, and a steady decline in forest and field bird species across much of the temperate-zone regions of the world.
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Little Red Riding Hood :: 21st Century Edition
A hat tip to Vincent Pfeiffer in France for this one. Thanks!
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Baby Shoes
Baby shoes was done as a set
after painting pacifier. Number 2
in a series of baby items with a
ribbon theme.
Acrylic on 5x7 canvas panel.
$30.00. Shipping $4.95.
To purchase contact me at
angelasacrylics@yahoo.com
Stems Cells Might Fix Dysplasia in Your Aged Dog
Jemima Harrison has sent me a link to something that is completely new to me, which is the use of stem cells to cure some serious canine problems, especially hip dysplasia in aged dogs.
This appears to be pretty miraculous stuff, and as Martin Bashir at ABC News notes (video link and a lot more information here), this is no longer experimental therapy: It's available right now.
It's not cheap -- about $2,500 -- but a heck of lot cheaper than operating on two hips, or even one hip.
And if we can do this with dogs now, what will we be able to do with humans into the future if we allow science to continue apace?
Thank God Barack Obama has greenlighted stem cell research to continue apace.
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ABC's Nightline Video on the AKC
Want to get your own copy of ABC Nightline's segement on how the American Kennel Club's standards and breeding practices are screwing up dogs?
You can order your very own CD -- just click here. And no, I don't know if it will run on European video machines which are (somehow) different.
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Michael Vick or Ingrid Newkirk?
From today's sports column in The New York Times
Here’s a hypothetical. You have to give up your beloved family pet, a pit bull terrier, and you have the choice of entrusting it to Ingrid Newkirk, president and founder of PETA, or Michael Vick, trusting that whoever you pick will find the dog a good home. Who do you choose?
.... Humans are not necessarily born with an innate emotional bond to dogs, and it is not a sign of abnormal pathology when some individual lacks that bond and the compassion that it implies. It still leaves Vick as a bad guy, but a different level of bad guy — one who can conceivably reform.
In the meantime we have PETA, protector of animal rights and their leader, Ingrid Newkirk, a strange bird to say the least. Newkirk got her start in the animal rights business while working at a shelter in DC. Revolted by the living conditions of the animals there, she decided to do something about it. That something was euthanizing them. When she couldn’t get the administrators of the shelter to go along with her plans, she just took matters into her own hands: “In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn’t stand to let them go through that. I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.”
This (killing as a means of rescue) continues as a common theme of PETA today. I have trouble sorting out exactly what it is that PETA and Newkirk regard as animal rights. I am clear that they don’t want animals used in any way that might be useful to humans, such as for food or research. Newkirk again:
“Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
But the right to life does not seem to be an animal right that they put a lot of stock in. PETA as an organization euthanizes a higher percentage of the animals entrusted to them than just about any other animal “rescue” organization. As high as 90 percent in some years. Some breeds go higher than that.
Newkirk seems to have a particular problem with pit bulls, and recommends that all breeding of them should stop and that pit bulls be euthanized as a matter of course. She says this is because they are more likely to be abused than other breeds, but it is noteworthy that she has been attacked by a pit bull in the past.
... As to my hypothetical question? If I delivered my pit bull to Newkirk, I would at least know his fate — he’d be headed out the back door in a plastic bag by the time I drove back home. I couldn’t be completely sure about Vick, but I think I’d have to take my chances with him.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
PETA's Slaughterhouse for Dogs and Cats
This morning comes word that in 2008 PETA killed 95.8 percent of the dogs, cats and other pets put into its care last year.
In fact, during all of 2008, PETA found adoptive homes for just seven pets out of 2,216 animals taken in.
PETA has a long track record of killing healthy animals (see pictures here), and almost no discernible track record that I can find of placing dogs and cats in loving homes.
As Dana Cheek, the former director of the Norfolk SPCA wrote:
I often receive phone calls from frantic people who have surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will "find them a good home." Many of them are led to believe that the animals will be taken to a nearby shelter. Little do they know that the pets are killed in the PETA van before they even pull away from the pet owner's home … PETA refuses to surrender animals they obtain to area shelters for rehoming. If only the celebrity 'deep-pocket' donors on the west coast knew that their donations were going to kill adoptable cats and dogs here in Norfolk.
You will not find PETA's shelter in Norfolk, Virginia on Pet Finder, nor are there any visiting hours. Posters are not placed on coffee shop bulletin boards, nor do they work with PetSmart or anyone else to find homes for the dogs and cats relinquished to them.
Instead, PETA injects killing solutions into almost all the animals handed over to the them, and then it contracts with a waste disposal company to have several tons of animals a month trucked away, out of sight and out of mind.
Why? Simple: they believe a dog in a shelter is better dead than kenneled for even a few days or a few weeks, and they oppose pet ownership entirely. PETA's Norfolk staff cannot be bothered to take time away from media-whoring in order to do the tough work involved in actually rehoming animals. They leave that to real shelters.
PETA, of course, tries to hide all of this, but the state of Virginia is not having any part of it.
Virginia has a legal requirement that all shelters report out how many dogs, cats and other animals are surrendered, how many are placed, and how many are rehomed.
PETA refuses to fill out the forms as asked by the state of Virginia, however, and every year a little charade occurs. This charade appears to be designed to slow down the posting of PETA's kill information to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website. PETA, it seems, is embarrassed by their own numbers. Not embarrassed enough to change what they do, mind you, but just embarrassed enough to try to keep comparative data away from the public's prying eyes.
And so, instead of reporting the data in the form requested, PETA mixes in unrelated spay and neuter data. They have done this for several years running now, and apparently they are doing it again this year, as the numbers are still not up on the Virginia state web site. PETA will eventually cough up the forms properly filled out, of course, but by then several months will have gone by. Heck, several months have already gone by.
To be clear, no other shelter in Virginia does this or even tries to do this. And you know why? Because the other shelters are not afraid of telling you what they are doing because most of them are at least trying to get dogs and cats adopted out.
PETA, on the other hand, seems to do virtually nothing to try to get animals placed. That's too much like work and there's no "look-at-me" publicity in it. The blue solution of death is so much easier. And so PETA injects, dumps, and runs off to do another titty-show protest somewhere. Yippee! Look at me. I am nekkid!
So how do we know what PETA's numbers are for 2008?
Simple: Just because PETA intentionally mangles the paperwork so that the data does not show up up on time on the Virginia state web site does not mean that they do not file something as a place holder. That paperwork does exist, and you can read it yourself right here and tease out the kill data, just as I have.
You can also compare it to the track record of other Virginia animal shelter facilities right here, and you can also compare it to past years of comparable PETA data by looking at the table below:
To cut to the chase, here's how the data breaks down for dogs and cats put in PETA's care in 2008:
- Of 584 dogs surrendered to PETA's "shelter" last year, 555 were killed by PETA and only 4 were adopted out. Another 21 dogs were transferred to the Virginia Beach SPCA, and 15 dogs were still "on hand" with PETA as of December 31, 2008.
- Of 1,589 cats surrendered to PETA's "shelter" last year, 1,569 were killed by PETA and only 3 were adopted out. Another 13 cats were transferred to the Virginia Beach SPCA, and 2 cats were still "on hand" with PETA as of December 31, 2009
Now here's the important part: PETA is very clearly in violation of Virginia state law.
Last year on this blog, I noted that PETA is licensed under Virginia law to run an animal shelter or humane society. But PETA does not run an animal shelter.
But don't take my word for it. Here what PETA's Daphna Nachminovitch said in court:
"PETA does not maintain an animal shelter. PETA has a couple -- we call them 'quarantine rooms' -- which are used to house animals that are held for one reason or another. And animals who are, who have a chance for adoption, are usually fostered in private homes. We do not have a public facility that's open to the public where people can stroll through and pick an animal. That's not a service that we are able to provide. We're an office building."
Right. You are an office building. Not a shelter.
But PETA's license to handle powerful killing chemicals did not say it was running an office building, but that it was running an animal shelter or humane society.
Under Virginia law, an animal shelter means "a facility, other than a private residential dwelling and its surrounding grounds, that is used to house or contain animals and that is owned, operated, or maintained by a nongovernmental entity including, but not limited to, a humane society, animal welfare organization, society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, or any other organization operating for the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes for animals."
Under Virginia law, a humane society means "any incorporated, nonprofit organization that is organized for the purposes of preventing cruelty to animals and promoting humane care and treatment or adoptions of animals."
Under Virginia law, adoption means "the transfer of ownership of a dog or a cat, or any other companion animal, from a releasing agency to an individual."
In short, PETA is not running a legal shelter or humane society (as Ms. Nachminovitch conceded in court), and therefore their licensed access to killing chemicals should be revoked by the state.
PETA can then re-apply with the Virginia Department of Agriculture to run a slaughter house if they so choose.
And no, the slaughter house designation is not hyperbole.
In 2008, PETA's shelter in Norfolk, Virginia took possession of 2,216 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals” and killed all but 7 of them -- a 95.8 percent kill rate once the transfers are accounted for.
What's that look like? Well, if the average dog/cat weighs 30 pounds, that works out to be about 30 TONS of dead animals coming out of PETA's shelter every year.
Graphically, it look a bit like this, with the white-on-black animals being those that PETA killed, and the black-on-white animals being the ones they actually found homes for and did not kill.
Want to do something positive about all this? Here's my suggestion: Send a letter to all the candidates hoping to be Virginia's next Attorney General.
Ask each of the candidates to make a pledge to investigate, prosecute and/or close PETA's Norfolk animal shelter, which is being run as an unlicensed slaughter house, not as a true animal shelter seeking to find homes for adoptable animals. Send them a link to this blog for the statistics and the law.
How to contact the candidates:
- Steve Shannon - Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General. Contact here (web form) or call (best): 703-218-3501
- Ken Cuccinelli - Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General. Contact here (web form) or call (best): 703-766-0635
- John Brownlee - Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General. Contact here (web form) or call (best): 1-888-523-6724
- Dave Foster - Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General. Contact here (direct email) or call (best): 703-349-2820
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