March 19, 2010 Things that make you go GRRRR!!!

Things that make you go GRRRRR!!!!

I am not a member of any animal rights groups, but after lobbying last year at the statehouse, I have gotten to know some members of the Humane Society of The United States, and Anne Sterling, the Indiana director of HSUS. Mainly what the HSUS does is they lobby to change laws to protect animals. It is nothing that is too over the top in my eyes. Most of it is common sense, but if you know anything about government, you realize common sense is rarely seen…
Here is part of the email I received from Anne this past week:
House Bill 1258, the animal fighting and pet store bill, cleared the House of Representatives the week of February 1st with a strong bipartisan vote of 71-26.
Introduced by Rep. Linda Lawson, the bill would make it a felony to be a spectator at an animal fight, would add animal fighting to the list of crimes in the state RICO statute, would require pet stores to provide consumers with information on the origin of their puppies prior to purchase, and would require people who own horses to provide them with shelter that is free of standing water.

Nothing too outrageous about that seems pretty sensible to me. Later in the week, I received another email from Anne, which read:

Hello! I hope this email finds everyone well!

I’m very sorry to report that our bill, or language, technically, died Wednesday night when the Senator Brent Steele refused to allow his caucus to sign the conference committee report.

To recap: the bill, HB 1258, would have required people to provide their horses with shelter, required pet store disclosure & would have made it a felony to attend an animal fight. The bill itself officially died several weeks ago, when the chair of the Senate Committee (again, Senator Steele) to which it was assigned, failed to schedule it for a hearing. The deadline for a hearing came & went & the bill was officially dead.

However, because the language passed one chamber (the House of Representatives, with a vote of 71-26) it was eligible to be amended into another bill, so we still had some options. The legislature is scheduled to end this week & we had already tried amending another bill, to no avail. In a final attempt, we tried to amend just the animal fighting language into a bill yesterday & 3 of the 4 conferees from the conference committee were ready to sign the committee report, to allow it to move forward, when Senator Steele objected & refused to allow the Republican Senator assigned to the committee to sign the report. If all 4 conferees do not sign the conference committee report, the bill is dead.

It’s obviously incredibly unfortunate that not even the animal fighting language made it through this year, due to the objections of essentially one legislator. This is particularly frustrating in light of the August 2009 dog fighting raid in Orange County, Indiana, in which 109 dogs were seized from deplorable & inhumane conditions.

As always, Representative Linda Lawson, the sponsor of the bill, was a true advocate for the animals in Indiana and did absolutely everything she could to try and get this through. Please take a moment to contact her and thank her for her tireless efforts to protect the animals Indiana. She can be reached via email at: h1@in.gov or via phone at: 1-800-382-9842.

If you would like, you can also take a moment to call or email Senator Steele’s Office & voice your displeasure with him for killing, for the 5th time, a provision that would have made it a felony to attend an animal fight in Indiana. With his refusal to support this common-sense legislation, he is consistent in his support of those who participate in the blood sport of animal fighting, and has secured yet another win for the dogfighters in Indiana. Senator Steele can be reached via email at: s44@in.gov or via phone at: (317) 232-9814.

On a happier note, Representative Lawson also introduced a resolution to declare October 1st ‘Adopt a Shelter Pet Day’ in Indiana. Thankfully, this resolution passed overwhelmingly.

The last paragraph was what really irked me, our state senators will not protect dogs from dog fighting and make it a felony to attend these illegal fights, but they will make another “Hallmark” holiday? What is wrong with this picture? Big deal, so we have a day that says it’s adopt a shelter pet day, do you honestly think that means more people will go out and adopt a shelter pet? I mean, its not as if we get another paid holiday off or anything, it’s just a nice way of saying, we like animals enough to add them to our calendar.

Frankly I’m floored at the stupidity of our government. I know others feel the same way for other reasons. We have a whole lot of reasons frankly to not like our government. I guess being the blue collar person that I am, I don’t “get” people in offices of power who fail to understand common sense! I’m sure that’s part of the problem of government in general, they don’t seem to understand the real world. We elect them to represent “us” the people, the real working people of the world who help make their lives cushier, and they spend their time, instead of working on real problems, they unanimously vote to make a cutesy holiday that will do NOTHING to help the problems. (Slams head into wall)

Who is this senator Brent Steele anyway? Is he a personal friend of Michael Vick? Does he put down some big bucks on dog fighting? So it’s ok to attend a dog fight, and we all know if you are watching, you are betting….yet betting on the Super bowl, which doesn’t hurt animals and is done EVERYWHERE…is a huge problem. Hmmmm…..
Does anyone besides me see the irony of this? It’s no wonder they need secret service and bodyguards for political figures.