I’m not as ready as Willy to throw in the towel on Prop B, but her analysis of what’s going on is probably more accurate than mine.  I had all but given up too, but a friend of mine who rescues dogs called me the other night and gently pushed me back into the ring.

One thing that convinced me that there is hope is that some state reps have been convinced to change their votes for repeal simply by pointing out to them that their districts approved Prop B in November.  She told me that Sally Faith of St. Charles and Chuck Gatschenberger of Lake Saint Louis have both agreed to vote against SB113 after it became public that they had accepted campaign contributions from Smithfield Farms.  Evidently, Sally Faith admitted that she hadn’t read the bill and had taken the word of a colleague she trusted.  Oh, sure.

If all 88 of the state reps whose districts voted YES on Prop B in November vote against repeal, that will be a majority and enough to kill the bill.  So it’s up to us to hound those state reps in the districts that passed Prop B to do the right thing – or else.

Through MEC reports I found out that my state rep, Paul Curtman of the 105th accepted a $500 contribution from Jason Smith, the rep whose mother owns one of the “dirty dozen” puppy mills.

Check out the list here.

That same Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation website has tons of good info, including a comparison of Prop B and SB 113 and a list of the voting percentage totals by district.  Check out yours.  If your House district passed Prop B, make sure your rep is voting against repeal. If your district did not pass Prop B, ask your rep to do the right thing for the dogs.  If breeders can’t make a profit by taking good care of their animals, they should close up shop and let someone do it who can.  Check out the BBB reports and all the complaints from customers who bought puppies they thought were healthy.

And click here to see Sen. Parson, sponsor of the bill, lying his head off to an audience where he obviously feels comfortable making up nonsense.

 If you have the stomach for it here are some photos from actual puppy mills.  Friends of mine who have rescued puppies from these dungeons of death tell me they can smell the diseased dogs before they even pull into the driveway.

I’m not ready to give up on this yet.  I hope you’ll get as angry as I am and motivated to do everything you can to protect these animals.

Get some Facts to answer the lies of the multi-million agriculture business. THEY have the money and the lies. We have the FACTS. Check out this video.

After seeing this video of Sen. Parson lying about the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act passed by voters in November, I attended a rally in support of the new law at the Capitol yesterday.  I carried a sign saying “Sen. Parson:  ‘YOU LIE.'”  It caught the attention of lots of people, including many with cameras.  I hope the story gets back to Sen. Parson.

The reason we were there was because the House was debating HB131 which would gut the new law.  The legislators who want to let a breeder have more than 50 females pregnant all the time in a space barely big enough to roll over or stretch out are heartless to say the least.  We had about 90 people there in the rotunda with signs mostly about letting the vote stand and respecting the vote of the people.

Several groups of school kids, both elementary and high school ages, came through.  Their first stop on the tour is the state seal emblazoned in the floor of the rotunda.  After the tour guides finished and led the kids to their next stop, I told the kids not to bother voting because the legislature would just overturn their vote.  Some of the teachers gave me a thumbs up. Others scowled at me.  Whatever.

A few of us joined Barbara Schmitz, director of the coalition that passed Prop B, to the governor’s office on the 2nd floor.  She had a petition signed by a bunch of folks.  The gov wasn’t there (actually I saw on TV that he was in Forest Park.)  An aide politely took the petition from us and let a photog take our picture for a national animal magazine (All Animals?)  No signs were allowed in the photo, but she let me hold my little American flag.  (no comment)

I learned after I got home that HB 131 was “laid over,” and, according to the Bill Tracking page on the General Assembly website there is no further action scheduled at this time.  

I heard opposite predictions yesterday from two people who know a lot more about how these things work than I do.  One said not to give up because there are good things happening behind the scenes.  The other said there is no way we’re going to stop the repeal/dismantling of the new law.   So it’s a toss up at this point.

Look at these photos of puppy mill conditions.  I know it’s hard to see this, but we have to do it for the dogs’ sake. Call your state rep and state senator and tell them how disgusted you are with this whole attempt to repeal a reasonable improvement of care standards at these facilities.  Send them these photos and ask them how they can sleep at night.   If you are lucky enough to have a rep and senator already supporting Prop B, tell him/her thank you and to please forward the photos to colleagues.

 

The three reasons:  the Missouri Tea Party, Phyllis Schlafly and Joe the Plumber. I don’t normally advocate arguments based on an appeal to authority, but in this case the temptation to argue negatively based on an appeal to (anti?) authority is just too strong. Doesn’t the fact that the Tea Party, Phyllis Schlafly and Joe the Plumber have jumped into the fray against the “Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act” (Proposition B) make you want to run out and vote for it immediately?

Animal cruelty is not a liberal or conservative issue per se. Many good, conservative Republicans in my neighborhood signed the petition to get Prop. B on the ballot. However, the anti-Prop. B lobbying efforts on the part of the Tea Party and the two media personalities is more or less predictable. The Tea Party, for instance, seems so worked up that a new group in Mexico, Mo. will devote it’s first meeting to figuring out how they can fight Prop. B. One can only imagine what frothing displays we will be gifted  with if they manage to get their bad-tempered act together.

The Tea Party involvement is easy to explain. The organization formed to fight Prop B, the misnamed Alliance for Truth (they claim that anti-animal cruelty activists “don’t like animals”), for lack of a better tack, is pushing all kinds of far-fetched conspiracy stories – catnip for Tea Party paranoia.

The Alliance has managed to distort the simple and straightforward provisions of Prop. 6 into a “radical” plot that reaches into (where else?) the White House. According to Alliance for Truth spokesperson, Anita Andrews, the main instigator of this plot is the Humane Society of the Unitd States (HSUS) which:

… seeks only to raise the cost of breeding dogs, making it ever-more difficult for middle-class American families to be dog-owners.”

[…]

Andrews  also explained that Cass Sunstein, “one of the biggest animal rights activists,” and President Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is tied to the Humane Society, and is helping them give Obama “a punch list” of the animals rights activists’ agenda.

It would take its own separate post to go into all that’s wrong with this little gem.

The involvement of Joe the Plumber requires no explanation beyond the fact that taking up the fight against Prop. B offers one more avenue for expanding his fifteen minutes of fame. This explanation also helps us understand his incoherent, over-the-top statement on the Alliance for Truth site, which proclaims Prop. B proponents to be:

…cowardly hiding behind animal cruelty, lying to our citizens and taking our constitutional rights away – one state at a time.

Ahhh! The constitutional right to be cruel abuse animals! I knew there had to be a constitutional issue in there somewhere. Since Prop B doesn’t involve the federal government, but simply a state deciding for itself about whether or not it wants to allow longstanding abuses to continue, the constitutional card loses some of the old Tea Party punch. But never fear, it does its job with the target audience; all you have to do is repeat the word “constitutional” enough and they end up drooling on the rug.

Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, of course, opposes government regulation on principle. The weakness of this position in cases like that of Missouri’s scandalous puppy mill industry is revealed by her tactics.  Instead of principled arguments about regulation, even poor, old, hardline Phyllis is reduced to advocating conspiracy theories to make her opposition to anti-cruelty legislation palatable:

HSUS has attacked modern livestock production practices in several other states and, while the first battle in Missouri is targeted to dog breeders, this is the precursor to subsequent fight involving our Missouri farm families

Can’t these bozos get it through their heads that this legislation deals exclusively with dog breeders, and that it has been proposed because the puppy mill industry has been a blight on Missouri’s reputation for years? Any legislation, for good or ill, directed at other livestock will have to be passed or defeated on its own terms.

Read the provisions of Prop.B yourself. They are straightforward and describe minimal improvements in the welfare of dogs used for large-scale breeding purposes. TPM quotes Humane Society spokesperson Michael Markarian who summarizes Prop. B  as follows:

This measure would provide common sense standards for the care of dogs,” he told TPM, including sufficient food and clean water, vet care, regular exercise, and adequate rest between breeding cycles, among other things. Markarian said the measure only applies to “commercial dog breeding facilities” that have more than 10 breeding females who they use for “producing puppies for the pet trade.

If conforming to these very basic requirements would bankrupt a breeder, as some have argued, then that breeder should not be in the business in the first place. We don’t condone forced child labor because paying adults a living wage would bankrupt the manufacturer – do we?

It should tell us something when the opponents of proposed legislation resort to manufacturing non-existent conspiracies, imagining impossible constitutional encroachments, and projecting their own dishonest agendas on a clear-as-water initiative. The “slippery slope” argument that gets them so worked up has always been a loser that has hurt “us” more than “them.” In this case it will only serve to perpetuate unnecessary animal suffering.

Tea Party photo by Sage Ross from Wikimedia Commons; Joe the Plumber photo from Wikimedia Commons.