[ SHOWGSD-L ] Fw: Alert: Nine (9) bad animal bills set for hearing, Thursday,1/25 at **7:00 am**
- From: "Ginger Cleary" <cleary1414@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Showgsd-L@Freelists. Org" <showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:38:31 -0500
-----Original Message-----
Blank
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 2:23 PM
Subject: Alert: Nine (9) bad animal bills set for hearing, Thursday,1/25 at
**7:00 am**
A VHDOA message to dog owning sportsmen about protecting their traditions,
avocations and livelihoods from anti-hunting, anti-breeding, animal
guardianship advocates. Forwarding and cross posting, with attribution,
encouraged.
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Dear Friends,
Please forgive the length of this message. It's General Assembly crunch time
for Virginia's animal owners.
All the remaining bad House animal bills are scheduled for hearing by the
ACNR Agriculture subcommittee on Thursday, 1/25 at 7:00 am in Room 1 of the
Patrick Henry Building, which is adjacent to the General Assembly. This huge
agenda requires extra time to complete and a larger room to hold the people
who are expected to observe and offer comment. It's crucial that you make
your opposition to these nine (9) bills known as clearly and quickly as
possible. At this same hearing, at the exact time and place a year ago, two
extraordinarily bad bills sneaked through. The most effective way to oppose
a bill is to attend the hearing and speak against it or support speakers
that do. No record is kept or oaths administered. Seldom are there pass
outs. If you can't come, please see hopw many calls/emails you, your friends
and neighbors can get out in opposition to these bills.
VHDOA's website preprogammed emails have been set up to cover these animal
rightist measures. Use our contact page and be sure to include your name and
mailing address. http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/VA.AG.Ctmes.html
Bill impact comments to summarize in your own words,
HJ 567 SOL; Department of Education to include standards regarding
instruction on animal safety, etc.. This is the seventh such animal rightist
education bill in the last three years. SB952 (Potts), HJ209 (Alexander),
SB166 (Edwards), HJ567 (Alexander), SB1276 (Whipple), SJ375 (Whipple). This
bill
1. promotes an animal rights philosophy under the cover of "compassion and
respect for animals and humans."
2. attempts to present animal rights as a mainstream belief system by
grouping it with such universally held concerns as "human rights violations,
genocide, slavery and the Holocaust."
3. attempts to place this animal rights philosophy on the same level as
important civil rights movements of the past, when in actuality the
philosophy of animal rights reduces and restricts the rights of humans.
4. would allow an opening for animal and Earth "liberation" propaganda to
infiltrate Virginia schools without critical review and under the guide of
"compassion."
5. requires materials to be used in the schools as "content background" and
"resources" for "instructional materials" to promote "compassion and
respect" for animals. Such a loose definition could evade rigorous content
standards now in place for textbooks used in classrooms (circumventing the
process designed to protect our children from propaganda.
6. would require schools to source materials from groups offering "humane
education" materials. Since all such "humane education" programs are
controlled by animal rights groups opposing virtually all use and ownership
of animals, Virginia taxpayers would be forced to underwrite such
corporations as the National Association for Humane and Environmental
Education program, a subsidiary of the Humane Society of the United States
or the National Humane Education Society.
7. would fund, with taxpayer dollars, animals rights-focused corporations,
offering them free promotion, creating a multi-million dollar conduit for
advancing their agenda through our children.
8. would require a massive counter campaign by Virginia citizens, businesses
and institutions raising animals for food, fiber, research, protection,
companionship, etc.
9. would promote a curriculum that is anti-science, anti-wildlife management
and anti-animal husbandry.
10. encourages schools to provide "appropriate instruction" regarding the
humane treatment of animals and animal safety utilizing unsupervised
volunteers and independently supplied external materials.
OPPOSE
HB 1959 Dogs and cats; increase of license fee.
Virginia law permits localities to set their own pet license fees up to a
$10 cap. Current fees range between $4-$10. By forcing an additional pet tag
sales at $2, HB1959 would reduce localities' tag revenue unless they raise
their first tag fees substantially above today's levels. Localities already
have the option of offering discounted tags for multiple pets. This bill is
a misleading, stealth fee increase mandate, which when combined with 2006's
"Gotcha" dog owner database, will increase costs to every state dog owner
under the legislative guise of reducing their fees. More truth in
legislation is needed here.
OPPOSE
HB 2081 Cruelty to animals; Class 6 felony for any person to willfully &
unnecessarily cause death thereof.
Creates a new, vaguely defined first offense felony provision, eliminating
such terms as "torture," "inhumane injury or suffering," and "cruelly and
unnecessarily beats, maims or mutilates." Increased felony risk for every
day pet owners, verternians and medical researchers. Contrary to the bill's
summary, it also materially weakens Del. Nutter's 2004 provision that
permits an animal owner to defend his pet from a dog attack on his property
without prosecution.
OPPOSE
HB 2098 Tethering of animals; certain acts associated therewith Class 3
misdemeanor.
Tethering isn't harmful to dogs - it keeps them safe. Eliminating tethering
will be very difficult to enforce and will cause many dogs to be put down.
Tethering doesn't make a dog aggressive. Most tethered dogs aren't problems
and in the few cases of mean dogs, the animal was aggressive BEFORE it was
chained. What may be appropriate in urban Norfolk won't work on the Eastern
Shore, in the Valley, Piedmont, Southside and elsewhere.
OPPOSE
HB 2100 Cats and dogs; license tax on those who have not been spayed or
neutered.
This bill summary is so misleading, it's totally wrong. HB2100 is a
continuation of a multi-year lobbying effort to charge owners of intact dogs
and cats very much higher fees and impose other restrictions on them. It
caps the tag cost for sterilized animals at $10, while permitting localities
to charge owners of intact pets any price they choose. Statewide dog
licensure is about 30%. Raising tag costs inappropriately will only drive it
further away from this bill's stated 75% goal. This is a self-defeating
socio-regulatory program that is bound to fail, here as it has everywhere
else. Norfolk, Albuquerque and California jurisdictions have intact tag
costs of $25-125 and their licensure rates are substantially lower than
Virginia's 30% average. There will be increased public health risks as
animal owners don't rabies vaccinate in order to avoid this bill's unlimited
tag costs and 2006's "Gotcha" dog owner database (HB339). WV and NC have
already reported multiple rabies cases in 2007 due to warmer winter weather.
The General Assembly needs to level with Virginians, instead of concealing
such bill impacts.
OPPOSE
HB 2242 Dogs; Class 3 misdemeanor to tether, fasten, etc. to stationary
object.
HB2098 Comments apply. Another Norfolk bill.
OPPOSE
HB 2295 Rabies vaccinations; surcharge thereon.
WV and NC have already reported multiple rabies cases in 2007 due to warmer
winter weather. http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/VA_RabiesData.html This bill
further discourages rabies vaccination and generally isn't well thought out.
There's no oversight. It contains no "fund" or mechanism to disburse
collected public money to participating veterinarians. Also missing are
criteria for selecting which animals are sterilized. New Hampshire, which
has a tag surcharge to fund private no cost or subsidized spay-neuter,
employs an owner fitness test, e.g. does the owner smoke or drink beer?
Nearly all of the money collected from dog owners there is spent on cat
speuter. A $3 surcharge on rabies vaccinations would cost Virginia dog
owners $1-1.2 million annually.
OPPOSE
HB 3091 Companion animals; exempts occasional breeder, etc. from being
treated as dealer.
Well-intended bill with multiple concerns. HB3091 ignores the federal
retail-wholesale sales USDA regulatory dealer distinction and breaches that
crucial animal owner protection or shield. This is a "mini-PAWS" bill that
has more problems than its parent, creates additional ones and doesn't solve
any. Who decides what's "occasional," a hobby sale, pet, hunting or service
dog and how often are they changed? Does every county and city have separate
rules? None of these terms are anywhere defined in VA's code. Does the
bill's "making a profit" objective test increase the likelihood of IRS or VA
Tax Department audits? HB3091 is basically identical to Del. Cole's HB1411,
which was PBI (rejected) in 2006.
OPPOSE
HB 3195 Companion animal dealer permits Forces every Virginia jurisdiction
to license anyone who "for compensation or profit buys, sells, transfers,
exchanges, or barters companion animals." A companion animal is defined as a
domestic or feral dog, domestic or feral cat, nonhuman primate, guinea pig,
hamster, rabbit not raised for human food or fiber, exotic or native animal,
reptile, exotic or native bird. Localities may determine license fee
schedules, inspections and other terms without state oversight. Fairfax
County zoning ordinances currently forbid the sale of any pet(s) in a
residential zone, independent of this bill. Similarly, Fauquier County today
requires licenses any of citizen selling more that one litter per year.
HB3195 makes localities license all animal owners, where previously such
action was a local option. OPPOSE
As I indicated earlier, Virginia's General Assembly sessions are very fast
moving trains. Please join me in opposing these bills, either in person,
through email or over the telephone. Meet me for coffee and a quick briefing
in the General Assembly's (GA) 6th floor cafeteria at 6:30 am on Thursday,
1/15 before walking next door. The GA is located at 9th and East Broad
Streets in Richmond and convenient to the Interstates. In politics and in
lobbying numbers count, especially in an election year.
On a more positive note, both VHDOA's collar theft bills advanced this week,
as did Senator Creigh Deeds' SB884 Retrieving hunting dogs and SB882 Loss of
hunting lands, which VHDOA supports. HB2531 (Abolishing the right of certain
hunters to trespass) is widely expected to fail this week.
Please share this message widely. Obviously time is of the essence. We have
just twenty-fours to defeat the nine bad bills scheduled for hearing early
Thursday morning.
Sincerely,
Bob Kane, President
Virginia Hunting Dog Owners' Association
http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/
To unsubscribe from this list, exercise that option at
http://mailman.montana.com/mailman/admin/vhdoa
If you have problems dropping from a mailman list contact bobkane@xxxxxxxxx
-------------------------------------
Ginger Cleary - Rome, GA www.rihadin.com <http://www.rihadin.com>
"Laws against something 'that other guy' does will eventually get US because
we are all someone's 'other guy.' " Walt Hutchens,2007
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