Animals & Politics

Wildlife, Federal Legislation  /  Nov 12, 2014

Focus on Enforcement of Dog and Cat Fur Law

Congress returns today for the lame-duck session, and one of the first items on the House agenda is final passage of H.R.4194, the Government Reports Elimination Act. In May, the Washington Post published a report titled “Unrequired reading,” on the thousands of agency reports mandated by Congress, some of which are as thick as “doorstops” and are just “gathering dust.”

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Pets & Cruelty, Wildlife, Ballot Measures, Elections, State Legislation  /  Nov 05, 2014

2014 Election Wrap-Up: Mixed Results and Hope on the Horizon for Animals

Last night’s mid-term election saw a rising wave of red across our country, with Republicans taking control of the U.S. Senate and winning a surprising number of gubernatorial, U.S. House, and state legislative seats. It was the second wave election in four years, and it cements Republican power throughout most of the nation.

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Wildlife, Ballot Measures, Elections  /  Nov 04, 2014

Today's the Day: Elect for Animals

Election Day is finally here, after months of debates, campaigning, and political ads by competing parties. Participation in the electoral process is an important responsibility that we all have in a civil society, and it has special urgency for those of us who have taken up the cause of the voiceless and voteless. Until animal advocates make elections a priority, we will never reach our high water mark when it comes to the reforms we're seeking.

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Wildlife, Ballot Measures, Elections  /  Oct 31, 2014

Feeding Garbage to Bears and Voters in Maine

I’ve been involved in dozens of political campaigns around the country over two decades, and the brazen lies and scare tactics used by state officials working in collusion with the bear baiting, hounding, and trapping crowd in Maine are among the worst I’ve ever seen.

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Wildlife, Ballot Measures  /  Oct 29, 2014

Countdown to Election Day

We’re just days from the November 4th election, and there are critical races for humane candidates and animal protection issues all over the country. I want to provide a rundown of several key updates as we enter the final stretch.

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Uncategorized  /  Oct 29, 2014

Countdown to Election Day

We’re just days from the November 4th election, and there are critical races for humane candidates and animal protection issues all over the country. I want to provide a rundown of several key updates as we enter the final stretch.

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Wildlife, Ballot Measures, In the News  /  Oct 27, 2014

Bears, Snares, and Scares in Maine

The opponents of fair bear hunting in Maine are taking outrageous liberties with their misleading campaign rhetoric. One of their constant refrains is that Question 1—which would ban the cruel and unsporting hounding, trapping, and baiting of bears in the last state to allow all three extreme methods—is largely funded by out-of-state groups, including The HSUS and HSLF. Never mind that those groups have tens of thousands of members who are Maine residents, and who want to rid their state of this terrible cruelty.

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Elections, State Legislation  /  Oct 23, 2014

A Tale of Two Attorneys General

When advocating for the enactment of humane laws, we're sometimes reminded that getting a bill passed by the legislature and signed by the governor means we are “up at halftime going into the locker room.” Before we can have confidence that a new law will have impact, we often have to defend against legal challenges and ensure that it is properly enforced. We rely on all sorts of law enforcement personnel to do this work. But often a key second-half player is the state’s chief law enforcement officer—the attorney general.

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Wildlife, Ballot Measures, Elections, State Legislation  /  Oct 21, 2014

Newspapers Urge YES on Maine's Question 1 to Protect Bears

Whenever we’ve confronted terrible cruelty, there’s always been a fierce effort to defend it. I think of tough fights in Louisiana to ban cockfighting, in California on Prop 2 and extreme confinement, and on bear baying in South Carolina.

Seldom do we see unanimous support for reform. There are always opinion leaders who don’t accept the real meaning of animal protection, or others who excuse cruelty or think it’s too much, too fast.

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Pets & Cruelty, State Legislation  /  Oct 20, 2014

Who Should Shoulder the Financial Burden when Animals are Abused?

Local and state anti-cruelty statues play a critical role in ensuring the humane treatment of animals in a community. When the right laws are on the books, animals can be removed from potentially dangerous situations, out of the hands of those suspected of abusing and neglecting them. Let’s say, for example, that 20 dogs, seven horses, and 39 chickens are found to be neglected, living and suffering in deplorable conditions on someone’s private property.

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Ballot Measures, Elections  /  Oct 09, 2014

Cast Your Ballot for Animals

On February 18, 1958, then-Senator John F. Kennedy told an audience of Loyola College alumni in Baltimore that we should “not seek the Republican answer or the Democrat answer but the right answer.”

Today, 56 years later and just 26 days shy of a crucial election, we at the Humane Society Legislative Fund are also after the right answers. The right answers for animals are the lawmakers who will fight animal cruelty and abuse, and stand up for the values of kindness and compassion.

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Wildlife, Federal Legislation  /  Oct 01, 2014

Caught on Tape: The Problem of Tigers as Pets and Photo Ops

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