Saturday, May 27, 2006

It's Not Just a Puppy, It's the Friggin' Bill of Rights We're Talking Here


And you thought the NSA snooping issue was a constitutional crisis. Albuquerque attorney Penni Adrian (photo above) is starting a recall petition for ABQ City Councilor Sally Mayer because of the HEART ordinance, which Adrian calls:

"a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution." (quote from ABQ Journal story by Isabel Sanchez)

And stupid us, we thought it was a thickly overwritten attempt to crack down on puppy mills.

Adrian claims she has "hundreds" of volunteers helping with the recall petition effort, which must be especially sweet from a multi-tasker's perspective as Adrian is also running for a District Judge position as an independent. In a District Judge race with zero name recognition across the board (thanks Andrew Jackson!), it certainly can't hurt to latch your name onto a controversial issue, regardless of how overblown and melodramatic you are in doing it.

Overblown and melodramatic has been an apt description of the entire HEART ordinance brouhaha to this point. I certainly wish the U.S. Congress had considered the invasion of Iraq as much as the City Council discussed HEART, and if we'd had half as many crying public commenters on Iraq as with HEART who knows how many lives would have been saved?

And special thanks to Penni Adrian for focusing on the important challenges to our constitutionally guaranteed rights. That whole NSA wiretap, phone record, ECHELON thing is just a smokescreen. Just like flouridation, the real totalitarian plot is being hidden in seemingly innocuous, cuddly things. Like puppies. They're using puppies, I tell ya! Will they stop at nothing?!?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, your comment is at best ill-informed. Penni Adrian wants to recall Sally Mayer. The reason is the HEART ordinance, or Patriot Act for the Dogs.

On the surface, it looks good - the city stops euthanizing the animals. However, the same ordinance imposes draconian surveillance measures against boarding kennels, vet clinics and suchlike and enforces mass castration of legally owned, well-supervised dogs.

I am all for apple pie. Razor blades have their uses too. Apple pie with razor blades, however, is a rather useless, not to say dangerous, product, and so is HEART ordinance, and there are perfectly good reasons to have the person who hoisted this idiocy upon us to be recalled.

jscotkey said...

Fluffy:

I can understand the difference of opinion on HEART, but don't quite get the "ill-informed" part. I said Penni Adrian is trying to get Sally Mayer recalled. You said Penni Adrian is trying to get Sally Mayer recalled. We seem to be equally informed on this point.

As for the pros/cons of the HEART ordinance, I'm glad to see you're in favor of apple pie. I'm not informed enough to know what the Hell apple pie has to do with dog castration, but you seem to have a theory.

Good luck on the recall and future apple pie/razor blade-laden analogies.

Anonymous said...

Sally has got to go.
I was ready before HEART passed.
Regardless of what politico goofball rounds up the names.

HEART has some value.
Why does the city license any breeders at all when we pay to euthanize so many animals?

Having a police officer patrol the parks in my neighborhood monitoring dogs...
does not.

There has been a cop in my Altura neighborhood all week only enforcing animal ordinance issues.
The same ridiculous ordinance issues Sally said weren't really the important part of her bill.

I saw him run his siren at 8 am to "pull over" someone walking their dog on leash to check tags.

Isn't there a 38% unsolved murder rate in this city. How about we work on that?

See ya later Sally.

Anonymous said...

"Why does the city license any breeders at all when we pay to euthanize so many animals?"

Because the issue is a whole lot more complex than Sally Mayer understands.

The "secret formula" to ending euthanasias is low-cost spay/neuter. Not breeder licensing. Not divisive laws. Not mandatory spay/neuter.

If you make it affordable to s/n dogs and cats, many more people will do so. Especially many more poor people.

Look at what Nathan Winograd goes around and preaches - and he's responsible for the REAL no kill cities. What does he advocate? Low cost s/n, community outreach and involvement, and avoiding divisive laws, which he says do not work.

About 75-80% of the dogs in the shelter are mixes. Most of those dogs were not bred on purpose. Eliminating every single breeder in the city will not help those dogs - because they were not bred by people who consider themselves breeders.

Of the purebreds, except for pit bulls and mixes, who have a dismally low adoption rate, purebreds are adopted at approximately twice the rate of mixes. If you partner with rescues, the rates are even higher.

The source of most purebreds in shelters? Commercial breeders, BYBs, and imports, especially from Mexico and the former Soviet Union.

Show breeders, or "hobby breeders", typically belong to clubs that mandate lifetime responsibility for any dogs they breed. Their pups are not in shelters. They sell pets on spay/neuter contracts. These are the good guys doing things the right way. If people are going to get purebred pups, this is where they should be getting them.

HEART will not affect people who do not consider themselves breeders. HEART will not provide low cost s/n for low income citizens. HEART will not help the purebreds in shelters, who overwhelming come from out of town, out of state, and out of country breeders.

What HEART will do is punish the folks who were already doing it the right way - because the folks writing HEART didn't bother to define the problem. It's a truly dreadful law that will cost a lot, but not do much to help animals.

Want to cut euthanasia rates? Read Winograd's writings. HEART has it wrong on almost every count.

Anonymous said...

I thought we already had low cost or free spay and neuter for low-income people's pets. I see the billboards around town. How do we get through to the people who think it infringes on an animal's rights to sterilize it?