Pacelle Denies HSUS to Take Over Animal Services
In an email a few hours ago, Wayne Paelle said there was no truth to the rumor of an HSUS takeover of Animal Services.
This breaks my Heart
LA (Louisiana) 11 Year Old Blind Dog - URGENT
LEX LUGER IS A SWEET BOY WHO WAS JUST RESCUED ALONG WITH 20 OTHER SMALL DOGS FROM A VERY BAD ENVIRONMENT.
HE IS AROUND 11 YEARS OLD AND NEEDS ALOT OF TIME AND ATTENTION.
HE IS BLIND AND MISSING ONE EYE.
HE IS ALSO MISSING HIS FRONT TEETH.
LITTLE LEX DESERVES TO SPEND THE REST OF HIS LIFE TAKEN CARE OF AND PAMPERED.
PLEASE GIVE HIM THE LOVING HOME THAT HE NEEDS.
ALL INCOMING PETS ARE GIVEN FIRST SHOTS AND WORMED.
12/1/09 HE WAS GIVEN rDapp, BORDATELLA, STRONGID, PYRETHRIN
They love me over there, at the pound, but...space is limited and pets are euthanized on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Unfortunately my time is running out
so if you think you and I could live together and love eachother,
PLEASE HURRY, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
Call (337) 394-1220 AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
It is a good idea to call first because the staff has so much to do, but leave a message and please keep trying.
IF YOU WISH COME ADOPT A PET, OR TO SEND A DONATION OUR ADDRESS IS:
The St. Martin Parish Animal Control Facility
1004 Industrial Park Road
St. Martinville LA 70582.
The opening hours are
Tuesday through Friday, 8 am - 5 pm.
Saturday 9 am - 2 pm.
Closed on Sunday and Monday.
HE IS AROUND 11 YEARS OLD AND NEEDS ALOT OF TIME AND ATTENTION.
HE IS BLIND AND MISSING ONE EYE.
HE IS ALSO MISSING HIS FRONT TEETH.
LITTLE LEX DESERVES TO SPEND THE REST OF HIS LIFE TAKEN CARE OF AND PAMPERED.
PLEASE GIVE HIM THE LOVING HOME THAT HE NEEDS.
ALL INCOMING PETS ARE GIVEN FIRST SHOTS AND WORMED.
12/1/09 HE WAS GIVEN rDapp, BORDATELLA, STRONGID, PYRETHRIN
They love me over there, at the pound, but...space is limited and pets are euthanized on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Unfortunately my time is running out
so if you think you and I could live together and love eachother,
PLEASE HURRY, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
Call (337) 394-1220 AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
It is a good idea to call first because the staff has so much to do, but leave a message and please keep trying.
IF YOU WISH COME ADOPT A PET, OR TO SEND A DONATION OUR ADDRESS IS:
The St. Martin Parish Animal Control Facility
1004 Industrial Park Road
St. Martinville LA 70582.
The opening hours are
Tuesday through Friday, 8 am - 5 pm.
Saturday 9 am - 2 pm.
Closed on Sunday and Monday.
WILL ANIMAL SERVICES GO TO HSUS?
These two recent articles (BELOW) point out that LAAS and the Zoo may be turned over to private groups. This rumor has been circulating for months, and there were previous articles about the possibility.
Jim Bickhart told me a month ago that there was this possibility, but that the Mayor's Office had not really gone into it that much yet in terms of realistically examining the possibility.
However, he may just be covering up, and that is why so little time and energy has been spent on getting a new GM.
Below, Orlov says Council will be taking this issue on next month.
Also, I was told three months ago by sources I won't name, that the turnover of LAAS to HSUS was nearly a done deal. Pacelle has been spending a lot of time in LA recently.
Does anyone know anything?
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THE SECOND ARTICLE:
Google News Alert for: "animal services" "los angeles"
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Francis Battista: Ruling on trapping of feral cats is (bad) for the birds
Updated: 12/15/2009 05:00:56 PM PST
A recent ruling by Superior Court Judge Thomas McKnew against the city of Los Angeles' support for the privately implemented Trap-Neuter-Return, or TNR, of feral cats is a step backward for progressive animal services in Los Angeles.
The ruling, which is expected to be appealed, prevents Los Angeles Animal Services from partaking in any activity that supports TNR - the only humane and demonstrably effective method of controlling community cat populations. Prompted by a suit filed by bird conservationists, it also would halt the long-standing practice of issuing cash vouchers that supplement the cost of the sterilization of community cats.
While this might appear to be a victory for birds and bird lovers, it is anything but. Consider the realities of the situation.
The No. 1 cause of songbird decline is loss of habitat due to deforestation, urbanization and development, followed by window collisions (especially with high rise glass buildings), wind turbine generators, common pesticides and lawn care products. There is no credible scientific study that shows cats to be a significant threat to birds.
Allowing though that cats are predators - they are rodent specialists (birds being generally more work than reward for a hungry cat) - there are an estimated 1 million-plus feral cats in the greater Los Angeles area.
The only sustained efforts at population control for these kitties are loosely organized by cat lovers, ranging from the stereotypical little old lady placing a few bowls of food on the back porch, to animal welfare advocates managing small colonies of sterilized feral cats in neighborhoods.
Each year tens of thousands of these cats are sterilized and returned to their respective communities and care givers, never to breed again. Yet they fill a niche in the neighborhood that would otherwise be taken up by other, as yet unsterilized breeding felines.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if there is a food supply (a restaurant, grocery store or apartment complex Dumpster, a rodent population or the proverbial little old lady), removing one group of cats only opens the territory for others.
Catching/killing community cats is not only an unacceptable and inhumane approach, it does not control population. Quite the contrary, if catch and kill (the standard policy for decades prior to the growth of TNR in the 1990s) actually worked, there would be no feral cats.
The bird conservancy groups advocate "removing" 50 percent of the community cat population. Since sterilization is not on their agenda, that would entail a perpetual program of catching and killing cats. Setting aside - if indeed that is possible - the ugliness and cruelty of such a plan, who do they propose would undertake such a campaign and how would they sell it to the cat-loving public?
The city certainly doesn't have the resources to deploy hundreds of trappers who would quickly become the target of animal activist ire. Are the bird groups planning to do it? The idea is as unworkable as it is cruel.
An army of cat-loving volunteers supports TNR at no cost to the city for their time and expertise. Withholding city support for the only viable approach to community cat management by ending a modest voucher program, the loaning of traps and providing public information, this ruling is no gift to birds or bird lovers.
McKnew in his lordly wisdom has, in effect, decreed to the cats of Los Angeles: "Be fruitful and multiply."
Birds beware.
Longcore Gets His Way; City Officially Ends Any TNR Support Today
MEMORANDUM
DATE: December 17, 2009
TO: Partnering Veterinarians and Rescue Organizations for LA Animal Services All Staff of the Department of Animal Services
FROM: Kathleen J. Davis, Interim General Manager
Department of Animal Services
SUBJECT: Compliance with December 4, 2009 Court Ruling – Los Angeles Superior Court
Case No. BS115483 (Lawsuit Regarding Trap, Neuter, and Return of Feral Cats)
A recent court ruling enjoined the City of Los Angeles from implementing a Trap Neuter and Release (TNR ) program for feral cats until the City has completed an environmental review in
compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”). Under the December 4, 2009 ruling, the City is also prohibited from encouraging third parties to carry out TNR , by providing incentives for, or otherwise facilitating, the capture, sterilization, and release of feral cats, until the City complies with CEQA. After consultation with the City Attorney, the Department prepared this memorandum to inform you that the City is prohibited from carrying out the following activities by the court ruling:
Providing vouchers to subsidize the cost of sterilization of feral cats. For vouchers distributed before December 4, 2009 , please note the City will not redeem the vouchers for payment by the Department for any sterilization of a feral cat performed after December 19, 2009. Effective immediately, the City will issue sterilization vouchers only to residents of the City for owned cats or dogs. No feral cat issuance, use, or redemption is allowed.
Providing waivers of trap permit fees or deposits for trap rentals for organizations that perform TNR .
Providing information about TNR programs sponsored by other entities on its website or providing cyberlinks to TNR programs sponsored by other entities. This includes referrals to TNR groups by Department staff.
Developing or distributing literature on the TNR program.
Conducting public outreach on TNR using press releases, fliers, or other media (except in conjunction with a CEQA public participation process.)
If you have any other questions at this time, please do not hesitate to contact me or Assistant General Manager Linda Barth at 213-482-9558 .
cc: Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa
Honorable Members of the Los Angeles City Council
Carmen A. Trutanich, City Attorney
Board of Animal Services Commissioners
Keith Olbermann Joins Dean Asking the Senate to Kill the Present Bill and Start Over
Under the current Senate bill, a 64 year old might have to pay three times as much as a 25 year old, which would make the mandated purchase of health insurance from a private company, impossible to afford. Preconditions would boost the premium 50%. The bill would force over 30,000,000 people to buy insurance and be fined if they don't. That is 30,000,000 new customers for insurance.
Keith Olbermann joins Dean and asks that the bill be killed, saying it is meaningless and a complete give away to the insurance industry. He blames the president and suggest Obama may have a primary challenge.
I agree. Obama has been a gutless president from a progressive perspective.
Keith Olbermann joins Dean and asks that the bill be killed, saying it is meaningless and a complete give away to the insurance industry. He blames the president and suggest Obama may have a primary challenge.
I agree. Obama has been a gutless president from a progressive perspective.
BETRAYAL BY OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
Howard Dean calls for defeating the healthcare reform bill and starting over. He says it is a meaningless gift to big insurance and pharma. Evidence leaks out that the current senate health "reform" bill has the conditions ironed out months ago by Obama in his secret meetings with Big Pharma and insurance companies. I am afraid this is change you can really believe in: bigger profits for insurance companies and Pharma.
So far: No single payer; no public option; no Medicare buy-in, no imported drugs (defeated yesterday), no price controls, and probably an upcoming defeat on the 90% payout requirement by insurance companies. AND, the insurance companies get 41,000,000 new customers.
What else: No bank reform, no meaningful Wall Street reform, business as usual, an expanded war in Afganistan.
We are betrayed. Time to do a little party purification like the Republicans are doing. The Democratic majority is a myth, just labels and words. In fact, we still have a big business majority running Congress and the White House.
I wouldn't be surprised if Lieberman were merely the fall guy to take the heat for the failure of the Dems and Obama to get real reform in healthcare, or real banking reform, or ....
Dozens of posts on Huffington Post and other progressive decry White House's failure to push real reform anywhere including banks, healthcare, Wallstreet and racism. Does Obama have any friends left except pharma, insurance and Wall Street?
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
"The president keeps listening to Rahm Emanuel," said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). "No public option, no extending Medicare to 55, no nothing, an excise tax, God!" he exclaimed about the Senate health care bill to Roll Call. "The insurance lobby is taking over."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) similarly suggested that blaming Lieberman was ignoring the real culprit -- Obama."This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don't think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
President Obama and the Senate leadership can't whip up the votes necessary to pass a public option or even a Medicare buy-in compromise, but they didn't have any trouble persuading 30 Democrats to vote against prescription drug reimportation Tuesday night -- thus preserving the deal cut between the Senate Finance Committee, the White House and Big Pharma.
Glen Greenwald:
Dozens of posts on Huffington Post and other progressive decry White House's failure to push real reform anywhere including banks, healthcare, Wallstreet and racism. Does Obama have any friends left except pharma, insurance and Wall Street?
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
"The president keeps listening to Rahm Emanuel," said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). "No public option, no extending Medicare to 55, no nothing, an excise tax, God!" he exclaimed about the Senate health care bill to Roll Call. "The insurance lobby is taking over."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) similarly suggested that blaming Lieberman was ignoring the real culprit -- Obama."This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don't think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
President Obama and the Senate leadership can't whip up the votes necessary to pass a public option or even a Medicare buy-in compromise, but they didn't have any trouble persuading 30 Democrats to vote against prescription drug reimportation Tuesday night -- thus preserving the deal cut between the Senate Finance Committee, the White House and Big Pharma.
Glen Greenwald:
Of all the posts I wrote this year, the one that produced the most vociferious email backlash -- easily -- was this one from August, which examined substantial evidence showing that, contrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it. From the start, assuaging the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was a central preoccupation of the White House -- hence the deal negotiated in strict secrecy with Pharma to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation, a blatant violation of both Obama's campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN). Indeed, Democrats led the way yesterday in killing drug re-importation, which they endlessly claimed to support back when they couldn't pass it. The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party -- rather than the GOP -- will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse.
As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage. Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this -- the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional "centrists." Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start -- the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry.
Who Was Afraid of a Cartographer? The Mayor's Office
This is the guy who sank TNR for Los Angeles, and attempted to do the same to Beverly Hills.
 |
Education | |
 B.A. Geography, University of Delaware, 6/1993 | |
| M.A. Geography, University of California - Los Angeles, 9/1995 | |
| Ph.D. Geography, University of California - Los Angeles, 12/1999 | |
Affiliations with Research Centers, Labs, and Other Institutions | |
| GIS Research Laboratory,http://www.uscgislab.net/ | |
Notice his degrees are in geography and he is an associate professor of geography at USC, and an occasional environmental sciences lecturer at UCLA. He has coauthored 16 papers and one book. Only one of those papers was about feral cats. He has no veterinary or biology background. Basically he is a map maker, yet the City of LA TNR policy.
Under Boks, TNR was the unofficial City policy, and Longcore and Rich of Urban Wildlands ended that.
The Mayor's Office, instead of doing a CEQA, in fact stopped all CEQA research, stopped the unofficial TNR policy, and then denied the City ever had such a policy and was caught lying and lost the lawsuit. Try to get any info out of the dept. about their feral research, CEQA or anything else. No information was allowed out.
This entire collapse of TNR is basically the result of Longcore's lawsuit and a very inept Mayor's Office response. Hundreds if thousands of feral cats have died already due to lack of City support and feral spay/neuter vouchers.
By the way, GIS means geographical information science.
His incredibly biased attack on every aspect of Beverly Hills TNR ordinance can be found at:
http://itisnotreal.com/UrbanWildlandsonTNR_0002.docx
Longcore Refuses to Meet Scientists Re His Recommendation to Kill Ferals
Longcore of Urban Wildlands refuses to meet with feral cat colony advocates. He says it’s a waste of time, his mind is made up. He wants cats “removed” from the urban environment.
Epidemiologist feral cat advocate to Travis Longcore:
I don't know what the City will do next. But as I said in my previous email, I would be happy to discuss with you the evidence regarding the possible environmental and public health impact of managed feral cat colonies and the effects of TNR programs.
Longcore’s response:
I appreciate your offer of discussing the literature, but I doubt that it would be particularly fruitful. My colleagues and I have given this a great deal of thought over many years and it is likely we come at this issue from a different perspective than you do. It is unlikely that either of us will change each others minds about the underlying value judgements that inform any decision about how to manage feral cats.
I repeat, longcore’s solution of removing 50% of the feral cat population is a demand for death for over 1,000,000 cats in Los Angeles
Tell Mr. Longcore what you think of him. Urban Wildlands has gotten off scott-free in the process, and the City and Ed Boks took the fall when they promoted TNR .
9401 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 1250
Beverly Hills, CA 90212-2945
(310) 273-7474
Photos Of the Nepalese Horror
Nepal begins controversial animal sacrifice festival
