| Senate | House |
| Amendment 497151 | House: | Withdrawn 4/30/2003 8:30 PM |
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| 1 | CHAMBER ACTION | ||||
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| 12 | Representative Barreiro offered the following: | ||||
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| 14 | Amendment (with title amendment) | ||||
| 15 | Between lines 121 and 122, and insert: | ||||
| 16 | (f) The Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl using | ||||
| 17 | only poultry which meet Florida Department of Agriculture and | ||||
| 18 | Consumer Services and the National Poultry Improvement Program | ||||
| 19 | disease control standards. | ||||
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| 22 | ================= T I T L E A M E N D M E N T ================= | ||||
| 23 | Remove line 8, and insert: | ||||
| 24 | conditions; providing penalties; exempting the Association | ||||
| 25 | for the Preservation of Gamefowl from the prohibition on | ||||
| 26 | animal fighting or baiting under certain circumstances; | ||||
| 27 |
amending ss. 933.02
and | ||||
Daytona Beach, Florida-AP -- Investigators in Florida have new details about a the death of a large bird at the hands of a minor league baseball pitcher.
By PAT MINDOS
Herald Staff Writer
Two watchdog organizations
make different complaints about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but
their unified message questions the integrity of the Norfolk-based animal rights
group.
Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of
Free Enterprise, said, “We believe the evidence shows that PETA’s leaders and
personnel have been involved in criminal activities of such a magnitude for such
a length of time that they have no legal right to a tax exemption.”
Jeff
Kerr, general counsel for PETA, responded to Arnold’s statement. “That is
completely ludicrous and they’ve known about it for a long time,” said Kerr,
Monday. “Everything it (PETA) does is directly related to trying to help end the
suffering and exploitation of animals. Everything we do is consistent with the
charitable mission of PETA.”
Meanwhile the Center for Consumer Freedom says
PETA allocates a greater portion of its funds on legal defense instead of
protecting the animals. The center is a nonprofit organization supported by
restaurants, food companies, and individual consumers to promote personal
responsibility and consumer choices.
Kerr explained PETA donates to legal
defense funds to help protect constitutional rights to effective counsel. “PETA
will help when we feel it is appropriate to defend the rights of people who are
trying to speak out in behalf of animals. We stand very much behind the
constitutional rights people have — the right to Freedom of Speech.”
Parker
Space, vice president of Space Farms Zoo & Museum, of Sussex, commented
Monday on the center’s findings. “People are sort of blinded by the false front
PETA puts forward,” said Space in a written statement. “Basically people do not
realize what is behind their true agenda. They are putting a lot of their
donations in their pocket and very little goes to the animals they ‘claim’ to
protect.”
Last week, PETA sent letters to Space Farms and The New Jersey
Herald stating that tigers or lions bred in captivity on the farm could end up
guarding crackhouses or languishing in basements. An additional letter to the
newspaper stated captive tigers are kept in small barren cages where they
sometimes go insane from the lack of exercise. The letters did not show proof
that the farm’s animals actually end up guarding crackhouses or kill people.
Space denied the allegations Wednesday, and said the family-owned farm only
sells the cubs to zoos or other breeding facilities. He also objected to the
article, printed Thursday.
Space said his zoo is regulated by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the pens and feeding facilities are inspected
bi-annually. The facility is also licensed by the NJ Fish and Wildlife.
“Whenever there’s a problem when the state finds an illegal tiger, we’re one of
the first ones they call. We have a good rapport with them,” Space said.
PETA’s criticism stemmed from the farm advertising its five tiger cubs in
Animal Finders’ Guide, which sells animals such as camels, kangaroos and elk
bull. “We monitor the publication, and when we find things that would be of
interest to the public, we act on them,” Amy Rhodes, Animals in Entertainment
Research & Investigations for PETA, said Friday. “We want people to know
that roadside zoos like Space Farms use these animals to bring people in. They
keep the animals purely for profit, once no longer profitable, they pawn them
off to anyone who is willing to pay for them — rarely a legitimate zoo.”
She
provided examples, such as research labs, or people who keep them as pets.
Rhodes also wrote the letters.
Space disagreed with Rhodes, commenting on
how Space Farms saved a family of rhesus monkeys last summer from being sent to
a research center. “When I heard what was slated to happen to these guys, I
quickly found who they belonged to and made arrangements to pick them up in
South Jersey,” Space said. “Now they are here at the farm to interact with the
people for many years to come.”
But further research into PETA indicates
other groups object to how PETA manages its finances. PETA does not publish how
much it spends on litigation, but the Center for Consumer Freedom, has tracked
the animal rights group’s tax returns for the past 20 years. “A tiny fraction of
the millions actually goes to animal help programs, like rescues, or less than
1/2 percent,” said Martosko who faxed a list, itemizing PETA’s expenses for
legal defense and animal protection. “It’s another example of how PETA pretends
to be warm and cuddly. It’s pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, it’s
an extreme radical (group) It’s not about being kind to animals, it’s about
being cruel to people.”
Kerr responded to Arnold’s objections to PETA’s tax
exempt status.
“Everything they have talked about has been disclosed in our
tax returns,” said Kerr. “We are very open in what we do and we are trying to
get people’s attention about the suffering that’s inflicted on animals.”
He
also said that because of PETA’s financial assistance with legal defense,
information about animal cruelty was brought out in the open and sweeping
changes have been made to animal labs.
Source: http://www.njherald.com/news/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1052228938,46011,
WASHINGTON, May 5 — The United States Supreme Court today unanimously upheld the right of the states to bring fraud charges against telemarketers and other fund-raisers who knowingly deceive potential donors about how much of their money will really go to charity.
Ruling in an Illinois case that weighed fund-raisers' First Amendment rights of free expression against the authority of government to protect people from fraud, the justices emphasized that while First Amendment protections for charities are broad, they are not a blanket.
"The First Amendment does not shield fraud," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court in Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates, No. 01-1806. Her decision and a concurrence by Justice Antonin Scalia can be read on the court's Web site: supremecourtus.gov.
The case has been closely followed by charities, telemarketers and organizations that contend that some fund-raisers prey upon the sympathies of people by giving them the false impression that most of the money they donate will go for good works.
Most states have either passed laws attempting to curb misleading fund-raisers, or are contemplating doing so. But the states have faced high First Amendment barriers that protect charitable solicitation. In three previous rulings, in 1980, 1984 and 1988, the Supreme Court struck down state or local laws intended to regulate how much charitable fund-raisers were paid or what potential donors had to be told.
In fact, the Illinois Supreme Court had dismissed the state's charges against Telemarketing Associates Inc. on the basis of those precedents.
When the case was argued before the Supreme Court on March 3, the Illinois attorney general's office asked the justices to overturn the Illinois tribunal's holding, and today the justices did so.
The state's position, supported by the Bush administration, was that Telemarketing Associates committed fraud by allowing donors to infer that most of the money the group raised on behalf of a charity called VietNow would go for such stated purposes as delivering food baskets and providing shelter to homeless veterans. In fact, the contract between the fund-raiser and its client called for the telemarketer to keep 85 percent of the money raised.
Even if the telemarketer did not actually lie about the arrangement, said an Illinois assistant attorney general, Richard S. Huszagh, there was fraudulent misrepresentation "if the public reasonably understands that substantially more" of the money raised will go to the charity.
"There is no constitutional value in artificially contrived half-truths," Mr. Huszagh said.
Justice Ginsburg emphasized today that the fact that a fund-raiser kept a high percentage of donations — in this case, 85 cents of every dollar — was not in itself fraud. But the activities of the telemarketer in this case, she wrote, seemed to cross over into a deliberate attempt to deceive.
The Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, issued a statement today calling the ruling "a major victory for consumers in Illinois and other states who want to make charitable donations but want those donations to go to the charity, not the pockets of professional telemarketers."
A lawyer for Telemarketing Associates said the ruling was by no means a total defeat for his side. "The Supreme Court affirmed that the decisions of a charity to raise funds and how those funds are raised is protected speech, and that the government can't second-guess that decision by retrospectively claiming expenses are too high," the lawyer, William E. Raney, told The Associated Press.
Today's decision was a mild surprise, since when the case was argued on March 3, one justice after another peppered Mr. Huszagh with what sounded like hostile and skeptical questions on whether the states could curb telemarketers, in light of the Supreme Court's three previous decisions in that area.
But Justice Ginsburg wrote today that those previous decisions "took care to leave a corridor open for fraud actions," a corridor also discerned upon reflection by the other eight justices.
"What the First Amendment and our case law emphatically do not require," Justice Ginsburg wrote, "is a blanket exemption from fraud liability for a fund-raiser who intentionally misleads in calls for donations."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/politics/05CND-CHARITY.html
But You Might Also Find Him Here...............
The Humane Society of the United
States
2100 L Street, NW
Washington DC 20037
202-452-1100
http://www.hsus.org/ace/11681
How About This Information From A FLORIDA Cat Lover Website,
Animals lovers everywhere want to help those animals that are
less fortunate that their own household pets. In an attempt to help, most
will donate blindly to an association based solely on the sound of the name or
even the fact that this organization has been around awhile.
We have all
received those envelopes in the mail with the cute Christmas cards begging for
you to support the charity by buying these cards. Some of us also have received
letters throughout the year showing starving and abused dogs and cats. Others,
pictures of Rabbits while the writer indicates that this is a result of animal
testing for the purpose of testing shaving cream and won't you please help by
sending money!
The two organizations that most
often use these begging tactics are PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals) and HSUS the (Humane Society of the United States.)
Please do
not be duped by these organizations. They are playing on your sympathies and
using YOUR money to further their hidden agendas. There is nothing good about
them. Your money supports their self serving interests!
All Charities with annual revenues of $25, 000 or more must
file form 990 with the federal government. This form details exactly what
portion of contributions goes to help animals and how much goes to
administrative costs.
It is better if a nonprofit group raises its own
money or uses volunteers to raise that money. There are a lot of 90-10 contracts
out there where only 10 percent actually reaches the actual cause. Be aware that
some charities list fund-raising costs as program services in their reports and
it doesn't directly aid animals....................
<snip>
...................Then we have the HSUS (Humane Society of the United
States) that says that they work for the protection of the animals. Yet they
have enough money (Your hard earned money) to spay and neuter almost all of the
strays in the USA yet they support NO LOCAL SHELTERS!
They use your (NOW
their) money to support anti-breeders laws. The next time that you or a
family member are looking for a pedigreed animal you may just have a very hard
time finding one. Why? Because HSUS funds legislation that would put
a stop to breeders being able to have the freedom to do this. They will
lie and say that they are against puppy and kitten mills when the legislation
that they are proposing across this great land, does NOT exclude small
private breeders but rather lumps everyone into the same legislative
category.
According to the form 990 and 990 EZ tax return the HSUS reported
assets
Financial
Info Fiscal Year: 2001
Assets:
$102,819,945
Income:
$57,177,692
Here is the link to the Income
tax returns filed with the IRS on the Humane Society of the United States for
the year 2001
http://documents.guidestar.org/2001/530/225/2001-530225390-1-9.pdf
Somehow I don't think that they NEED my money nor are they
worthy of it since they do NOT support any local Humane societies. The HSUS
relies on your misunderstanding to keep their bank accounts "rolling in the
dough!"
Research conducted by the
Center for Consumer Freedom (www.consumerfreedom.com) has confirmed
that since at least 1998, the Humane Society of the United States has been
quietly funding an Internet service used by the violent criminals of the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF). HSUS has been widely criticized for hiring
ALF-affiliated criminal J.P. Goodwin in 2001.
It’s called WASTE.org, and
it hosts the ALF “Frontline” mailing list, the preferred vehicle for arsonists
and other criminals to announce their animal-rights crimes.
According to
what I witnessed, they don't need my money
either!
Americans donated
nearly 200 Billion to philanthropic causes in 2001.
Protect yourself and
make you dollars go further to worthwhile charities
(1) Don't give money
to any charity that you don't know
(2) Make sure that the organization
spends at least 70 per cent of its budget on program services. The best do even
better
(3) Investigate the charity's BOD for possible conflict of
interests
(4)Make sure that the charity is registered with the IRS and a
public Charity otherwise your donations are NOT tax deductible
(5) Do NOT
donate solely on the basis of the charity's name. Some adopt names very similar
to well known charitable organizations
(6) Do your homework. Planned
giving is much more effective than last minute responses
Your local NO
KILL shelters would be a very good place to donate your hard earned money. You
can even visit and delegate in what areas of operation you would like your
donation to be spent.
Remember PETA and the HSUS do NOTHING to help your
local shelter!
This is the best charity monitoring group that can provide you with almost everything you need to know before giving a donation.At this site you'll find reports of Charitable organizations, including a data base of more than 850,000 IRS recognized nonprofit organizations......This one gives you the whole enchilada!