Policing for Profit, Animal Style

The holiday season is shortly upon us and fraudulent animal rescues filled with animal rights fanatics are frantic to present sad sob stories to the public to get you to open up your wallet and snap up a Christmas puppy. As fast as you can say Merry Christmas, the Indianapolis Animal Care & Control raided a thirty year old business called Upton's Famous Pet Training Center and stole their dogs for resale. That's not all. Paul Upton also runs a licensed boarding kennel and several of the seized dogs belonged to his customers. Upton has been charged with animal cruelty and fined $112,000 plus $6,000 for kennel "care" for the dogs. The sales price of the stolen Upton dogs is simply additional gravy for the local animal shelter. 

Animal rights extremist Kim Wolsiffer had this to say. "A majority of the concerns we had were along those lines; the size of the kennel that the animals were being kept in and the medical concerns that we'd seen with multiple animals," said Deputy Chief of Enforcement Kim Wolsiffer. 

Kim Wolsiffer_ Deputy Chief of Enforcement and animal rights activist.

Wolsiffer wants you to believe that she just suddenly developed a concern about the size of their kennel just as the holiday season was kicking off. Why wasn't she concerned when the kennel received a spotless inspection report earlier this year? Or any time in the previous thirty years? And just what is she concerned about? Are the kennels too big? Too small? Too round? Or what? In fact, the Upton kennels exceed federal size requirements for dogs. Wolsiffer can wring her hands all she wants, but Upton is providing better care than the law requires. It's no coincidence that just months earlier she bragged that her officers were receiving extra training to help them put the hammer down on the public. Her stated goal is to ramp up their prosecutions by 25%. All of those fines that her department receives from the public goes to pay their own salaries and "perks" of the job. Talk about a conflict of interest. 

Wolsiffer wants you to believe it was a 'random' inspection that generated a sudden crime wave that they had no idea was occurring before, but if that was true, why did they have a reporter along for a ride? And why the public announcement just months earlier that the Indianapolis Animal Care & Control department was going to deliberately increase their prosecution rate? Surprising no one, the Animal Cruelty Investigative School that Wolsiffer brags that she attended is conducted by the University of Missouri Extension Service and staffed with a who's who of animal rights quacks. It's no surprise that the program was set up by Norma Worley, a hard core animal rights fanatic, with insider connections at PETA and the radical Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The ultimate goal of HSUS is to phase out animal ownership in America. 

 "Our job is to seize animals" Norma Worley, testimony at the Maine Animal Welfare Advisory Council, 2006. 

Worley who was run out of California under questionable circumstances went to Maine to continue her animal rights work. In 2001, the Maine legislature had issued a Red Report that said the state of animal welfare in Maine was very good, but made minor suggestions such as dropping dog licensing requirements. Animal rights activists love to hear ideas for modifying laws. You thought they'd be following through on ending dog licensing? Of course not, instead the fanatics tried to outlaw dog breeding statewide. To help make these so-called minor changes, Worley was hired by the state of Maine in 2003. Under her leadership the department performed so poorly it was downgraded from a Department to a Program as she mercilessly overspend her budget, giving the taxpayers large cost overruns. She was so widely despised for her animal rights terrorist connections that theAmerican Sporting Dog Alliance demanded she be fired in 2009. 

John Yates of the American Sporting Dog Alliance said this of Worley, She "has run roughshod over the rights of dog owners in what can only be described as official repression by a rogue governmental agency gone mad." 

Worley racked up such a horrible reputation in Maine that incoming Republican Governor Paul LePage threatened to fire her on his first day on the job. She immediately "retired" in January 2011 before he took office. Reinventing a new past she went to Missouri where she taught law enforcement officers how to interpret cruelty statutes from an ideological radical point of view. I've talked extensively in the past about the long term animal rights infiltration of America's law enforcement officers. Having quacks like Worley setting up training programs for officers is nothing new. Another long time animal rights wingnut, Melinda Merck, set up the animal "CSI" program at the University of Florida. The problem is, as I revealed in my book, Staring the Dragon in the Eye: The Hidden Victims of Animal Extremists, Merck is so incompetent, she couldn't tell the difference between a knife wound and a predator attack when she tried to frame an innocent teenager for crimes he had not committed. 

Wolsiffer and the officers of the Indianapolis Animal Care & Control received their job training from animal rights fanatics determined to destroy the Constitutional rights of animal owners. Paul Upton and his employees have had enough and gone public with their story, sharing details of the dog theft on their Facebook page. 

Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the author of a new book, The Art of Terror: Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon. 

Read this and other Cavalry Group articles on JoeForAmerica.com

Activist Journalist Promotes Terrorism of Family Farm

It’s always interesting to me to see the fall out of today’s massive media consolidations.   More and more people are getting their news from fewer and fewer sources.   That gives a small circle large power to affect our society by making their views seem more widespread than they are.   When newspapers and magazines are taken over there is always a scramble by the staff to try and save their jobs, a natural reaction.   Sometimes ethics goes by the wayside in this fight to stay employed in the continuing down economy.   In Minnesota, earlier this year a small urban newspaper named City Pages, focusing on their audience of over-privileged extreme left wing members of the millennial generation, was taken over by the competition. As you can expect some lost their jobs. Still others seem willing to publish just about anything to generate outrage and readership to prop up their careers and avoid a layoff. One such person is reporter Cory Zurowski, known locally as being “edgy” at the paper known to have an “attitude” as if that’s something to brag about when reporting the news.   Walter Cronkite is probably spinning in his grave at what passes for reporting these days. But is it “edgy” to defame a farmer and destroy a family?   Is it “edgy” to write a story filled with unsupported, fraudulent details passed off as facts, calling a business you know nothing about a “puppy mill” and then standing aside to let the outraged readers of your propaganda take over and destroy a rural family just to sell papers and make a career?

Zurowski has done just that, recently running a series of articles defaming the rural Haag family farm.   The Haag’s run the Amaze’n Farmyard, a small educational petting zoo for families and school children. What is more Midwestern and wholesome than a family farm and its animals? But to Zurowski, he speculates that this beautiful family farm is hiding some deadly secret just because the Haag family won’t allow him to visit their property. Why should they after he has written such slander about them?   To rile up urbanites who know nothing about farming, Zurowski speculates that as many as 900 dogs may live at this farm at the adjoining dog kennel. Since he has never been there, he wouldn’t know how many dogs are there.   Joining him in defaming a Minnesota family is urban privileged stay-at-home mom Lindsay M. Holiday from Blaine, Minnesota.   Blaine, a suburb of the Twin Cities, is full of million dollar homes and other high-end housing. Holiday took it upon herself to conduct some sort of undercover private vigilante investigation when she, herself, is not law enforcement. Holiday bases her investigation on fraudulent reports slandering the Haag’s from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the largest animal rights group in America run by a vegan CEO who has famously stated he doesn’t want to see another cat or dog born ever again. You know, because Holiday had nothing better to do with her time than stalk a rural farmer.   Zurowski brags that Holiday is a brand new first time mother as if that has anything to do with her credentials as a fake law enforcement agent or doggie detective as he calls her.

Just like Joshua Rockwood, a small time farmer in New York, the Haag family and all of their kennel employees are seeing a concerted attack to destroy their way of life by people who know nothing of farming or dog breeding.  Urbanities think nothing of embarrassing this family in front of their neighbors.   They think nothing of harassing them and humiliating them on the Internet with false allegations about their farm. They think nothing of causing all of the kennel workers to lose their jobs in an economy where they won’t find another one soon and will end up on unemployment until it runs out. Ignorant do-gooders like Holiday make ludicrous charges and then just melt away to leave the damage in the pages of newspapers and on social media. Enflamed by the City Pages coverage of her illegal actions, Holliday plans a August 15th protest against the Haag farm during one of their busiest days to cause them a business loss claiming she’s against “inhumane capitalism.” The Haag farm is defended by The Cavalry Group, a member-based company working to legally protect the constitutional and private property rights of animal owners and animal related businesses across America.

“This is another example of bully tactics from animal rights groups,” Patterson says. “These people are doing nothing wrong. They are operating a commercial breeding kennel that regularly undergoes inspections from both federal and state regulators.”

It remains to be seen how Zurowski will cover the protest. Will he invoke his inner Cronkite and simply report the honest and unbiased facts, or will he run another terrorist apologizing rant to continue to destroy a rural Minnesota family and their employees?

Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the author of a new book, The Art of Terror: Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon.

Follow Katharine on Twitter: @KatharineDokken 

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Taking a Step Down the Path to Extinction

The California State Assembly's Arts, Entertainment, Sports & Tourism Committee is scheduled to potentially outlaw elephant conservation efforts on July 14, 2015.  The bill before them, Senate Bill 716, would outlaw the use of a tool called an elephant guide.  Elephant guides are no different than leashes for dogs or reins for horses.    You can't walk an elephant in public without one. Animal rights activists call this simple tool, cruel.   They claim that these tools cause injuries, puncture wounds, abscesses and other types of trauma to an elephant.

"They are weapons with only one purpose:  to cause pain, suffering and fear in elephants."
 activist Nicole Pagquette, HSUS.

Funny enough, these activists from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) have no injured elephants to show the public to prove their statements.  If these simple training tools cause puncture wounds, where are they?   The Ringling Bros Circus, in particular, is one of the most inspected shows around.   In 2012, during "one 11-week stay in California last summer, a total of more than 18 state, local and federal government agencies sent 44 different inspectors to look at Ringling’s pachyderms.  The 82 visits spanned more than 221 hours, or more than 3 hours for every day the circus was in the Golden State.”  At no time during those 221 hours of inspection did any inspector find an injured or "traumatized" elephant. 

Nicole Paquette went on to say that Ringling was stopping their elephant acts because of "the public's overwhelming opposition to the mistreatment of elephants for entertainment."   Again she lies.    Last year, HSUS lost a RICO Act lawsuit and paid Ringling $15.75 million to settle claims that activists had lied about how Ringling treats their elephants. You would think that activists from the HSUS would give up after being outed in court but here they are again lying to legislators and the public.

Earlier this year Richmond, Virginia banned elephants and other cities across America have listened to the same animal rights puppet masters.  These efforts are all part of the activists determination to remove all animals from our lives, one specie at a time.   Today its elephants, tomorrow its carriage horses, such as the long running campaign by New York City Mayor DeBlasio to ban carriage horses from Central Park, and tomorrow it will be your dog.   Ringling made a business decision to remove their elephant act because they have spent millions defending their reputation, wining, and the activists just continue to lie. 

Activists scream that elephants belong in the wild but in the wild they are dying in large numbers.   The vast majority of elephants in America today are domestically born.   They were born in captivity.  they are not 'wild' animals.   Animal rights activities want to remove them from our lives.  Today it's the circus, tomorrow they will disappear from our zoos and sanctuaries.   Activists are already attacking zoos nationwide and forcing the closure of many elephant exhibits.    Just up the road from Richmond, the Virginia Zoo recently announced that they are closing their elephant exhibit and getting rid of two elderly elephants under pressure from the animal rights infiltrated Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).    Just a few months ago, the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington got rid of their elephants under continuous pressure from activists.  Once elephants are no longer in the public eye, people will forget about them.   In today's electronic world, people have notoriously short attention spans.   Once out of sight, will anyone care that they are quickly becoming extinct in the wild?  A world without elephants, what a sad world that is. 

Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the  author of a new book, The Art of Terror:  Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon. 

Follow Katharine and The Cavalry Group on Twitter:   @KatharineDokken  @TheCavalryGroup

Animal Rights Activists Exploit Animal Suffering for Profit: Here's the Proof

In today’s big brother society, Homeland Security uses the slogan, “If you see something, say something” harking back to the days of Soviet Russia and East Germany.    It is not American to nark on your neighbors.   But in some cases, saying something is a good thing.  For example, if you see someone assaulting a woman or child.   Or if you see an animal abused.   The animal rights movement, however, doesn’t want you to say anything, ever.   Sounds polar opposite, doesn’t it?   All across America, thse activists are lobbying against what they call “ag gag” laws that interfere with their profit making advocacy.   They make millions off of images of abused animals. The more images they have, the more money they make.  They don’t want to see animal abuse stopped because then they can’t exploit it for cold hard cash. 

For example, in North Carolina, the pro-animal rights Governor recently vetoed an agriculture Property Protection Act, which the activists referred to as an ”ag gag” bill.   The North Carolina legislature then rightfully overrode Governor Pat McCrory’s veto.   Activists claim that these laws prevent them from reporting animal abuse.   They claim farmers are hiding something from the public.   They lie.   Animal rights activists do not want to report animal abuse.   Instead, they film it for their snuff films to raise money from the public.  Farmers are the ones that want to report and stop animal abuse in its tracks.    Many bills like the one in North Carolina have been filed in recent years in states across this Nation to force animal rights activists and others to report animal abuse when it happens.    Some versions of these laws include provisions that any witnessed animal abuse must be reported to the authorities within 24 to 48 hours.   Activists are opposed to reporting an abused and injured animal.   Instead they want to film the suffering animals, sometimes for up to 9 months, just so they can get their animal snuff film images.

    

A chronic offender in this category is a group called Mercy for Animals (MFA).   Recently the Dairy Farmers of America issued a statement calling out MFA for not reporting animal abuse in a timely manner.   MFA sent an activist named Jessica Buck into the Geordert dairy farm in Colorado who then didn’t do the job she was hired to do, which was to take care of their animals.  Instead the female activist spent two months filming animal abuse by a few of the farmer’s 30 employees and not reporting it to anyone. 

 

"We couldn't believe that someone who we hired as a milker and trusted to do the right thing and care for our cows would act so contrary to our values," said Marie Goedert of the undercover activist, Jessica Buck. "Why not bring these concerns to our attention immediately?"

The employees in question had already been fired by the Geordert’s by the time MFA released their video to the public.  In addition, they are working with the local Sheriff to ensure that everyone who abused animals on their farm is prosecuted.   So tell me, who’s speaking up for the best interest of animals?   The farmer or the activist? 

In the past, activists from the animal rights front have been accused of actually staging the animal abuse themselves both in Idaho and Colorado, and other states, in order to discredit American farmers and discourage consumers from eating meat.   

In the Colorado case, activist Taylor Radig, was arrested and charged with animal cruelty for failing to stop the abuse she witnessed for over two months.   Instead of reporting what she saw, in violation of state law, she simply filmed the actions so her employer, Compassion over Killing, could release the video to the public months later and exploit the situation.   She didn’t care about the actual animals who were suffering in front of her.   

Instead all she and others like her care about is selling snuff films to a gullible public and pleading for donations.   Donations that do not ever go to the animals you saw in those videos.   These so-called ag gag laws are needed to force people to say something if they see animal abuse occurring. 

VIDEO: Activists lock themselves to construction equipment. Two animal rights activists are atop construction equipment to protest the building of an animal research lab. click here

Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the author of a new book, The Art of Terror:  Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon. 

Follow Katharine and The Cavalry Group on Twitter:   @KatharineDokken  @TheCavalryGroup

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Private Property: The Real Endangered Species?

In 1973, Congress passed and President Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with the intent of protecting threatened species such as the bald eagle. Since then, close to 2,000 species and subspecies (1,400 of which are in the United States), have been added to the listing under the Endangered Species Act.

While the original Act was well intended, the Endangered Species Act has become the Trojan horse that sneaks in property-thieving regulations and a “sue and settle” lawsuit scheme while pretending to be beneficial to conservation. This threat to animal owners, animal based businesses, and private property has expanded significantly in recent years with animal rights groups hijacking the conservation aspect of the ESA to advance their radical agenda.

These groups make up a $400 Billion global coalition of organizations that raise money under the guise of promoting the welfare of animals, while using that money to buy lawyers and lobbyists to fund misleading, emotionally driven campaigns to pit the public against animal owners and breeders.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) is one such radical animal rights group based in San Francisco that files lawsuits against privately owned animal businesses with no intent of winning in court. Rather, the lawsuits are used to propagate a false narrative against their targets (typically animal based small business owners) in order to force them out of business. Instead of doing the work of raising, breeding, and caring for animals, the victims of these lawsuits must spend scarce resources on lawyers and public relations experts to clear their good name, and defend their livelihoods and their animals. Many cannot afford this burden and simply close up shop.

Recent reports from the House Committee on Natural Resources have uncovered that an entire cottage industry exists around filing lawsuits based on the ESA. As a result, funds that were once intended to be used to protect species in danger of extinction are now being diverted to fund frivolous lawsuits against animal owners who are the targets of extremist animal rights groups.

In addition, government bureaucrats often act unlawfully through a tactic called “sue and settle.” They settle litigation with their allies in environmental and animal rights groups behind closed doors in a way that advances the activist’s radical agenda, and in the process block out citizens, states, and local governments affected by their decisions and their subsequent rules and regulations.

This “sue and settle” tactic funnels millions of settlement dollars from the Federal Government to the animal rights and environmental activists to fund their continuing efforts to game the system and wrongfully attack animal enterprise ultimately.   The result is the destruction private property, businesses and lives.

One such victim of these attacks is Pam and Tom Sellner, owners of Cricket Hollow Zoo in Iowa, are one of many faces of victims of these attacks. Pam and Tom have been bringing joy to families for years with their privately owned collection of tigers, lions, pumas, and other exotic animals. Their zoo provides learning opportunities for students in rural Iowa who may otherwise not have access or contact with these animals. However, that will never satisfy the animal rights extremists who believe that these animals don’t belong in captivity.

Tom and Pam are now faced with mounting legal fees to fight this frivolous lawsuit from an animal rights activists group (ALDF) radically out of step with American values, but funded and well staffed with attorneys to do the dirty work. The Sellers are just one of the many faces of the victims of ESA-based lawsuits that have sprung up across the country.

While well intentioned when written over forty years go, the ESA has become a weapon for lawyers to beat small animal businesses over the head, all at the taxpayer expense.

Ultimately, the abuse of power under the ESA puts at risk the very animals it was intended to protect, as private property rights are trampled under the hooves of this Trojan Horse, and the system attacks the animals it was intended to protect.

Animal rights groups are using the ESA and our court system as a weapon to destroy those who aren’t in line with their ideology.  If this works on animal enterprise, what is next?

Mindy Patterson is the President of The Cavalry Group, a member based company protecting and defending the Constitutional and private property rights of law abiding animal owners, animal-related business, hunters, and agriculture concerns legally and legislatively nationwide.

Follow on Twitter: @TheCavalryGroup  @cowgirlathart

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