Author: Brian Carnell

NAIA Wants Investigation of Tax Exempt Animal Rights Groups

The National Animal Interest Alliance recently called for the Bush administration to investigate what NAIA believes are unlawful activities undertaken by animal rights groups acting as tax-exempt charities.

In a press release on NAIA’s web site, Patti Strand said,

We believe that the Administration’s goal to increase the flow of money to legitimate charities through new tax deductions is both admirable and necessary. However, we also believe that organizations that benefit from tax-exempt status and misuse constitutionally protected speech to threaten businesses and private citizens should not benefit from federal help.

Some of these organizations fail to condemn the growing use of vandalism, arson, and other serious crimes that benefit their agenda. They disseminate half-truths to stir opposition to legitimate animal-based enterprises and threaten boycotts and public smear campaigns in order to exact money from corporations, force capitulation to radical demands and raise money from the general public. These campaigns and others have raised millions of dollars based on unproven allegations of animal cruelty and abuse.

Just a little background here. Many animal rights groups, including the big ones such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States are incorporated as 501(c)(3) charities. Both the law and IRS statements are often vague and confusing, but a 501(c)(3) charity is only supposed to engage in lobbying and other social actions only if such activities are not a substantial part of their total activities. Nonprofits whose primary activities are lobbying and/or otherwise political in nature are supposed to incorporate under 501(c)(4).

Most nonprofits interested in doing a lot off lobbying create affiliated 501(c)(4) charities. For example, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took out an anti-Bush ad last November, it did so through an affiliated 501(c)(4) (currently, there are no restrictions preventing a 501(c)(3) organization from donating to a 501(c)(4) nonprofit).

I think its pretty clear that the animal rights groups such as PETA are primarily engaged in political activity and really should be forced into 501(c)(4) — which they would oppose because they would lose certain tax advantages.

NAIA has an online-petition at its website which you can sign by visiting their press release web page. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the text of the petition and a link to click on to sign the petition.

Source:

NAIA Calls on President Bush to Act Against Animal Rights’ Extremists. National Animal Interest Alliance, Press Release, June 1, 2001.

Roche Begins Research Exodus out of the United Kingdom

At the end of May pharmaceutical company Roche announced that as part of a worldwide 3,000 workforce reduction it was closing its British research and manufacturing center after almost a century of operation. The cuts included the entire research time that developed the anti-AIDS drugs Invirase.

Roche, like many European pharmaceutical companies, is moving its research efforts to the United States. William Burns, head of pharmaceuticals at Roche, said that the move was not “a reaction to animal rights activism” in the United Kingdom, but certainly the widespread assault on animal research facilities in Great Britain probably made the decision a lot easier to justify.

The upshot of recent developments in the United Kingdom is this: the United States is going to increasingly become the major focal point for animal rights activists. The activists in the UK have had some stunning successes, and are successfully driving out research firms and other animal enterprises. Over the next decade the focus of the worldwide animal rights movement is likely to be on the United States, where so far the animal rights movement has had at best a very minor impact.

Source:

Bitter pill for Aids researchers as Roche axes British development base. David Frin, The Financial Times (London), June 1, 2001.

Wisconsin Considers Agri-Terrorism Bills (Plus An Incredibly Misinformed Activist)

When People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Ingrid Newkirk said that she hoped foot-and-mouth disease came to the United States, lawmakers in Wisconsin were apparently paying close attention. The state legislature is currently working on a number of bills that would provide for criminal penalties to threaten or commit acts of what is being dubbed “agri-terrorism.”

Sandy Chalmers, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,

On the one hand you have a marginal and largely irrelevant fringe group that has shown a pattern of using outrageous statements to get in the newspaper. But on the other hand, we have to take any threat seriously. So, are we concerned? I think vigilance is the most appropriate term. We have to be vigilant and proactive. We have to be prepared for anything.

Part of that preparation includes new proposed laws designed to increase the penalties for damaging agricultural facilities. Several legislators are working on a bill modeled on Iowa’s strict law where vandalizing and/or terrorizing agricultural property is a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine if the total damage is more than $10,000.

Wisconsin lawmakers are also looking at Pennsylvania and Indiana statutes which provide criminal punishment for intentionally exposing agricultural animals to an infectious disease.

State Sen. Sheila Harsdof would like to extend the laws to target people who make threats to infect animals saying that, “There must be some recognition of the damage that can occur simply by making threats.”

But will any new laws be any more effective than the old laws have been in ensnaring extremist animal rights advocates. Tom Thieding, executive director of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, is skeptical. He told the Journal Sentinel,

It’s great to have a strong law on the books, but the sophistication of these wackos is so high tech and so stealth of night that our justice system is just not able to capture these people in the act. You want it in place in the event you catch these guys in the act, but it’s not going to be a deterrent. They’re going to be intent on doing it regardless of the laws that are out there.

On a side note, less than a week after the Journal Sentinel ran its story, an odd letter from animal rights activist Karen Payleitner appeared in the Journal Sentinel which give some insight into how these folks can make such ludicrous claims about animal agriculture, research, etc. — they’re too wrapped up in their fantasy world to even pay attention to their own organizations. Payleitner wrote,

I am a vegetarian, have been a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for nearly 12 years and am a member of many other animal rights organizations. The suggestion that any of us would do something so despicable as to infect livestock with a hideous disease that would harm our own or someone else’s loved ones is not only ludicrous, it is deeply offensive. It is equally contemptible to suggest that we, of all people, would want to cause horrible suffering in animals that we also love and respect.

Well at least she got one thing right, when Newkirk and Bruce Friedrich said how wonderful it would be if foot-and-mouth disease came to the United States they were once again demonstrating how offensive and contemptible PETA is.

Sources:

Lawmakers work to head off ‘agri-terrorism’ in state. Jessica Hansen and Meg Jones, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 3, 2001.

Ludicrous to think groups would do harm. Karen Payleitner, Letter to the Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 9, 2001.

What About A Frontier Free Friday?

Can you imagine the flames that would issue forth from Dave Winer if some executive at Microsoft suggested a Frontier Free Friday to protest Winer’s constant abuse of his customers and innocent bystanders? You know, something like:

What if every Friday were a Frontier-free day for the Web? You can use Frontier any day but Friday. To give something back to the Web, if you want to use my browser you would have to use Apache, Vignette, etc. — anything but Userland’s software. One day a week.

The more I read Scripting News the more I become convinced that “The Two Way Web” is every bit as much an empty marketing slogan as anything Microsoft ever comes up with.

‘Today the hammer comes down’

We’re moving out of our house in early August and into a slightly nicer house (smaller, but better maintained) about 5 or 6 blocks away from where we live now. One of the main reasons for moving is to get away from our neighbors. Among the biggest troublemakers are the college students who live in a small apartment complex behind us.

It is bad enough that they begin partying on Wednesday’s, but lately they’ve been setting off firecrackers as well. We usually call the police, but noise violations are hardly high on their priority list.

Today I called the manager of the apartment complex to complain. He was extremely receptive to my tale of woe, especially how described observing drunken college students lighting fireworks on their wooden balcony. He told me that he’d take care of it, saying that he’d given them warnings about the fireworks, but “today, the hammer comes down.”

Excellent.

Atheros Communications

I’d never heard of Atheros Communications until running across a brief but intriguing mention in the July issue of Wired.

Atheros has apparently beaten everyone to market with the first 802.11a chip, which will go into mass production sometime this summer. Whereas 802.11b operates on the 2 ghz range, 802.11a is designed for the 5ghz range (which like 900mhz and 2 ghz doesn’t require a license) and achieves potential throughputs of up to 72Mbps, although the current IEEE standards limit the maximum potential throughput to “just” 54Mbps.

Atheros has a press release explaining the technology. Given how long it took 802.11b to begin showing up at the consumer level in volume, this will probably take 3 to 5 years to become affordable for casual users, but is nice to see where these things are headed.

There are already 802.11b cards showing up that add proprietary features to speed things like streaming DVD video over a wireless LAN. Imagine what could be done with five times that bandwidth.