A regulatory Czar that is also a zealot. Spooky beginnings.


Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:40:25 -0800
Subject: Obama appointee has AR history (Dallas Morning News)

> Dallas Morning News
>
> Is Obama appointing an 'animal rights zealot' to high office?
>
> Jeffrey Weiss
>
> Fri, Jan 16, 2009
>
> http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/is-obama-appointing-an-animal.html
>
>
>
> Perhaps discussion about the ethical treatment of animals is going to
>
> be higher on the new administration's agenda than one might think? On
>
> an average day my e-box is filled with partisan screeds from a broad
>
> spectrum. And usually I roll my eyes at the more extreme claims and go
>
> on with my day. For instance, how about a headline that claims "New
>
> Radical White House Appointee: No Hunting, Meat, or Medical Testing?"
>
> Laughably implausible, yes? As it turns out: No. Overstated, to be
>
> sure, but not as far as you'd think.
>
>
>
> The fellow in question is Harvard professor Cass R. Sunstein, tagged
>
> by Obama to be administrator of the Office of Information and
>
> Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the White House Office of
>
> Management and Budget. A quick Google turned up a paper he published
>
> in 2002 titled The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer.
>
>
>
> Head to the jump for excerpts.
>
>
>
> On appropriate legal restrictions on the treatment of animals:
>
>
>
> We should focus attention not only on the "enforcement gap," but on
>
> the areas where current law offers little or no protection. In short,
>
> the law should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific
>
> experiments, entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against
>
> unnecessary animal suffering. It is easy to imagine a set of
>
> initiatives that would do a great deal here, and indeed European
>
> nations have moved in just this direction.
>
>
>
> Require low-suffering farming and ban recreational hunting:
>
>
>
> "If we focus on suffering, as I believe that we should, it is not
>
> necessarily impermissible to kill animals and use them for food; but
>
> it is entirely impermissible to be indifferent to their interests
>
> while they are alive. So too for other animals in farms, even or
>
> perhaps especially if they are being used for the benefit of human
>
> beings. If sheep are going to be used to create clothing, their
>
> conditions must be conducive to their welfare. We might ban hunting
>
> altogether, at least if its sole purpose is human recreation. (Should
>
> animals be hunted and killed simply because people enjoy hunting and
>
> killing them? The issue might be different if hunting and killing
>
> could be justified as having important functions, such as control of
>
> populations or protection of human beings against animal violence.)"
>
>
>
> Put animal cruelty in the same moral context as human slavery:
>
>
>
> "The problem is that most of the time, the interests of animals are
>
> not counted at all--and that once they are counted, many of our
>
> practices cannot possibly be justified. I believe that in the
>
> long-run, our willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering
>
> will be seem a form of unconscionable barbarity--not the same as, but
>
> in many ways morally akin to, slavery and the mass extermination of
>
> human beings.
>
>
>
> To be fair, he also makes the case that medical experiments can be
>
> justified. And knocks down the idea that animals should be recognized
>
> as possessing the same kind of autonomy as people. And it's not as if
>
> he's been appointed as Secretary of Agriculture or Interior, where his
>
> animal-rights positions might be directly relevant."
>
>
>
> But boy, howdy, I'd pay to see a confirmation hearing with this guy
>
> where some of these issues got aired.

great...cant wait for the next election. have 50,000 chickens plus beef cows and i hunt trap and fish...this guy hates me.

Now who,s grinning??

All animal use people are in a precarious position when zealots such as this guy with his stated track record, are made CZARS. One also has to wonder about the King that created such a Czar. I am pretty sure the Medical researchers , farmers and Wildlife Conservation Biologists are quite challenged and nervous over such a choice.