Cass Sunstein has Secret Animal Rights Agenda
By Consumer Freedom
Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost.
Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar:
Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist.
Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.
“Extensive regulation of the use of animals.” That's PETA-speak for using government to get everything PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can't get through gentle pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory czar.”
A version of the same paper also appeared as the introduction to Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, a 2004 book that Sunstein co-edited with then-girlfriend Martha Nussbaum. In that book, Sunstein set out an ambitious plan to give animals the legal “right” to file lawsuits. We're not joking:
“[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.”
It doesn't end there. Sunstein delivered a keynote speech at Harvard University’s 2007 “Facing Animals” conference. (Click here to watch the video; his speech starts around 39:00.) Keep in mind that as OIRA Administrator, Sunstein will have the political authority to implement a massive federal government overhaul. Consider this tidbit:
“We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”
Sunstein also argued in favor of “eliminating current practices such as greyhound racing, cosmetic testing, and meat eating, most controversially.”
He concluded his Harvard speech by expressing his “more ambitious animating concern” that the current treatment of livestock and other animals should be considered “a form of unconscionable barbarity not the same as, but in many ways morally akin to, slavery and mass extermination of human beings.” Sound familiar?
As the individual about to assume “the most important position that Americans know nothing about,” Sunstein owes the public an honest appraisal of his animal rights goals before taking office. Will the next four years be a dream-come-true for anti-meat, anti-hunting, and anti-everything-else radicals? Time will tell. For now, meat lovers might want to stock their freezers. (photo above: uchicago)
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Why is the bogus group and it's bought and paid for "opinions" everywhere you see on the internet ? They're like a virus... A "Secret Animal Rights Agenda?" You have got to be kidding me.. They vomit out the same old propaganda year after year... Because in America, if you say something long enough, loud enough and nasty enough.. IT MUST BE TRUE... These are people whose clients are Tyson Foods, Cargill Meats, Monsanto, Dean Foods, Wendy's and Out back steak house....
Tyson has been brutalizing both it's animals and employees for decades... It's been videotaped, and sworn to in signed affidavit by employees, that cows are regularly gutted and skinned alive... still kicking, struggling (and sometimes injuring the not much better off employees in the process). Employees which Tyson has beat up on and attacked while on strike for better or at least safer, working conditions ...
Monsanto and its dog poisoning labs like Huntingdon Life Sciences, kill 500 animals day... but you had better not be concerned about it or else you might be accused by CCF of having the dreaded ANIMAL RIGHTS AGENDA! Their sugar daddy, Phillip Morris , started them off with the initial funding... Phillip Morris, whose testing laboratory Covance is the largest importer of primates in the U.S. and the world's largest breeder of laboratory dogs. The way they torture these poor animals over tobacco and toxins, is enough to make your blood run cold...
92 % of all animal testing fails human trials, according to the FDA in 2004... It's done for purely legal and financial reasons...(and because that way, company's like Monsanto can PROVE that their poisons and chemicals are SAFE (until they kill enough people to take them off the market)... Ever wonder why no drugs are ever around for more than 10 or 20 years? If it weren't for Covance Laboratories tobacco would have had labels in the 50's...
But Richard Berman and David Martosko .. they only want to protect the defenseless consumer against rabid vegetarians! Most of the CEO's of the slime ball company's they work for are worth more than PETA's entire operating salary for a year... 8 members of the Cargill Meat family are on Forbes billionaires list.. THEY CARE ABOUT PEOPLE!!! That's why when they're not slandering animal and health activists... They're busy trying to make sure their billionaire, sociopath employers don't have to raise minimum wage a penny... or contribute a nickle to workmen's comp when their employees get sliced open or fall into manure pits... I think most people would puke their guts out if they had to visit one of YOUR CLIENT's HELL HOLES.. But isn't that the real problem? Not radicals or IDEALISTIC VEGETARIANS trying to force their values on you... But exposure...
10 billion land animals are killed for food every year in the U.S. (over a million an hour) AND THEIR STILL NOT SATISFIED! My God, somebody ordered a tofu frank and CCF is going ballistic . How blood thirsty can you get?
How dare those ACTIVISTS talk about my BIG MAC that way ... MY RIGHTS ARE BEING INFRINGED UPON!
Also, what in God's name is a "natural organically approved herbicide." By your definition, CAFO's represent "stewardship and conservation" and they (not animal activists or vegans) are the "Saviors of Animals"... I
I wouldn't take a crap in a McDonald's let alone eat in one... "mass production facilities" are not filling my grocery store.." or my grocery cart... I shop at an organic market and when I do go to a main stream store, I don't buy that crap (it really is mostly crap, but you don't want the details I am sure., there's a pretty good reason why "no one sees" these places...) A well kept industry joke is that factory farmers don't eat their own products, they know better.
Livestock now use 30% of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33% of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70% of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.
Live Stock's Long Shadow United Nations, FAO Newsroom, Rome, November 2006
Animal agriculture accounts for 51% of world GHG emissions world wide or at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year.
World Watch Magazine, November/December 2009
Hope that's not too complex for you...
It is sad to think that Americans have gone so far astray on animal rights . The vegan who thinks that because they don't eat meat that they have helped animals and the planet is wrong. Using "natural" organically approved herbicides kills just as many animals on an organic farm as a conventional one and an organic farm's mass production of organic food displaces more animals than hunters could hunt in a lifetime. The mass production facilities that produce hundreds of thousands meat animals a day from contracted CAFO's that no one sees is filling your grocery store, like it or not. It is a complex world we live in and we need to think bigger than the right of an animal not to be eaten. Man is a part of this complex world and animals get eaten by people and other animals. Stewardship and conservation. These are the true saviors of animals.
OK honestly if you do not like to eat meat that is fine. No one will ever force you to. BUT for the MILLIONS of AMERICANS I am afraid that they will tend to disagree with you, based on the idea of forcing everyone to live out the idealistic wants of a vegetarian. In short I do not impose my will on you, and you do not impose your will on me. that is why we live in a free country. Now I am not meaning anything in regards to people who choose not to wear close other than to use as an example. You would not want anyone telling you that you cant wear close any more would you? That is all fine and dandy until it is 30 below outside. So even though you do not see a point of people eating meat for THEIR diet or way of life still does not make it right to force others to go by your belief.
If individual freedom were all that mattered than I think our country has a quite a few wrongs to address. We ended slavery which was completely against the wishes of slave owners. The real issue isn't whether we are trying to "force" our views on others, that would be perfectly justified if there was something morally wrong with killing/torturing animals , the real issue is whether or not our current treatment of animals is wrong.
In fairness to the readers, this writers so called "Facts" are based on the work of a well know front group headed by the now infamous "Richard Berman" who's own son has called him "My father is a despicable man. My father is a sort of human molestor. An exploiter. A scoundrel. . ."
These so-called "facts" are strategically positioned by Richard Berman and co. (of the infamous "Center for Consumer Freedom") and who is a regular front man for business and industry in campaigns against consumer safety, environmental and animal rights groups. Each year, Berman, using his front groups to spread misinformation, spends millions of dollars distracting the public with misleading ads. He employs a wide range of writers and "Communication Directors" to spread anti-rhetoric against well know groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, PETA. HSUS and other watchdog groups in their efforts to raise awareness about their causes.
From the bermanexposed website:
Richard Berman is a Washington, D.C.-based hired gun who uses front groups to defend his corporate clients against the public interest. Using his lobbying and consulting firm, Berman and Company, as a revenue vehicle for his activities, Berman runs at least 15 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts, Center for Consumer Freedom, and holds 16 "positions" within these various entities.
His incentive? As a result of his largesse, in 2006, Richard Berman used $2,000,000 in cash to buy this $3.3 million house.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “Richard Berman has become wealthy by deceiving the public through scare tactics, sleazy ads, and bogus websites. BermanExposed.org lists in one place Berman’s pay-for play activities, and demonstrates that his real expertise is making money.
Before one more story is published citing Berman as a credible expert, we encourage journalists and consumers to take a look at BermanExposed.org to better understand Richard Berman’s number one goal: to be the best snake-oil salesman ever.”
Want to know more about this person and his various front groups and employed strategic "anti-rhetoric" writers? Visit www.bermanexposed.org to get the REAL radical agenda.
... we wouldn't have to talk about the need for animals to have rights. But people have tossed aside their responsibility to be the guardians of non-human animals. So we can only thank ourselves for getting to this point, and thank Barack for appointing someone willing to talk about animal rights. So far, though, talk is all Cass has done, so, y'know, nothing to get too riled up about.
I would be thrilled beyond measure and I'd have to pinch myself every day if Cass Sunstein was truly an animal rights advocate, and as such promoted a truly animal-friendly agenda. God knows animals need all the friends they can get! But alas, I suspect that, just as Barack Obama, for all his charm and political promise, is no liberal, Mr. Sunstein is not a true animal advocate, at least not in the sense of actually acting in his capacity as regulatory czar to eliminate their suffering at the hands of humans. I hope I'm wrong.