Posted by:
amazonreptile
at Thu Jan 14 14:05:02 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by amazonreptile ]
You make some good points. BUT comparing the HSUS budget to the entire herp industry's sales is a straw man argument. We do not have a budget of that size to fight theirs. We could never use 100% of sales from 100% of the industry to fight them.
Likely their budget is far more than 29X the size of our cash available to fight them. Add in PETA and BORNFREE to compare with the "reptile nation's" legislative budget and we have a serious shorfall on our side.
I use your numbers to derive the following: If EVERY member of the reptile nation gave 3% of their total budget then we could match theirs. Think that will happen?
We ARE and SHOULD be scared of what they are doing.
>>To everyone who has sat back watching this unfold, and have done nothing. This is directed at you.
>>
>>The HSUS is SCARED OF US! This is a point I made the other night on my reptile radio appearance.
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>>The HSUS received 87 million dollars in donations in 2008.
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>>The reptile industry is a 3 billion dollar per year industry.
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>>That means that the reptile industry is 29 times larger (dollar for dollar) than The HSUS.
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>>Can you imagine taking on something 29 times larger than you? That would be the equivalent of The HSUS trying to beat an NFL football team by itself! Offense, defense, and some special teams!
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>>The HSUS can't do that! And they know it! They found out first hand when they lost the HR669 battle. 50,000 letters vs their contributions to the pockets of our Congressmen - it was a no brainer in favor of us.
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>>If you like analogies, here's another. Go watch "A Bug's Life". It's a perfect illustration of what can happen when people band together to fight, rather than segmenting into smaller groups who are scared out of their minds. In the movie, a large ant colony defeated a terrorist group of grasshoppers because the ant's stuck together, and fought together. WE CAN DO THAT! (Yes, I DID just compare us to ants, lol - but I also called the grasshoppers, "terrorists"!)
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>>What they're currently doing is trying to segment our industry by proposing mini versions of HR669. And that's EXACTLY what HR2811 and S373 are. These bills have the EXACT SAME LANGUAGE as HR669, they just focus on a smaller set of animals.
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>>HR669 encompassed almost 2,500 animals. These bills currently focus on between 2 and 40 (depending on what stage you examine of the bills life).
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>>They'd LOVE to get it back to almost 2,500. But for now, they'll be happy with the handful or two that they get out of HR2811 and S373 because we're the most outspoken segment of the pet industry at the moment. We're the ones fighting. They figure if they can knock us off, the rest will be easy pickings! They won't have to face an NFL football team anymore, they'll just have a series of one-on-one games. And they'll win those. Every time.
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>>So if you don't fight S373 and HR2811, and these bills pass, you can kiss the entire industry goodbye. Once their done with non-native animals, they'll move on to the native animals, then cats and dogs. Trust me.
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>>Get off your butt and DO SOMETHING! WRITE YOUR LETTERS or YOU'LL be to blame for this passing.
>>
>>jb
>>-----
>>What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously
>>
>>Jonathan Brady
>>DeviantConstrictors.com
>>Deviant Constrictors picturetrail
>>
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AMAZON REPTILE CENTER
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you make some good points BUT - amazonreptile, Thu Jan 14 14:05:02 2010