Sign The Petition To Ask St. Albans City Council To Adopt Huntington's Dog Tethering Ordinance

I signed the electronic petition to give St. Albans dogs the same protection from cruel tethering that the City of Huntington gave their dogs 4 years ago. You can sign the petition, too. Click this link: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/318/410/863/stop-tethering-dogs-in-st-albans-wv/#next_action

Cities all over the United States and Canada are enacting city ordinances that protect dogs from being tethered outside without access to food, water, shelter and companionship. Tethered dogs live miserable, lonely lives.

We're asking St. Albans to adopt the Huntington law because it is simple and clear. Unlike the Kanawha County "Linz Law" which is riddled with exceptions and loopholes, the Huntington law makes it easy for law enforcement to see at a glance if the law is being violated. 

The Huntington law reads: "It shall be unlawful for any owner or other person controlling or possessing any dog to tether a dog outdoors without direct supervision of the animal's guardian."

Sign the petition to protect the dogs of St. Albans, WV, from cruelty on the end of a chain. Click here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/318/410/863/stop-tethering-dogs-in-st-albans-wv/#next_action

Higginbotham At Large Welcomes Your Job Search Questions

A few days ago a fellow board member told me I should re-introduce myself to the Kanawha County Workforce Investment Board and write a little bio to remind them of why I was appointed to the WIB in the first place. 


OK, I'll do that in a moment but first I want to invite my fellow WIB members to submit suggestions about the topics I should write about on my blog. 


As my regular readers know, I already write a considerable number of posts about job search and career topics but now that I'm on the WIB I  think I should do more. 


Send your topic suggestions or job search questions to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.


Here's why I'm qualified to write about job search:


Over the past few decades I've earned a considerable percentage of my income by finding executive and technical talent for clients. I'm not a "recruiter I'm an executive search consultant or "headhunter".


I've found architects, engineers, sales reps, licensed healthcare professionals of all types and managers at all levels of responsibility for both private and publicly-traded companies.


I've served as an expert panelist for college career counseling departments, an on-air job search guest expert for radio stations, a job search workshop presenter/facilitator and, of course, I've written job search and career articles for magazines.
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Higginbotham At Large does not publish comments submitted anonymously or pseudonymously. For example, a comment submitted by JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com would be published. A comment submitted by "anonymous" or by "FuzzySlippers@Morons.com" would not be published.

St. Albans Barber Shop And Public Policy Think Tank Finds Brooks McCabe and Obama In Biblical Prophecy

is Senator Brooks McCabe a tool of the Anti-Christ? Would merged city-county government help usher in One World Government and the reign of The Anti-Christ as prophesied in The Book of Revelation? Yes and yes according to the patrons of the St. Albans barber shop where I got a haircut this past Friday.

I live in a town where The Mark of The Beast, The Anti-Christ and One World Government are never far from the minds and the lips of many of its residents and can pop up in day-to-day conversation at almost any time if certain precipitating conditions are present. For example, when the cashier at the St. Albans Kroger asks a shopper for his or her Kroger Plus card it's not unusual for this innocent request to get employees and customers talking about a "cashless society" and how we're all being softened up for a mark on our foreheads or our hands without which we can neither buy nor sell. A software engineer routinely sends me updates about how close we are to being surgically fitted with government mandated  RFID devices.

The mere sight or mention of President Obama is another precipitating condition that gets people talking and speculating about "End Times". To many of the people in St. Albans, figuring out if Obama is The Anti-Christ or what part he plays in the fulfillment of prophetic Scripture is better than Sudoku.

On the day when the barber shop in which I was waiting for a haircut erupted in speculation that Brooks McCabe might be in league with Satan and that merged city-county government might have an ignominious and nefarious place  in biblical prophecy, there were at least three precipitating conditions present: (1) The guy in the barber chair was complaining about government abuse. (2) Much of the brown-skinned, Muslim world was in revolt against their governments. (3) President Obama was on TV making a speech about the fall of Egypt's Mubarak.

The mere sight of President Obama was making the guy who came in after me visibly twitchy. Every once in a while he groaned or muttered curse words in a stage whisper.

"Merged government just moves us one step closer to One World Government" said the guy in the barber chair.

The guy who came in behind me nodded his head in agreement.

"So by your reasoning" I said, "we also moved one step closer to One World Government when the 13 colonies merged to become the United States."

The guy who came in behind me grunted but never looked at me. Had he been Egyptian he would have removed a shoe and held it in the air like the Egyptian revolutionaries did to show their contempt for Mubarak.

The guy in the barber chair got a familiar far away look in his eye that told me he was experiencing cognitive dissonance - he was trying to reconcile two contradictory, mutually exclusive thoughts. On one hand, the guy in the barber chair believed Peter Marshall, David Manuel, Glenn Beck and David Barton, that God Almighty guided Christopher Columbus, The Pilgrims and the Puritans to the New World where He also led them to form the nation that would become the beacon of light to the world. Never mind that the US was formed 150 years later, not by Puritans and Pilgrims but by Deists and skeptics.

On the other hand, the guy in the barber chair also believed that government - especially Big Government - is of the Devil. So Big Government is bad - except when it's the US government which was a work of God but is now led by a man who may be a candidate for Anti-Christ.

Anyway, that's how a barber shop think tank decided that Brooks McCabe may be a tool of Satan and merged government may help usher in One World, Anti-Christ led government.

Why Kanawha County's Dog Tethering Ordinance is So Important

In This Issue of Higginbotham At Large:

- Update on Kanawha County Dog Tethering Ordinance

- Next Meeting of Drinking LIberally

Kanawha County Dog Tethering Ordinance Update:

Because I was at yesterday’s public hearing on the bear hunters’ request to exempt hunting dogs from the Kanawha County anti-tethering ordinance, several people have asked me for an update on the hearing.

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that, in Kanawha County, dogs that are not classified as “hunting dogs” are protected by an ordinance that says their owners cannot tether them for periods exceeding 15 minutes, 4 times daily. Dog owners who violate this ordinance may receive stiff fines.

The bad news is that the hunters lawyered up, threatened to sue, and got their dogs exempted from the protections of the ordinance.

It was obvious from Kanawha County Commission President, Kent Carper’s, introductory remarks at the public hearing that the fix was in and that the commission was going to grant the hunters’ demand to exempt their dogs from the protections afforded other dogs and that the Kanawha Humane Society’s board, many of whom were in the room, had already agreed to the exemption.

Had the commission not allowed public comment, one would have gotten the impression that there were only two “sides” to the argument. On one side were the hunters who lawyered up and threatened legal challenges to the law. On the other “side” was the Humane Society board that caved in to the hunters’ demands and agreed to exclude “hunting dogs” from the protections of the anti-tethering law.

I would like to remind commissioners Carper, Hardy and Shores that Kanawha County taxpayers have never granted the Kanawha Humane Society board plenary and plenipotentiary powers to speak and decide for the rest of us yet Carper conducted the public hearing as if all that mattered was that the lawyer-rich hunters and the Humane Society board had reached an agreement and that the hunters promised not to be cruel to their dogs.

I believe Kent Carper when he says that if hunters are caught being cruel to their dogs they will be prosecuted – with or without the anti-tethering ordinance - but animal cruelty is hard to “prove” in a court of law so those of us who wish to report cruelty need as much legal specificity and inclusion as we can get. Laws that don’t define cruelty don’t really protect animals. An animal can be starved, beaten or deprived of water and shelter for days before humane officers can “prove” that cruelty took place. Laws that clearly spell out how long you can tether an animal, how often you have to provide water for your animal and what, exactly, constitutes shelter for an animal make the cruelty easier to observe and document. Those of us who have reported animal abuse know that vague, “I’ll know it when I see it” animal cruelty laws favor the abuser. That, Mr. Carper, is why observers and enforcers need specific, black and white, binary laws. You either provided your dog with legally-defined shelter or you didn’t. You either provided your dog with sufficient food and water as defined by law, or you didn’t.

And, Mr. Carper, the reason tethering and confinement laws, in particular, are so fundamental to prevention of cruelty to animals is because, unlike wild animals, tethered animals and confined animals can’t go somewhere in search of food, water, shelter or warmth. A “stray” cat can crawl up inside a car’s engine compartment to get warm. A tethered dog can’t. A wild squirrel or raccoon can seek shelter from the rain, water for its thirst or food for its hunger. A tethered dog can’t. A starving, dehydrated, shivering dog tethered to a stake in the ground is worse off than a stray dog because at least a stray dog might get lucky and be taken in by a loving human. When I was a teenager, a neglected neighborhood dog adopted my family. We had already taken him in as a stray before we learned from the mail man that our new pet was, in fact, a refugee from down the street who escaped from his abusers and found a better deal, an option the tethered dog doesn’t have.

I believe Mr. Carper is a fine public servant and, as I told some Huntington animal rights activists yesterday, I wish Kanawha County, West Virginia and the nation had thousands more progressive, fair and decent public servants just like him, but the next time Mr. Carper is tempted to broker a backroom deal concerning Kanawha County's animal protection laws, I hope he will remember that hunters and Humane Society board members aren't the only Kanawha County taxpayers with an interest in protecting animals.

My biggest take aways from yesterday's public hearing:

1. If you lawyer up and threaten to sue, the Kanawha Humane Society will back down. Kanawha County's dogs are lucky the hunter didn't demand that all dogs be exempted from the tethering ordinance.

2. People who want stronger, more meaningful and enforceable animal protection laws need to be prepared to hire lawyers because the "other side" will.

3. People who want stronger, more meaningful and enforceable animal protection laws need to be better organized, need to communicate with each other more and need to get a lot better at recruitment, at PR and at using social media.

There’s a great deal more I’d like to say about that public hearing and about animal protection laws but I’ll save some of my comments for another day. Huntington’s city council recently passed an anti-tethering ordinance and soon, I’m told, the same animal activists who demanded the city ordinance will ask the Cabell County Commission to pass a county-wide ordinance so I’m sure I’ll have more to say then.

Next Meeting of The Charleston, WV, Chapter of Drinking Liberally

If you are a liberal and you’d like to meet and network with other liberals, come join us at 5:30 PM, Thursday, 7 January at Bruno’s, 222 Leon Sullivan Way.