It seems you can’t trust anyone anymore. Not even when you are exercising your right as an American citizen to contact your representative and express your thoughts about a bill.
On March 5 I posted the latest SAOVA newsletter to the Tennessee Pet-Law list with the following message:
A sampling of legislators has been selected for a special campaign to request they WITHDRAW their support from PUPS. Included are legislators previously endorsed by SAOVA who have strayed. Others profess to be conservatives yet added their names to this expensive, invasive animal rights bill. Some are Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus members. Visit the SAOVA campaign page, click and email these legislators and ask them to STOP supporting the PUPS bill. http://www.saova.org/PUPS.Campaign.html
On March 7 a Pet-Law member reported that he sent a friend to the SAOVA web site. She also clicked on a link to humanewatch.org. After contacting her congressman, Rep. Allen West, at 5:04 pm, to ask him to withdraw support for PUPS, she received a “Welcome” message from HSUS at 5:11 pm.
One such occurrence is interesting. More than one is suspicious.
On March 9 a long-time Tennessee Pet-Law member reported that he had been signed up as an HSUS member:
WTF?? I just received an email thanking me for signing up with HSUS? You have got to be kidding. I wonder what bozo thought I would be interested in that bunch???
When asked if he had contacted any legislators recently he replied:
As a matter of fact, I did respond to the recent request to email various legislators to withdraw support for the PUPS bill. Does someone think they can get us poor misguided souls to see the light if they sign us up for their propaganda? But in my view, NOBODY has the right to put my email on someone's list without my permission.
It’s starting to look like HSUS has moles placed in the offices of certain legislators. They may be diverting e-mails and stealing e-mail addresses. Who knows if the messages people are sending about PUPS are even reaching anyone impartial, or if they are being deleted as fast as people send them.
You can try to contact your legislator and voice your concerns but I don’t know if it will do any good. If an HSUS mole reads your e-mail or answers the phone, it won’t do much good.
If you have heard from HSUS after contacting a legislator, please let us know in the comments section. We’d like to know how widespread this problem is.