Another Important Message From John Holland - President of the Equine Welfare Alliance - on Attacks in Social Media

This was first published on the EWA Newsletter which can be seen online here.

This post will be my only comment on the unfortunate situation that only serves to demonstrate how quickly some can forget that their stated goal was to help horses - something this ugly infighting does not accomplish. To say I'm shocked and disappointed would be quite the understatement. 

For the past week, various Facebook pages have been full of wild claims and speculation regarding the resignation of an EWA board member. We have not commented on this resignation because it is our policy, like every reputable organization, to keep board matters confidential.

We have worked very hard to become a respected organization that provides accurate information in an unemotional context. This is the reason that we can now be accepted as a source at legal proceedings, in legislative hearings and by the press.

We have therefore stated only that it is against our policy to become involved in any way with public attacks on other animal welfare organizations or in supporting them against such attacks. It is our position that these attacks, justified or not, serve only to undermine the credibility of our entire movement.

We have repeatedly been asked whether the requested resignation was the result of our supporting AC4H. No, it was not, nor did it involve a single incident.

Now that I have been personally attacked for over a week, I have many wonderful examples of why this sort of Facebook vigilantism is so destructive to the image of our movement and to its cohesiveness. People have speculated wildly and recklessly about a situation of which they know absolutely nothing. They have been willing to believe that I would suddenly, and with no justification, ask for the resignation of a board member and then offered completely irrelevant material as proof.

For example, a photo of me standing with Christy Sheidy was offered as proof that I support her. A few posts later someone recognized that the picture was from a 2008 anti-slaughter conference in Washington, and was one of dozens of pictures of me and other participants standing together. So the image proved only that Christy Sheidy and I had both taken the time and effort to attend an anti-slaughter conference.

Furthermore, publicly calling people names like Crusty Sheidy or Christy Shady is so adolescent as to make me cringe. We do not need this kind of discourse at any level, against anyone, and to imagine that it somehow helps the horses is delusional.

The posting of a public notice of a tax lien was given as the reason for dismissal.  Posting public documents is acceptable and commonplace. However, I might mention that it was posted with a comment stating that it proved AC4H had not declared income from its broker program - a comment intended to invite controversy. That comment turned out not to be true and is typical of the kind of thing that makes people question the accuracy of other information being provided.  Still, it was far from the reason for this entire debacle.

Let me put it bluntly. This kind of war is moronic and of utterly no help to the horses at all. While a river of horses go over the borders, countless hours are being wasted on a McCarthyesque witch hunt to see if this person or that supports an operation that is already under investigation by authorities and all but totally defunct. People I have known and worked with for years have somehow lost all reason and joined in this blood sport without asking "What is to be gained and what could be lost?"

I do see where some people have injected interesting facts such as the point that I was one of the first people to question whether it wouldn't be better to buy horses by bidding against kill buyers rather than buying them from kill buyers and thus putting money in their pockets.

But let me suggest we think deeper. We all regard the kill buyers with disdain, but even if we bought every horse out from under them at auction we would still be stuck with the problem because it would merely enrich those doing the over-breeding and dumping the horses! We can't rescue our way out of slaughter folks.

Finally, I must point out that this former board member has decided to divulge and embellish confidential board discussions in hopes that it would embarrass EWA and add to her support. That is both unethical and illegal, and speaks to the individual's understanding of the duties of a board of directors.

Now having read this, each of you are free to go back to banging out useless flaming posts in hopes of collecting "likes" (whatever they are worth) or working with us to end the slaughter and abuse of American horses. Which will it be?

John Holland

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A Message From Equine Welfare Alliance President John Holland

 Hi Folks,

This is part three concerning the omnibus bill. Part one, as many of you have discerned, was our optimistic New Year's message hinting at good things ahead, and part two was the announcement of the defunding language in the omnibus budget and how it got there.

These developments have led to the question of how long this will stop slaughter houses from returning to the US. I will attempt to explain the answer to that question. Like most things in Washington, the answer is a bit convoluted. However, I think it is safe to say it will stop their return for at least two years and here is why.

Budgets are, as we all know, a one-year affair that begins October 1st. The process is supposed to start with the President's budget, which is broken into 12 separate budgets (such as the Agriculture Budget), which in turn go to the various appropriations committees to be amended.

These budgets are then supposed to go to the floor of their respective houses for a vote. Following their passage in the Senate and House, the resulting budgets are supposed to go to a conference committee to hammer out differences, and then back to the House and Senate for a final vote.

But if there is one consistent theme in Congress, it is that they almost never do things the way they are supposed to. According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress has passed a full budget only three times in the past 26 years! Most years they pass a CR for all or most individual budgets.

Last year, the agriculture budgets got through the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, but neither reached their respective floors for a vote. Both budgets had defunding language, as did the President's budget. The budget for other departments didn't even get that far.

A CR, or Continuing Resolution, is merely a way of keeping spending at the same level (or at some multiple of the current level) for an additional period. The duration can be from a day to as much as the remainder of the current budget year.

An omnibus budget is yet another way for Congress to shortcut its budgeting process. This fiscal year, we got a series of short CRs, followed by an omnibus budget.

Since the omnibus was based on the bipartisan budget "framework" agreement reached a month earlier, and since that agreement was for two years, we can be sure that the 2015 budget will be a one-year CR.

Now it gets kind of ironic. The late Sue Wallis, Dave Duquette and even Charlie Stenholm had speculated publicly, and no doubt prayed, that there would be a CR for 2014. That would have continued the funding for inspections from the previous 2012 and 2013 budgets.

However there is something call an "anomaly" that can be added to a CR to place a restriction on certain funds. Since nobody was sure the omnibus would pass, a CR was indeed prepared and tucked away to keep the government funded the rest of the year if the omnibus blew up.

That CR contained an anomaly that prohibited any funds from being used for horse slaughter inspections. So had they been forced to use the CR, it would have had the same outcome (defunding). We knew this well before the budget deal was struck, and actually expected that is the way things would go.

And why is this important going forward? It is important because it was none other than Secretary Vilsack who signed off on the anomaly. That explains why Victoria wanted to thank him. It also means that it will be virtually impossible for the pro-slaughter camp to accomplish a removal of the defunding language for the 2015 budget CR.

So the plants are locked out for two years and probably more. And that is the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would have said.