By Michael Beckel 21 hours ago

An Iowa-based organization dedicated to combating “the radical animal rights movement” and led by a former Missouri Republican senator’s chief of staff has launched a new super PAC, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The Protect the Harvest Political Action Committee told the elections regulator that it “intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts” to call for the election or defeat of federal candidates.

Which politicos will be targeted, however, is still unclear.

Neither the super PAC’s treasurer, Brian Klippenstein, nor its attorney, Mark Roth, responded to requests for comment from the Center for Public Integrity.

Super PACs are legally allowed to solicit unlimited contributions to produce political advertisements — so long as their spending is not coordinated with any candidates’ campaigns.

Klippenstein currently serves as the executive director of Protect the Harvest, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit established in 2011 to educate the public about “the benefits of farming, ranching and hunting” and to advocate “for the right to conduct such activities.”

The nonprofit may engage in politics, although federal law mandates that influencing elections may not be its primary purpose.

On its website, Protect the Harvest warns that “the animal rights movement in America, led by the Humane Society of the United States, has evolved into a wealthy and successful attack group determined to end the consumption of meat, threaten consumer access to affordable food, eliminate hunting, outlaw rodeos and circuses and even ban animal ownership (including pets) altogether.”

That’s “baloney,” said Joe Maxwell, the Humane Society of the United States’ vice president of outreach and engagement. He said his organization is “leading efforts to ensure that we have good stewards of the land and the animals on our farms.”

Protect the Harvest, Maxwell asserted, is “nothing but a front group” that is “in bed with industrialized agriculture.”

There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.

For All Beings

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Exposing the Big Game

Why Does the Left Largely Ignore Animal Issues?

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Exposing the Big Game

Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Left Forum, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
– The City University of New York

Animal Liberation and Social Justice – Theory and Testimony

LEFT FORUM Saturday May 31 in New York City Noon-1:50pm
http://www.leftforum.org/

An animal revolution is underway, yet the vast majority of leftists seem
indifferent to it. Why? Nearly everything the left fights for is undermined by
systemic animal abuse. What is it to be human? What is it to be animal? Every
morally relevant proof of human superiority-reason, language, moral awareness,
self-awareness, future awareness, social laws-is proven groundless. Yet
distortions persist claiming to justify crimes against animals. Marx’s vision of
a classless society looks toward a time when all alienation-between humans and
the natural world, humans and the social world, a person and himself or
herself-is overcome.

Yet the anthropocentrism of many on the left who share that vision-and of Marx
himself-obstructs progress toward it. For to ignore the cries of animals is to
be complicit in their enslavement, an enslavement that is destroying the Earth
and ravaging human life-much of it, moreover, typifying colonists’ enslaving of
the colonized, the degraded, alienated consciousness of the enslaver in each
case differing scarcely at all. Sifting theoretical insights-while at the same
time offering personal testimony-this panel shows why the liberating of animals
is always also about human liberation, and why justice for animals is always
also about human justice.

SPEAKERS

KAREN DAVIS, President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns and
author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, among many other publications

JOHN SANBONMATSU, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute and author of The Postmodern Prince:
Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject

PATTRICE JONES, Co-founder of VINE Sanctuary in Vermont and author of
Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a Guide for Activists and
their Allies

JOAN HARRISON, Independent advocate for animals, homeless advocate,
author of many poems, essays, letters, blogs, and chair of this panel

WHERE AND WHEN

DATE: Saturday May 31, 2014

TIME: Session 2 from Noon to 1:50pm

PLACE:
Room 3.8 John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York,
524 West 59th Street,
New York, NY 10019

REGISTRATION:
Left Forum, John Jay College of Criminal Justice – The City University of New
York
http://www.leftforum.org/

________

Also coming up in NYC

Thursday, June 12 Animal Sacrifice, Religion and the Law.
The Practice of Using Chickens as Kaporos: A Forum Free & Open to the Public
http://www.upc-online.org/kaparos/140514_using_chickens_as_kaporos_forum.html

—
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Don’t just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.
http://www.UPC-online.org/ http://www.twitter.com/upcnews
http://www.facebook.com/UnitedPoultryConcerns