#legislation and regulation

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[kaurwreck]

If you're following KOSA, you should also be following state legislation, which is much more rapidly adopting tech regulation related to child safety than Congress. For reference, in 2023, 13 states adopted 23 laws related to child safety online.

Even if your locality hasn't adopted similar tech regulation, online platforms, apps, and websites are rarely operating in only some states. When regulations become patchwork, it's often easier for companies to adopt policies reflective of the most stringent regulations relevant to their service for all users, rather than try to implement different policies for users based on each user's location.

I know this because that's what happened when patchwork data privacy regulations began swelling — which is why many webites have privacy policies reflective of the GDPR that apply even to users outside of Europe. I also know this because I'm a tech lawyer — I'm the wet cat drafting policies for and advising tech and video game companies on how to navigate messy, convoluted, and patchwork US regulatory obligations.

So, when I say this is how companies are thinking about this, I mean this is how my coworkers and I have to think about this. And because the US is such a large market, this could impact users outside the US, too.

[venacoeurva]

TBH everything public has been or will be scraped (Tumblr just made it easier for a select few specific models and gave them more data... including data that should not have under any circumstance so I would imagine there's gonna be some legal rammies for that?) and at this point I'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting for actual legislation to make doing AI training fiscally and legally inconvenient and an elaborate hoop jump because companies won't stop until it hits that point to no longer make it worth it and make it no longer that unicorn investors were sold. They've been happy to collect and sell our data for ads everywhere for years, it ain't surprising so many sites stoop to this.

So I'm just gonna sit here and make uglier watermarks, bout as much as I can do as an individual, and there are much more heinous things happening in the world right now.

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE U.S. CONGRESS

Hold Bank Execs Financially Accountable for Mismanagement! Pass the DEPOSIT Act.

274 so far! Help us get to 500 signers!

I am writing to urge you to pass the Deliver Executive Profits on Seized Institutions to Taxpayers (DEPOSIT) Act that was recently introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Reps Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Mike Levin (D-CA).

This important legislation would hold executives at failed banks financially responsible for their mismanagement and prevent them from selling off shares of stock, potentially profiting from their bank failure -- like Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker might have done when he sold $3.6 million of stock shortly before the collapse of SVB.

American taxpayers shouldn’t be left holding the bag and bailing out banks while their executives are walking away with multi-million dollar compensation and bonus packages. Please respond in writing and let me know you co-sponsored this bill. Thanks!

▶ Created on March 24, 2023 by Jess Craven

📱 Text SIGN PNFKGB to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[highpriestessofchildsacrifice]

it's rlly nice that I don't have to pick my classes for the fall or spring lol I know some ppl hate that but I genuinely don't want to think about it

[uptownthots]

the loud and proud resentment MRA types have towards women for having the "privilege" of feminism. Like ignoring the fact that being a group of people so oppressed you have to develop a political movement dedicated to your liberation is not a privilege, I think a lot of MRAs misattribute (and grossly misrepresent) feminist work to [patriarchal, misogynistic] society (e.g "society only cares about women!" "society only believes victims if they're women!") because if they acknowledged that whatever supposed privileges women have are a result of decades of years of political work and resistance, rather than just Society™️ giving us preferential treatment, they'd have to subsequently acknowledge that the reason men (supposedly, according to MRAs) don't have these privileges is because the don't care to do the work, and not because "society" is like. oppressing them.

[bluemanedhawk]

I feel like there need to be legal regulations established on the black-and-magenta checkerboard so that it doesn't become something where all the meaning of it is lost because it's overused in incorrect situations. It's like the Red Cross and Red Crescent except nowhere near as big of a deal.

[usadvlottery]

US Immigration and Customs Laws encompass a complex framework governing the movement of people and goods across the United States' borders. These laws are designed to regulate immigration, prevent illegal entry, ensure national security, and facilitate lawful trade and travel. They cover a wide range of topics, including visa requirements, border security measures, customs duties, import/export regulations, and enforcement mechanisms. Compliance with these laws is crucial for maintaining legal status, preventing unauthorized entry, and upholding the nation's safety and security. Various government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, oversee the enforcement and administration of these laws.

[eternalistic]

The FTC announced last week that it would host a competition challenging private citizens to find solutions to protect people from AI-generated phone scams.The scams can use AI to clone a loved one’s voice, making it sound like they’re in trouble and tricking unsuspecting people into coughing up big bucks. The FTC is offering a $25,000 reward to anyone who can innovate a solution, essentially leveraging the same AI technology to protect consumers, Maxson said. Applications will open in January. The agency previously held similar crowdsourcing competitions to help combat robocalls.

[toni-onone]

Is the food safety the best in the world in the United States of America? No!

This documentary looks at the food safety within the food industry in the United States and the finger pointing between government agencies and the industry. It shows gaps , much denial and monetary gain that obviously takes priority over consumer safety. 🚨👀👂🏾🤔🤯👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👶🏽👵🏾🏡🚑 www.netflix.com/us/title/81460481 In the United States of America so many people get sick and unfortunately some die from…

[delusionalinsecurewreckpiningphd]

me spending the last few days reading about a piece of draft legislation

[hellborg]

Americans just wanna get high and beat their dick, is that so wrong?

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[andrewjbernhard]

Navigating Declaratory Judgments for Condo Associations and HOAs: Milestone Reports and 40-Year Certifications in Florida

Attention Condo Associations Florida! New regulations, managing milestone reports, and 40-year certifications is daunting. This post dives deep into how declaratory judgments can be a crucial tool in ensuring compliance and resolving disputes. #Milestone

For Condominium Associations and Homeowners’ Associations (HOAs) in Florida, maintaining compliance with state regulations and ensuring proper management of community properties can be complex. Among the critical responsibilities are performing milestone reports and 40-year certifications, which are essential for the safety and upkeep of aging buildings. In cases where there is uncertainty about…

[almatyconsultingsblog]

What Legal and Regulatory Services Does Almaty Consulting Offer in Kazakhstan?

Navigating the complex legal and regulatory landscape of Kazakhstan requires expert guidance and a deep understanding of the local market. Almaty Consulting offers a comprehensive suite of services tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses and individuals. Whether you're dealing with litigation services in Kazakhstan or seeking advice on labour legislation services in Kazakhstan, our team of experienced professionals is here to support you.

 

Litigation Services in Kazakhstan

Our seasoned attorneys specialize in various forms of litigation, including commercial litigation attorney in Kazakhstan and construction litigation attorney in Kazakhstan. We represent clients in both domestic and international courts, ensuring that your legal disputes are handled with the utmost professionalism and expertise.

Labour Legislation Services in Kazakhstan

Employment laws in Kazakhstan are constantly evolving. Our firm provides in-depth advice on all aspects of labour legislation in Kazakhstan, from drafting contracts to resolving disputes. We also offer specialized services in labour dispute resolution in Kazakhstan, helping you navigate conflicts between employers and employees efficiently.

Security and Stock Market Services in Kazakhstan

The financial market in Kazakhstan is highly regulated, making compliance a top priority for businesses. We offer expert consultation on security and stock market services in Kazakhstan, including advice on exchange stock requirements in Kazakhstan. Our team ensures that your business complies with all necessary regulations, minimizing risks and enhancing your financial stability.

Advising on Tax Regulations

Tax compliance is a critical aspect of any business operation. Our specialists provide comprehensive services for advising on tax regulations in Kazakhstan, ensuring that you meet all legal obligations while optimizing your tax strategy. We also offer assistance in compliance with tax regulations in Kazakhstan, helping you avoid potential penalties and legal issues.

Transport & Logistic Legislation Service

Kazakhstan's strategic location as a transportation hub necessitates a thorough understanding of transport and logistics regulations. Our team is well-versed in transport & logistic legislation service, providing guidance on compliance and operational efficiency. We also offer expertise in advising on transport regulations to ensure your business adheres to national and international standards.

Corporate Litigation and Business Law

For businesses facing legal challenges, we offer top-tier representation as a business litigation law firm in Kazakhstan. Our services include expert counsel from a corporate litigation attorney in Kazakhstan, ensuring that your business interests are protected in all legal matters.

IT, Communication, and Anti-Monopoly Compliance

As technology continues to advance, staying compliant with IT regulations in Kazakhstan is crucial. We provide specialized services in advising on IT regulations in Kazakhstan and advising on communication regulations in Kazakhstan, ensuring that your business operations are secure and compliant. Additionally, our firm offers robust anti-monopoly compliance services to help you navigate the complexities of market competition and regulation.

Construction and Housing Issues in Kazakhstan

The construction industry in Kazakhstan presents unique challenges, from regulatory compliance to dispute resolution. We provide expert legal support for construction and housing issues in Kazakhstan, ensuring that your projects meet all legal requirements. Our team includes a construction litigation attorney in Kazakhstan who is experienced in handling disputes and legal challenges in this sector.

At Almaty Consulting, we are committed to providing comprehensive legal and regulatory services that meet the highest standards of professionalism and expertise. Whether you need assistance with транспорт и логистическое регулирование or advising on tax disputes in Kazakhstan, our team is here to ensure that your business thrives in the complex legal environment of Kazakhstan.

CONTACT DETAILS

 Name - Almatyconsultinggroups

Website - https://almatyconsultinggroups.com/

Contact Number - 702 702 4444​Mail Id - Aidar.Kashkarbayev@almatyconsultinggroup.com

[farmerstrend]

The Future of Ndengu Farming in Kenya: How the Mung Beans Bill 2022 Could Shape the Industry

Kenyan mung bean or ndengu farmers will require licenses from the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) if a new Bill becomes law. The Mung Beans Bill 2022, seeking to promote growth and development of the mung bean industry, proposes that every grower shall register with the relevant county executive committee (CEC) member in charge of agriculture, with each CEC member required to maintain a…