I’m just sayin’ is all.

Meh. They may be pretty stable over time, but they do vary pretty markedly from place to place. With the biggest factor being poverty rates.

AMEN …

win= animals benefit from more contact, time out of cages, leaner environments

win= ‘offenders’ benefit from the animal-human bond

win= shelter workers, volunteers, and general public benefit from observing new opportunities for animals

Comment by ericka — January 30, 2010

This is SUCH an important point! Think of the good programs that teach inmates to care for/train animals do. Even at that “hard-core” stage people can and do learn compassion and empathy. What about “lesser offenders,” especially young ones? If they are ruled out from volunteering, what have we gained? And what opportunities for turning their lives around have we lost?

While we may have already gone beyond any reasonable limits with hiring practices-only those with high Ficos need apply and by the way pee in a cup—I choose not to acquiesce, to instead draw a line. If we don’t take this intrusive and unreasonable act of government seriously and refuse to give in, further erosion of our constitutional rights begins.

History shows that what happens, happens because people ignored all the small events that cumulatively signaled something was going terribly wrong until it was too late to unwind it.

If you have been convicted of a violent felony you aren’t going to be allowed to work in schools with children, volunteer in search-and-rescue, or work in certain other jobs in California. It makes no difference whether it is a paid or volunteer job.

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” This is brought up to try to shoot down any and all proposed restrictions on liberty, without any room for context, nuance, or any discussion about whether it’s something “essential” or an actual right that is being restricted, or whether the security justifies the restriction.

We accept many limitations on our liberty to achieve security. Those who disagree are either disingenuous, or else they are anarchists. I can’t drive my sports car down your residential street at 160 mph. I can’t play my stereo full blast at 2 AM while driving down your street. I can’t have my own stash of nuclear weapons. I can’t yell “fire!!!” in a crowded theater. Laws restrict our liberty to do these and many other things.

IMO, the potential consequences if convicted child molesters could get jobs working with children in schools are such that fingerprint background checks to prevent it are justified.

OTOH, it would be easy to expand the net too wide and rationalize all manner of jobs as needing fingerprint background checks. Uncle Sam has mandated fingerprint background checks for a number of jobs using dubious logic through its TWIC card program. Our right against warrantless searches is threatened. And don’t get me started about mandatory drug testing.

I do not believe that working with shelter animals rises to the level of justifying fingerprint background checks. Likewise, I expect that if a story airs tomorrow about a person who had previously been convicted of felony animal cruelty, who got a job working with shelter animals, and who was caught brutally torturing shelter animals, that there would be widespread outrage and demands for criminal background checks (here comes those fingerprints again) for shelter workers. I expect that some of the liberty or death crowd would be among those making the demand.

Where I volunteer there is always a ‘floating Juvie’ who is doing community hours helping clean cages. They also pet and play with the dogs and cats. I have witnessed a ‘calmness’ which these troubled youth experience when they pet a cat.

Okay, back to the finger printing… who decides people with ‘a record’ can’t help animals. Just this past week, our shelter unveiled a brand new building. Volunteers and all the regular animal advocates in our city came to the grand opening. We helped cut the ribbons and clapped as the parade of dogs walked by to their new kennels.

Guess what? The week before, local inmates were brought in to carry the heavy stuff to the new digs. They did it for many reasons, and you can bet one reason was because helping animals in ANY WAY a person can…feels good.

Last thing…then I can sleep soundly tonight: Most dog profilers do not have experience with the breed they bash. I challenge every one of the Pitbull haters out there to spend 30 minutes with a pit bull, one-on-one, hanging out, and throwing a tennis ball. Then comment.

His first choice had written a paper when he was in law school that raised some red flags for the White House, and in attempting to convince the President that he needed to nominate someone else, Sam says to Toby and the President:

In the 20s and 30s it was the role of government. 50s and 60s it was civil rights. The next 20 years it will be about privacy. The Internet. Cell phones. Health records. And who’s gay and who’s not. Besides, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?”

But biometric data — body bits — is more “us” legally than our financial or shopping data, and protecting it has to be more of a priority. Because the right to privacy of our own bodies protects our medical rights, our right to control our bodies, our reproductive systems, our DNA — the abuses are so intensely personal and can paralyze us on a level that is far more profound and fundamental than having what we buy tracked.

Now, controlling or tracking what we read becomes about our minds and thoughts and even, I guess, our souls. That is, I think, deeper than even our bodies.

But the fact that it’s gotten to the point where we have to consider whether our government can FORCE US to turn over our piss and our blood and our DNA and our fingerprints in the absence of any reasonable cause, or that it should be allowed to become so ubiquitous a practice that it’s almost impossible to get a job without surrendering those things, and then PRIORITIZE THAT with whether our innermost thoughts should be probed by a system of tracking what we read… I mean, seriously. Game over.

And maybe it is. I don’t know. But I know that my piss is mine and my blood is mine and my fingerprints are mine, and if someone wants them, they need to go through due process of law.

And if shelters want volunteers, then they need to find another way to prevent abusers from infiltrating their ranks, one that doesn’t abuse our freedoms nor make us feel like criminals.