Make no mistake about this, people in rural America love their pickup trucks and they love their dogs. And they REALLY love their dogs who ride in pickup trucks. So you can imagine in Tennessee (where I lived for 15 years), when a state legislator introduced a bill that forbids drivers from allowing their dogs to ride unsecured in the back of trucks — well, it is a big dang deal.
Other states, such as Delaware, have considered such legislation in the past but killed the bill in committee. PETA says:
Florida, New Hampshire, California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Oregon have laws prohibiting and/or restricting animals in cargo beds of trucks.
Some counties also have laws against allowing unrestrained dogs in the back of trucks.
The Humane Society says
Washington and Oregon have much weaker no-transport laws.
The Tennessean reported:
The bill, introduced by Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, would make failure to secure the animals in the open area of a motor vehicle a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a $50 fine. A legislative committee is scheduled to hear testimony Tuesday from veterinarians and law-enforcement officials in support of the bill.
Dunn said witnesses will testify to the hazards of such rides to the dogs and to the people following behind if the dog jumps out.
"Somebody will go to have their dog treated at the vet — to get shots — and they end up getting treated for broken legs when the dog jumps out of the back of the truck on the way," Dunn told The Tennessean. (The paper editorialized against the bill.)
The story continues:
Dunn insists the dangers are real. He said the Massachusetts Society for Protection of Animals found that 141 vets in a 1988 study treated 592 dogs thrown from truck beds that year.
And the story includes this passage:
Dunn claims he has received "hundreds" of e-mails in support of the legislation and just a few against it.
The bill makes it illegal for anyone to "intentionally transport a dog on the running board, fenders, hood, or other outside part of any motor vehicle unless such dog is suitably harnessed, caged, or enclosed so as to protect such dog from falling, jumping, or being thrown from the motor vehicle."
There are exceptions made for a dog being transported by a farmer requiring the services of the dog, or for a hunting dog being transported by a licensed hunter.
Rep. John Tidwell, D-New Johnsonville, said last month that Dunn's legislation "would absolutely destroy the way people live with their animals."
"Quite frankly, the dog's job when you go to the shopping center, when you go to the feed mill, is to protect the truck and what's in it," he said.
Boston Globe
reporter Bill Dedman was the one who alerted me to this story and he also sent me this
link to a product that may be the kind of restraint that lawmakers are looking to require.
Here is another version.
A Texas A&M veterinarian explains why having dogs in the back of pickup trucks is a bad idea.
I also found a story that said dogs can suffer eye damage by riding in the back of trucks because wind dries their eyes out. Dogs have no tear ducts, the story explains.
Blacks Fare 56 Percent As Well As Whites Economically
The National Urban League's "Equality Index" compared conditions for blacks in America to those for whites, and found:
- Economics - Blacks fare 56 percent as well as their white counterparts.
- Health - Blacks fare 78 percent as well.
- Education - Black educational performance is 76 percent.
- Fewer than 50 percent of black families own their own homes versus over 70 percent of whites.
- Blacks are denied mortgages and home improvement loans at twice the rate of whites.
- Teachers with less than three years of experience teach in minority schools at twice the rate that they teach in white schools.
- Forty-nine percent of black students' teachers lack a college minor in the subject they taught versus 40 percent of white students' teachers.
- Blacks attain college degrees at 63 percent of the rate of their white counterparts.
Paper Finds Blacks Pay Higher Taxes
I spotted this story in the IRE Hot-Stories index. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported:
On average, blacks in this county pay a local income tax rate that is 49 percent higher than what whites pay, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette computer analysis has found. Put another way, the typical black person with a $40,000 salary would pay $908 to the school district and municipality, while a white person with the same salary would pay just $604.
Black homeowners also pay higher millage rates than their white counterparts, the analysis shows. The average black homeowner pays a property-tax bill of 26.27 mills to the school district and municipality, while the average white homeowner pays 23.74 mills, a difference of 11 percent.
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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of websites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.
It's interesting that these states enact laws for the safety...
