California Legislative Assembly Member and newly elected District 3 City Councilman, Bob Blumenfield, has just recently introduced a bill, AB-1045, that is sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States and will attempt to do some pretty subtle (but awful) things to the blunt text currently residing all over California’s shelter laws.

This bill would make technical, nonsubstantive changes to those provisions by replacing references to a “pound” with references to an “animal shelter” and by replacing references to destroying an animal with references to humanely euthanizing the animal.

Way to cutesy up the hellholes, Bill! Have you ever been to any of these pounds, err, I mean shelter resorts that you seem to want to grandstand over?

All this is is a move to tell grown adults that “everything will be okay.” That we should just close our little eyes and go back to sleep, because by golly, the animals are being taken care of in California! And so many of us out there actually WANT to be told this. So we can continue pretending that what is happening actually isn’t, and that things are always on the up and up, because you know, we all love animals and don’t want to see them hurt, right? Real bumper sticker shit. The type of crap that makes us feel good about ourselves without doing anything. The good old sticking ones head in thy sand. So many of us are really awesome at that.

This crappy toilet roll of legislation practically begs us to look the other way. This is doublespeak in its finest form. Pound means jail. Shelter implies safety. Shelter still kills. Shelter not safe. Destroying an animal means killing it. Humanely euthanizing an animal implies that we’re giving it that awesome death present that it’s been begging for since last Christmas. Shelter still kills, destroys. Shelter not safe. But we’ll give the illusion that they are anyways, that way we can all congratulate ourselves and go out for drinks later!

Will Jennifer Fearing, HSUS’s California state director, be picking up the tab? She’s the same person that last year put together a “task force” with the intention of getting rid of the Hayden Law. You know, because our trustworthy shelters “don’t need that law to comply.” Yeah, right. That basically means that the minimal protections that California’s shelter animals currently enjoy, well, they definitely don’t need those anymore! You know, it has nothing to do with budget cuts, it’s actually because our shelter managers are sparkling slices of humanity that will always do the “right thing” for the animals. Yeah. This is the time when everyone should come together to unanimously tell Fearing that she’s full of caca.

I’m sorry folks. I can’t even pretend to be civilized with people that do these awful things under the cover of goodness. Jennifer Fearing and the HSUS have oftentimes acted as the literal enemies of true and genuine shelter reform everywhere, and their attempts to dumb down language meant to bury the atrocities that are happening every single day need opposed by all of us with all of our might. What she is trying to do is essentially pose over dead shelter animals while telling us that they were love tapped for their own good. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of Californians never knew that her job description was to submarine actual shelter protections at the behest of a car salesman like Wayne Pacelle… And to Bob Blumenfield: Don’t take the easy road out the gate, sir. Don’t prop up language meant to turn the truth backwards, which will only serve to keep the so many people not yet exposed to the realities of kill shelters further in the dark. Rethink your position here.

You can most easily reach Jennifer Fearing on Twitter: @JenniferFearing. You can also, and hopefully will, email Bob Blumenfield and (more politely than me) ask him to withdraw the bill: assemblymember.blumenfield@assembly.ca.gov.