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Who can forget the immortal line from Bambi, the one that soured an entire generation on deer hunting? “Man is in the comments.” Perhaps we’re misremembering. We’re not going to check. Anyway, after WW published an Oregon Journalism Project story about which ballot initiatives appear headed to voters in November (“Signature Issues,” Jan. 28), plenty of readers had disdainful things to say about a proposal to ban the killing of animals in Oregon for consumption. To be sure, it is a tad surprising that 92,000 people support a plan to criminalize fishing, animal husbandry, and rodent control. It might be the first issue in recent memory that unites the commenters on wweek.com with the posters on Bluesky: Thanks, they hate it. Here’s what our readers had to say:
David Binning, via Bluesky: “People are reading it as an initiative about meat, but IP 28 would also make it a criminal offense to kill rats or mice in Oregon.
“As a potential criminal under this proposal, I asked canvassers about it; they suggested I should simply live-trap rats and release them in a park.
“They do reduce it to a misdemeanor, so if you’re caught trapping a mouse the penalty is just 100 hours community service and they take your pets away.
“Anyway, neat that Oregon is finding a way to pioneer carceral veganism.”
Henry Rearden, via wweek.com: “This whole IP 28 charade reminds me of a Portlandia episode that hilariously portrayed the protagonists as a couple insisting on visiting the cage-free, GMO-free, pesticide-free farm where the local restaurant sourced their chicken. This whole petition is a farce.”
Diva, via wweek.com: “The naive shall always be with us. (Yes, people are allowed to paraphrase the Bible.) It is important to remember what human beings are: the most successful of the Great Apes. Animals. For all of human history the large majority have been omnivorous. That is not going to change. It is human nature.
“Though I have chosen not to eat beef and poultry since college, I do not try to impose my lifestyle on others. And being pragmatic, I still use leather products. That animal’s life is over by the time his hide goes to a tannery. The lack of balance dooms the extreme animal rights movement.”
Aestro17, via Reddit: “A quarter million dollars is chump change for a petition like this, but I imagine it still could’ve saved many more animals than this exercise in public masturbation.”
MonkeyChasedWeasel, in reply: “A quarter million dollars would pay for planting tree root balls along several miles of salmon habitat. It stabilizes the banks and provides a refuge for fry.”
Lisa Loving, via wweek.com: “Oregon is legendary for its animal rights activism. These folks have a lot of money, incredible clout among famous cultural figures, and they have always been better organized than everybody else; it looks like they overlap with the MAHA people. But there’s a place where the far right and the far left meet, and that place is Oregon. If the animal rights movement ran the peace movement, there would never be another bombing again. But they don’t. And it draws that line between say, for example, why abortion rights and marriage equality are issues that go begging, but the right to serve pâté at your overpriced brunch spot somehow makes it to the table?”
PaPilot98, via Reddit: “My horse is going to be very upset that I can no longer jack it off.
“But seriously, yeah, this would be dumb at a federal level, let alone a state one. I thought we’d learned our lesson about special interest groups, but I guess it was just the ones we didn’t like.”
ORDER PRESCHOOL OFF THE DOLLAR MENU
Your recent piece on a Dunthorpe preschool got some attention [“Happy Meals,” WW, Jan. 21]. A recent audit suggests Multnomah County’s fully loaded cost per student for Preschool for All is approximately $42,862 per year. Seems like the folks in Dunthorpe are getting a pretty good bang for their buck.
Kevin Kohnstamm
Northwest Portland
BLAME BIDEN’S BORDER POLICY FOR TODAY’S VIOLENCE
I read your story entitled “Read Local Dispatches From ICE’s Deadly Campaign in Minnesota” [wweek.com, Jan. 24]. I would expect, although perhaps painfully optimistic and naive, that you would report the impetus to this “deadly campaign.” And that impetus would be the Biden administration’s laissez-faire attitude to people coming into this country during his administration. No open borders, no Minnesota deaths. I guess that you have been hypnotized by the woke left and have become nothing more than a useful apparatchik. You will have to live with that reality, although looking into the mirror daily may give you pause.
Dominick D. Dorchester
Wood Village
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Email: amesh@wweek.com
