Big night.

First, how about New Hampshire?  Now six states offer marriage equality to their residents. 

Second, the Humane Society recycling fiasco gets increasingly snarled.  Matted, perhaps?  Read the article and tell me if you share my outrage that the local organizations are upset MORE about their lost profits than by the toxic destruction being committed in their name?  They are going to sue this man over their lost thousands, but no one is talking about the electronics and who is responsible for disposing of them safely.  Sad.  I guess dogs and cats living near the dumps in China aren't worth rescuing, especially when they glow in the dark.

Either way, this gives me pause:

Oklahoma records show that Mr. Nixon, who was employed by Allegheny County in the administrative services division from 1998 to 2002, established his recycling business under the banner EarthEcycle in January 2008.

Before that, however, court records in Allegheny County show Mr. Nixon left behind a checkered life when he moved from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma in 2003.

Mr. Nixon, who filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania in 2000, pleaded guilty to a number of charges in the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court in 2001.

The charges include two counts of simple assault, making terroristic threats, harassment and possession of an instrument of crime. He served one year of probation for each charge. Court records show charges of disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing were withdrawn.

When Mr. Nixon implied I was an industrial spy and threatened to draw me into a lawsuit, I was merely taken aback.  Now I can see all those little red flags were waving like mad for good reason.  Wow.  I just cannot get over how many people were duped by this man.   Rest assured, he had help from someone with inside connections to multiple local animal welfare organizations.  Or don't rest assured because there are many tons of your materials floating around out there and no one seems to care.

I want my shredder and my electric heater back!  I will GLADLY pay a reputable company to dispose of them.  Maybe a lot of folks are comfortable with the "oh well, how could we have known?" approach, but I feel incredibly bad that I didn't take action sooner.  Visions of the 60 Minutes segment haunt me.

 

 
Most of all, I feel awful that I was right. I have been bashed in the dog world, in the queer world, ignored by friends in the media and just trounced by volunteers for these different organizations.  I wish they were all right and I was just an overly sensitive jerk.  There is no satisfaction in being right.  No feeling of accomplishment.  None of the usual underdog standing up to the man sensations.

I feel like crap and I'm probably going to cry in a few minutes because I keep thinking that I should have started waving my hands back in February when I first smelled a rat.  Instead, I let someone bully me into a corner.  Now I'm backing down when people are saying "Oh, these organizations couldn't have known" to get me to stop complaining about their culpability.
 
Bullshit. If I walked into the Humane Society of Podunkville and said "Here's a too-good-to-be-true fundraiser that will generate $10,000" they would ask some questions.  Especially if my company was 365 days old! 

So the unanswered question now is what these organizations are going to do about it?  I wish someone would put the screws to them on this particular issue -- how do they undo the damage and dispose of the electronics?