{"id":4444,"date":"2015-03-11T17:38:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T00:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/activists-take-their-toll\/"},"modified":"2016-10-22T18:25:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T01:25:36","slug":"activists-take-their-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/letters\/activists-take-their-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists take their toll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>It\u2019s startling to see that elephants will no longer be in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus. We can chalk this up to a decades-long harassment campaign from radical animal-rights activists, who alleged elephant mistreatment, taking its toll.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">We shouldn\u2019t forget that activists had their day in court to prove their claims \u2013 and lost, spectacularly. A judge dismissed their case, finding that animal rights groups had covertly paid their key witness, who lied under oath, nearly $200,000. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Ringling\u2019s parent company sued the activists for racketeering and bribery and collected $25 million in settlement money, including $6 million from the Humane Society of the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">It\u2019s nice to hear, however, that the Ringling elephants will retire to a company care center in Florida that has helped breed these animals, which are endangered in the wild. Ironically, this animal care exceeds anything the always-complaining animal-rights activists provide.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p class=\"p4\"><strong><em>\u2013 Will Coggin, director of research, Center for Consumer Freedom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s startling to see that elephants will no longer be in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}