Rather than disclose that accounting NKN's leader Day instead hired a law firm Tripp Scott to file a civil law suit for the comments listed on these two pages.
Compare the context of my statements, many of which were posted on my personal Face book page, with the comments leveled against me personally. Ironically it would be one year, or in mid November of 2012 that NKN finally released their version of Everglades accounting.
Line items for an administrative fee of $5,646 on donations earmarked for rescue with only $872 paid out to "My Animals Rock" which is rescue group that had been helping Mirta for years.
Regardless off the numbers on payments to various vet offices the cost per animal rescued would have been substantially less had this rescue operation partnered with Miami Dade Animal Services.
Sadly, because No Kill Nation insisted on controlling the rescue operation based on available resources. Many dogs got left behind that could have had a safe place to sleep at the county shelter.
Note: Amy Roman Restucci took over the Abandoned Dogs of the Everglades in February of 2012. She is now paying herself a $50,000 salary and driving a new BMW - all thanks to donor dollars. No Kill nation paid ex show breeder Karolyn Rico a $41,000 salary or more than Ingrid Newkirk for who knows what job responsibility she had. Charity fraud? You be the judge.
This one area was were No Kill Nation and I disagree on. With the hatred that No Kill Nation and their leaders had towards shelters and the animal protection community this much needed help was simply ignored.
The accounting was only released in November of 2012 one week after a "Permanent Injunction" was issued ordered me to take down numerous Drats Blogs and just about any reference I may have made that mentions No Kill Nation on Facebook as well.
The arrogance of deceit kept more animals from being saved. More numbers that are just numbers considering how long it took No Kill Nation's two accountants to put this together.
Balanced Paws has a business relationship with NKN's leader Debi Day. The payout of $3,000 was for boarding and training of a dog rescued from the Everglades named Pierre. There has been no clear explanation as to what happened to Pierre after or if he left the control of Balanced Paws.
Fourteen months in boarding is an awful long time for any dog but to take a dog found living in the wild and make no attempt to find a suitable foster is simply irresponsible.
Still, while No Kill Nation admits they are not a rescue group they have repeatedly attacked my work here running a no kill sanctuary for senior hounds that I started in late 2002. I have never fostered a dog in boarding.
While NKN's Amy Restucci was much too busy to foster Pierre herself, or simply clueless on fostering, she did have time to take her whole "100+ Abandoned Dogs" team to Key West for some rest and relaxation.
I never realized how emotionally stressful rescue is in south Florida. Most rescuers I know spend their evenings cleaning cages, playing with their fosters and trying to figure out how your going to pay for all those fosters living by your feet. Not Amy, relieved of the boring responsibility of teaching fosters to trust again she unwinds with a night out with the girls at her favorite pub.Yet, Amy has on numerous occasions called me irresponsible and a hoarder. I guess you can't be a hoarder as long as you dump your rescues in boarding and get someone else to pick up the tab.
Once I first starting nosing around on issues related to No Kill Nations involvement in the Everglades Project including the relationships with NKN employees Kathy Santomero, Amy Restucci, Maggie Rodriquez and Camille Loge the rhetoric directed towards me became increasingly hostile.
Who is Kathy Santomero? Kathy was one of the major fundraisers for the Everglades Project. She did such a wonderful job No Kill Nation promoted her to the board of directors. Kathy is also a woman of many words.
In addition to her skills in fundraising Kathy is well versed in espionage. One would think a group devoted to ending shelter killing in our nations shelters would have board members focused on bringing about that change.The sad thing is I am not that difficult to spy on. My Face book page is open to the public, all my blogs are not only open but allow un moderated comments - something that is unheard of in the no kill movement.
If you can't defend your vision by communicating why your vision is better than anything else then you don't have a vision.
While Kathy talks a good story about being compassionate with those who suffer from chronic illness her actions tell an entirely different story. Was it compassionate to sign an affidavit swearing under oath that 150 plus of the Drats blogs were "lies and defamatory" towards NKN when many of the topics discussed in those blogs covered item like puppy mills, Nathan Winograd (who is NOT NKN), CAPA laws, Rick Berman and the like. Either Kathy has extremely poor reading comprehension skills or she deliberately filed a false document with the court.
Why would she do that? In her own words - it's about the music.
Yes, Kathy IGNORANT PEOPLE can be so cruel.
Despite all this hateful rhetoric I complied with the court order that resulted from Santomero's false affidavit used in court to secure a permanent injunction. Over 150 blogs were deleted, including dozens of educational blogs written months before the Everglades even became an NKN project.
All my older comments on Facebook were blocked by simply changing settings preventing anyone from accessing old posts, A court order to Google deleted over 150 of my blogs including the blogs on puppy mills, Nathan Winograd, Rick Berman, CAPA, Mike Fry and even more incredibly blogs written about my hounds.
In fact, the order was so extensive that two blogs I wrote for first amendment clarification called "Amused to Death" and "My Back Pages" containing nothing more than lyrics to songs that had been around for decades.
Yet, NKN's board member K Santomero swore under oath that all of these blogs were "lies and defamatory" towards NKN.
That was part of my issue with the permanent injunction. What landed me in hot water was when NKN's attorney demanded that all "future writing" on the NKN be included as well.
Clearly, No Kill Nation's leader nor her friends were going to adjust the tone of words they choose to post. Words of hate became the battle call of a war of words that entangled anyone who dared voice an opposing viewpoint on No Kill Nation's vision or agenda.
Despite demands from Debi Day's attorney that I not be allowed to comment at all on anything related to Debi or her organization those same guidelines obviously didn't apply to her.
People were attacked with vile comments by both Debi and her friend Maria Venuto (who posts by the alias Lucy Von Pelt) for simply being friends. I have only known Hilda Mueller for a very short two years. Hilda is one of the kindest, compassionate person I have had the honor to meet. The hateful, vile attacks that were directed at Hilda and her family became very personal to me.
I have never had the honor to meet Mary Lundberg but I do know in watching her work she is a friend to shelter animals.
What kind of leader of a national animal advocacy group threatens people and what kind of leader allows her friends to post the most vile comments about a person imaginable? Mary works tirelessly taking pictures of shelter dogs at MDAS hoping to find that one person who might save a life. Debi Day and her NKN friends are much too consumed with their war of hate to be bothered.
This is school yard behavior - Debi Day can not be trusted to act like an adult. This "no kill" movement - if there is a movement - will never survive as long as it is run by children who only have hatred in their hearts.
The truth is none of the vile comments above can be banned through the courts. That would clearly be a violation of the first amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that "even defamatory speech" is protected under the first amendment.
Now as a practical application it would be ill advised to write things that can be proven defamatory like the comments I have just shared. Those defamatory comments then could be subject to a lawsuit clarifying whether or not they were defamatory or not.
Debi Day has repeatedly claimed that the statements I've written on Facebook or this Drats blog were "ruled" defamatory after the court heard testimony was heard. That is a blatant lie. The court NEVER held evidence hearings on any of the statements listed in the original complaint No Kill Nation filed.
The only hearings held were pretrial motion hearings. I defaulted out of a court battle that would have cost me six figures in legal fees to defend. Instead of wasting money on attorney's I chose to use my resources to pay for things like surgery and vet bills for the hounds.
In this country the super wealthy should never be able to "PURCHASE" public opinion. The concept of the rich and affluent not only silencing my voice but, as Maria puts it "putting me in prison", is something that happens in third world countries but not in the United States of America.
I know many have told me to walk away but walking away from defending the right to free speech would be an insult to all of our brave soldiers who paid the ultimate price for my freedom and yours too - that is simply something I will not do.
