Waukesha County Double-Speak

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, take a bow and consider yourself nominated for the annual George Orwell Spin Award.

Vrakas aligned himself recently with the 11th-hour purely partisan move by the State Assembly GOP leadership to introduce water diversion approval changes in the Great Lakes Compact - - so called tweaks that in reality that would kill or cripple the agreement.

Now Vrakas is quoted in the Business Journal saying the changes he supports would take politics out of the process.

"It's a change in the compact that will take politics off the table, forcing decision makers to rely on science," said Vrakas.

Story here.

Larger context here.

The double-speak?

Vrakas is participating in a coordinated political manipulation to weaken or upend the Compact - - while arguing that he's de-politicizing it.

And the Compact killers in the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and other business groups like the Metropolitan Builders Association also claim their goal is a stronger Compact.

Stronger, when the reality is weakening?

And injecting partisan politics into a process which had been painstakingly bi-partisan, even non-partisan, as groups of all varieties across the Great Lakes region worked on the Compact draft between 2001-2005, and in the state legislatures that have approved it so far, have done so with no partisan showboating

Its as if you went out for dinner with Vrakas and their allies and you watched them substitute a bucket of fried chicken for dinner salads - - and claiming they were making a low-fat diet choice to better health.

Next thing you know, GOP Assembly leader Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) or State Rep. Scott Gunderson, (R-Waterford), will announce they destroyed the Compact to save it.

(For all you kids out there, destroying something to save it is a Vietnam War reference, dating to the US military's explanation having leveled the Village of Ben Tre in Febuary, 1968.)