Saturday, January 19, 2013

Righty Blogger - - Now DNR Secretary - - Had Undermined Mining Bill 'Process'

To help replace the pristine Penokee Hills in Northwest Wisconsin with an open pit iron mile at least four-miles long, one-mile-wide and 1,000-feet in from Ashland County to Iron County - - (will they rename it "Irony County?") - - the GOP is getting ready to change long-established rules governing mining application reviews, public hearing procedures and mine waste dumping in or at public waters, just to name a few.



Open Pit Mining Methods thumbnail
To kick-off this Great Changing Of The Rules To Fit The Players (hat tip, Cathy Stepp: read on...) to serve one special corporate interest - - the out-of-state Cline Group run by $10,000 donors to Scott Walker - - the GOP-controlled Legislature is holding a 9:00 a.m. hearing Wednesday at the State Capitol on a mining bill that will allow Cline to blow away, sift through, smelt and then dump in the Bad River watershed close to Lake Superior what's left of 330 million cubic yards of Penokee Hills rock. (note: figure corrected Sunday, from "square" to "cubic.")

Acidic content included.

Note that attending this one-and-only hearing in Madison - - correctly called a "hoax" and a "manipulation" by State Senator Bob Jauch, (D-Poplar) - - requires a 600-mile round trip from Ashland, and represents just another another GOP-wielded stick in the eye to Northern Wisconsin residents who already had to drive to West Allis where Assembly Republicans held what one mining supporter called a "process blunder" to gather input on the first and worst iteration of the bill, in 2011.

(Just for the sake of argument, suppose the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources were to green-light the City of Racine's Root River outflow into Lake Michigan as the final wastewater discharge point for Waukesha's proposed Great Lakes diversion - - and then scheduled the one and only hearing on the matter 30 miles north of Eau Claire - - or about a 600-mile round-trip from Racine. Just sayin'...)

And speaking of the the DNR: when Scott Walker picked her to run that agency because she had "a chamber-of-commerce mentality" - - yes, he really said that (validating Jauch, et al, above) - - builder and former government-basher (the ironies get richer) GOP state senator Cathy Stepp had written a partisan blog posting not only ripping the DNR but also accusing the other party of systematic, rule-bending hypocrisy to get what it wanted.

Noted here.

Stepp was writing ranting about the way she thought state agencies like the DNR (!) played with the rules to solidify policies she didn't like - - further ironic, since rule-making is now concentrated behind closed doors in our chamber-of-commerce-obeisant Governor's office.

Anyway, Stepp-as-blogger/future DNR Secretary closed out her screed with a now self-inflicted accusation, reprinted here, with all its punctuation and spelling flubs, shouting capitalizations  - - verbatim:
It's always the fine print in these things that have the heaviest hit.

Just another example of the democrats game plan: Change the Rules to Fit the Players.

Shout it with me, now: HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT.





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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2013 at 1:49 PM

    That fits the pattern of projection that we have seen. Accusing Democrats of doing one thing, meanwhile doing that same thing systematically themselves on a much larger scale.

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  2. UnknownJanuary 19, 2013 at 2:36 PM

    http://americamustbesaved.blogspot.com/

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2013 at 7:19 PM

    Anon -- save the dime store psycho-analysis. It's not helpful here.

    This isn't "project" this is bold-faced lying and saying what GOP knows the mainstream media will carry.

    Its called P-R-O-P-A-G-A-N-D-A

    It works and Wisconsin's media echo-chamber will spread it around the state repeatedly until its conventional "wisdom".

    You miss the entire point by making this about a personal character defect instead of in-your-face politics that WORKS and succeeds in controlling the dialog and outcomes.

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  4. nonquixoteJanuary 20, 2013 at 9:26 AM

    29I'm not sure if it was yours or Cathy Stepp's wording, but 330M cubic instead of square yards is a bit more precise and a hell of a lot more overburden.

    Kind of hoping this was Stepp's quotation to illustrate the 'precision,' data with which Republicans make their decisions.

    Thanks for staying with this fiasco in the making. I'm still waiting for the tea party loudmouths to complain about the time and money JB wasted on voter ID challenges. I'm now predicting their total silence about how much this is going to cost the state taxpayer in the Federal Courts. Looks like a ripe opportunity for merit pay deja vue all over again at DOJ.

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  5. James RowenJanuary 20, 2013 at 10:19 AM

    To nonquixote: "Square yards" corrected to "cubic." My error. Thank you for pointing it out. I rechecked the scientific study linked.

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