The Wisconsin GOP chooses to be The Pollution Party
In the wake of Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel's surprise special interest-driven demotion of career civil servant and lead environmental prosector Tom Dawson in favor of a newly-hired corporate advocate, and GOP Governor Scott Walker's special interest-driven sandbagging of proposed state rules designed at long last to reduce widespread drinking water contamination near the manure-generating industrial-scale feedlots his administration is committed to expand, I was reminded of a salient question asked a few years ago which I quoted by long-time conservative West Bend business leader and journalist John Torinus on his always-provocative blog Straight Talk from the Heartland:
Likewise for clean air - - which Schimel and Walker are actively obstructing through litigation and pro-corporate coordination with other states.
And Schimel is going a step further by creating a unit within his office staffed by pro-corporate attorneys recruited and paid by Wisconsin taxpayers to function as a partisan adjunct to major trade associations, private corporations and the upper fraction of the 1% to sue the federal government over a host of pet conservative issues.
Don't these Republican officials - - and their Wisconsin Supreme Court protectors, State Legislative water-carriers and big business underwriting enables - - and their children, grand children, aging parents and and all their friends' families - - breathe the same air and drink the same water as do the rest of us?
You can't tell me they and their friends and families live and work and play 24/7 in gated bubbles, the air and water filtered to perfection.
Be that as it may, and while the right in Scott Walker's Havocwreakistan celebrates its total-gerrymandered-bought-and-paid for control of state government and the public resources it is supposed to be managing as but humble and temporary trustees for the people, I'm wondering:
Has it has occurred to Republicans that just as they now own government, they also will have to own every failure during their one-party rule, including, literally, what will and is already flowing into wells, rivers and streams from factory farms into rivers because of GOP-approved, ideologically-based and politically-inspired decisions to eliminate, reduce or distort pollution prevention, pollution inspections, environmental and permit reviews and the scientific, legal and enforcement experts in both at the Attorney General's office and the DNR who are supposed to do that very public service mission?
The Republican Party was founded in Wisconsin. Nationally - - before Trump and his embrace of discriminatory Voter ID and other Jim Crow ballot-box restrictions embraced by Scott Walker and his cohorts in North Carolina and Texas, et al - - the Grand Old Party was known as The Party of Lincoln.
Today, in Wisconsin, the GOP has chosen to The Pollution Party.
What's the appeal, what's the future, what's the morality in that?
I have always had a hard time figuring out why conservatives in the GOP have gone anti-conservation. Conserving valuable resources, like our drinking and recreational waters, is a conservative thing to do. It should be looked at as an investment, not spending.Let me take it one step farther:
Likewise for clean air - - which Schimel and Walker are actively obstructing through litigation and pro-corporate coordination with other states.
And Schimel is going a step further by creating a unit within his office staffed by pro-corporate attorneys recruited and paid by Wisconsin taxpayers to function as a partisan adjunct to major trade associations, private corporations and the upper fraction of the 1% to sue the federal government over a host of pet conservative issues.
Don't these Republican officials - - and their Wisconsin Supreme Court protectors, State Legislative water-carriers and big business underwriting enables - - and their children, grand children, aging parents and and all their friends' families - - breathe the same air and drink the same water as do the rest of us?
You can't tell me they and their friends and families live and work and play 24/7 in gated bubbles, the air and water filtered to perfection.
Be that as it may, and while the right in Scott Walker's Havocwreakistan celebrates its total-gerrymandered-bought-and-paid for control of state government and the public resources it is supposed to be managing as but humble and temporary trustees for the people, I'm wondering:
Has it has occurred to Republicans that just as they now own government, they also will have to own every failure during their one-party rule, including, literally, what will and is already flowing into wells, rivers and streams from factory farms into rivers because of GOP-approved, ideologically-based and politically-inspired decisions to eliminate, reduce or distort pollution prevention, pollution inspections, environmental and permit reviews and the scientific, legal and enforcement experts in both at the Attorney General's office and the DNR who are supposed to do that very public service mission?
The Republican Party was founded in Wisconsin. Nationally - - before Trump and his embrace of discriminatory Voter ID and other Jim Crow ballot-box restrictions embraced by Scott Walker and his cohorts in North Carolina and Texas, et al - - the Grand Old Party was known as The Party of Lincoln.
Today, in Wisconsin, the GOP has chosen to The Pollution Party.
What's the appeal, what's the future, what's the morality in that?
6 comments:
Walker Republicanism in Wisconsin was Trumpism before Trump. They know no bottom and they hollow out the hills they stand upon. It's all going to collapse beneath them and right now the only remaining moral salvation is for them to ensure that they don't take the entire state down with them. Sadly, I think most of that crowd would enjoy the company.
Isn't there some legal maneuvers that we can use to turn these people in? All I read about is this and that and that and this, why isn't there somebody out there who can help the people of WI and prevent anymore damages? This is going too far.
The help is right in front of us......THE BALLOT BOX..................DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY OFFICE SEEKER WITH AN "R" BEHIND HIS NAME!
The problem is tho, we are gerrymandered and that is a fact! We have no chance, this all needs to be stopped.
I was going to make a comment about how Donald reached out for 2nd amendment help but could not go through with it. And I'm not even running for POTUS
Booting Schimel out statewide in 2018 is a must....if not before.
Let's see what the Marquette Poll says today. If it's Dems +10, gerrymanders won't save a lot of these slimeballs in the Legislature
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