Monday, January 2, 2017

WI's polluting Gov. Walker will steal water issue for '18 race

Though he has thumbed his official nose for 5+ years at his US Clean Water Law obligations, has overseen a statewide reduction in pollution inspections and enforcement, and has carried water (sorry) for whichever wetlands and water abusers needed an official shoulder shrug or pass  - - whether sand mining companies, iron mining special interests, big ag, animal feeding and manure producing operations - - 

GOP Gov. Scott Walker has just signaled he will keep trying to fool all of the people all of the time by stealing the very issue - - clean water for everyone - - which should disqualify him from further public service to keep his inevitable 2018 re-election campaign afloat.

The evidence?


Note the theme of this three-agency, campaign-style news release about his administration's insubstantial and distracting response to persistent groundwater contamination near animal feeding operations:

“Water quality is a top priority for us.” That’s what Gov. Scott Walker said in November when he directed the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and the Department of Natural Resources to coordinate resources…" blah, blah, blah.
More evidence?

* This is the 2015 GOP presidential candidate who said he could defeat ISIS because he withstood peaceful protests by teachers, nurses, office workers and state retirees. Absurdity? No problem, as words for Walker can have nothing behind them except a political mission.


* The same politician who turned his blatant obstruction of voting rights into a bogus talking point about having made it "easier to vote." In other words, flipping the script also flips the truth.


* Whose intentional plan through deletions tucked among millions of words in a state budget to upend the state university's historic mission statement was just a "drafting error." As PolitiFact said, "Pants on Fire."


*  And his Department of Natural Resources with the "chamber of commerce mentality" corporate types he put there to run the show just got caught deleting and otherwise playing with climate change and science information to make "climate" and "climate change" disappear completely from its key climate change web page.


* Walker also created a bogus, dog-whistling narrative to justify drug-testing (read: humiliating) food stamp recipients by saying he wants to go after you-know-who for sitting on the sofa playing video games instead of looking for a job.


* He's also manipulated the language of state law to enshrine the rock-bottom $7.25-per-hour minimum wage he refuses to let rise as a livable wage.


With a track record of saying or scrubbing or minimizing and falsifying (78 examples) whatever he thinks will help him win a campaign, make no mistake about it:


Though he has been called by experts a disaster for the Wisconsin environment, Walker will adopt his comfortable career politician/on-message/fact-free persona and repeat over and over again that "water quality is a top priority for us" until 50.1% of the Wisconsin electorate believes it.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He's nuclear waste for the Republican Party. Couldn't even get a foot in the door of Trump Tower, meaning his aspirations for a Federal job are, maybe, as Ambassador to Cambodia. Trump has vowed to drain the swamp in D.C., not top it off.