Sen. Johnson was OK with greater Great Lakes degradation

I had noted the close but welcome defeat yesterday of a move in the US Senate to more easily allow freighters to empty their ballast tanks filled with ocean water into the Great Lakes despite the probable presence of destructive, fast-reproducing invasive species in that ballast water.

For the record, let it be known that GOP/Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson - - 'representing' a state bordering two of the five Great Lakes and which is already suffering documented damage from invasive species to beaches, water intake pipes and fisheries - - amplified his contempt for science and history by voting with the shipping companies.

And when asked to explain his vote, Johnson, through an aide reading a prepared statement, completed the rare obfuscatory quadfecta by jamming the bureaucratic buzzwords "interstate commerce...federal standard...more appropriate...regulatory patchwork" into a single, issue-ducking comment:

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson voted the opposite way, having — through an aide — described the issue "as an interstate commerce issue where a federal standard is more appropriate than the current regulatory patchwork based on state land borders."

So let's add it to the Wrong Johnson Archive.

"Sunspots" Johnson does have a way with words; we remember his earlier eloquence on environmental matters, so, to be fair, I must give him credit for perhaps believing he was saving Wisconsin and the Great Lakes from something inspired by North Korea. Or Stalin:

...on WRJN 1400 radio in Wisconsin, the longtime climate-change denier said liberals and progressives, like socialists and communists, “want to control everything.

“The whole climate change debate gives ― and there are all kinds of quotes from adherents of and promoters of climate change ― the reason they’re doing it is it’s such a great opportunity to control, you know, pretty much, government, and control your lives,” he said. 

“I mean, again, I don’t know why they want to do it. There’s an arrogance of power there that they’re utopians, that they really think they can create heaven on Earth, and where it’s failed in the past, those people like Stalin and Chavez and the Castros, the nut cases in North Korea ― by the way, if you want equal results, go to North Korea, you have equal misery.”

“The arrogance of liberal progressives,” he added, “is that they’re just a lot smarter and better angels than the Stalins and the Chavezes and the Castros of the world, and if we give them all the control, and they control your life, they’re going to do a great job of it. Well, it just isn’t true.”