Glenn Grothman: wrong on the morning after pill

Hi folks,

I should be fair and note that Glenn got this wrong last year (and not this week) when he sponsored and introduced the failed Assembly Bill 343. As always with Glenn, some things you just can't make up. Anyway, this is relevant this week because the FDA has let science trump politics for a change and allowed wider distribution of the Morning After Pill.

The idea of Glenn prescribing his personal morality for both Wisconsinites and the University of Wisconsin System seemed normal and, so, appropriate for here -- but he's in it with Pat Strachota so the full story is over at The Motley Cow.


hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: expert on herbicides?

Hi folks,

Glenn was irritable again this last week because the DNR keeps interfering with his fun. I know how he feels.

I was irritable when my-brother-the-doctor told me I had to quit smoking. He's a cardiologist and an expert on the effects of smoking. He called me late one night with some new, and even more awful, details about what smoking does to your heart. I knew he was right, but I didn't want to listen to him. Even though it was bad for me, I loved to smoke.

So I know how Glenn feels when a whole bunch of PhD's and other experts at the DNR tell him that something he wants is a bad idea. He's already irritable about the whole garter snake business, and now the DNR wants to regulate a herbicide that might be a bit too dangerous for humans.

Here's the story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Panel wary of plan for herbicide rule
Legislators vow to stop proposed standards unless requests are met

By LEE BERGQUIST

lbergquist@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Aug. 22, 2006

Madison - A legislative committee pressed the Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday to reconsider a plan to regulate a controversial and widespread farm chemical and vowed to reject the rule outright if the agency doesn't agree to its requests.

Under language drafted by Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), the co-chairman of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, the panel wants the DNR to agree to a peer-reviewed study to evaluate the herbicide, which is marketed by St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. under the trade name Lasso.

[...]

But Republicans said the DNR's proposal was another instance of the agency overreaching its authority - few states are cracking down on the chemical, and only two wells in Wisconsin are thought to have exceeded the proposed limit.

[...]

A random study of private wells by the agriculture department in 2001 showed that 28% of the wells contained some level of alachlor's byproduct, known as alachlor ethane sulfonic acid, or ESA.

Its presence in so many wells makes it the most the prevalent synthetic chemical in Wisconsin's groundwater, state officials said.

Right... So, 2 details:

1. Glenn thinks it's okay to let foxes set up a peer reviewed study of how best to watch the chicken coop. Foxes have definite ideas about chickens. and...
2. If only two wells have reached the DNR suggested limits -- even though 5 years ago 28% showed traces of the herbicide -- then... well, there is no "then." How many wells should be allowed to reach the limits? How many Wisconsinites should "be allowed" to find this stuff in their wells? 20? 30? 1000? How about only yours?
   

This much seems clear: Glenn would rather listen to the foxes at Monsanto than the PhD's and doctors hired to look after the interest of us chickens.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Wrong on Race?

Hi folks,

In my entire life I've only seen 2 pileated woodpeckers.










They're pretty rare -- but not nearly as rare as this:


There was a Glenn-spotting over the weekend at the Ozaukee NAACP picnic. Glenn showed up for about 45 minutes and -- one imagines -- ate.

But I'm trying to work out how Glenn's services-slashing voting record squares with his support of the NAACP vision. It seems that the two should contradict each other.

How do I make sense of his hacking away at services for economically disadvantaged folks -- by supporting whopping big tax breaks to the richest few percent of us -- and his showing up at a picnic for the most visible group working to encourage services to our neighbors who have been institutionally excluded from the good life?

Maybe he's turned over a new leaf. Could Glenn be a prodigal son who has finally come around to a socially compassionate world-view that doesn't require shifting the tax burden to the poor? Will the Republican Party have to dump him? Will I ever see another pileated woodpecker?


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Wrong about Taxes too.

Hi folks,


If nothing else, Glenn loves to cut taxes, whether it's a good idea or not. He's like a 4 year old swinging a machete. He doesn't always know what to cut, just that he likes it -- a behavior reinforced by rich uncles who give him a lollypop every time he hacks up another watermelon in the neighbor's garden.

As this story from the Bill Christofferson's Xoff Files points out, citing the Milwaukee Journal and a recent study by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute [usually a dark-neo-con blinktank], those service-cutting loonies in Madison just cost us $100 million dollars.

If this keeps up, how many more important services and programs will these knee-jerk neo-cons cost the state? (like new teachers say, or sewers! or better water quality! or farmland protection for farmers and habitat protection for hunters and fishermen!) I suppose that if I were in the top 1% of the money in this state, I'd appreciate Glenn cutting my taxes too -- but I don't see that happening any time soon. :^)

Anyway, please click here to have a look at this report from Bill Christofferson at The Xoff Files.

Tax cuts only good if they help the rich?

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Wrong on running against Kohl

Hi folks,

It's been a quiet news week for Glenn, so let's revisit some leftovers I've been keeping in the fridge. Here's something from last month during his aborted-run against Senator Kohl that still has me scratching my head.

You'll remember that he put together the required number of signatures to go for it, but pulled out at the last minute. Anyway, here's an example of weirdness in the Milwaukee Journal from back in July:

FRIDAY, July 14, 2006, 11:23 a.m.
By Steven Walters

Grothman produces 3,012 signatures

Madison-State Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) showed up at the home of a Journal Sentinel reporter at 9 p.m. Thursday with a box of nomination papers.

"Let's count," he said.

So, the reporter and the senator huddled at a kitchen table, going through a pile of nomination papers Grothman, his friends and local party leaders circulated last weekend that -- had they been filed by 5 p.m. Tuesday -- would have put the Republican on the ballot as a U.S. Senate candidate against three-term Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.).

Grothman produced the pile of nomination papers, each of whom had room for 10 signatures of Wisconsin residents, after accusations by bloggers and others that he didn't run against Kohl because he couldn't get the 2,000 signatures required by the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline. He picked the home of the Journal Sentinel reporter who had personally asked to see the nomination papers.

But the number of signatures on nomination papers he produced Thursday night was 3,012.

"It just proves they're lying," Grothman said about the bloggers and emailers who suggested that he didn't run because he had failed to get the required number of signatures. "We got them."

Two items about this that made me go "hmmmmm...."

• I'd have to ask Steve Walters, the reporter here, whether he and Glenn are buddies or whether Glenn knew he was a reporter and just appeared at his back door at 9pm on a Thursday night. Sounds like Glenn just showed up and broke into the guy's kitchen.

--and

• ... wait a sec, read that again: "Glenn showed up at this guy's house at 9 o'clock on a Thursday night" to 'prove" he had enough signatures to run? I mean, what makes you so insecure that you need to prove to a Journal reporter that you have enough signatures when the election commission -- surely the uber-authority here -- would have guaranteed those signatures? Doesn't this seem a bit... I dunno... hysterical?

Glenn was wrong to pull out of a race against Senator Kohl. Personally, I'm sorry he didn't run and I know that those of us to the left of the Spanish Inquisition feel that way too. It would have been a chance for Glenn to air his politics in the open light of day where everyone could get a clear look at them -- a quick and certain way to make Democrats out of anyone who is raising a child or earning less than $150,000 a year.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: expert on snakes too.

This week Glenn continues his fight to have the Butler gartersnake removed from the Wisconsin DNR's threatened species list. GM Today reported:

Since 1997, the 18-inch-long snake has been classified a threatened species, and that means its dwindling local habitat needs protection, say area conservationists including town of West Bend resident Gary Casper, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee herpetologist and research associate for the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Signe Holtz, the Department of Natural Resource’s Bureau of Endangered Resources director, says the snake remains threatened, based on sound scientific research, and those restrictions should stay in place.

Bah, humbug, retorts Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) and Rep. Daniel LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), co-chairmen of the state Legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, which appears on the verge of striking the colorfully striped snake from southeast Wisconsin off the state’s threatened species list.

Glenn apparently believes it is more important for Living Word High School, a religious school in Jackson and "Home of the Timberwolves" to have an athletic field, than it is to keep habitat available for a threatened species. Apparently Glen supports protecting habitat for wolves ...

-- but not for the little guys.