Glenn Grothman: even wronger on Planned Parenthood

Another statement "not intended to be a factual statement."

Wisconsin Cuts Only $1 Million from Planned... | Gather

Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman regretted that the new budget doesn't cut even more funding from Planned Parenthood. He stated, "There's an ugly side to this organization, and I regret that they're going to take such a tiny cut in this budget." The Wisconsin state senator is absolutely correct; the pro-abortion group needs to have all of its funding cut.

This particular abortion-rights organization is one of the favorites of the liberal Democratic left, and since these people were voted out of office, and replaced by conservative Republicans, the preferred projects of the Democrats must pay the price for their support of the Democrats. This is how democracy works. Those who are in the majority get to decide how taxpayer's funds are spent, and they do not want their tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood.

And there, in the mirror....

Glenn Grothman: wrong for trying to lock the closet.

More fallout around the cheddarsphere from Glenn hoping to keep the idea of sexuality away from the children of Wisconsin.

Grothman nostalgic for gayer, closeted times

Senator Glenn Grothman doesn't want your hidden liberal agenda to turn the pupils gay! Back when he went to high school, gays apparently didn't exist...

Vital Signs: Grothman suggests "don't ask don't tell" for state schools

Glenn Grothman: wrong for thinking Wisconsin is not that hot.

Glenn doesn't believe in global warming because it's colder in West Bend this year.


Wis. senator calls for disbanding state's Clean Energy Committee

Wisconsin state Senator Glenn Grothman says he's not convinced climate change is happening in our state. Representing West Bend, he serves on the state's Clean Energy Committee. He says the committee should disband and stop pursuing alternative energy options for the state.

"The whole reason we're spending this additional money is because we're supposed to be fighting global warming," says Sen. Grothman during a phone interview. "Well, if we have two years where temperatures in Wisconsin are below average, why are we doing it?"

Glenn Grothman: wrong for trying to block sensible sex education

Hi everyone,

Glenn still seems to believe that teaching young people about responsible sex makes them have irresponsible sex -- this explains why US teenage pregnancy rates are as far behind European rates as they are. More interesting is that sexual activity rates among European teeens who've had good sex education is lower than among American teens who were given the abstinence based only nonsense.

From: Community Blogs - Blogs - BrookfieldNOW

Wisconsin's State Assembly will vote on bill AB 458 today, Thursday, Nov. 5th. This bill would seriously alter Wisconsin's current human growth and development (sex education) statutes. If passed, AB458 would remove local school board's control over how sex ed is taught in each district.

Assembly Republicans were able to temporarily block the vote on Tuesday, but it will come to the floor today, the last day the Assembly meets for the year.

[snip]


What is so bad about the bill? Senator Glenn Grothman explained on Jay Weber's radio program Wed. morning how AB 458 would change HG&D instruction in Wisconsin (should it pass) Here are my notes:

• We would have to do [teach] it in a way that doesn't create any bias against those sexually active.

• It would ban abstinence centered and abstinence only teaching like Thiensville['s program.]

• This would force districts to allow Planned Parenthood into the classroom for condom demonstrations, starting at age 12.

• It would normalize teen sex, which is illegal according to state law for children under age 16.

Sen. Grothman mentioned that the Assembly Republicans tried to get an amendment to "provide instruction in marriage and parental responsibility," included in the bill, but that provision was rejected by the Democrats. (That language is currently in the state statutes.)

Oy.

For the mountain of reasons why every last bit of this is not only wrong, but a threat to children everywhere, start here.


hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: right for supporting the West Bend School board.

Glenn Grothman has spoken publicly in support of the West Bend school board, noting the board's fiscal good sense during a difficult budget year.

As surprising as this was to me, I cannot imagine the shock it must have caused his audience at the Common Sense Citizens of Washington County meeting earlier this week. I can barely imagine their disappointment at hearing the embodiment of arch conservatism (with the possible exception of Leah Vukmir, of course) complimenting the school board for doing a good job when most of those present have opposed the school board at every possible turn. Glenn suggested that the budget mess was Madison's fault, not the local school board's. He also stood up, a bit, for the teacher's union and it's representation of the underpaid teachers working in West Bend.

I suspect some of the disappointment is visible in the fact that Owen Robinson, who was present at the meeting, hasn't said a word about Glenn's comments over at Boots And Sabers.

Apparently Glenn's comments weren't Booty or Saber-y enough and simply don't track with the Bleed the School District paradigm they've adopted.


hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: gets nod from the-government-should-intervene-to-secure-fetal-but-not-childhood-health lobby.

Hi everyone,

As expected Glenn gets the nod, not only from Wisconsin Right to Life but also by Pro-Life Wisconsin's Victory Fund.

From their blurb:

“We are called to stand behind these candidates who are willing to stand behind 100% of the babies,” said Matuska.

Ms. Matuska commits the standard "pro-birth" misanthropy here. Technically, Pro-Life Wisconsin does not stand behind babies who have already been born, but only behind the one's who haven't been born yet.

Once those babies are out of the womb, they're left to the gentle graces of Social Darwinism and the Free Market economy.

I always think of Ogden Nash's poem about cats when this issue comes up.

The trouble with a kitten is that,
it eventually becomes a CAT.

Kittens are cute and always find a spot by the fire. Cats require responsibility and are put out to fend for themselves.

I'm trying to see the difference between this and Glenn's view of children. While inside the womb, they should be the government's responsibility to protect but once outside of the womb, no?

That seems like a contradiction to me.

And so on.

hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: Fails to pass muster on government reform, again.

Hi everybody,

It's probably not a surprise but Glenn has, again, landed at the bottom of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's annual scorecard for responsible government.

He scored at the bottom with Sens. Kanavas, Kedzie, Lazich and was beaten only by Scott Fitzgerald.

As always, by their works shall ye know them. Glenn and his buddies regularly "stood with the special interests and worked to defeat reforms that would restore power to the general public."

Way to go Glenn.

Alas, Pat Strachota also made it to the bottom by voting against reform legislation in lock step with her party's hard liners.

The good news is that we'll have a choice for a change this November: another Republican, a Mr. Wiesolek from Cedarburg and an Independent, Clyde Winter are both running against Glenn for the Senate 2oth, and another Independent, Mr. Dombro will be running against Ms. Strachota in the Assembly's 28th.

Maybe they'll be able to vote for more responsible government.

hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman attacks Wisconsin values.

Hi everyone,

Glenn Grothman finally shows his hand. I wrote him last week but, so far, no explanation. I think he must be embarrassed.


Last week in his "From the Hill" editorial in the West Bend Express News Glenn said two things that floored me.

He said the university was the enemy of middle class values and, then


he claimed that the UW Board of Regents is raising tuition in order to squeeze out middle class Wisconsinites.

The technical term for the style of argument in Glenn's claim is called "Three Card Monty" or, more popularly, the Shell Game [btw, if you click on the Shell Game link there's a picture of Glenn with his hair done up in corn rows taking money away from some kid.]

Okay, by the numbers:

1. Is the university an enemy of middle-class values? Uh, no.

For most people, (me and Glenn included!) the university is how Americans get into the middle class in the first place. If the university were opposed to middle class values, it wouldn't produce middle class people.

From Glenn's point of view, then, I must be an enemy of middle class values -- but if that were true, then how come I spend every day helping people acquire the skills they need to move into salaried, professional, and traditionally middle class positions? (These people are mostly from farm and blue collar families -- and refugees from once good jobs now sent overseas by the same economic system to which Glenn pledges his allegiance.)

Glenn even ignores the hard facts -- the dollars involved. Economically speaking, the university is a major engine for development in the state of Wisconsin and thus, one of the major contributors to the economics that make our middle class lives possible. The UW trains the people who run our economy. Remove the university and everyone in Wisconsin would end up working for people from other states -- or, these days, other countries.

Want to know what makes this worse? Glenn knows all of this.


Which leads us to the heart stopper --


2. Do the UW Regents keep raising tuition because they too hate middle class values?


No. Senator Grothman himself is the reason the Regents are forced to raise tuition.

The vaporous sloganeering in Glenn's article is hypocritical in ways I can barely describe.


Here's how it works. Keep your eye on the ball.

The Regents raise tuition because the Legislature cuts the UW budget and the money has to come from some place. It isn't going to our salaries (we're among the lowest paid faculty in the country) and it isn't going into slick new offices (the computer in my office is 5 years old, and it works just fine). There isn't enough waste in the system to make up the difference (the UW administration is famously -- and I hate saying anything nice about administrations -- one of the most efficient and least wasteful university administrations in the entire US).

So the money has to come from increases in tuition.

And again, Glenn knows all of this, too.

Oh, but wait... there's more.

The hypocrisy goes even deeper (I've dealt with this before): when Glenn was in college the taxpayers subsidized nearly 75% of his tuition. This was a good deal for the students, but also for the state's economic profile. But Glenn has undone this economic dynamo. After the last 10 years of budget cuts, compliments of Mr. Grothman, the taxpayer now subsidizes only 25% of our students' tuition and now Wisconsin produces fewer Bachelor's degrees than Mississippi.

I guess Glenn didn't mind having the taxpayer subsidize his education, but the kids in school today?... or the adults who have had to go back to college in order to compete in the new, globalized, economy?

Nope. Glenn's votes say "screw 'em."

Glenn's votes demonstrate he doesn't believe todays taxpayers should have the same level of access to the university he did.

Were you able to follow the ball on that one?

Let's review: 1) Glenn claimed the major route to a middle class life (the university) is opposed to the middle class.

[the theme from Dragnet plays]

Dumb da dumb dumb.

And 2) he blames the university for raising tuition when it's really his fault, and the fault of his fellow travelers in the legislature who continually vote to limit access to the university system and, thus, to the middle class life every American deserves.

Dumb da dumb dumb dummmmmmb.

Glenn himself, through his voting record, has limited the ability of hard working, economically threatened Wisconsinites to attend the University of Wisconsin. First he votes to cut the UW budget, which tightens access to moving into the middle class and then, in order to duck the blame himself, he blames the university.


This isn't rocket science: the real enemy of the middle class in Wisconsin is a state senator who votes, every single time, to keep Wisconsin residents out of the middle class.

Did Glenn think his tax cuts would be free? Didn't his dad tell him TANSTAAFL !

Glenn is taking away more than a free lunch, however. He's taking away the economic future of this state. He's taking away your children's future.

...in Wisconsin, at any rate. They can always move to Chicago or Minneapolis.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on denying workers rights to professionals

Hi folks,

Glenn thinks it's a bad idea to let UW faculty unionize.

Proposal allowing UW faculty to unionize draws fierce criticism - The Daily Cardinal

Republicans in the state Legislature have recently called on Democrats to remove a budget proposal that would give UW System faculty members the right to vote on collective bargaining.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, asked Democrats in the state Senate to eliminate the provision from its proposed budget.

Grothman said if UW professors unionize, it could make them “bitter, more expensive and monolithic.” He also said that professors’ unions could hold too much political sway.

“I think unions are more likely to give money to political candidates … they’d rather turn the university into a hotbed of partisan political activity,” Grothman said.

[...]

Josh Wescott, spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said he did not express concern about any of the demands that the proposed union could make.

“This is about making sure we have the best and brightest minds here [in Wisconsin],” Westcott said, referring to the ability of the state to recruit and retain faculty.

Wescott also added that the proposals by Grothman are akin to slamming the doors on higher education and wrapping them in “barbed wire and electric fencing.”

The university administration is not taking a stance on the issue.

UW System spokesperson David Giroux said that the collective bargaining provision is an issue for faculty and staff to decide on, not administrators.

“They are all capable of being independent thinkers,” Giroux said. “They are capable of making the decision on their own.”

One thing Glenn got wrong here was about giving money to political candidates. Since he has conscientiously cut faculty benefits over the years while avoiding anything like a cost of living adjustment, none of us really has any money to give to political candidates in the first place.

The Greater Irony here is that Glenn's own votes are causing this drive toward unionization. Faculty don't care too much for the idea of a union. We like to think of ourselves as professionals and above the fray of money -- but when it happens, it'll happen for the same reason any other group unionizes: the failure of government to represent its interests.

It is easy to see that now-Senator Grothman has failed to represent the needs of UW faculty -- that's not a surprise. What is worse, but more telling, is that by continually gutting the university budgets he has shortsightedly failed to represent the long term interests of the people of Wisconsin who the university serves.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: lights up while Madison burns.

Hi folks,

There's a lot going on in Madison lately... budget budget budget.

Instead of attending to the serious business of why America should be the only industrialized country in the world without responsible health care, Glenn lights up a doobie with the money we're spending to keep kids from smoking. This piece of opinion showed up in our local advertising rag a week or so ago as well.

This time, in the Tomah Journal's - Opinion section. One comment grabbed my attention:

Cigarette smoking in this country has been declining for the last 40 years. Oddly, smoking among high school kids went up until dropping the last few years. There’s no mystery as to the reasons for the decline -- studies in the 1960s confirmed smoking was bad for your health, the military stopped handing out free cigarettes, and cigarette taxes went up.

In reality, almost no one starts smoking after about age 18. Almost no one. And no 12 year old who starts smoking pays a damn bit of attention to the warning labels, scientific studies, or receives free cigarettes from the military. Well, not yet anyway.

Couldn't the legislature start thinking about net, instead of gross? If we spend the money when they're young, we save a ton of money (in our taxes and insurance premiums) fixing their heart disease, emphysema, and lung cancer later. We might also remember that in a billion dollar budget, 10 million is 1% of the budget.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of seeing the words "conservative" or "Republican" being used to camouflage a philosophy of "penny wise and pound foolish."


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong for not investing in the future of Wisconsin.

Hi folks,

In the "there he goes again" category:

On Thursday AUGUST 16, 2007 the Chipppewa Herald reported that Glenn once again found himself in the minority on the position of university tuition.


From the Chippewa Herald online

Wisconsin lawmakers approve tuition reciprocity deal

By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. - A tuition reciprocity deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin won approval Thursday from Wisconsin's budget-writing committee, sealing the deal that had been worked out between the two states.
...

The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee approved the deal 15-1, with Republican Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend voting against it. He expressed concern that the deal encourages Wisconsin students to choose Minnesota schools over ones in their home state because there's no higher cost to go there.

I'm surprised Glenn worries about students leaving Wisconsin. Every time he's voted on a budget, he's increased the cost of education for Wisconsin residents.

Glenn had it a lot easier when he was at Madison.

As recently as 15 years ago, the state invested nearly 75% of the tuition costs for each student attending the UW -- but during the last 15 years, the state legislature blindly cut the state's share to about 25%.

The people of Wisconsin covered 75% of Glenn's tuition back in the 70's. He paid about 25%.

For students today, it's the other way around -- they now pay 75% of the cost and precisely because legislators like Glenn believe education is not a good investment of our tax dollars.

You don't improve economy by making it harder for people to go to college.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong for putting $700 million at risk.

Hi folks,

Glenn just can't take yes for an answer if it conflicts with his ideologically tastes.


State committee eyes affirmative action

By Tom Sheehan | Tribune Capitol bureau

Committee chairman Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, questioned state administration and university officials about hiring and admissions policies, which he said seem highly subjective. He asked UW System officials to provide a list of items that give applicants a chance to “jump up in the queue” in admissions.

UW System schools don’t assign “points” for race, although race is one factor among many considered in admissions, said Margaret Lewis, System associate vice president for state relations. Admission standards vary by campus, but academic performance is paramount in all cases, Lewis said.

The UW System is obligated by state and federal law to encourage diversity, and $700 million in federal grants could be at risk if federal standards are not met, said UW System General Counsel Patricia Brady, who testified before the committee.

Actually, I'm mostly amazed that Glenn used the word "queue."


Here's my take on diversity. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this too. Y'all will let me know.

1) Education is primarily about discovering the gaps in what you know (since the stuff you do know already is, well, already known to you).

2) You can't figure out by yourself what it is you don't know -- if you knew what it is you don't know, then you'd know what that is (you might want to reread that again, slowly) :^)

-- so you need other people to help you find those gaps in your education of which you remain unaware. In other words, to flesh out your own education, you have to get a handle on the "unknown unknowns." The Sec of Defense, when he made this quip about Iraq, was actually paraphrasing Socrates, so it's been the sort of thing my discipline has been thinking about for some time now. :^)

3) Since you cannot know by yourself what it is you don't know, you have to have people around you with different backgrounds to help you do that -- since people with the same backgrounds will tend, as a rule, to not-know the same stuff you don't know either.

and so 4) to be well educated, students need to be around a lot of other students from diverse backgrounds. This helps everyone locate the gaps in their own experience and knowledge base and, in this way, fill in those gaps and become... tada... better educated.


So it serves everyone if the UW system figures out a way to make sure it has a diverse student/faculty mix.


It seems ironic to me, just now rereading all that, to think that this little logical exercise might be too complicated for Glenn -- who is , remember, a LAWYER and a politician by trade.

Just musing.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on state law.

Hi folks,

Strange words coming out of the junior Senator in Madison this week.

Hearings were held about the Butler's garter snake and, as you can note from some of the comments we've had posted here, a lot of snake experts from around the state (and country now) want to know:

"What the heck is up with this Glenn Grothman guy?"

Apparently during the hearings Glenn was consistently sarcastic and snide about the use of "scientific evidence" to make decisions about wildlife management, and why experts mattered when it came to making decisions like whether a species is "threatened" or not -- which is, for starters, bad manners. And apparently he kept asserting that he didn't believe the snake was rare enough to be threatened.

Unfortunately the DNR cannot enforce the law based on Glenn's beliefs, and neither should they.

Strangest of all, he repeatedly asked the DNR representative "What gives you the authority to tell people what they can do on their land?"

This is strange, of course, because Glenn gives the DNR the authority to tell people what they can do on their land -- the Legislature does. In fact, technically, the DNR doesn't so much "have" the authority to enforce state and federal laws... it "is" the authority.

And the DNR has a choice: they can enforce our environmental laws based on science or based on what Glenn believes.

I'm still okay with the DNR using science, even when it inconveniences Glenn's friends.


[this is starting to make me dizzy. anybody else?]

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman suggests business is an un-necessary evil.

Hi folks,

An article in GM Today reported that James A. Buchen, vice president of government relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, endorsed a bunch of GOP candidates, including J.B. Van Hollen and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green in West Bend last Thursday morning.

Glenn was present at the speech, along with other local notaries including Rep. Strachota and Serigraph CEO John Torinus.

Grothman thanked Buchen for raising awareness of the state’s legislative policies toward business.

"It’d be nice to have people in Madison who don’t view business as a necessary evil," Grothman said.

It wasn't immediately obvious to me whether he thinks it'd be nice to have people in Madison who don't think business is evil, or who do think it's evil but just not necessary.

He suggests -- and he can't be doing this on purpose -- that either 1) those currently in state government think of business as a necessary evil [which would be crazy since his party is in control of the Legislature] or 2) that he'd like to see people in state government who believe that business is not a necessary, but perhaps an unnecessary, evil.


Anyway, you get the idea. The truth is, you know, I'm only able to warp his statements at all because they're nothing but sticky rhetoric wrapped around an incoherent worldview.

You can't twist what won't bend.

Look, (with considerably less twisting) he's simply humming his favorite old tune: that businesses (and people?) should never have to pay any taxes and should be allowed to do anything they want to without governmental interference.

Unfortunately for Glenn, even businesses have responsibilities and an allegiance to the Republic (and our state!), just like people do.

We cannot shirk our responsibilities to Wisconsin either by ducking reasonable taxes -- which pay for the things we all need -- or by failing to behave in a civic and civil way -- which is something we all need from and owe to each other.

So, sorry Glenn: people and businesses both need to behave properly and accept their civic responsibilities. To do otherwise is both irresponsible and -- not anti-business, but anti-American.


And see? Logic can be used for good instead of evil.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Safe use of herbicide is anti-farmer.

Hi folks,

This week's puzzler.

Looks like a win for Glenn Grothman and Monsanto this week. Our boy will not let go of this herbicide business.

Here, chopped to the bones, is his argument:

1) Glenn believes the DNR is being too careful because it wants standards placed on the use of a particular herbicide

and

2) he didn't see anything wrong with letting Monsanto, the manufacturer, set the standards and run tests to see how much of own herbicide is safe to use

and

3) the DNR wrote a rule, based on its science, that would try regulate the amount of bad chemicals that could end up in well water,

4) Because the DNR wants these standards, Glenn believes the DNR is "anti-farmer."


THEREFORE: Glenn's assertion means that the DNR's attempt to protect farmers from chemicals in their well water is "anti-farmer."


You just can't make this stuff up.

I included a bit more of the article than usual in case some of you were tired of doing sudokus. ;^)


hiho
Mpeterson

Here it is:

The Capital Times
Herbicide rule killed
By Anita Weier
September 6, 2006

As expected, the Legislature's rules committee killed a rule proposed by the Department of Natural Resources that would have regulated the amount of the herbicide byproduct Alachlor-ESA in groundwater.

"We automatically object. We don't have to do anything," Sen. Glenn Grothman, co-chairman of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, said today.

The committee had favored a peer review funded by Monsanto Co., the manufacturer of the corn soybean herbicide Alachlor.

The chemical changes after it is used and breaks down into a byproduct that is more persistent, said Bruce Baker, deputy director of the DNR's water division. The byproduct has been found in 28 percent of wells around the state randomly tested by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.

State scientists have said that Alachlor-ESA (ethane sulfonic acid) could cause anemia.

"No state in the country except Minnesota has any regulation of this chemical, and Minnesota allows twice the amount that Wisconsin proposed," said Grothman, R-West Bend. "The DNR has taken an extreme anti-farmer position."

A letter from Natural Resources Board Chairman Gerald O'Brien to the committee co-chairmen said that the board "continues to believe the standard for Alachlor-ESA is needed and appropriate."

"We are also concerned that the option presented by the committee will not allow a standard to be set, and needlessly leaves families and their children who get their drinking water from a well with no allowable groundwater standard for a chemical byproduct that has been shown to have adverse health impacts in lab rats," O'Brien wrote. "We already have wells that exceed the standard the board proposed."

Glenn Grothman throws the first stone.

Hi folks,

Wow, I'll tell you what, it must be good to be without sin -- and Glenn knows how it feels.

Glenn's little column in the West Bend Express News this weekend (2 September 06) went after opponents of the ban-on-civil-unions-amendment that'll be on the ballot in November. The column was the kind of political "discussion" that gives professional logicians like me a migraine. You look for order and coherence and it feels like walking barefoot over broken glass.

Anyway, their arguments about marriage are like broken glass wrapped in the creamy frosting of fear (eg. homosexuals are trying to take over America) and the morphine of righteous indignation (eg. there's nothing wrong with my marriage).


So, let's try this again:

1) Marriage is a religious institution and therefore should lie safely outside legislative whim.

2) Voting to protect marriage is like voting from a lifeboat to patch the Titanic. Half of all marriages fail these days -- an amendment cementing the present form of marriage into law will simply perpetuate a 50% failure rate. And again, this isn't the state's business.

3) The amendment doesn't simply restrict 'marriage' but locks out any 'civil union' that even looks like marriage. Senior citizens who want to move in together and still preserve their pensions and benefits are going to be cut out of legal protection.

From here Glenn launches into an argument that gay people don't have to be gay. This appeared as a kind of "Bat-turn" in the middle of his article and made me raise both eyebrows -- you know that creepy feeling you get when people change the topic a bit too suddenly? It makes you wonder what their real agenda is.

Was Glenn really writing about marriage or about trying to justify his politically test-marketed conviction that homosexuality is a sinful practice?

I assume it must be political and not religious, since no truly religious person would ever be this comfortable throwing the first stone.

So which is it Glenn?




hiho
Mpeterson

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