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 all 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 which is already suffering documented damage from invasive species to beaches water intake pipes and fisheries - - extended 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:
For the record, let it be known that GOP/Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson - - 'representing' a state bordering two of the five Great Lakes which is already suffering documented damage from invasive species to beaches water intake pipes and fisheries - - extended 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."