The unbearable costs of Republican politicians pandering to their base
Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette is wasting taxpayer agenda to join another partisan lawsuit designed to stifle the agenda of a president his state overwhelmingly supported twice.
Led by West Virginia, the states are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to block the EPA from enforcing its new carbon limits, published Friday, which call on states to reduce emissions an average of 32 percent by 2030. The states say the rule will cause higher electricity rates and hurt the coal-mining industry.
President Barack Obama’s plan requires states to generate 28 percent of their electrical capacity from renewable sources such as wind and solar, and was expected to face legal challenges.
Politico‘s Mike Grunwald points out that the plan is nowhere as harsh or as sweeping as it critics and supporters have suggested. But it is targeted to urge states that have been negligent in moving toward greener sources of energy. Essentially, it’s urging all 50 states to do the absolute minimum we need to do to fight climate change. And it doesn’t even require them to get started doing so for years.
In reality, the move toward renewables has become almost inevitable because of economics. The Stimulus birthed next-generation energy sources that are already competitive with dirtier offerings because of the most persuasive argument possible — price.
As a result, adoption of green sources is already leapfrogging — or bionic leapfrogging — over predictions made before the Stimulus began radically reshaping our reliance on dirty energy.
The point is: This lawsuit is a huge waste of time and money because pursued by a political party that is alone in the world in its absolute devotion to protecting the right to pollute for free and denying the climate science consensus.
The risks of climate change are exorbitantly high for the Great Lakes State — unless the future you want is one with higher temperatures, the rotting of our cherry industry and dying lakes.
But again and again, the only future Bill Schuette cares about is his own.
I’m not going to make this case any better than Jack Lessenberry did this week:
He serves the worst right-wing elements of his party, and seems willing to do anything to please them to try to win as much power as he possibly can.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has accused Schuette of a crime. Not the kind you can go to jail for, anyway.
But he is guilty of using and misusing his office to pander to the far right, in his continuing effort to win support for his expected run for governor three years from now.
Just read the whole damn thing.
If you read Eclectablog, you know Schuette’s wrap sheet of neglect, graft and shame.
When it comes to breaking up families and defending polluters’ rights to wreck our climate, Schuette is on duty. When it’s time to take a stand to make our roads safer, our legislature accountable or our legal system fairer, he’s at least guilty of the crime of loitering.
Schuette is a pimple in a Republican rash that has infected our body politic. Conservatives see our government as a tool to persecute their politician enemies, disrupt progress and toy with a economy still healing for their multifarious failings. He’s just our pimple and he will be until we pop him.
Bill Schuette wants to be Michigan’s future and we’ve already seen how that dismal that future would be.
[Image via @SchuetteOnDuty]
