By Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.
Special Guest Perspective for the MacIver Institute
Since Wisconsin’s Democrats oppose the mining of iron ore, I am curious to see what material they have decided on to replace the steel in the tracks, wheels, frames, and motors of Mayor Barrett’s proposed downtown trolley system for Milwaukee.
Any kind of metal is out – mining and smelting and all that carbon energy it takes to bend and form the stuff, you know. Plastic is out, too – made from oil. Can’t be wood – logging and habitat disruption and whatnot. Hemp, maybe – seems to be pretty versatile stuff and it could be grown locally. Nope, illegal. They might end up having to knit the thing.
And speaking of iron mining, the Mayor just authorized another dumping of raw sewage into the Kinnickinnic River after a hard rain just two days before his victory in the recall primary.
What the heck does dumping 16,250 gallons of poop water into the River K have to do with iron mining, you might ask. Well, if you recall it was Barrett’s Democrats, led by urban legislators, who killed off the Mining Bill, putting the ki-bosh on thousands of jobs across the state and dashing the hopes of economic revitalization any time soon in Iron County.
Their cover story was that their votes protected us from the unthinkable devastation that could be caused if a hard rain might wash some dirt into the streams that feed the Bad River. Having grown up in that neck of the woods and drunk from those streams while hard rains pummeled the nearby slag heaps, I don’t fear the dirt as much as I do urban legislators.
And although it has been nearly 40 years since I took an Ecology course, I’m pretty sure that dirt getting rained on is not pollution. On the other hand, I am 100% certain that a union guy working for the city yanking a valve handle open to dump tens of thousands of government poo juice into a river on purpose – is. Read more at Dr. Tim Nerenz’ website>>