Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Republicans blame Gov. Evers for CWD spread? Sure, why not.

Suddenly Republicans have a sudden urge to tackle the CWD crisis infecting our deer herd in Wisconsin, after doing nothing and making it worse for 8 years? No, not really...
Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker took a largely hands-off approach after he took office in 2011. The disease has since spread across the state. According to the DNR, 26 counties had at least one infected deer in the wild ... 56 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties qualify as affected.

Republican Sen. Devin LeMahieu pressed Cole on why the governor's spending plan includes no new strategies for combatting CWD ... asked (if) Evers thinks fighting the disease is important.
Walker/Republicans Punted on CWD for 8 Years, Even Stopped Picking up Road Kill Deer: So I nearly spit out my coffee a few weeks back when I heard the outraged voices of Republicans grilling DNR Secretary Preston Cole about Gov. Tony Evers lack of effort to do anything about CWD.

Enter State Sen. Tom Tiffany, the guy most responsible for ripping up Wisconsin's natural resources and environmental laws. He has single-handedly put industries like mining and corporate farming ahead of sports hunting and clean water. Seriously...and I'm not joking, he's the chairman of the sporting heritage committee. Just 3 months after Evers took over as governor, Tiffany had the balls to say..."I could...say this is a failure of the Evers administration...!" I also missed the part where the state spent millions trying to fight CWD:
Republican Tom Tiffany, chairman of the state Senate’s sporting heritage committee, said he’s not surprised Evers “punted” on the disease. The state has spent millions trying to fight it to no avail, he said. 
“I could take a real partisan line here and say this is a failure of the Evers administration, but these are difficult decisions. We’re just not sure yet what is going to be effective. But they’ve got to come forward with a plan. We need leadership from the Department of Natural Resources and … the governor as well.”
Hold on there. I'm guessing Sen. Tiffany's low information voters wouldn't have noticed, but here's how Republicans made things even worse...recently.

Trolling to get moderate voters to support his reelection, Walker issued a few emergency rules supported by Democrats, including double fencing deer farms, restrictions on the movement of live deer from one farm to another, and putting a stop to transporting deer carcasses across county lines. But a joint committee of GOP Senators and Representatives basically killed all the new rules. We're now starting from scratch thanks to our anti-government/deregulation Republican majority. 

As for Evers plans for CWD...
Cole says the governor wants to see what research reveals about the disease and doesn't want to spend money on it when other states are doing the work ... the DNR needs to do more to persuade hunters to turn in deer heads for testing ... the DNR is in the middle of a four-year study on deer mortality and Evers and the agency should wait until that’s complete before making any decisions.

1 comment:

  1. These Republicans are children - incapable of doing real work to solve problems themselves, and trying to blame everything on an Evers Administration that just got here.

    How dumb do they think their constituents are for even trying this garbage? And how dumb are their constituents if they fall for it. But hey, they don't need my tourism dollars in the Northwoods and other areas if they don't care enough about their resources to take care of them.

    ReplyDelete