For TWIP this week, I’m going to opine on Terri Lynn Land’s odd stance on climate change and conservative lawmakers’ attempt to appeal to women through terribly misguided – and quite frankly unfunny – sexist posturing.
Progress: the process of improving or developing something over a period of time. That’s the goal, people.
This Week in PM Blogging:
Terri Lynn Land fails miserably at Lawmaker Scouting Combine
If Terri Lynn Land ran the 40-yard dash, she would probably have fared better than attempting to handle a media scrum. Hit the books, Terri. You need some work.
No, seriously. Thank you, President Obama. If we want to combat climate change, we need to go to the source – carbon pollution. Proposed EPA rules do just that.
On the equal rights front, our LGBT brothers and sisters are making progress, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do. We can’t allow our state to be one where our friends, families and neighbors are second-class citizens.
For someone who claims to have the right ideas for Michigan, Terri Lynn Land seems to come up awfully short on specifics.
Business lobbyists want to have their cake and eat yours too
“The economy is bad! We need tax cuts and deregulation. Wait, now the economy is good! We still need tax cuts and deregulation.” –The business lobby
TWIP Clips:
You’re not funny
By now you’ve probably seen the outrage that has occurred over three GOP lawmakers who brandished women’s fashion magazines on the House floor and made the joke, “Don’t say we don’t understand women.”
We called on the three lawmakers to apologize — and in return we received a “sorry, not sorry” from conservative House Speaker Jase Bolger:
“What they meant to be a joke wasn’t funny to some and I apologize to those who may have been offended.”
First of all, the lawmakers in the photo should apologize themselves. Second, Bolger is basically saying that nothing with the situation was wrong or inappropriate — it’s just that some people took it out of context and they shouldn’t have.
I’m calling BS.
(And Speaker Bolger, do you think it was funny? You said “some” people didn’t think it was funny. Were you one of those people?)
Literally one day after the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, these lawmakers thought they could get away with mocking women on the floor of the House chamber. You would think that 100 years after women were given the right to vote that this behavior would be political suicide. Maybe this year it will be.
However, these lawmakers think they can get away with tearing down women because – somehow – their comments are always “taken out of context.” What dumb luck, literally!
These lawmakers were laughing at the very real, very legitimate criticisms of their political platform — one that treats women as second-class citizens who should not have access to things like health care or equal pay for equal work.
Conservatives like to preach about personal responsibility. It’s time these lawmakers owned up and practiced what they preached.
Climate change, meh
On her Twitter account (she loves Twitter, BTW), Terri Lynn Land said the following:
“I believe in protecting MI from climate change but we must not hurt our recovery with EPA regulations. MI jobs are my top priority. #MISEN”
Wait a minute. We can’t combat climate change and create jobs? Oh, that’s right, we actually can. It’s just that Land’s corporate oil sponsors wouldn’t want her to say such things. But the truth is we can create jobs AND combat climate change by making greater investments in renewable, cleaner and cheaper forms of energy like wind and solar.
Here are the facts: Michigan’s clean energy sector supports 20,500 jobs and generates more than $5 billion a year in economic activity. From 2005 to 2009, clean energy jobs were the only sector that grew, while other job sectors were shrinking.
Increasing Michigan’s use of renewable energy will create more jobs, spark investment and launch new businesses in our state. Every dollar invested in clean energy creates three times as many jobs as a dollar invested in oil and coal.
The fact is the coal industry is making us sick, polluting our air and our water with cancer-causing toxins. Coal is the #1 source of mercury pollution into our Great Lakes and a leading trigger of asthma attacks. Coal-fired plants cost Michiganders $1.5 billion annually in health care expenses.
We NEED to combat climate change. We NEED to create jobs. We can do both with clean energy. Think about THAT for a minute, Terri.
Progressive Reads:
Minimum wage increase: A step in the right direction, but not enough
Michigan Republicans can’t justify mocking women on House floor