All The Cool States Banning Employees From Mentioning 'Climate Change' Now

Perhaps jealous of all the good press folks in Rick Scott’s rapidly flooding Florida got for its decree that state employees not discuss climate change or even say the forbidden words, a Wisconsin government official stood up and said “Nobody out-stupids Scott Walker’s administration! Nobody!”

So on Tuesday, Wisconsin’s Republican State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk put before the three-person Board of Commissioners of Public Lands a motion that prevents the board’s 10 employees from working on climate change issues, talking about climate change, or even responding to emails regarding climate change. Presumably this includes emails sent by the voting public. For a member of the party forever complaining that government is not accountable enough to the taxpayers, Adamczyk sure isn’t walking the walk or talking the talk!

The measure passed 2-1, with the commission’s lone Democrat dissenting, while Adamczyk and fellow Republican Brad Schimel, the state’s attorney general, voted in favor. A generous interpretation is that these two Republicans are watching out for Wisconsin’s real-estate interests for that day in the near future when rising sea levels will turn Waukesha into oceanfront property.

Not that working on climate change was taking up much of the board’s time to begin with. The board manages trust funds originally established long ago by the sale of land grants from the federal government to finance the state’s public education and local libraries. Executive director Tia Nelson says the only time she has ever done any climate change-related work was in 2007 and 2008, when then-Gov. Jim Doyle appointed her to a global-warming task force. We’re going to go out on a limb and predict she’s never going to be appointed to a similar task force by Scott Walker.

Adamczyk has a fetish for cutting government waste, starting with his own job, which he was elected to by promising to eliminate it. This New York Times   story from February shows this spectacularly clueless sack of crap rampaging through his office, pointing out the wasteful fraud like a departmental iPhone that cost all of $58 a month and some plastic piggy banks with the department’s name printed on the side that probably cost a buck each at a Madison novelty item store.

Yr Wonkette spent years working for large corporations and received tons of ridiculous swag like that, which was always getting handed out in lieu of decent raises. In our opinion, such piggy banks indicate that government is already working like businesses, which is the professed goal of so many Republicans.

But the BCPL operates without any taxpayer dollars. Its budget comes from revenues from land management, particularly from timber interests that log on public lands. (Perhaps the effects of climate change on Wisconsin’s forests might concern logging companies? Quick, one of them should cut Adamczyk a check!) So who knows what’s going on in this dingbat’s head. Maybe Nelson turned him down for a date and this is the only way he can get her attention.

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[ Bloomberg ]