Too much Mitch

One of the politicians I most love to hate is the governor of my (former) home state of Indiana, Mitch Daniels. Or “my man, Mitch” as he’s known by our deranged Decider, G.W. Bush.

Mitch has gone on a rampage of selling off state assets such as the Indiana Toll Road to his corporate cronies. (Excuse me: if a road is lucrative enough to be bought, why must its potential be siphoned off to private interests?)

But now Mitch and his henchmen at the Indiana Department of Environmental (mis)Management have done something that amazes even me. They’ve given permission for a BP refinery in Whiting to increase the amount of sludge and ammonia they dump into Lake Michigan by nearly 2000 pounds a day. This in return for 80 promised new jobs.

I’ve often wondered about the priorities of Hoosiers. The state has a mere 30 miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan, and at one time it was a pristine ecosystem of dunes with unparalleled biodiversity. Today it’s a sprawl of oil refineries, steel mills and power plants surrounding a state park. And now they intend to dump a ton of shit into the lake every day for eighty jobs.

This undoes years worth of progress in cleaning up the Great Lakes.

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