Saturday, February 16, 2013

Pave Over Paradise, Put Up A Shooting Range

The Mackenzie Center in Poynette, Wisconsin, is a classic success story.

In 2005, the center was toppling at the edge of failure due to successive budget buts and short staffing.  Two groups, The Friends of the Mackenzie Center and Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, stepped up to the plate and entered into an agreement with the DNR to run the place for the state.

Since then, they have turned the place around.  They now host 16,000 children a year, teaching general environmental education and outdoor skills.  The state's contribution to maintain the facility is $185,000, which is a mere .04% of the DNR's budget.  And that cost has not gone up in all the years of the contract.

But now, the Mackenzie Center is about to become a classic story of failure.

Scott Walker, acting through his sockpuppet political appointee, Cathy "Bambi-Killer" Stepp, says that's too much money.  Never you mind that he gives exponentially more money to his campaign donors and corporate masters every day.

Don't expect Walker to sweat the loss of important education for tens of thousands of children either.  First off, we know that he sees our children as being only so much chattel to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Secondly, if the kids get an education, especially regarding ecology and the environment, they might catch on that the iron mine bill is so much garbage and that fracking is killing the state, figuratively and literally.

Instead, Walker feels it's much easier to just go ahead and turn it over to the NRA and let them make it into a shooting range where they can hold controlled hunts.  That's what they call "sportsmanship."  I call it animal cruelty.

Another thing to note is that they aren't even bothering to pretend to hold a non-listening session.  Since they haven't given a damn what the people think, why should they keep up that facade?

Perhaps when the NRA build their shooting range, they could specialize in teaching people how to shoot themselves in the foot and call it the Wayne LaPierre Shooting Range.

1 comment:

  1. When I was a kid in the 70s this place was my favorite field trip along with the Cave of the mounds and up the Balanced Rock trail at Devils Lake for geology class. Walker is screwing our future generations out of enjoying nature one bit at a time. Soon there will be nothing left of what makes this home.

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