Madison Blogger Dennis York has been writing some very good posts these last three months and tonight I recommend his most recent entitled Exxtra Thick Hypocrisy. It seems the Sierra Club unleashed a broadside against oil giant ExxonMobil. The Sierra Club changed over the years from its founding in 1892 as a conservation group, into the current overtly political activist 501(c) 4 non-profit organization with millions of dollars to spend. The Sierra Club 2004 Political Endorsements pretty much demonstrate the organization is "effectively" acting as an operating arm of the Democratic Party.
The hypocrisy is that while the Sierra Club supports Democratic elected officials at all levels, many of these office holders own large blocks of stock in big companies like ExxonMobil. Apparently it is very hard to be a rich liberal without holding real assets in things like big global corporations. I find it especially amusing that musty old State Senator Fred Risser keeps his wealth, in part, in ExxonMobil, the world's largest and most profitable oil company which is also Sierra Club's evil mean bad company #1. Where are the student protesters?
As a side note, the following is Senator Risser's official website biography:
"Born and raised in Madison, Senator Risser is the fourth generation of his family to serve in the Wisconsin Legislature representing this area. He has represented the Madison area in the Wisconsin Legislature since he was first elected to the State Assembly in 1956. Senator Risser served for three terms in the Assembly before he was elected to the State Senate in a special election in 1962, and has been re-elected to the State Senate in every election since."Forty three years of sitting in a chair in the Wisconsin State Senate with a blank look on his face. I don't know why but I am always reminded of some pleasantly ineffective first son of a minor feudal era duchy, thanking God for hereditary power. Then I think about term limits.
