SNL at Gruenhagen's town hall: MPCA would have compromised American effort in World War II

There's no stopping the reasoning powers of Representative Glenn Gruenhagen. Defying time (I'm not sure about space), he asserted at a recent town hall in Le Sueur:

Gruenhagen also resumed a campaign attack on the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), alleging if Minnesota iron mines had to comply with MPCA standards during World War II, the war effort would have been compromised. “(MPCA regulations) are one of the most restrictive in the United States,” Gruenhagen said. “It makes it difficult for business to start or expand here.”

Well, sure, Glenn. Minnesota's Iron Range provided 75 percent of the iron used in the war effort.

And if the various war administration bureaucracies Roosevelt's government put into place hadn't rationed food, gasoline, and other commodities, while transforming much of the private manufacturing sector into the arsenal (and haberdashery and commissary) of democracy--while raising imposing and raising income taxes on nearly everybody--the war effort would have been compromised as well.

One might speculate that a state's environmental regulation would have stood in the way after all that mobilization. Right.

Or, one might consider this a real-life application of the logic employed in a classic  Saturday Night Live "What If?" sketch in which a panel of experts consider whether the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo would have changed had Napoleon had a B-52.

Gruenhagen joins Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray, Loraine Newman and Mitchell Laurance in the school of hilariously hypothetical and impossible history. Unlike the SNL crew though, Gruenhagen is arguing in good faith, however flimsy his choice of historical analogy might be.

This, in short, might the entire problem with Gruenhagen: good faith, bad brains.

Image: What if Napoleon Bonaparte ran against Glenn Gruenhagem on the Green Party ticket in 2012? How about Napoleon Dynamite? No?

Comments

[Phoenix Woman]

Actually, the show I was envisioning was Monty Python's Flying Circus.

A favorite bit of theirs involved a knight with a chicken going up to blithering idiots and smacking them with said chicken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTt-ewgKm5A

I kept waiting for something similar to happen to Mr. G.

[Mark Heitkamp]

I am always disappointed when someone reports second hand news, which turns out to be either false or deceptive.

The Le Center Leader article you quote failed to attribute Glenn's statement to the source. Glenn was quoting or paraphrasing DFL State Representative Tom Anzelc, District 3A, standing to support HF1, as seen in this video at time marker 4:08:45.
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/htv/programa.asp?ls_year=87&session_year=2011&session_number=0&event_id=3253

If you watch DFL Rep Anzelc, you will find that your argument is simply nonsensical.

The floor debate on HF1 begins at 2:01:50. It would be good to see you make a correction to your reporting on this issue.

Bluestem replies:
How unfortunate that you think that an impossible argument like that advanced by Gruenhagen is somehow valid if a DFLer makes it.

But it matters not who argues that had the current permitting been in place in World War II that the war effort would have been compromised.

It sounds scary to think that we might have lost World War II had _______ happened, whatever the _______ might be.

But to use that fear to argue against current regulation ignores the massive mobilization of the economy and creation of bureaucracies--and changing of rules--that went on in order to win the war.

The US Steel/Anzelc/Gruenhagen comparison is silly--a misapplication of a historical analogy to a present circumstance--and your notion that Gruenhagen is somehow validated by repeating an impossible argument is simply an appeal to the authority of Anzelc's person, and not a confirmation of his logic.

Instead, that Gruenhagen chose to repeat something he heard demonstrates that members of both parties can be tempted to employ fearsome but faulty logic shared by corporate representatives.

A point has to stand regardless of who said it, and thus the local paper isn't at fault for failing to attribute the analogy to someone else, given that Gruenhagen agreed with it, and used it to illustrate his own ongoing war against the MPCA and government regulation.

sjs

[Mark Heitkamp]

Please do not put your words into my quill. I never made the arguement that either side was correct. I was merely asking if, now you know that the DFL made the argument (first), would you ridicule them as well. Since it appears that you are willing to make the logical arguement against the WWII analogy, I submit that you are ridiculing both sides, but have made Glenn out to be the fool, while not holding the DFL to the same ridicule. In my book you owe Minnesota State Legislator Glenn Gruenhagen an apology. Mark

Bluestem replies:

You made no plea in your first comment that I ridicule Anzelc, simply that I correct the record. Your comment was posted.

All readers can see it, and if they see that you ask me to ridicule Anzelc, rather than simply to admit that my objections to the analogy were "nonsensical," then they are far more clairvoyant than I.

As for dictating of what Bluestem's content can be--whether the substance of posts or the comments--bluster all you wish.

Many have tried to do tell me what to write--almost entirely progressives and DFLers, whose esteem, logic and reputations you appear to cherish far more deeply than I do--and they have simply wound up peeping through a keyhole on their knees, as a bard from Hibbing once sang.

[Phoenix Woman]

Game, set and match to Bluestem!

Sorry about your butthurt, Mr. Heitkamp.