My Letter To The Editor Concerning The Regulatory Certainty Act

Below is a letter to the editor of my local newspaper that I put together this morning. I don't know if I'm going to send it yet. It has to be submitted before the Tuesday.

Senator Tom Tiffany and the rest of the politicians that are supporting the Regulatory Certainty Act(LRB-3146 and LRB-3408) to restrict local communities to regulate Wisconsin's booming frac sand industry and other destructive activities have forgotten that prior to the writing of the Declaration of Independence there were over ninety local “declarations of independence” issued by community governments throughout the colonies prior to July 1776. This is according to historian Pauline Maier. Why? Communities at the time were frustrated with the central government serving the interests of British empire and preempting their necessary local laws.

Today we see history repeating itself. Communities throughout the United States are starting to put together Community Bill of Right's to protect the land and the welfare of their citizens. Politicians like Tom Tiffany are using the power of the State to try and preempt this from happening. Essentially they are serving the interests of corporate wealth over the public by not allowing communities to stop organizations like mining companies from moving in and poisoning their air, water, soil and bodies. If they will not allow communities to govern themselves then we really need to consider this excerpt of the Declaration of Independence:

“Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

Local communities are simply trying to provide a new Guard for their future Security. Politicians that are in support of the State government preempting the power of local governments to democratically govern themselves ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are going against the very fabric of our American democracy.