Guest Post-- John Waltz (D-MI)

Seems these days wherever there's some kind of Republican hypocrisy explosion, we're finding Michigan SuperCommittee hereditary multimillionaire Fred Upton. So it didn't take long for Jed Lewison at Daily Kos to expose Upton's role in the Republican Party's trumped up attempt to politicize the Solyndra bankruptcy. Lewison makes the point that Upton "not only supported the program under which Solyndra received aide, [he] lobbied on behalf of companies in [his] district to receive the exact same sort of assistance... Upton not only helped pass the law, but he also used it to help his constituents. There's nothing wrong with that, but in light of his current scandalmongering, it's worth noting that less than two years ago, he was praising the Obama administration." Blue America has enthusiastically endorsed New Deal Democrat, John Waltz, for the MI-6 congressional seat that Upton thinks belongs to him. Please consider helping his campaign at our Blue America ActBlue page. We asked him to help explain a pattern of behavior by Upton in this matter.

Upton's Babies

by John Waltz

While our nation continues its economic struggles, Fred Upton has decided to distract everyone with a witch hunt. As soon as news broke of Solyndra going bankrupt, Upton went on to blast the program saying that Obama is trying to pick winners and losers. Without digressing into all the details of what happened with Solyndra, the real story is that Upton has no problem with our government picking winners and losers as long as they are his ‘winners’.

Among many of Upton’s ‘winners’ include heavily subsidizing the oil industry, securing nearly a billion dollars for factories, and his penchant for nuclear energy. The biggest federal grant request Upton asked for was $4 billion to expand the nuclear loan guarantee program. He knows the private sector would not even attempt building a nuclear facility without the full support of the government. 

This is another hypocritical play by Upton, where as long as it’s his ‘winner’ then it’s just ‘okie dokie’, but if Democrats ask for the same then it must be bad. I bet the millions he has received from energy companies helped sway this decision.

Republicans like Upton love to invest in the past by subsidizing fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which are obviously bad for the environment and do not help our nation progress to green energy. We have seen many times where nuclear power has created some of the worst disasters in history such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and in Japan after the earthquakes.

Just this week though in Michigan’s 6th Congressional District, we had a brush with disaster at the Palisades Nuclear Facility in South Haven. After an electrical accident, the plant had to vent radioactive steam into the air to stop a meltdown from happening. This accident came five short days after the plant had to shut down due to a leak in the plant’s cooling system.

It is bad enough the Kalamazoo River had a massive tar sand oil spill in July 2010, now we have to deal with the unknown effects of nuclear steam being pumped into our air? When will Upton get a clue? Being a Congressman is about representing the interests of your constituents, not a game where you are willing to sell us out to the highest corporate bidder to fill your campaign coffers. I guess if Upton had his way and dismantled the EPA then pesky nuclear accidents wouldn’t be an issue.