RON JOHNSON'S BIZARRE POSITION ON CHILD-ABUSE VICTIMS....
It's been fairly obvious for a while that Ron Johnson (R), the strange far-right Senate candidate in Wisconsin this year, is hard to take seriously. On everything from economic policy to climate policy to Social Security, Johnson's positions have varied between wrong and ridiculous.
Yet this one is shocking, even for a GOP Senate candidate.
[B]efore running for Senate, Johnson did have one prominent act of political participation. In January 2010, Johnson testified before the Wisconsin state legislature in opposition to the bipartisan Wisconsin Child Victims Act. The legislation, if passed, would alter Wisconsin law to eliminate the statute of limitations on civil suits for child abuse and allow a three-year window to bring suit for victims who were victimized before the bill. The legislation also specifies that the entities that can be sued would include not just individuals, but also a "corporation, business trust, limited liability company," and other formal organizations that could be held accountable for the illegal behavior of their employees. As the bill's authors write, "We believe that there should be no deadline on justice for child sexual abuse victims."
But Johnson did not place protecting victims as his highest priority.
Clearly not. Johnson instead told policymakers, I" think it is extremely important to consider the economic havoc and the other victims [the Wisconsin Child Victims Act] would likely create."
In other words, if victims of child abuse seek justice, it might interfere with the economy. It's preferable, then, to make it harder for victims to go to court. In a dispute pitting victimized children and abusers, Johnson spoke out against a measure looking out for the former.
Jed Lewison added, "The issue here isn't that just that Ron Johnson is opposing victims of predators -- it's that he's doing so to defend the interests of a tiny elite. If he can't even stand up for children -- sexually abused children, in fact -- who in their right mind believes he would stick up for the interests of everyday Wisconsin families?"
Making matters even worse, Joe Sudbay notes that Johnson served on the Green Bay Diocese Finance Council, which was being sued for its role in the sexual abuse of children at the time of his testimony, putting him in an awkward position -- he urged state lawmakers to make it harder for victims to sue while at the same time helping a church at the center of an abuse scandal. (It's unclear if the legislature was aware of the potential conflict of interest at the time of Johnson's testimony.)
I don't know if this is the kind of story that resonates with voters in Wisconsin, but it seems pretty awful.
One has to wonder why Johnson's conflict of interest have not been investigated. He had the power to vote on legislation which affected the board he was serving on. Friends in high places? Who knows. Johnson has let it be know he is not an advocate of rational thinking. he simply believes what he believes and that settles it - GOP WI Sen. candidate Ron Johnson claims ‘sunspot activity’ is the cause of extreme weather trends.
Yesterday, Wisconsin businessman and U.S. Senate candidate for the Republican Party Ron Johnson gave a wide-ranging interview to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Johnson, a global warming skeptic, detailed his views on climate change and explained that he believes that extreme weather occurring across the globe — like record flooding in Pakistan and massive forest fires in Russia — may not be a result of man-made global warming, and that it’s “far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity”:
A global warming skeptic, Johnson said extreme weather phenomena were better explained by sunspots than an overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as many scientists believe. “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” Johnson said. “It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination.” [...]
“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time,” he said. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow,” said Johnson. Average Earth temperatures were relatively warm during the Middle Ages, Johnson said, and “it’s not like there were tons of cars on the road.”
In fact, sunspots have been at a historic lows. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, “Severe weather fueled by global warming pollution is having an even more devastating impact around the world. … All of these disasters were predicted by climate scientists as a consequence of greenhouse gas pollution from burning fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, Johnson’s anti-science, anti-environment views aren’t limited to his bizarre theory about sunspots. Last June, he claimed that global warming saved Wisconsin from turning into a glacier, saying he was “glad there’s global warming … We’d be standing on top of a 200-foot thick glacier.” He has also told the press he is open to oil drilling in Wisconsin’s Great Lakes.
