Funny, he doesn’t look like an utter halfwit here.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman (R-Lead Industry). Why is he the duck-fucker of today, you ask? Simple.Just look here:
The bill, introduced only last week, is moving at breakneck speed, getting a hastily scheduled public hearing on Thursday. Introduced by Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, the proposal also apparently has the blessing of Republican leadership. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has signed on as a co-sponsor.
“When a court does something that’s as outrageous as (the Thomas ruling), when they retroactively tell businesses that were producing paint in 1900 or 1910 that not only can you be liable for damages … but you have to be liable for any paint produced by any paint company in the United States in 1900, obviously you can’t operate commerce with that type of decision made,” Grothman said at the hearing.
Business interests were also enraged by the Thomas decision when it came out in 2005. In fact, they launched a successful electoral crusade to tilt the liberal court toward the conservative side. In 2008 the author of the Thomas decision, former Justice Louis Butler, lost his bid for reelection after business interests spent millions to back Michael Gableman, an obscure, conservative circuit court judge.
Grothman said Thursday that the pending lead paint cases were “filed at the last minute” to beat last year’s Feb. 1 enactment of the state’s “tort reform” bill, but Earle said he filed his cases before the law was even proposed, some as early as 2006.
Grothman didn’t restrict his comments to the bill. He questioned the notion, which has been well-documented over decades, thatpaint in the home can cause lead poisoning.
“Quite frankly, it’s scandalous that lawyers are leading people to believe that the lead paint in these houses is responsible for the increases in the (lead) levels in their blood,” he said.
Although the audience for this journal is generally aware of the history of lead toxicity, it bears repeating from the perspective of the current debate about lead exposure standards and, indeed, exposure standards for other neurotoxicants. Lead appears to have been first discovered and mined in Turkey in 6500 BCE. Its low melting point and malleability earned it recognition for its utility even at this early stage in human history. Those properties are also the reasons for its extensive exploitation and resulting deposition in the environment. The Romans widely mined and smelted lead from 500 BCE to 300 CE, which resulted in a spike in atmospheric lead release that was not eclipsed until the industrial revolution. Greek physicians provided the first clinical description of the health effects of lead in 100 BCE.
Widespread commercial use of lead soared with the recognition that lead-based paint was both highly protective and durable. The hazardous properties of lead pigments did not go unrecognized, however (Table 3). In 1887 a U.S. medical report documented childhood lead poisoning that, in 1904, was linked to lead-based paint. European governments moved to ban lead-based paints in the early 1900s, culminating in a ban by the League of Nations in 1922. Despite reports of childhood deaths related to consumption of leaded paint on cribs, the U.S. did not begin officially to phase out lead-based paint until 1971, with the passage of the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act. The gradual elimination of lead-based paint inventories meant that houses painted before 1978 may contain lead-based paint. Confronted by the publicity about the health hazards of lead, the paint industry aggressively promoted lead-based paint products including using children in their advertisements (Markowitz and Rosner, 2000a, b). Dismayingly, lead-based paint continues to be a major source of lead exposure in children.