"Let's acknowledge the obvious," he said at the beginning of Tuesday's two-hour hearing. "The Asian carp and other invasive species are a real threat to the future of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes."

But Durbin and the state and federal agency allies he assembled Tuesday pointed out there could be drastic consequences if Michigan is successful in court. Closing the navigation locks could unleash widespread flooding in the Chicago area, and it would put a big dent in the barge industry that moves so many of the raw materials that make this industrial hub hum.

Hired by the Attorney General's office, John Taylor, professor of supply chain management, explained the true nature and cost to Illinois industry was minimal, in comparison to the real effect Asian Carp can have on the great lakes. He notes the impact would primarily be with the O'Brian lock closure. His study concluded that the primary impact would affect less than one percent of the trade moved around in the Chicago area. Further, that does not mean eliminate but require a different transport method (the equivalent of a couple of train loads) to move the cargo displaced by the closure of that lock.

Nope.  Durbin didn't "carp enough" on the issue of that particular invasive species, like the 'Badgering' he is doing on our state's economy now.  His concern over the great lakes now serves his position more than as an errand boy on the president's mission to destroy the coal industry and take with it [ultimately, thousands of] Michigan Jobs.

And our elected federal heavyweights stand mute.

Stabenow, who has publicly stated that she "Feels global warming" when she flies, has yet to defend these Michigan workers who are facing an emergency not of environmental need but one of a political nature, based on an ideologue's misguided mission to destroy the energy industry and all things connected to it. The SS Badger and the jobs that are related to its operation have become collateral damage.

This is not the first time Obama has attacked our coal fired jobs base without repudiation by Stabenow or Levin however. The president's effort nearly led to the closure of the Marquette power plant, a move that was barely avoided through promises of upgrades and a purchase by We Energies with Wolverine power to make it happen.  Without the deal, the entire upper peninsula of Michigan would have faced rolling blackouts, and any industry that uses electricity would have been destroyed.

Michigan's US Senators were silent on that.

Yet the presumed danger of coal ash in the great lakes is not necessarily partisan either. The drive to destroy coal by the president and his administration overrides previously established EPA standards and accepted levels of heavy metals and mercury.  It was in 1993 that the Clinton administration EPA that found coal ash and other fossil waste non hazardous. Saying in August of that year, that

"Based on all of the available information, EPA has concluded that regulation of the four large-volume fossil-fuel combustion wastes as hazardous waste under RCRA Subtitle C is unwarranted"

"In today's action, we are determining that regulation of fossil fuel combustion (FFC) wastes under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is not warranted."

Times change I guess.  Democrat Bill Clinton's priorities were not the same and as purposefully destructive to the economy as Democrat Obama's, and the data didn't present a problem back THEN.

Reality has become a product of who resides at the top of the heap.  A place at the table for sycophants and wannabe leaders requires that no amount of conflict be allowed in the ranks.  Dick Durbin's mission to destroy a part of Michigan's economy is to please his master, Barack the first.  And Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin know their place, and won't say a thing.