Only thing worth doing tonight:
A gift of any size supports the lifesaving mission of the American Red Cross whether it's responding to a disaster, collecting lifesaving blood, teaching skills that can save a life, or assisting our military members and their families.
GOP legislators poised to do Scott Walker's bidding and service their reactionary base voters at the same time through budget measures that jam the poor and unemployed do not give the proverbial flying fig over their hypocritical, self-serving, punitive behavior.
Bashing the poor is so easy: no high-powered lobbyist is going to call and say, 'hey - - back off - - my people don't like this bill or that amendment.'
No association spokesperson is going meet you for drinks or coffee or golf and pass the word that 'you know who is thinking about going the other way come fundraiser-time' unless that special interest gets served.
So the administration and GOP legislators running the Committee on Joint Finance on behalf of their solid majorities are likely to cut unemployment compensation access and food stamp participation, limit the number of low-income people on health care insurance that could be federally-funded, and further slash transit options used principally by minority and lower income city-dwellers trying to get to jobs in suburbs.
These are survival program cuts levied on people with lesser political clout by powerful, privileged and well-connected legislators who themselves enjoy - - at taxpayer expense - - Cadillac health insurance coverage, mileage reimbursement for in-district driving, and $88-per-day in tax-free meal, mileage-to-work and, if needed, lodging expenses (Madison-area legislators get half.).
So legislators from upscale Milwaukee and Waukesha suburbs an hour or so from the State Capitol can punch in - - even car pool to get there for a single meeting and file for $88 - - without declaring the money as income.
Do the math: that $88 is worth far more if, say, you're in the 28% tax bracket.
And whom else gets reimbursed by you and me or the boss for driving to the office?
Or gets paid to eat lunch or dinner on your dime, tax-free?
Who are the welfare queens, really?
The Walker administration wants the right to sell public assets - - from highways to prisons to university dormitories - - through private, no-bid procedures, reports the Journal Sentinel.
Grover Norquist will be pleased, but taxpayers should balk.
The plan is allegedly to reduce debt somewhere in state finances - - but is actually an end-run to mindless privatization around publicly-interested and honest budgeting.
A prison could be sold off to a for-profit operator (union-free) with some proceeds helping pay a road-building project built on the come.
A highway could be sold to a private company that wanted to turn it into a toll road and collect money from motorists who had paid for the road and its servicing with gas, income or property taxes.
A power plant could be sold to a utility which could then raise the rates to the prison or university complex the power plant now serves.
Talk about back-door policy-making, using public assets to make private, special interests even richer.
To pick winners and losers, to defeat local control, and taxation with representation.
Legislators who are comfortable with giving away taxpayer-paid properties to reward insider influence practically begs for flat-out corruption - - contributions for buyer access, Pay For Play II - - should vote for the plan.
Walker is traveling to Iowa and says that he will "do other surrounding states."
The verb aside...Iowans would do well to study up on Walker, and there is a lot for Walker to learn in Iowa and the surrounding states - - where better job creation than our state's 44th-in-the nation/last in the Midwest is taking place, as the State Journal recently illustrated.
Maybe Walker will see Iowa's ubiquitous wind turbines and stop blocking investors in Wisconsin from building them.
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| Hey! Just look out the window |
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SWT-2.3-82 Wind turbine. Photo: Siemens |
Here's the map:
Corridors 2030 routes:Backbone & ConnectorSource: Connections 2030 Long-Range Multimodal Transportation Plan adopted October 2009
I'd posted information about this last year, but Wisconsin Gazette has gone back to it and I am happy to put this up.
May 16, 2013
The Legislature is pushing a $128-million project to widen Highway 23, a little-used road that winds through farmland between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac. The project has been held up in court by challenges from 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, which objects to the waste of taxpayer dollars and the environmental damage the project would cause. To build the project, the state would have to pay $60,000 for each acre of land purchased, because some of the land includes buildings. Land in the area normally sells for $10,000 per acre. While lawmakers favor this project, they claim the state is so broke that it must reduce public transit funding by $10 million.
Just once...I'd love to see a Milwaukee television news report that shows the relationship of highway-building-and-congestion and the region's politically-inspired rail-free history.
Conservative legislators, talk radio and then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker not only killed light rail, they sank the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter train line that could have run parallel to the torn-up I-94 North-South project, as its home page discloses, and offered a travel choice to the south suburbs and cities all the way to the Illinois line:
The
Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee corridor has a unique and exciting
opportunity to develop high-quality commuter rail service
in an existing rail right-of-way.
The existing Union Pacific freight rail line would be
upgraded to add a commuter rail that would connect to
the very successful Chicago Metra that now ends at Kenosha.
It is envisioned that the KRM Commuter Rail service would
connect the lakeside communities of Milwaukee, Milwaukee-south
side, Cudahy-St. Francis, South Milwaukee, Oak Creek,
Caledonia, Racine, Somers, and Kenosha--and connect to
the Chicago Metra service to NE Illinois and Chicago.
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| Quick Stats | |
Map and facts (pdf 225k)
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Gov. Walker never takes responsibility for the state's plunge on his watch to 44th in job growth, or for his failed 250,000 new jobs pledge.
But the Teflon Governor has been quick to blame Jim Doyle, recall protestors, the fiscal cliff, Obamacare, and even the data itself for our bringing up the rear in Great Lakes/Midwestern states' regional job creation.
Preventing us from taking off like a rocket!
So look to Workforce Development or the Governor himself to cite these factors - - if not now, then certainly when ugly May or subsequent numbers are released:
* Kids with lawnmowers. You know that mean layoffs at landscaping firms.
* Neighborhood lemonade stands. I saw one the other day taking business from nearby fast-food joints.
* All that rain.
* School bake and book sales. They're killing the malls.
* Iowa's formidable je ne sais pas.
* Yard sales. See school bake and book sales.
* Minnesota's no-fair je ne sais quoi!
* Cooler by the Lake.
* Indiana's mysterious Hoosierism.
* Road construction congestion. You can't easily get to restaurants, movies, live shows and other night spots around Milwaukee, so just stay in, cook a meal, and download a movie or Netflix programming. Oh, wait - - wrong message, never mind.
* All that snow.
* Streetcars.
* All that wind.
And, no doubt...
* Hillary Clinton.
You could not make up this story: tar sands coke pollutants are piling up over Detroit after being shipped to the US, and the mess belongs to...the energy magnates better known as the Koch brothers, says The New York Times:
WINDSOR, Ontario — Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they’ve been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the Detroit River.
Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom.
And no one knows quite what to do about it, except Koch Carbon, which owns it.
Slumping numbers, losing streak, bringing up the rear in the Midwest.
Talk about a rough week.
The Brewers are having their problems, too.
With dreams of an upscale mall dashed - - though the interchange that was supposed to be contingent on the never-built mall is open, with fancy roundabouts galore (see photos below) - - how else do you report this development 'development'?
A Walmart supermarket and discount store and Sam's Club store are being proposed for Oconomowoc's Pabst Farms site, where city officials had once hoped to see a regional mall developed.I took these photos about a year-and-a-half ago:
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| I like the bike path (r). But that sign? Better slow down to interpret that. |
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| Lovely pillars |
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| Roundabouts - - four in all - - all about. The brickwork and landscaping are lovely. |
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| Where's the holiday shopping traffic last Saturday afternoon? Oh, I forgot. The mall never got built. |
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| Houses on Pabst Farms' former farmland |
Having ramped up unemployment through Act 10 austerity, having dragged the state to 44th in job growth, having presided over the WEDC scandal, having lost another 24,000 private-sector jobs in April, having netted only 50% of the job-gain he repeatedly pledged, Walker now pretends to be pro-worker.
An insult and a joke.
Weekend I-94 shutdown will create headaches; here are detour routes
The regional freeway system reconstruction plan still has decades to go before completion (and the next full-blown expansion, though a federal court ruling may make some profound changes).Three mile backups expected with graduations, Kenny Chesney concert
From 13 boring holes to eight, so there's a new permit request, Lee Bergquist reports.
The company told the DNR it needed to gather additional information related to potential storm water runoff pollution for those sites before re-submitting them.Some background.
Why not take your gun bowling?
Well...
According to TV station WPBF, witnesses said the man was carrying a revolver in the pocket of his shorts. The gun was triggered when he hit his leg while throwing a bowling ball.
I'd recommend careful analysis of Ald. Bob Bauman's response to Federal Judge Lynn Adelman's ruling that the Zoo Interchange reconstruction plan development and rebuilding spending is severely deficient and discriminatory.
Bauman has long been a transit advocate.
* A loss of more than 24,000 private-sector jobs in April.
* And with just 62,000 private-sector jobs netted in his first two years in office, Gov. Walker - - he who started, funded through budgetary requests and chairs the scandal-plagued job-creating agency known as WEDC - - is about 60,000 off-pace to meet his goal of 250,000 new jobs in a first term.
This is the basic takeaway:
For every job created on his watch, another job he'd promised never happened.
At that rate, he will miss his pledged performance by 50%. Try taking that score to your teacher, professor, job evaluation...
The numbers tell the story;
...analyses using previous sets of census data have shown that Wisconsin has been lagging most states in job creation. For the 12 months from September 2011 to September 2012, for example, Wisconsin ranked 44th in private-sector job creation, census figures show.In a follow-up to the main story, the Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert adds interesting comparisons and perspective:
The chart below shows the annual rate of private-sector job growth (or decline) for the eight years under Doyle and the first two years under Walker:
The numbers show big job losses in 2008 and 2009 during the national recession, then growth during Doyle’s final year and during Walker’s first two years.
Walker officials hailed the data as showing “the best two-year gains under any (Wisconsin) governor in over a decade.” That’s true, when comparing Walker’s first two years to any two-year period under Doyle.
At the same time, the best single years of growth in this period were Doyle's second year, before the recession, and Doyle's final year, when the post-recession turnaround took hold.
Milwaukee Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore teamed up with satirist comedian Stephen Colbert last night for give-and-take hilarity in what I believe is the greatest "Better Know A District" segment he's produced.
Link here - - and check out the comments for a peek into the mud bath where far-righties wallow.
Gretchen Schuldt reveals the details of WisDOT's double-decked, billion-dollar plus concrete invasion of Milwaukee west side and Story Hill neighborhoods where veterans' graves and two additional cemeteries will be disrupted:
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is expected to pursue an I-94 east-west freeway expansion project that would cost up to $1.2 billion and include six additional lanes of concrete in many places; double-decking through west side cemeteries; additional elevated, overlapping lanes east and west of the double-decked section; and absolutely no transit.The plan seems to collide with a federal judge's inclination on highway-expansion that ignores transit and its users' needs.
Cut, cut, cut, and mislead about their purportedly fiscal reasons.
Just like they did in Walker's first budget, GOP legislators again slash the bi-partisan and popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship land ownership and public access program.
And...this time order the DNR to begin selling land already in the public domain.
This is your/our open space, Wisconsin.
One veteran state business leader is baffled.
But the reasons are not too hard to figure out. The administration and the Joint Finance Committee are deeply in the deep pockets of real estate, forestry and other special interests.
And they will all do the same in the Penokee Hills with your/our water, too.
Media have reported that while in Madison these last couple of days
the Dalai Lama urged state government leaders to be guided in their
actions by compassion and sensitivity.
Not sure if Walker and legislators in the ruling GOP/majority party -
- busy these last two years restricting ballot box access, tax breaks
for the poor, food stamps, unemployment compensation, health insurance
coverages, transit funding and other programs and services needed by all
Wisconsinites, particularly the elderly, jobless and low-income - -
understand that the message from the visiting world dignitary and
spiritual leader applies to them.
First posted at Purple Wisconsin.
On the one hand, he's in a master's program sponsored in California by the federal government.
On the other hand, he's getting an award from a group recognizing his stance against the federal government.
Here is the text of the federal court ruling today pointing to deficiencies in the Zoo Interchange project and related planning.
Now that spending imbalances favoring highway expansion to the exclusion of transit riders is getting the attention of a federal judge - - is this the right time for the legislature and Walker to sink the federally-funded streetcar line?
Just a layman asking the question.
US District Court Judge Lynn Adelman has ruled that plaintiffs raising economic justice and procedural objections to the way the state conducts highway planning and public spending at the expense of transit riders and low-income residents can continue to sue over the Zoo Interchange project.
The plaintiffs explain, here.
Federal transportation officials urge states to lower the level of legal intoxication for drivers from a blood alcohol count of 0.08 to 0.05.
Regardless of the lives and money that would be saved, that would be saved and booze lobbyists would predict the end of tavern and other so-called hospitality jobs, and spineless legislators of both parties, along with the Governor, will grovel before these well-heeled and powerful special interests.
But do not look to Wisconsin to get on board, as this is still the only state in Americaso disinterested in safe and sober driving that it gives every motorist one misdemeanor-free OWI arrest, and had to be dragooned some years ago by a loss of federal transportation funding into lowering the existing legal intoxication BAC level to 0.08 of 0.10.
We'll know in a few days if the DNR will give GTAC a permit to drill 13 test borings up to 1,200 feet deep where the company wants to mine iron ore in Northern Wisconson.
How will the agency make sure polluted drilling waste water and other boring debris does not contaminate the ground water, surface water and surrounding terrain?
Good questions to turn into comments calling for a careful environmental review in advance of any permit or remediation orders, and sent to your legislator and also to the DNR's mining person:
How the DNR manages this process will indicate how rigorous a regulator it intends to be as perhaps decades of mountain-top and open-pit mining moves billions of tons of trees, vegetation and rock - - for decades - - in the Bad River watershed near Lake Superior.Ann CoakleyAnn.Coakley@wisconsin.gov
Director, Bureau of Waste and Materials Management at Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
But not at the scandal-plagued Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which he championed, got established, still chairs and earned this recent headline, story and lede at the WISN-TV 12 website:
No...our ego-driven Governor continues to play on the national stage by calling for firings and a special prosecutor to investigate the federal IRS tax-exemption issue.Audit says WEDC broke state law
A blistering audit released Wednesday said Republican Gov. Scott Walker's premier job creation agency repeatedly broke state law in its first year of operation, failed to adequately track money it awarded for economic development projects and sometimes gave money to ineligible recipients.
GOP legislators and leaders - - doing Gov. Scott Walker's partisan bidding principally through the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee - - have decided to diminish local control, absorb the authority of municipal officials and run local governments from committee rooms and offices in the State Capitol.
Call it the politics of disenfranchisement - - Voter ID's bigger brother.
As the JFC works its way through Walker's proposed 2013-'15 state budget - - where state fiscal issues, not policy or partisan agendas, are supposed to be front-and-center - - legislators there and through other initiatives have busied themselves ending local public employee residency requirements, neutralizing local governmental ability to raise fee revenue, restricting what kind of local transit Milwaukee can buy with federal grant funds, and what levels of salaries and length of terms will apply to the members of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors.
On top of state-inserted Act 10 restrictions on local public employee wage and benefit decisions and labor relations, not to mention further degradation to public school budgets by expanding private voucher school enrollments and payment transfers.
All this determined from far away by state legislators who are writing and rewriting laws and overtaking decisions historically made for good reasons, after hearings and votes by local council and county board members, Mayors and County Executives allocating local revenues as the communities see fit
If local residents don't like the decisions, they can vote the local officials out of office, or make changes by referendum.
Too much of this spiteful, ham-handed interference is aimed at Milwaukee by GOP partisans still resentful over recall politics and are behaving like the worst winners imaginable.
Legislators who live far from Milwaukee have no business micro-managing and monkey-wrenching the affairs of a complex urban environment they know little about but enjoy using regularly as a campaign punching bag to remain in office - - or shall we say, these days, to remain in power.
And legislators backing the end of residency rules, like State Sen. Leah Vukmir, (R-Wauwatosa) have a direct conflict-of-interest because their districts are close to Milwaukee and will benefit from an influx of well-paid Milwaukee public employees whose city-supplied salaries and benefits will transfer to suburban housing markets and main street economies at Milwaukee's expense.
Determining municipal budgets, controlling transit decisions and overseeing residency issues are local matters.
State legislators motivated by partisan considerations should remove their noses from local issues and budgets.
People living in neighborhoods across the state don't need another alderman or supervisor from 15 or 150 miles away - - especially an unofficial 'representative' the local residents and taxpayers can't vote out of office for bad decision-making.
You never know where Scott Walker is, but out-of-state raising cash and his personal profile is a good bet on any given day.
Now the Capital Times is keeping track with an online map.
WTMJ-AM's afternoon talker said this afternoon - - in reference to the US Supreme Court's refusal today to hear the Elmbrook Church/public high school graduation case (the refusal upheld a ruling by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that the use of the church site for the public school graduation was unconstitutional) - - that "the concept of separation of church and state" does not appear in the [US] Constitution.
As to the precise phrase, "separation of church and state?" Correct. It's not there.
But the concept not being there?
Apparently the Justices disagree with Atty. Wagner. As have many, many before them, as the Court has historically interpreted the following First Amendment text as raising a strong barrier between church and state:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereto
Greenhouse gas levels have reached an historic level, but what's the reaction at Wisconsin's DNR?
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Its webpage on Climate Change and the Great Lakes hasn't been updated since 2/27/2012.
Its webpage linking to a UW climate change initiative hasn't been updated since 6/18/2012.
And these soft or dated items are the the first three that pop up if you type "Global warming" into the DNR website search box:
* EEK! -Global Warming is Hot Stuff!
... Home Page, . Global Warming is Hot Stuff! ... Global warming:
It is more than just a game of up-and-down on a thermometer. ... dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/ce/eek/earth/air/global.htm - 20k
* [PDF] Introduction
... “The scope and consequences of global warming are so massive that the responsibility for action rests not only with our leaders in Washington, but ... dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/ce/eek/teacher/climateguide/pdf/00-0000-introback.pdf - 54k - 2009-01-28
[ More results from dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/ce ]
* Warming trends -- Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine ...
A special section about what global climate change could mean for Wisconsin. By Kelly Mella and Julia Barrett. April 2000 Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine.
dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/supps/2000/apr00/global.htm - 30k
Great profile on our Mayor:
Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee has never given up and never given in. One of the earliest members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group spearheaded by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Tom Menino, he has made curbing urban bloodshed a personal cause.
Too bad every marcher didn't have a rocket launcher for self-defense.
What the Journal Sentinel Sunday poses as a question - -
Is the GOP-run state Legislature at war with Milwaukee? - -
Why Do Republicans Batter Milwaukee? Because They Can
And because it feels so good.Chalk up the reporting difference to the freedom of blogging, though the evidence that Walker and his allies are politically and personally jamming city taxpayers in ways that ultimately hurt a state that needs a successful, big city is on full display in both accounts.
Walker and his GOP legislative allies continue to politically batter and budgetarily squeeze Milwaukee with right-wing policies and full-on partisan retribution for Mayor Barrett's two gubernatorial challenges and big anti-Walker votes in city wards.
An anti-Milwaukee agenda weakens Wisconsin statewide, but plays well in the GOP's suburban and out-state strongholds - - so helps keeps gerrymandered Republicans embedded in their safe seats.
Leaving Walker and anti-urban legislators free to interfere in the Milwaukee economy and local landscape through city worker residency rule manipulations, a strangled bus system, derailed local, commuter and regional train initiatives along with their lost development potential, local spending limits made worse by drastically-cut public school budgets.
It's a coordinated attack on Milwaukee and local control with elections, partisan payback and punishment in mind - - gleefully predicted by righty WISN-AM talker Mark Belling on November 3rd, 2010 a day after Walker was elected in Governor and the GOP took control of the Legislature.
The warning was so succinct and ominous that I'd posted it:
"They can do whatever they want."
I put this over at Purple Wisconsin where there is a vigorous discussion underway:
GOP state legislators cheering their bill to block Milwaukee from building a starter streetcar system in the downtown funded with a federal transportation grant should take a look at a settlement in which the state pledged, after federal mediation, that the funding would be spent on local transit.
Money spent with the state's cooperation - - a key factor in a related city, county and state joint environmental justice legal settlement agreement that contained many elements (Gov. Thompson was a major, if not the pivotal figure, in this effort).
I know because I was in many of the meetings as Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's policy director where more funding was allocated by joint agreement from the same federal grant to start or finish various projects of mutual interest, including:
* the beginning of Marquette Interchange reconstruction,* the replacement of the obsolete 6th St. Viaduct with a modern 6th St. bridge and at-grade intersection at Canal St,* the removal of the Park East spur,* the construction of a lagoon walkway on property designated as a state park off the Summerfest Grounds to guarantee pedestrian access to the Lakefront there.A link to the settlement and cooperation agreement, signed by the state transportation department, is here.
Disturbing, depressing news on the climate change front:
In other news with more probable resonance, American Idol judges are out.“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.
Remember when this guy bragged about driving a used Saturn and packing his own ham sandwiches for lunch?
Times have changed, reports The RUN blog:
Gov. Scott Walker will headline a ritzy golf outing for Republican governors in sun-soaked Newport Beach, California this summer, according to an invitation provided to The RUN.
Tickets for the July 16 Republican Governors Association outing at The Resort at Pelican Hill range from $2,500 to $25,000. It includes an 8 a.m. breakfast, a golf tournament at noon and a post-golf reception commencing at 5 p.m.
There has been spate of national media reporting about the broad, negative impact of US student loan debt on the US economy - - examples, here and here - - and original research by One Wisconsin Institute has made a major contribution to the discussion:
To say the Institute’s campaign on student loan debt has started with a bang is an understatement to say the least. The results of a comprehensive report on student loan debt, homeownership and automobile purchasing were the lead story in the state’s largest newspaper.The Journal Sentinel noted some of the student loan burden in Wisconsin, as compiled by the Institute:
Individuals with bachelor degrees with student loan debt were making average monthly payments of $350 on loans with an average term of nearly 19 years...(Disclosure: I am on the Institute board.)
For those with advanced degrees, monthly student loan payments averaged $448, with an average term of 22 years.
Over $200 million in annual new car sales are lost as a direct result of student loan debt and households with student loan debt are significantly more likely to rent rather than own their home...
Supporters of the Milwaukee streetcar line have plenty of reasons to think that the downtown transit and development project Walker and GOP legislators are trying to kill through a utility cost ploy is far from dead:
Ald. Robert Bauman, who represents the downtown Milwaukee area and is a major supporter of the streetcar project, said that the utility relocation costs for the project will be insignificant and predicted that the project will move forward despite the state budget measure, which still needs to be approved by the full Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker.As a Milwaukee transit advocate, Bauman was involved more than a decade ago in crafting a civil rights/environmental justice settlement with state and federal officials to ensure that funding available then - - and now ticketed for the streetcar project - - be used for Milwaukee transit projects.
And because it feels so good.
Walker and his GOP legislative allies continue to politically batter and budgetarily squeeze Milwaukee with right-wing policies and full-on partisan retribution for Mayor Barrett's two gubernatorial challenges and big anti-Walker votes in city wards.
An anti-Milwaukee agenda weakens Wisconsin statewide, but plays well in the GOP's suburban and out-state strongholds - - so helps keeps gerrymandered Republicans embedded in their safe seats.
Leaving Walker and anti-urban legislators free to interfere in the Milwaukee economy and local landscape through city worker residency rule manipulations, a strangled bus system, derailed local, commuter and regional train initiatives along with their lost development potential, local spending limits made worse by drastically-cut public school budgets.
It's a coordinated attack on Milwaukee and local control with elections, partisan payback and punishment in mind - - gleefully predicted by righty WISN-AM talker Mark Belling on November 3rd, 2010 a day after Walker was elected in Governor and the GOP took control of the Legislature.
The warning was so succinct and ominous that I'd posted it:
"They can do whatever they want."
It looks like Gov. Walker and his GOP allies have finally figured out a way to derail Milwaukee's proposed downtown/lower East side streetcar loop (he'd already axed a Milwaukee-Madison Amtrak line in 2011 and GOP legislators separately nixed a Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha commuter train, too) for which utility customers might have had to catch a share of the costs.
Taxpayers share costs when transmission lines and other utility equipment need to be moved or switched out when legislatively-mandated state highway projects run into the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars - - but hey, no matter - - the streetcar is dead and a transportation double-standard is preserved.
Win-win!!
Good news, Bucky: Milwaukee won't be joining backwaters and failures like Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, Portland and Minneapolis that were flat-out ruined by their urban rail systems.
But wait: there's more.
Killing off trains and maintaining our major cities' rail-free status isn't the only drawing card for out-of-towners, business relocaters and entrepreneurs who might want to visit, spend some time and money, maybe open a business or treat this as the place to send the kids to college.
* Walker wants to drop the license fee for getting a chance to kill a Wisconsin wolf to just $50 - - heckuva deal for bargain hunters and a 50% discount from last year's outlandishly-costly blood-letting. And after adding mourning doves to the hunting season list, legislative sportsmen have set their sights on groundhogs and sandhill cranes, too.
Plus - - if activist liberal judges would just get out of the way, you just might be able to do a little owner-and-dog bonding in our great outdoors by being allowed to bring Fido and Spot along on the wolf hunt - - off-leash - - and let them show you just where the wolves are hiding.
* And more fun is on your Wisconsin itinerary. If some people up North would stop whining about their drinking water and fishing holes, a brand-new tourist attraction could open near Ashland close to Lake Superior with a green-light from the DNR: America's Largest Open-Pit Iron Ore Mine, where some stupid hills in the way of progress and super sightseeing right now attract but a few tree-huggers, backpackers, campers and anglers.
I mean, no one actually lives or maintains a culture there.
Hey, we might have 15,000 lakes, but seen one, seen 'em all: people will flock to watch mountain-top dynamiting and monster-trucking to get at and move iron-ore 1,000 feet deep and 22 miles long and help Uncle Sam balance a trade deficit with China.
* We're still rated #1 in easy OWI laws. Meaning there's a free pass from a criminal record with your name on it should you get pulled over by some quota-hunting/sobriety-hating copper for your first offense.
That'd be a crime in every other state, but not where the six-cents-per-gallon tax on beer brewing hasn't been raised since 1970.
Some kill-joy legislators are making fresh noises about taking away your Wisconsin-only right to get pinched for OWI here one time crime-free if you go over 0.15, or twice the legal limit of .08 - - but I think you can trust the liquor lobbies to keep that precious Wisconsin freedom to drive drunk get caught OWI once on the old-school books.
* And speaking of old school, some Wisconsin communities are going full nostalgia by returning to gravel roads.
Look - - budgets are tight, businesses need their tax breaks, and if you ask me, pavement is one of those luxuries - - like a streetcar (psst - - they mean "light rail," also known as a "stranger mover") jammed into one of the few big city downtowns nationally lucky enough to have escaped so far without one - - that are too darn expensive.
So screw pavement and crumbling roads, and streetcars, too. Raise a glass and pop for your $50 wolf pelt permit and be proud your state is open for business and closed to business that tends to develop along trolley lines.
Not that that's a contradiction.
And tune in later as we watch Scott Walker and his legislative allies further save the state by slapping down food stamp recipients, poor people's health insurance, public school funding, teacher salaries and drunk-driving regulations.
Let's put Wisconsin on the map.
That d*mn UW-System...oh wait, it's the Walker-and-GOP run government.
Walker and his GOP legislative allies like the cheap shot.
* On public union organizing - - Walker withheld his union-rights' stripping scheme during the 2010 election, then "dropped the bomb" on public employees and their home budgets.
* On mining legislation - - the Bad River Band, the people most effected, were cut out of the bill-writing, with the consequences to their land, water and lifestyle a literal dropped bomb.
* On Milwaukee's internal streetcar planning - - with federal funding and a civil rights transit development settlement agreement in the bank - - state legislation is being introduced with Walker enthusiasm to kill the project while state-paid highway construction by the billions of dollars continues to deliver people to and from the suburbs even faster.
* On health-care expansion for the state's poor: With federal funding available, Walker rejected the money.
* And Walker budget cuts endorsed by GOP legislators closed four Planned Parenthood health-care clinics out-state this year, though no state funding went to abortion services.
Glad to see that the state's premier public interest law firm, Midwest Environmental Advocates, has established a blog and used its initial posting to explain why it's a bad idea for the DNR to propose ending some big project environmental reviews.
We need more, not less analysis of the impact of high-capacity wells, large dairies and various pollution-control, waste and waste water projects in this state, and more Internet distribution of data and other information about these and other environmental issues by expert advocates like MEA.
Here is the MEA posting.
Get into the discussion there, bookmark the site, use it as a guide for your organization's Internet presence and send it to friends and policy-makers (and thanks to MEA for passing along on its site a link I'd put up on the DNR subject.
Gov. Walker and state Republican legislative leaders who have a made a career out of sticking it to Milwaukee have figured out a way to deny the city a streetcar line, the Journal Sentinel is reporting.
Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee intend to approve a measure Thursday that would bar utility ratepayers from having to bear any costs for a proposed streetcar in Milwaukee - a provision that likely would kill the project.And Walker is willing to demagogue and mislead his core suburban, talk-radio driven audience to get his way:
"I'd spend my time and resources on economic development projects that put people to work instead of a streetcar that will affect a handful of people on the upper east side of Milwaukee," Walker said then.Just as Walker obeyed city-fearing, suburban-focused talk radio and denied the two largest state cities a federally-funded Amtrak line - - and the state a spot in a regional rail network connecting cities with major university and research center employers - - Walker continues to marginalize Milwaukee over the street car plan.
Though he chairs the troubled cookie jar known as the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, where state auditors found that rules, laws and everyday spending, accounting and performance standards had been routinely ignored since the WEDC's inception, Walker somehow summoned up the chutzpah today to say that repairing the mess over which he has 'presided' is an opportunity for more transparency.
The situation also provides an opportunity to develop more transparency with "clear expectations, clear policies and clear follow-up," Walker said.How does he get away with mocking true transparency by hiding his attack on labor during the 2010 campaign, then "drop[ing] the bomb" with what he called "a modest proposal" on citizen/public employees?
When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.And I'd copied the link to the campaign posting more than once - - examples from 2011 and 2012 are here and here - - but this is where those campaign links take you now:
"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.
Not Found, Error 404
As the troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is set to hold an audit autopsy meeting tomorrow morning in Waukesha, I thought this was the right time to reprint the full text of Scott Walker's WEDC announcement news release from 1/6/2011:
Madison–Governor Walker today released a draft of legislation to transform the Department of Commerce into the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.
“Our first goal for the state has to be job creation, but our current government structure does not reflect job growth as a priority,” said Governor Scott Walker. “This legislation will create a public-private partnership whose sole mission is to promote economic growth and create jobs for Wisconsinites. Transforming the Department of Commerce will align state government with our most important mission: creating jobs.”
The regulatory duties currently assigned to the Department of Commerce will be reviewed to determine their impact on public safety or public health before being reassigned to other agencies or eliminated. The new authority will be led by a “chief executive officer” and a twelve member board of directors.
The board of directors will be comprised of the Governor, who will serve as chairman, and eleven members appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate
The WEDC will be required to report to the Legislature annually on the progress of its economic development initiatives and subject to annual audits by the Legislative Audit Bureau.
Why the rhetorical question when the answer and need is as plain as day.
Millions of WEDC state job-creating [sic] dollars went un-tracked or were awarded improperly by Walker's signature business agency, and other monies there were spent without goals or controls, independent auditors have found - - but Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Sen. Alberta Darling, (R-River Hills), expressed ambivalence today about whether the committee should slow down the budgeting of even more money for the WEDC, WisPolitics.com is reporting:
She said lawmakers may want to see more before the JFC votes on the WEDC budget.
"We have to get WEDC right, don't we?" she said.
Here's the schedule.
The meeting of the Board of Directors for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation will be held on May 8, 2013 at 8:00 a.m. at the Waukesha State Office Building, located at 141 N.W. Barstow Street Waukesha, WI 53186. The items to be discussed are included below. Note that some members of the Board may attend by phone.
________________________________________
AgendaWisconsin Economic Development Corporation
Meeting of the Board of Directors
Waukesha State Office Building
141 N.W. Barstow Street
Waukesha, WI 53186
May 8, 20138:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.This meeting is the first opportunity for WEDC leadership to meet with the Board since the release last week of the Legislative Audit Bureau’s FY 2012 review.
Both the Board and WEDC leadership and staff are eager to discuss the findings in the context of previous proactive audits and public disclosures by WEDC, as well as the significant changes that have been implemented throughout FY2013 to address concerns raised by LAB.1. Call to Order and Roll Call
2. Discussion of Legislative Audit Bureau Audit
3. Adjournment
WEDC - - Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation?
Or Walker Economic Disaster Confirmed?
Talk about a collision of fumbled ideology, overbearing hubris and classically-failed Politics 101 - - see day one/unit one handout, "Managing The Home Fires."
Walker came into office and quickly moved to eliminate the former Wisconsin Department of Commerce and replace it with an ideologically-correct, quasi-private agency.
Walker The Reformer.
Presto! A business to serve business.
To create business, and serve business in the state that he allegedly opened for business, get it?
"Hey, look, I founded a corporation. Only 9,999 to go."
And thanks to compliant GOP legislators, WEDC was set up free of big guvmint red tape and other messy things like goals, standards, protocols, legal, fiscal and internal management controls to make sure our tax money was spent wisely, fairly and productively.
But more importantly, to meet a political goal - - helping Walker win his campaign bet that he could create 250,000 new jobs/10,000 new businesses.
From the beginning, the charade that is WEDC was a massive, PR-driven misuse of state power and public dollars so by the end of 2014, Walker and all that 'free' market philosophy and corporation-managed achievement were going to look clever, brilliant, and prescient.
Just in time for his 2014 re-election and perhaps a bid for the Presidency.
But the failed, scandal-plagued and mismanaged agency - - with a scalding state audit providing all the details (full text, here) - - could have used an involved, management-attuned and authentic Chairman riding herd on senior leadership to make sure this agency - - his agency - - could succeed.
After all, the Wisconsin economy was counting on it.
But Walker is a dabbler, not a doer, and with the state falling nationally on his watch to #44 in job creation, the WEDC underwent top-tier turmoil (latest resignation, earlier resignation and the story of one senior fiscal official who stayed all of one day) at the top.
Walker's response? A default on responsibility.
He chose instead to fly around the country, bask in the glories of his union-busting recall win, fuel the Presidential buzz, raise campaign funds with false claims and pile up chits for his personal and political advancement.
Running the state, shoulder to the wheel and in particular guiding the WEDC?
Work is for little people.
The mess at WEDC is Walker's and Walker's alone, and it will deservedly follow him on the campaign trail here and elsewhere like his own shadow.
Top officials have come and gone at the scandal-plagued Wisconsin Economic Development agency, where basically no one has been in charge, but this takes the cake:
Madison - The man brought in to burnish the image of the state's flagship jobs agency resigned late Monday after a Madison television station uncovered tens of thousands of dollars that he allegedly owes the state in income taxes and jobless benefit debts....The news was first reported by WKOW-TV in Madison:
MADISON (WKOW) -- The man hired to help the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation with its public image resigned late Monday after 27 News made inquiries about income tax and unemployment insurance debts of close to $45,000 he owes the State of Wisconsin.
Democrats at the State Capitol want the Joint Finance Committee to defer action on the budget for the scandal-ridden Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, but the key committee is run by Republicans, so don't bet on it.
Walker, the WEDC chair, is said to be calling a meeting where the state's recent and scalding audit will be discussed, then white-washed, since the agency was Walker's sop to the private sector on job-creation, and there's no way he will do or call for any substantive repairs to something he will never acknowledge is broken.
But good for the Dems to keep up the pressure.
Here is the text of their statement and' effort:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDate: May 7, 2013Contact:
Sen. Chris Larson, 608.266.7505Rep. Peter Barca, 608.266.5504Sen. Julie Lassa, 608.266.3123Rep. Jon Richards, 608.266.0650Sen. Robert Wirch, 608.267.8979WEDC Board Members, Legislative Democrats Call for WEDC ReformBefore addressing WEDC budget, reforms must be implementedMADISON – Today, Legislative Democrats are calling on their colleagues across the aisle to stop action on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) budget before reforms have been passed to end the fraud, waste and abuse at the corporation.WHAT: Press Conference calling for immediate reform to end WEDC fraud, waste and abuseWHO: Rep. Barca, Sen. Lassa, Rep. Richards, Sen. WirchWHERE: Wisconsin State Capitol, Senate ParlorWHEN: Tuesday, May 7, 10:30 a.m.
