Walker To DNR: Toady To Business

The hits inflicted by Scott Walker on the state he hoodwinked in November just keep coming:

Unions stripped of collective bargaining, students and minorities willfully disenfranchised, secondary schooling turned over to the private school movement, highway builders showered with funding while bus systems are starved, food stamp eligibility to be handed over to a for-profit firm, privatizing the UW-Madison's management - - it's hard to keep score of the intentional moves Scott Walker is making with his 52% mandate to turn Wisconsin from a democratic entity into a corporatist state where business and bottom lines come before public service, transparency and citizen control.

Add to the list a stunningly imperious grab, even for Walker: the easing of natural resource permitting by changing timetables at a freshly business-dominated Department of Natural Resources (industry and trade association types now hold the position of Secretary, Deputy and head of the air quality division), and ignoring independent scientific advice when projects are being reviewed.

In other words, turn regulation and reviews for the common good into supporting material for "Employee of the Month" entries collected by the folks in HR.

The remake of the DNR - - nicely summed up by the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters - - will turn it into a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce; a piece of a plan to make the state and its resources serve the Club for Growth and the Republican Party.

Look for another round of resignations at the DNR by people who wanted to do public service, not filing and rubber-stamping for trade associations, their lobbyists and the CEO's who call the shots.

It may take decades to undo the harm that Walker and his right-wing think tank playbook are doing to this once progressive state, where icons like Gaylord Nelson and Aldo Leopold worked tob equeath legacies of open lands and clean waters for generations coming later.

The Walker crowd will leave behind smoggier air, dirtier water, filled wetlands and better quarterly earnings reports by the corporations and law firms who will hire, or rehire back, the people whom Walker installed in public service positions to drag Wisconsin back to the 1950's.