Dems Should Reclaim, Expand Basic Wisconsin Values

*  Democrats in Wisconsin have ceded to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his party too much power over language and messages, and the 2014 campaign to win back the state is the best time to turn the tables.

Republicans call themselves a values party, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Let's get back to basic Wisconsin values, and tradition, law, and history.

* Start with the Wisconsin Idea - - especially since Republicans have abandoned it:

Progressive Republicans...believed that the business of government was to serve the people. They sought to restrict the power of corporations when it interfered with the needs of individual citizens. The Progressive Movement appealed to citizens who wanted honest government and moderate economic reforms that would expand democracy and improve public morality. 

*  Spread the word about The Public Trust Doctrine. 

Explain that it's the part of the Wisconsin Constitution that says the waters of the state belong to all the people of the state - - which means that groundwater isn't the property of any big corporation that wants to contaminate or drain your trout streams or fill our lakes, and that wetlands should not be used as rock waste dumps throughout the Bad River watershed in the Penokee Hills to serve an out-of-state coal company's proposed, big open-pit iron mine.

Walker's contempt for The Public Trust Doctrine goes back to the eighth day of his term in office when he had a special bill introduced in the Legislature to exempt a donor from what was an ongoing Department of Natural Resources review of a development project that would have required the filling of a wetland near Lambeau Field.

And ever since, Walker and his Legislative and special interest allies have targeted The Public Trust Doctrine, narrowed it, weakened it - - and in the process - - continue to give it away.

Along with your right to appreciate the natural environment and to pass Wisconsin's water legacy to your children and grandchildren

*  Demand a revival of a citizens'-focused Wisconsin DNR.

This means ending the appointment of the agency Secretary by the Governor and the politicized installing of senior staff like Walker's "chamber-of-Commerce" DNR leadership team that is there to ignore The Public Trust Doctrine.

And who have failed to enforce environmental regulations in place to protect public health while giving polluters and political insiders relatively free reign to trash the land.

And who have shut citizen stakeholders out of policy-making so that favored insiders, like hounders killing bears and wolves are encouraged to run roughshod over open lands, wildlife habitat and animal populations that, like the water, belong to all the people of the state - - and are supposed to be in the hands of the DNR as trustee.

Team Walker's abuses of resources, public processes and elemental fair play are not limited to environmental degradation and special-interest policy-making, either.

Voter ID and other ballot machinations are designed to twist the most basic of public resources - - law and legislating - - and skew democratic procedures for partisan opportunity

The manipulation of public offices, taxpayer-paid staffers and a fair election process were and are at heart of John Doe I and II.

We need a new, broad embrace and redefinition of Wisconsin Ideas to keep the environment and the government open, fair and clean.