Sunday, August 10, 2014

On Environment, Mary Burke Finds An Issue

The Wisconsin State Journal Sunday catalogues the many ways Wrong-Way Walker has led rollbacks on environmental protection in Wisconsin and summarizes opponent Mary Burke's more level-headed positions, here.

From the perspective of this blog, Burke's coherent approach is more in line with Wisconsin values and common sense Walker has disregarded or overturned.

If implemented, her approach would help to guarantee clean air, water, access to the natural environment and most importantly, access to decision-and-policy-making that should be at the center of a genuine democracy.

Her inclusionary, publicly-spirited view is a welcome alternative from Walker's special-interest capitulation and I am glad the State Journal laid out the candidates' differences.

I cannot easily enumerate all the political and environmental matters touched on in the article that have been disclosed, analyzed and promoted on this blog over several years (there's a reason it's called "The Political Environment") - -  though I note that five of the ten major blog categories I recently enumerated and organized for readers in a single posting are covered in the State Journal piece.

Those would be Walker, the DNR, the state water crises, frac sand mining and the open-pit iron ore mine.

That single posting is here and taken as a companion to this item rate among the top posts out of nearly 14,000 here since February, 2007. I hope it is a useful portal.

The State Journal article also says Walker streamlined project and permit reviews to give businesses more certainty - - and I contend that this business about "certainty" is more a Walker talking point and code for 'winners and losers will be chosen' (Google also WEDC, favors to donors, etc.) - - but I'd argue that certainty is sometimes a mirage or a negative.

For example, all the permit streamlining included in the iron mining bill Walker pushed and which the iron mining company/donor collaborative helped write are so incompatible with the parallel and mandatory Federal review that fresh years have now been added to the overall permitting process.

And the faster that pipeline, frac sand mining and large dairy expansion permits are pushed to the exclusion and disregard of neighbors, downstream communities and the entire state water table, the more likely there will be litigation that slows things down.

Along with the buildup of citizen resentment that will lead to an eventual reversal.

With Mary Burke's strong showing in the polls, that pendulum swing may be moving faster than Walker and his corporate donors had assumed.

No comments: