Fatal Flaw In Modified Mining Bill Fails To Fix Fitzgerald Fiasco

The Journal Sentinel offers a detailed account of possible changes to be proposed in the mining bill blown up in a fit of special-interest parliamentary mania by the recall-threatened Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald.

Here is a link to the story.

And while it is clear that some Senators are trying to satisfy and mollify the industry-compliant State Assembly while also absorbing repeated signals from federal officials that wholesale changes to existing law just won't pass muster - - perhaps a contradiction too big to be resolved during Fitzgerald's tiny and politically-created window established for approval - -  I don't see, nor have I heard, that any authentic effort is being made to work with the people most affected by this entire uproar- - the Bad River Ojibwa  who live and grow wild rice near land and on waterways close to the site of the proposed iron ore mine in Northwestern Wisconsin that produced the mining bill and the fearful Fitzgerald's fiasco and hissy fit in the first place

No doubt whatever bill passes is going to produce challenges in court over environmental, procedural, legal and fiscal issues - - delaying any new mine in Wisconsin for untold years - - but why are legislators and other officials still ignoring the Ojibwa and the treaties they signed, nation-to-nation, with the Federal government more than 150 years ago?

And thus adding another level of delay.

This entire process - - from the Assembly's secretive bill writing with industry insiders at the table - - in light of revelations of secretive redistricting bill drafting, not so unusual for this group of Republicans, eh? - - to Scott Fitzgerald's imperious hijacking of the established hearing and drafting procedures last week - - has served to highlight the decline of the content, process and especially the leadership - - led by the brothers Fitzgerald - - in the Legislature.

It began when Republicans won both houses a year ago and went on a one-party rampage at the public's expense that began with Walker's collective bargaining dropped bomb and continues, as we speak, with the Fitzgerald Family fiasco.

WTMJ Radio Talker Speaks Up For Offensive High School Indian Mascots

Righty talker, former Federal prosecutor and local control hypocrite Jeff Wagner is at it again, calling for the Legislature to bypass an 'activist' State Supreme Court and adopt a law to enable local school districts to keep their Native American mascots and nicknames.

He's long continued to call the Marquette Golden Eagles by their discredited "Warriors" nickname - - discarded by the school's more-enlightened Jesuit leadership as offensive.

And laughably - - what a hypocrite - - Wagner says it's a matter of local control - - the very principle GOP legislators and Scott Walker have have destroyed with Wagner's cheer-leading through Act 10 collective bargaining wipeouts, local residency ordinance overrides, and other imperious decrees from on high.

Milwaukee's proposed streetcar plan is a Wagner frequent topic: Shouldn't Milwaukee have the right to implement it under local control without interference from the Governor, legislature and PSC?

So the question is: Why does Wagner want the Legislature and others to go out of their way to offend this minority group?

Since when is deliberate offense anything to laud?

Would he take the same position if Catholics, Jews, Asians, African-Americans or others were similarly and intentionally targeted?

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.

Future of Wisconsin waters, wetlands in State Senate Committee's hands

The fates of clean water, valuable wetlands which filter them and citizen-led environmental protection in Wisconsin are in the hands of the State Senate Natural Resources committee.

Raise the alarm: the matter cannot be overstated.

That's because the Committee, with a GOP majority, may vote on an ultra-special-interest amendment which was adopted as the Assembly adjourned last week written to enable rare wetland filling for a sand mine operation despite the fact that the project is being contested right now by Midwest Environmental Advocates, Clean Wisconsin and citizens in a Monroe County judicial hearing.

Somewhat like finding out that were you a defendant in a legal case that just as it was going to the jury, some 'lawmakers' somewhere passed a law that said even if you win the case it doesn't matter. 

Like the way the old Politburo used to run things in the Soviet Union.

Your rights? What rights?

There is fresh reporting that Committee chairman Robert Cowles, perhaps the last environmentally-attuned GOP Senator left in that body, says he will not allow the bill to proceed, but he tempered his position with this reality-check, according to the AP: 

While state Sen. Rob Cowles said it wasn’t his plan to consider it, “there’s always forces above us that can override this guy.”

And as the AP notes:

The bill before the Senate committee does not yet include the provision meant to benefit Meteor Timber. Even if Cowles doesn’t pass it, the full state Senate could decide to take up the Assembly version of the bill when it meets on its last planned session day March 20.

Here how to find the committee and its members: Contact them, thank Sen. Cowles for his pledge and tell the Senators to kill the amendment.

Senator Cowles (Chair), Senator Petrowski (Vice-Chair), Senator Olsen, Senator Miller, Senator Hansen

And find your State Senator, here, or through the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-362-9472  let her or him know that they should not support the amendment if  it gets to their desks.

There's no way to soft-pedal what is just the latest, and maybe final outrage in the intentional, money-driven partisan nullification of Wisconsin environmental history, priorities, protections, standards at the expense of citizens' rights and environmental rationality which has been going on since the early hours of Scott Walker's more than seven-year reign.

A reign he opened with the unilateral suspension of a legally-established, routine review of a wetland-filling permit for a project near Lambeau Field proposed by one of his campaign donors.

It was an imperious, unambiguous warning shot for all to see across the political environment which the Legislature dutifully affirmed.

The Walker/GOP/Legislative/big business war on the environment has been waged unabated through his installation of senior pro-business officials atop the Department of Natural Resources with the "chamber of commerce mentality" Walker said he wanted there - - and, again, he did it for all to see, which is why the DNR, continually stripped of staff, funding and mission now better resembles a state Department of Commerce than the science-based, public health and environmental protection agency it had always been.

And is run now by an actual, retired chamber of commerce executive than the chamber-of-commerce obedient Cathy Stepp, she having recently moved to work her builders' will on Trump's version of the US EPA great lakes regional office in Chicago.

And Walker's redefinition of state government as an arm of business will accelerate later this year when Walker moves the weakened DNR's inspection and permitting-reviews for the state's expanding heavily-polluting large dairy cattle feeding operations from the DNR he has systematically savaged to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection which through multiple marketing activities including the World Dairy Expo in Madison drives Wisconsin milk, cheese and dairy sales production worldwide.

And maybe it's more accurate that the tipping point for clean, green, publicly-focused environmental policies in Wisconsin was already passed when Walker and the Legislature gave Foxconn the right to fill wetlands, reroute waterways and build on lake beds without even as much as environmental studies on the company's 3,000 acre site and routine permit applications which should have been routinely required.

Because wetlands absorb flood waters that can end up in your basement, and drain to waterways which the Wisconsin Constitution says belong to everyone - - though the Walker/Legislative/special interest war waged what is known as the Public Trust Doctrine it is obviously winning.

Little wonder that in the wake of those favors for Foxconn, the Legislature lifted the ban on toxifying metal mining in Wisconsin, and removed state protections for roughly 100,000 acres of wetlands statewide.

So we can expect a steady flow of special bills, permissions and other exemptions so businesses can fill, pave over, cut down or other wise pollute the land - - a flow as predictable and harmful as the increased flow of pollutants into Wisconsin rivers and streams documented by the DNR and archived with the EPA - - 

- - but only because it's required by a portion of the federal Clean Water Act not yet obliterated by Trump on behalf of coal mining, uranium mining companies, big western cattle ranchers and timber businesses.

So there is a lot on the line come next Wednesday when the State Senate Natural Resources meets in Madison. 

If the bills amendment dies there, there is still a chance that special interests cannot get anything they want from from compliant legislators and the Governor they blindly serve.

If the bill is voted out of committee, it means that State Senate GOP Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald knows he has the votes to send it to Walker for a signature.

Which will firmly establish the precedent that even where permitting is required to fill a wetland in Wisconsin, the Legislature can simply reify its contaminated version of a Wisconsin Idea by passing a special bill to tear up that permit and send in the bulldozers.

Wisconsin Republicans And The Politics Of Adolescence

Meet Wisconsin's new teen idols - - Scott Walker, The Fitzgeralds, budget writers Vos and Darling, David Prosser and his fellow injudicious Justices.

Bullying the end of public employees' collective bargaining, then enabled by a obeisant, 4-3 Supreme Court majority behaving like an adjunct party caucus, passing in the Assembly a $66-billion budget filled with special-interest corporate freebies at 3 a.m., handing the Governor the imperious power to veto agency rules previously overseen by the Legislature and openly running fake candidates in recall elections to save their party's bacon - - Republicans are governing for the moment's immediate gratification, without a moral compass.

Much the way adolescents might behave, their development not yet complete, along with a flawed or incomplete grasp of the future, without an appreciation of the connections between actions-and-consequences - - none of what describes adults too much front and center in the their thinking processes or behaviors.

I'd particularly put Scott Walker's abrupt cancellation of an Amtrak line and its $800 million in federal funding - - leading him his attempting and failing in an embarrassing do-over to try and recoup $150 million for Amtrak improvements he remembered he and his Milwaukee business supporters favored.

Also included in the GOP's politically-juvenile action category: Walker's petulant refusal to negotiate with - - that is, talk to - - state employee unions he then decimated in that category.

And his arbitrary moves to fill wetlands, barely examine mining operation permits, force some working poor to pay higher state taxes by restricting a federal, earned-income tax credit program - - yet still claiming his budget was free of tax increases.

Also, certainly the State Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling vindication of the union-busting/Open Meetings issue Walker and Republican Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald cooked up, and that former GOP Assembly Speaker-now-Supreme Court Justice Prosser approved in a judicial farce that set records for hurried thought, and dangerous precedent - - such as who (e.g., Mike Huebsch, DOA Secretary, but not a party to the action being appealed) can go around the normal processes and seek direct action by the Court, and how and when it will release a decision in that person's favor on an unsuspecting public?

Could be this summer, could be next year, could be later - - but it's guaranteed that Republicans will find themselves in the minority and come to regret their politically-adolescent behavior during Walker's first few months in office.

Walker has 'friend Cathy Stepp' to help with wetland filling

To this posting - -

Familiar environmental hater in charge of WI, Great Lakes EPA

- - I'll add today's Walker says-it-all Tweet, though the Journal Sentinel copyrighted photo on Walker's feed about Stepp here makes her look like she just realized someone reposted that deleted and very unflattering consultant's video of her imperious management 'style.'

And if Stepp is Walker's friend, she's also the dream EPA regional pick for Wisconsin businesses, Walker donors and developers who are eyeing a million acres of wetlands to fill.
--------------------------------------

Scott Walker‏Verified account @ScottWalker 52m52 minutes ago

Congrats to my friend Cathy Stepp!

Here's another photo, this one posted by the DNR itself after Stepp successfully completed her first deer hunt.

With Walker, How Many Tipping Points Do You Need?

If it wasn't his Act 10 "bomb," or the felony sentencing of political staff aides, or two John Doe probes or forced ultrasounds and direct attack on Planned Parenthood, or his unstoppable false speaking and writing...to the give-aways to private interests from iron ore to frac sand mining companies to anyone who wants to fill a wetland...then surely it is Walker's imperious signal that he would deny of a pardon to a combat veteran so he can pursue a Wisconsin police career.

Because Walker is not granting any pardons, period.

This story should go viral statewide and nationally because it says everything about a narcissistic and authoritarian Scott Walker who believes everything is about him.

OWN nails Walker's imperious state aircraft abuse. Noted here since 2011.

Walker's zooming around the state on our dime has a then and now quality:

Then, in 2011:

Remember when Acting Gov. Scott McCallum, (R), another fiscal conservative (sic), got in trouble for using state aircraft for questionable trips?

Some governors - - such as the new Republican Gov. of New Mexico - - are grounding their planes, or selling them, as just happened in Florida at the new Governor's request - -  for financial reasons. 

I see Walker has held a news conference at the Kenosha airport, and has a day of trips planned - - including Rhinelander and Green Bay?

Is the stressed state budget - - meaning taxpayers - - covering the cost of these flights?

Skyrocketing fuel prices?

Fuel up the bird!

And in 2014:

Curiously, former Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum's history of using expensive state airplanes for quick trips that could have easily been taken by car - - like Walker's short hops - - was left out of the Journal Sentinel story.

McCallum's plane use was big news and controversial at the time.

It really brought the issue of state officials' airplane use to the public's attention and helped doom McCallum's campaign for a full-term in 2002 after he'd assumed the governorship office when Tommy Thompson resigned to join the George W. Bush cabinet.

And today, in 2018:

MADISON -- Gov. Scott Walker billed taxpayers more than $818,000 to rehab his political image by flying around Wisconsin on state-owned airplanes, a liberal group alleged Monday. 

A database compiled by One Wisconsin Now indicates Walker took 869 flights and logged more than 114,000 miles over a 32-month period. The flights include several short trips, including one from Kenosha to Milwaukee.

And don't forget that Robin Vos got into the action, too:

Though state officials had to make sure there was a plane available to take Vos and other legislative officials to a news conference in Ohio where one of his London traveling buddies had something to say. 

The State of Wisconsin Department of Administration describes its function and shows some of its equipment at this Wisconsin Air Services website.

One of its aircraft is a Beechcraft twin turboprop airplane like this one.

Here It Comes, Wisconsin: Governing By Villainification

Not, that's not a misspelling.

And I didn't mean "vilification." though we will hear plenty of that when Scott Walker takes office as Governor of Wisconsin in two weeks and the GOP moves into the post January 3rd phase of Operation Blame Game.

I said Villainification, because Walker and his legislative lieutenants will repeatedly run down their villains' roll call - - Gov. Jim Doyle, Democrats, unions, liberals, President Barack Obama, the UW system, the City of Madison, the UW System, graspy minorities, the entire federal guvmint, regulators and regulations of every imaginable type and stripe, etc., ad nauseum, et al - - to paper over and otherwise rationalize away setbacks, simple mistakes or basic powerlessness when unpredictable events produce unpleasant or unplanned consequences.

Walker was a villainophile par excellence during his eight-plus years as Milwaukee County Executive, serving up, when needed - - Tom Ament - - the gift that kept on giving - - along with Lee Holloway, County Government in toto, unions, John Norquist, Tom Barrett, Jim Doyle, faded-from-memory contractors, stimulus dollars too juicy to turn down, various campaign workers, and any other scapegoat to deflect responsibility for his bad budgets, failed appointments, revenue shortfalls, inter-governmental glitches, service scandals, acts of God, or God knows what.

Then after dabbing a little lipstick on the pigs he'd taken to market - - away he'd go, motorcycling, Twittering and evading any responsibility for snoozing at the switch and succumbing to disinterest while preferring to running for Governor.

And thereby leaving Milwaukee County in worse shape than he'd found it.

Did you ever hear him utter the equivalent of "my bad?"

After the facade collapse at O'Donnell Park this summer that killed a 15-year-old boy, it was revealed that Milwaukee County had no system in place to regularly inspect County facilities.

What was Walker's response, given that he had been County Executive for more than eight years?

He made it a two-fer (I'll highlight them so you don't miss 'em):

"Walker said Tuesday that his administration had inherited the current inspection system and had started to take steps to improve it even before the tragic accident at the O'Donnell Park parking facility last June. He also said he had suggested one change in a prior budget that was rejected by the County Board."

Full story here.

Hauling out the villains and shifting blame their way is an old conservative talk radio trick.

The talkers regularly tee up their usual suspects (I'll spare you the derogatory nicknames): Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or John Norquist or the Clintons or Jim Doyle - - you hear the squawking on the AM dial all the live long day - - to gin up the audience...heat up the ratings...inflate the talkers' sense of self-importance - -  regardless of how synthetic or mythological or just plain false is the villain's connection to real world cause-and-effect.

Take the discredited allegations about "voter fraud" - - here the villains were ACORN and a few pathetic petty criminals who filled in fraudulent voter paperwork, got caught and were rightly punished, but who were not master-minding a grand conspiracy stealing elections.

Or consider the tiresome, talk-radio red herring that Wisconsin has lost jobs because it's a "tax hell, but compare that phony rhetoric, say, to the real job losses resulting from Walker's imperious cancellation - - he called it a "victory" - -  of the federally-funded Madison-Milwaukee train.

Talk about a hellish move: Walker cost Wisconsin a train assembly plant in Milwaukee, and at least 4,700 rail construction and additional white and blue-collar positions.

Or think about the Right's big lie about the "government's takeover of health care," an effective sound bite for sure - - and also an issue ironically relevant for Tea Party and other conservative office-takers who will soon delight in elite, taxpayer-subsidized-and-government-provided-public-employee health care plans.

Managing by blame-shifting was Walker's M.O around here, but it got old and explains why he got only 38% of the gubernatorial vote in Milwaukee County.

Some finger-pointing is inevitable after a tumultuous election, but Walker, his talk radio handlers and press release driven legislator allies have little subtlety in their playbooks and probably won't want to toss the villainification template.

Without it, the work would get harder and the finger of responsibility point only to you.

Mining Bill, Walker Rescue Should Continue To Fade

[originally posted, 8 p.m., Tuesday, March 6:] Unable to convince all 17 members of his caucus that the ugly mining bill he supported should become law, and facing the possibility of an historic recall election in the spring, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has again taken control of the process - - a losing move  - - by moving it from the Senate Floor where it was voted down Tuesday to a committee he chairs - - Senate Organization - - where he and his lobbyist allies can keep the bill warm while they plot their next - - and losing - - moves.

So the spin cycle goes into high gear, along with continued finger-pointing away from the mirror the GOP should be staring at, since this fiasco began with the Assembly's secretive process and continued through Fitzgerald's demolition of the special committee he appointed to create the compromise, bipartisan bill he scuttled in favor of the special-interest turkey he he followed to its 17-16 demise.

I would predict the following from the Fitzgerald/Walker Republican camp:

*  Participation in an amped-up PR strategy coordinated by the mining company, the WMC, friendly unions and the Governor that will distort a false jobs vs. the environment dichotomy and turn it against the bill's opponents.

*  Threats by the company to take their mining plan elsewhere.

*  More visibility by the Governor - - who wants a win on the bill because he, too, is facing a recall election, and the possibility of more bad employment data later this week and through the spring.

Walker will urge the company to set aside their exaggerated threat to leave, playing faux leader and peacemaker, and he will claim the mining bill is a silver bullet solution for the state's jobs crisis, when, in fact, a mining permit - - if the company submitted and won an application - - would face still face considerable state, federal and legal obstacles putting approval many years away.

* A special session called with fanfare and hot-off-the-press news releases by the Governor, within days - - all theater - - reminding folks of his last last special session on jobs that got us some pro-gun and other extraneous, ideologically-motivated/no-jobs' legislation.

That non-performance drained the drama from special sessions, so now our expectations for results are pretty low.

I'd rate the success of these transparently-political ploys as very low, especially if opponents stay united and focus on their strengths: respect for the the state's clean water heritage, respect for public participation in policy-and-decision-making, and respect for Native American treaty rights.

The 17 votes against the bill are solid, in part because the Assembly bill and its roll-out were so bad, while Fitzgerald's cancellation of the Senate select mining committee, its work and bill drafting compounded the Assembly fumbles because Fitzgerald's moves were so ostentatiously clumsy, imperious and anti-democratic.

Furthermore, Walker and Fitzgerald, and their allies in both houses look like the politically-obsessed industry pawns that their actions have underscored.

Proponents of the bill and this particular mining proposal have no one to blame for their failure Tuesday than themselves.

Some free advice to the other side:

*  Take people and the land more seriously.

* Don't jam the public.

*  Stop writing legislation - - whether for mining giveaways or self-serving redistricting maps - - behind closed doors.

*  Work with local residents on serious, comprehensive economic development plans, from the north woods to low-income neighborhoods in Milwaukee and Racine.

Update, Tuesday, 10:07 p.m. - - As predicted:

March 6, 2012

Statement by Gogebic Taconite, LLC President Bill Williams on State Senate Rejection of Mining Reforms:

Senate rejection of the mining reforms in Assembly Bill 426 sends a clear message that Wisconsin will not welcome iron mining. We get the message. GTac is ending plans to invest in a Wisconsin mine. We thank the many people who have supported our efforts.

For Further Information Call: Bob Seitz, Arrowhead Strategies, LLC at 608-310- 5323

Update, Tuesday 11:50 p.m.

To which the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters responds:

For Immediate Release: March 6, 2012
Contact: Anne Sayers, Program Director, 608-208-1129 (direct), 608-658-0186 (cell), anne@conservationvoters.org

Statement of Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters' Executive Director Kerry Schumann on GTAC's announcement that they are leaving Wisconsin:

"Gogebic Taconite's announcement that they are leaving Wisconsin confirms that the company was never interested in responsible mining.

 Further, it illustrates Governor Walker's eagerness to place polluting special interests above Wisconsin's working families. His failed leadership led Gogebic Taconite to believe that they could change the law, so they alone could pollute Wisconsin waterways with deadly chemicals, silence the voices of our citizens and shift the costs from the mining company to the taxpayers.

Responsible mining requires companies to work with stakeholders and minimize environmental impacts. That's the Wisconsin way and Wisconsin voters know it. The bi-partisan Senate vote to reject the open-pit mining bill was a victory for Wisconsin families and clean drinking water."

Walker, Aping The Imperious, Appears Completely Hapless

It is hard to know where to begin getting a grip on Scott Walker's lack of same - - from his inability to be honest to his tendency towards braggadocio - - but closing the Capitol on the eve of his budget speech that he now seems bent on delivering to the equivalent of a selected studio audience as police keep the public away suggests a definite tendency towards self-destruction.

While there are obvious qualitative differences between Madison, Cairo and Tripoli, it is Walker's miscalculations and overt behaviors - - quashing freedoms, issuing ultimatums, trying to force protesters to go home, manipulating his appearances - - that give him more in common with foreign dictators than the Wisconsin Governors he is following and the office he and they have held.

Only a profoundly tone-deaf chief executive - - or one on a serious power trip - - would fail to see the self-destructive image he is cementing in the minds of a public that can throw him out of office in ten months.

And some of his legislative allies even faster.

From Woodson To Walker What A Difference A Week Makes In Wisconsin

A week ago (well, actually a work week), the Packers won the Super Bowl and the state was united behind the courageous Charles Woodson and the others: Rogers, Driver, Jennings and Matthews.

Everyone felt great.

In the ensuing week, the mood for many got gloomy, then breath-takingly depressing:

Scott Walker, who won electionwith just 52% of the vote, was widening his imperious and unchecked extension of executive power - - beginning early in the week with the suspension of the broadly-popular Stewardship Program through which the state and local non-profits partner to acquire open space to pass along to future generations, and ending Friday with Walker's plan legislatively to wipe out most collective bargaining rights for public employees.

The goal: slam public employees, damage Democratic Dane County's equilibrium and economy, and deflate unions across the stat.

All the while strengthening employers through tax breaks and gubernatorial control of the state's process to promulgate administrative rules - - in itself a huge win for big business at the expense of transparency and consumer power.

Combine that with the coming attack on traditional Wisconsin voting procedures through legislators' assault on the myth of voter fraud concocted by Republicans and the Walker Gang's intent is clear:

Embed radical changes deeply into Wisconsin public life and policy-making, because everyone in politics knows it's easier to do things than to undo them.

With legislative majorities, ideological allies in talk radio and an unwillingness to include others in their decision-making circle, the die seems cast for years of self-interested and harsh Republican rule.

Progressive Wisconsin R.I.P.

New Wisconsin Motto: Sit Down, Shut Up, Go Away, Dry Up

Wisconsin democracy is taking a cumulative beating at the hands of power-hungry Republican legislators who imitate Scott Walker's imperious style.

*  Wisconsin GOP Senate President and anger management dropout Mike Ellis had a 'sit down and shut up' tantrum that went viral last week.

The long-time Republican from Neenah had his gavel-damaging tantrum after Democratic Senators objected to GOP parliamentary maneuvering that cut off debate and quickly approved a bill forcing unnecessary ultrasound procedures on women seeking legal abortions.

*  Women sitting in the Assembly galleries in a subsequent session were then thrown out and arrested because they dared to take Ellis literally and sit with tape over their mouths - - proving again that the party in power is driven by a pathological need to control and shut people up and out of decision-making and participation - - from the personal to the professional to the political.

*  Exceeding Ellis' vanity and insecurities, Walker personally shut up a 20-year-old UW Platteville student who'd signed a Walker petition two years ago.

There are other examples, with more to come.

* GOP Legislators drafted the original version of the controversial mining bill, with industry input, in secret - - much as they had written their legally-deficient, gerrymandering redistricting plan, too - - and were arrogant enough to make it known they intentionally kept the Bad River Ojibwe Band away from the table even though the Ojibwe hold treaty-protected land and water rights, live just a few miles downstream from the proposed open-pit mine and polluted, waste rock dumping sites, and need clean water to grow wild rice that has defined and sustained its culture.

*  The budget-writing Joint Committee on Finance, with a 12-4 GOP-and-thin-skinned-majority, had already used the state budget to say get out to an investigative journalism non-profit project it didn't like that works with the UW-Madison School of Journalism.

*  And the finance committee, at the 11th hour and without notice, slipped into the budget bill another shut up and go away provision - - this one undermining state constitutional protections for water, and your rights to it, that date to 1787.

I'd suggest you read what even the DNR says about all that - - about long-standing constitutional protections for water and the state government's obligation to defend your rights to it - - before the shut up crowd shuts down that page on the DNR website because it says too much, preferring the talking-point spin offered by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce on behalf of industrial-scale water users.

The budget amendment made by a Sheboygan assemblyman who declined requests by this blog to be interviewed about it will prohibit a citizen, a business, a homeowners association, a municipality - - anyone - - from challenging the DNR's issuance of a permit to drill a high-volume (100,000 gallons a day or ore) well on the grounds that it would overburden the aquifer and harm nearby wells, streams, rivers or lakes through "cumulative impacts."

In fact, this is what the DNR says about its obligation to take "cumulative impacts" into project review consideration to defend your right as a Wisconsin citizen to water:

The [state supreme] court has ruled that DNR staff, when they review projects that could impact Wisconsin lakes and rivers, must consider the cumulative impacts of individual projects in their decisions. "A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin State Supreme Court justices in their opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC.(2)

But soon, if the common sense cumulative impact of multiple wells is your issue - - be you a property owner, drinking water supplier, farmer, angler, or boater - - sneaky legislation will make sure you keep your concern, your science, your data, your opinion to yourself.

Or, as Mike Ellis would say, 'you're out of order. Sit down, shut up and dry out.'

But before you go to your room like a good boy or girl, raise your voice through an action plans run by the River Alliance of Wisconsin - - here - - and the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters.

Walker praises apprentice President's Muslim ban

I noted the other day somewhat tongue-in-cheek that right-wing WI Gov. Scott Walker had gotten it right in an early Presidential debate when he said Donald Trump would be an apprentice President.

It was Walker's one well-scripted anti-Trump zinger, and, of course, Trump proved Walker the apprentice Presidential politician by crushing Walker in the polls and forcing him out of the race before it really got started.

Walker had also opposed Trump's talk of banning Muslims from entering the country, but in classic Walker-dodge-the-issue-mode, our Governor has waited three days and then yesterday flipped on the issue by praising Trump's Muslim travel ban.

Walker hid until the initial wave of protests and demands of accountability had crested, then got his talking point in line with the "safety" concern the White House eventually rolled out though there were no imminent threats from the seven countries cited in Trump's sloppily-drafted and Imperious Executive Order, and no history of  terrorist attacks in the US by immigrants from the countries named.

Walker also needed to get on the right, right side of Trump before our Maximum Leader comes to Wisconsin later this week and shares the stage with Walker, and I'm sure Walker figures the immigration ban issue will die down to his advantage once Trump names his Supreme Court pick and the distraction diverts people's attention as part of the new chaotic normal.
    

Vos Drops Talk Of Bigger Legislative Expense Accounts

Assembly boss Robin Vos, (R-Rochester) abandons fatter per diem payments to state reps. The idea was ill-timed, conceived and illegitimate.

Next up for abandonment: that $487,000 new kitchen remodeling for the Governor's Mansion.

Some are saying it's no big deal if private donations pay the tab, though the makeover request to date has the State Department of Administration's stamp on it.

Wrong: the whole idea is imperious; I'd like to see the GOP raise a half-million for meals for the homeless instead.

Walker Stuck Milwaukee County With Multi-Million Wage, Legal Bills

Like a home seller leaving behind a hidden termite nest in the foundation, Scott Walker walked away from Milwaukee County government in 2010 and left the next administration a multi-million dollar mess to fix:

$4.1 million in wages Walker illegally withheld from County employees through mandatory furlough days he had no authority to order, plus responsibility for a yet-to-be-calculated legal tab run up in the last two years by employees who won restoration of the lost wages, the Journal Sentinel reports.

His imperious behavior - -  on top of eight years managing County finances into the ground - - hurt individual workers, and now all County taxpayers, but Walker is now ensconced in the Governor's Mansion and beyond local accountability.

With Cautions, Washington Post Airs Rumors Of GOP Split With Walker

Passed on with all the appropriate disclaimers, too.

Regardless, people concerned with Walker's budget, his related legislation and imperious, extremist  behavior need to keep up the pressure.

Imperial Waukesha Demands More, More, More

The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce on Saturday tells The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a fit of imperious selfishness that Wisconsin should weaken proposed amendments to an eight-state Great Lakes water management agreement known as the Great Lakes Compact.

That would be a tremendous mistake.

People across the Great Lakes, and especially those in Wisconsin who believe that regional cooperation should mean cooperating on the Great Lakes region, too, need to classify the Chamber's position as narrow-minded endangerment to the world's largest reserve of fresh water.

And also a danger to Wisconsin and the other Great Lakes' water-sensitive commercial and recreational economies.

The compact has been in place since 1985; the amendments would establish rules and standards for communities that wanted to withdraw water from Lake Michigan or another of the Great Lakes - - because a) no one owns Great Lakes water (that's in the Wisconsin Constitution, by the way), and b) Great Lakes water is a common resource.

Common. As in, shared. In fact, commonality is suggested in the very word Compact.

What the Chamber is complaining about is that the proposed amendments - - under review by a state legislative study committee - - would affirm current US law by restating that all eight Great Lakes states have to approve a diversion application for a community like the City of Waukesha.

That procedure, with some reasonable rules and standars, would apply because Waukesha is outside the boundaries of the Great Lakes basin.

Since the water in the Great Lakes is finite, communities like Waukesha would have to show in an application under the amended compact that they have no other reasonable alternative to a diversion - - ruling out matters of convenience - - and that they would pledge to return a reasonably equivilent amount of water to maintain the health of the Great Lakes and its tributaries.

In other words - - do your due diligence, create an application, and apply - - recognizing the shared nature of the water.

But instead, the Chamber wants Wisconsin to adopt a major change to the amended Compact by getting rid of the unanimous, eight-state application approval requirement.

That provision helps guarantee Great Lakes water against diversions throughout the Great Lakes region and beyond - - including withdrawals that could harm Wisconsin.

It's also important to point out that the states took more than four years to agree on the proposed amendments, and because it was a negotiation...about a compact...to steward a common resource...that no one owns...the states agreed that the compact amendments needed the approval of all eight states without significant changes to go into effect.

Or else, why have an agreement...to manage a shared resource...in the common interest...for the public good...in an eight-state region that also covers residents in two Canadian provinces?

If Wisconsin were to adopt the Chamber position and withhold approval of the eight-state, unanimous diversion rule, other states would follow suit or drop the Compact altogether, and the free-for-all to extract Great Lakes water all the way to Arizona.

Or even farther.

The entire push to protect the Great Lakes for the common good with a Compact began when Ontario considered allowing a company to remove tanker-shiploads of Great Lakes water for sale in Asia.

Led by Wisconsin's then-Governor Tony Earl, the states and provinces adopted a Compact that said that diversions outside the boundaries of the Great Lakes basin needed the unanimous approval of all eight US Great Lakes governors.

Because no governor objected, for instance, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin later won a diversion.

What the Chamber also misses is that the compact amendments as proposed already gave communities outside the Great Lakes basin boundaries like Waukesha a break.

The negotiators agreed to include communities like Waukesha for diversion application eligibility because a portion of the county in which they are located - - Waukesha County - - touches a Great Lake basin boundary.

That's the subcontinental divide, visible as the hill at Sunny Slope Rd. in eastern Waukesha County.

Early drafts of the amendments did not include that exception.

And the negotiators drew the defining line at a straddling county - - not, for example, a certain distance from the basin boundary - - thus ruling out diversions into, say, Jefferson County.

Is that fair to Jefferson County?

Might they not want Lake Michigan water, especially since it is known that right now, Waukesha is pulling alot of its well water right now from beneath Jefferson County?

And if you extend that exception to Jefferson County, how about Dane County right next door? After all, Dane County is drawing down its underground water supplies dangerously fast.

Sources familiar with the amendment drafting process have told me that the so-called "straddling county" exception was supported by Wisconsin's negotiators precisely to let the City of Waukesha and other communites in Waukesha County into the process.

Problem is: Already being a winner in the negotiating and drafting procedure, and grateful for the foot in the door it already got, Waukesha doesn't even want to follow that process.

It just wants the water.

Twice last year, Waukesha's Water Utility unsuccessfully asked Gov. Doyle very quietly in legal communications to simply allow it permission to withdraw from water from Lake Michigan three times its current water usage.

And also to permit Waukesha to dispose of that water after treatment into the Fox River and the Mississippi watershed without returning it to the Great Lakes basin.

It was willing to complete a back-door application, in other words, so it's not applying for diversion permission that Waukesha objects to. It just wants to establish the process itself, as if it could secede from the state, region and planet.

Waukesha's Chamber looks at Lake Michigan with an old-fashioned imperial sense of entitlement.

Water, the Chamber says:

A valuable natural resource.

It's close. And accessible.

We want it.

No one should be able to block us...with things like...cooperative agreements...that include standards, scientific reviews, legal regulations and all the other pesky requirements of a modern world that insure a shared and finite resource will be wisely-managed.

Earlier failures to do exactly that with the region's underground water are why the acquifer been so vastly depleted beneath Waukesha.

Instead of learning from decades of over-pumping throughout the region - - and here Waukesha is not the only culprit, and it soon will celebrate the first anniversary of its new water conservation plan - - the Chamber wants to extend the history of poor regional water management by weakening and perhaps killing a long-standing international agreement.

The timing of the Chamber pitch is instructive. This coming Monday, the Waukesha Water Utility and Mayor Larry Nelson have scheduled a 7:00 p.m. public meeting where officials will discuss its water supply planning.

Mayor Nelson will probably play good cop to the Chamber's bad cop.

That's because cooler heads know that the Chamber's exclusionary and exceptionalistic 'us-first' stance is politically self-destructive.

First, it undermines Gov. Doyle. He is the co-chairman of the Council of Great Lakes Governors. That's the body that is proposing the compact amendments.

Is the Chamber's bludgeon the way to win an ally in Madison, and get him to carry your water at the Governors' Council?

And if a Waukesha diversion application ever came their way, don't you think the other governors and the technical reviewers would wonder if regional cooperation down Waukesha way in Wisconsin also meant cooperating on how to reasonably use the Great Lakes region's greatest resource?

"Hmm," might the Compact staffers and other states' natural resources departments reviewers and their bosses and the governors say..."Waukesha, Wisconsin wants a diversion. Aren't those the people that dissed our work on this shared resource?"

Even if Waukesha never applies under the Compact - - maybe the Compact does die because Wisconsin or another state or a court somewhere blew it up, or maybe it takes too long to get all eight states' approvals - - current US law, the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) also contains a provision that all eight US states must approve a diversion.

Does the Chamber want WRDA eliminated, too? How far will its self-centeredness drive it?

Remember. The Great Lakes contain 20% of the world's fresh, finite surface water. (Snow and rainfall replenish it at the rate of 1% a year)

The farther from its basin you divert it, and the fewer controls you have in place to conserve it, the more you endanger it - - for yourselves, your children's children, and for people across a vast region of North America who are depending on you to put stewardship first.

Gingrich to State? Giuliani to Justice? Bannon as WH chie?

Such nasty men.

Looks like the model is South Africa, circa 1970.

And wait until the Federalist Society serves up a Supreme Court nominee or three to make sure everything reactionary and alt-right gets a stamp of approval there.

Again - - Wisconsin is the one-party, corporatized GOP-managed model. Manipulate the base with dog whistles, install an imperious executive, employ a bought-and-paid for partisan Legislature and top it off with supreme court justices who will make everything legal.

Wisconsin Republicans Should Host Psychological Association Convention

Scott Walker gushed over the weekend about the National Governors Association's adoration for Milwaukee - - host city to the NGA's just-concluded 2013 confab.

Walker saw tall buildings, rode around on a Harley and visited Miller Park as something of an awestruck tourist in the very city (Wisconsin's largest, didja know!) he warned the state just last year not to emulate.

So if Walker has any pull with national conference planners, he'd be wise to bring any available psychological organization's meetings to Wisconsin because he and his party are in need of an intervention.

Evidence?

Beyond his quick turnaround on the value of Milwaukee?

*  Well, consider that at the Govenors' conference, Walker called for more federal-state partnerships on transportation despite having run for office against, and helped derail, a federally-funded Amtrak extension from Milwaukee to Madison - - a project that also came with years of employment, plus a train assembly plant and repair shop for additional work in Milwaukee.

He and his legislative allies also shut down transportation partnership planning and investment for a federally-assisted commuter rail line linking southeastern Wisconsin cities and suburbs with the METRA service at the Illinois border, and a separate federally-funded downtown Milwaukee streetcar system.

*  State authorities are ticketing peaceful people over in Madison for drawing hearts in washable chalk on the Downtown Square sidewalks, or singing the words to the First Amendment in the Capitol rotunda, but state authorities did not cite unlicensed guards carrying assault rifles on public forest land near mining sites up North.

*  Then you've got GOP legislators serving Walker's imperious stance by voting to get rid of local control and decision-making on regional transit systems, public sector collective bargaining, local employee residency laws, certain mining agreements, and other public issues - - but are now the champions of local control when it comes to planning for traffic roundabouts.

Despite evidence that roundabouts reduce accidents and their severity.

And though claiming to be fiscal conservatives, Wisconsin Republican legislators  endorsed Walker's refusal of federal health-care funding for low-income residents, booted tens of thousands of those people from existing coverage and then added millions of dollars to the state budget to cover the additional visits to hospital emergency rooms sure to result.

That's a lot of erratic behavior with negative consequences.

Somebody needs to bring in some professional help.

Admitting the need would be a good first step.