Not Your Grandfather's Republicans In Wisconsin These Days

There's a rumor floating around - - with some justification given Scott Walker's disregard for wetlands' permitting and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund - - that lands owned by the state for common use will be sold off to developers or loggers in a broad and single-minded push towards public asset privatization.

A little history here:

I was reading Edmund Morris' Colonel Roosevelt last night, and was struck by lines on page 35 about how the newly-retired President Teddy Roosevelt was disturbed to learn by letter while touring Africa in 1910 that his successor, Pres. William Taft, was unraveling Roosevelt's Progressive legacy.

And had removed Gifford Pinchot, a Roosevelt appointee and protege, as the country's chief forester.

Writes Morris:

"'We have fallen back down the hill you have led us up," Pinchot wrote, "and there is a general belief that the special interests are once again more in substantial control of both Congress and the Administration." He portrayed a well-meaning but weak president, co-opted by "reactionaries" careless of natural resources. Wetlands and woodlands that Roosevelt had withdrawn from commercial exploitation had been given back to profiteers."

Sounds like where Walker is headed - - enabled by a weakened Department of Natural Resources and a compliant legislature - - with lands set aside in the Stewardship Program named jointly for Republican Governor Warren Knowles and Democrat Gaylord Nelson.

Sidebar: I said in the blog post headline "not your grandfather's Republicans" because my grandfather M.G. was a devoted Teddy Roosevelt (TR) backer.

When TR's youngest son Quentin was killed during World War I in mid-July, 1918, my grandfather memorialized that tragedy by giving my father Hobart, born July 31, 1918, the middle name Quentin.