Wisconsin Has Become Bizarro World Under Walker

Pop culture vultures from Superman comic book devotees to "Seinfeld" fans know that everything is backwards or inverted on the fictional, cube-shaped planet of Bizarro World, where the credo begins:

"Us do opposite of all Earthly things!

The metaphor holds up if you look at Wisconsin turned upside-down by Scott Walker and his allies in the State Legislature and even on the State Supreme Court in the last two years:

* Wisconsin was the first state to legalize public employee collective bargaining, but Walker's Act 10 has virtually killed the process.

* Wisconsin produced environmental leaders and inspirations from Aldo Leopold to Gaylord Nelson, but the Walkerites instituted wolf hunting, want a Sandhill crane "harvest," eliminated a system of air pollution alerts, rolled back wetland protections, killed train projects, enabled Wild West frac sand mining and chose fossil fuels over wind turbines and other renewable energy programs.

*  Wisconsin built a wonderfully serene network of state parks and trails; the Walkerites he installed to run the DNR like a bueiness want to allow hunting and trapping on about two-thirds of the parks and trail acreage.

*  Ojibwe tribes in the 19th century ceded land through treaties across the northwoods to help create the state and provide timber to settlers for their homes and culture, so now the state wants to pave the way - - liberally - -  for a massive open-pit iron ore mine up to a mile across, 22 miles long and 1,000 feet deep at the edge of Ojibwe rice-growing lands - - downstream from the proposed mine.

* Wisconsin is among the leaders nationally in voter turnout, so Walker and his GOP allies are moving to tamp down election participation by requiring mandatory ID cards and ending popular election-day voter registration - - so popular, in fact, that Walker's son Matt, a college student, registered at the polls for his first vote this summer, with Dad in tow.

*  Walker said the state was broke, instituted austerity measures and effectively cut public employee pay in the name of fiscal restraint, but now his wife wants a $487,000 kitchen upgrade to the Governor's Mansion.

* And Assembly Republicans, after instituting cut-after-cut across the board in the budget - - well, with the exception of funding the now-foundering Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation which Walker chairs - - are talking about increasing their $88-per-day taxpayer-paid, and tax-free expense account allowances.

* Bizarro World certainly extends to the Walker-created-and-chaired Development Corp, where millions of dollars are owed but were not tracked or may be lost forever through bankruptcies.

On Bizarro World, bonds sold are guaranteed to lose money.