Mining Bill Latest Walker Divide-And-Conquer Ploy

It was Gov. Walker himself who introduced "divide-and-conquer" to contemporary Wisconsin politics by manipulating everyday taxpayers and private-sector workers against public employees.

That and other examples, here.

Now Walker and his legislative lieutenants are on to Divide-And-Conquer/Mining 2.0 - -  pitting north against south, and a sluggish economy against environmentalists and a cleaner landscape - - frequent Walker targets - - and against Native Americans whose reservation and water supply would be degraded by miles of long, wide and deep open pit iron mines that Walker's 'mining reform' bill (the existing law works just fine) would help carve out of the Penokee Hills near Lake Superior.

Two years of Walker's ideologically-driven, pro-business efforts to create jobs have fallen flat. He's way short of benchmarks to hit his ridiculous bumper-sticker campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs by January, 2015.

His "Open For Business" border signs were a joke.

His tax breaks haven't worked - - except to reward corporate supporters.

Neither has his signature-and-failed Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation - - a spectacularly wasteful and incompetently run, CEO-friendly replacement for the Department of Commerce. Millions in dubious loans were not tracked. Money is gone through defaults. It's a mess.

Remember: this is his baby, and he is its chair

So back again, and against this backdrop of failings, comes the mining bill he lost a year ago because too many State Senators couldn't stomach its secretive, special-interest crafting by the Assembly and its disregard for both the treaty rights of the Bad River Ojibwe Band and waters that flow into Lake Superior.

But now Walker has a larger working majority in the Senate, and has been pushing mining legislation on a statewide tour - - all in the name of jobs (read: Save my backside).

While inflating the mine's potential job creation, ignoring the likelihood that the mining company would bring in out-of-state workers) and overlooking losses in tourism and recreation employment incompatible with mountain-top removal blasting, air pollution, trucking, acid runoff and on-site smelting.

Care to go fishing in the Bad River watershed with gargantuan trucks rumbling by, dynamite blasts in the background, dust in the air and pyrite sulfates in the water?

Walker, mining interests and legislators under their control will say an iron mine up north is the silver bullet for the economy, when, in fact, a mining bill based on the dreadful Assembly version that is again being touted in the GOP-controlled legislature is little more than jobs'-loss cover for Walker's failed policies.

What will be created?

A divided state.

Plenty of ill will.

Angst for people who love the land or who are being willfully ignored by the state on the Bad River Reservation.

Years of wasted staff work by state agencies -- at our expense - - and more legal costs for mine opponents who will prove in court that the proposed mine is a political fiasco and charade that offends the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust [for Water] Doctrine, the US Clean Water Act and tribal treaty rights.

This iteration of divide-and-conquer is a damaging and shameful loser.