In Wisconsin, groundwater abuses, ground level corruption

Here's how to get a grip on the pollution of Wisconsin's groundwater and GOP-managed politics in Wisconsin these days:

Say you discover you've got heart disease, so you go to the long-established public hospital because it has the doctors and labs you need but find a new crop of intake workers who tell you:

We know how to treat you, but some new people bought the place who have friends in high places, and get a lot of donations from cigarette manufacturers and fast food chains, and they decided to change the hospital mission to a more free market operation -- so they cut the budget, laid off scientists, left vacancies unfilled and assigned their lawyers to remove any language from the charter that says we have to provide you treatment.

Now you understand why Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' Wisconsin Department Natural Resources political managers aren't fining polluters or assertively regulating the manure output of big feedlots.

And why industry-captive Wisconsin legislators got the corporate-friendly Attorney General to opine that the DNR didn't have to bring the feedlots into line, and now that a second judge has told the DNR it should do its feedlot regulatory job in the public interest, the feedlot-obeisant legislators will write a law this fall to order the DNR to leave the industrial-scale feedlot operators alone.

Knowng that the same special interests which put Scott Walker into office and his gerrymandered legislative allies into their seats for life have also rigged the Wisconsin Supreme Court's majority and its ethical standards, too, so, in the end, dirty water wins, you lose, and there's a perpetual bad taste in democracy's mouth.