[Updated] I'd wondered on this blog Saturday whether Gov. Scott Walker actually showed up - - as he'd pledged to do - - in flood-damaged N. WI after punting from Donald Trump's Green Bay appearance Friday:
"Park looks great," Walker said on his Facebook page:
"Looks great?"
That scene would not have looked "just great"if the miles and miles of open pit iron ore mining Walker wanted been dug and operated for up to a century - - with the Penokee Hills blasted away and the wetlands and rivers fouled with acidic tailings and the air clogged with dust pollution - - all goosed along by secret campaign funding and many corporately-linked legislative favors - - had not finally died under the weight of widespread citizen opposition, the power of US treaties with the Bad River Ojibwe band and falling iron ore prices.
Not to mention the overwhelming importance of clean water at the edge of Lake Superior and its historic wild-rice producing sloughs - - threatened anew by another ridiculous idea - - plopping a 26,000-pig feeding operation and its nine millions gallons of manure annually in the same area.
The open pit iron ore mine which DNR Secretary Stepp touted as a partisan GOP hack and not just as the "chamber of commerce mentality" cabinet officer Walker put atop the agency to discount the people's input and give away state land, water, air quality, wildlife and the public trust.
Copper Falls? Really, Governor: have you no shame, sense of irony - - or Google?
You know, this is the second such posting and point I've made.
Twenty six months ago:
"...he will continue leading the response to the violent storms that swept through northern Wisconsin last month. As part of this commitment, later this week he will survey ongoing recovery efforts and meet with residents and local officials about their needs during this difficult time," a Walker spokesman said.Indeed he did, 'leading the response" by posting photos of himself eating spaghetti at a fundraiser, tapping beers, and, below, with DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp and others saying "cheese" at Copper Falls.
"Park looks great," Walker said on his Facebook page:
Joined @TravelWI, @WDNR & local offics. at Copper Falls for storm clean up update. Park looks great. #NWiOpen4Biz
That scene would not have looked "just great"if the miles and miles of open pit iron ore mining Walker wanted been dug and operated for up to a century - - with the Penokee Hills blasted away and the wetlands and rivers fouled with acidic tailings and the air clogged with dust pollution - - all goosed along by secret campaign funding and many corporately-linked legislative favors - - had not finally died under the weight of widespread citizen opposition, the power of US treaties with the Bad River Ojibwe band and falling iron ore prices.
Not to mention the overwhelming importance of clean water at the edge of Lake Superior and its historic wild-rice producing sloughs - - threatened anew by another ridiculous idea - - plopping a 26,000-pig feeding operation and its nine millions gallons of manure annually in the same area.
The open pit iron ore mine which DNR Secretary Stepp touted as a partisan GOP hack and not just as the "chamber of commerce mentality" cabinet officer Walker put atop the agency to discount the people's input and give away state land, water, air quality, wildlife and the public trust.
Copper Falls? Really, Governor: have you no shame, sense of irony - - or Google?
You know, this is the second such posting and point I've made.
Twenty six months ago:
I don't think you could find a greater contradiction in Wisconsin government behavior right now than the Department of Tourism's promotion of Copper Falls State Park's beautiful trails and waterfalls and the years of pressure and deregulatory work by Gov. Walker and Republican legislators to get the nation's biggest open-pit iron mine dug in the very Bad River watershed that makes the Park and region an attraction.
"There are, of course, many ways our economic policy could be improved. But the most important thing we need is sharply increased public investment in everything from energy to transportation to wastewater treatment.
ReplyDeleteHow should we pay for this investment? We shouldn’t — not now, or any time soon. Right now there is an overwhelming case for more government borrowing."
-- Paul Krugman
"Time to Borrow", Aug. 8, 2016
Regardless of the wisdom of federal borrowing to invest in infrastructure, this will be resisted because it retards the trend of privatization of public wealth.
Indeed, Wisconsin has become a textbook example of a good state gone bad through imposition of a feudal model of governance without social conscience, and of a blatantly corrupted civil service, enthusiastically enforcing starvation of funding, and accelerating privatization, of public resources.
The obstruction of the seditious Tea Party wing which has overtaken the Party of Lincoln is the manifestation of diseased mentality codified in the paranoid and reactionary ideology of the John Birch Society, headquartered in Appleton Wisconsin.
Sons of John Birch Society member Fred Koch have led the decline of responsible governance through promotion of fiscally irresponsible model legislation and purchase of political stooges such as Governor Scott Walker.
In the attendant societal distress, their Dark Money cabal have simply been out-maneuvered in selection of a 2016 GOP presidential candidate by Putin's banksters, whose preciously corrupt malefactor was carefully tutored in the artful use of slime by Senator Joe McCarthy's lawyer Roy Cohn.
-- ABS Fremont, CA http://nyti.ms/2b360ac