In WI DNR reorg., fun from the top down, Part 4

I've been writing today about the Wisconsin DNR's much-anticipated 'realignment' - - here's one post which summarizes Parts 1, 2 and 3 - -  but seriously - - 18 months of career employee anxiety meant the Secretary was having a buzzwordy blast? 

...Stepp said many of the reorganization ideas came from DNR employees. 

"That's what's been the most fun for me out of this entire process is to watch people excited about contributing to a much more vibrant and sustainable future for this very important agency," Stepp said in the interview. "And to see some of their ideas come into being for the first time ever."

Though not as much fun as that Halloween party, I betcha, and note that fun at the DNR is one of Stepp's signatures!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent:   Wednesday, October 19, 2011 11:30 AM

Subject:        Please join us

This message is sent to all DNR Central Office staff, Darwin Road staff, and Regional Directors:

Come and join us for our 1st annual Halloween Progressive Potluck  

How does it work?

Staff on each floor will be designated a food type to bring.  For example, employees on 8th floor are asked to bring meat or a hot dish which will be set up in a conference room on 8th floor. The same will happen with each floor.  (See attached poster for food assignments). Everyone will need to go floor to floor to get a balanced meal (unless you are in the mood for only dessert and you can just stay on 7th floor…) Don't have time to get something together for the potluck??  Bring a canned good to donate to the food pantry instead.  

And Costume Challenge!

Central Office has challenged the Regions to a costumer competition. We are asking each bureau and office to take a picture of their staff in costume and forward it to Laurel Steffes. Pictures will be included in the next e-digest.  Who wins?  You decide. And the prize?  The pride in believing that your region/office was the best!! 

Our Goals?

To have fun

To mingle with staff on different floors

To enjoy some great food

In WI DNR reorg, forestry biz a big winner, Part 3

I'd posted items earlier today about feedlot and manure producers winning big in the WI Department of Natural Resources 'realignment' announced Wednesday morning, as well Team Walker thumbing its collective polluting nose at federal clean water monitors , so let me post a third significant item from what DNR managers told staffers at an agency-wide meeting.

In a nutshell, there is another Wisconsin industry winner other than feedlot operators and big ag in the reorganization - - forestry - - from which Walker just inserted a key insider into a top-level DNR position - - which I recently noted based on a DNR news release:

Fred Souba Jr. has been appointed Chief State Forester by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The 40 year forest industry veteran will also serve as administrator for the DNR Division of Forestry...

Currently the owner and Senior Consultant of ProVision Forestry LLC... Souba has been the chair of the Wisconsin Council on Forestry (exit DNR) for seven years.

 
WI DNR staffers were told today that there would be these added forestry industry priorities:

*  a reduction in the review times for private forest management plans, applications, cutting plans and cutting reports.

*  an increase in service to private land owners with a focus on woodland owners not engaged in sustainable forestry practices.

* Helping the feds who manage the Chequamegon-Nicolet Forests hit harvest goals and get more wood to the market to fuel the economy.

Bottom line: 

This iteration DNR managers is reading from Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' playbook by serving the Wisconsin's wooded, rural red counties which give Walker and the GOP its electoral base.

More later.

WI DNR reorg. sticks it to US EPA, clean water WI, Part 2

I'm posting a series of preliminary reactions - - Part 1, here - -  to the unveiling by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources today of its long-awaited 'realignment' which we already know intends to reward some of the state's biggest polluting livestock operations and heaviest users of groundwater already being deregulated with the privatizers' Dream Scenario:

Writing their own environmental permit rules.


Kinda like telling habitual reckless drivers they can set their own speed limits, or letting smokestack emitters decide what constitutes air pollution.

It bears noting that the DNR, run with the 'chamber of commerce mentality' Scott Walker installed atop the intentionally-diminished department, is already under scrutiny by the US Environmental Protection Agency for systematically evading state obligations under the US Clean Water Act since 2011.

That Walker and the DNR's corporatized management team would move to further enable the groundwater hogs in the state whose operations also have spilled millions of gallons of manure into streams and let it leak its toxins into residential wells tells me these things:

*  The Walker administration continues to thumb its nose at the EPA.

*  The Walker administration continues to put private profit and Walker donor interests above the people's constitutional rights to clean water.

*  Even if the EPA writes clean water orders for the state, or takes over the clean water enforcement program, as the EPA can do, the Walker administration is cynically betting that the incoming Donald Trump EPA team will undo any remedial actions ordered, or will withdraw the threat of federal action, period.

I can't see any other explanation for Walker's DNR to further deregulate clean water enforcement in the state just a few weeks after EPA officials came to Madison, spent several days in a highly-publicized records inspection spurred by numerous citizen and expert complaints, and held a heavily-attended public session in Eau Claire to take more public input on the clean water crisis in the state.

At first glance, DNR reorg. is win for polluters, Part 1

About that big reorganization of the Wisconsin DNR, the agency which Scott Walker is running with his self-defined 'chamber of commerce mentality.' 

Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel reports that privatization winners in the deal include the big manure-producing animal feeding operations which are growing substantially in number and capacity - - which also are commanding more and more millions of gallons of groundwater constitutionally-owned by all the state's residents, but diverted thanks to the cooperation of the DNR and the Attorney General - - operations which will be allowed to write their own environmental compliance plans without which they cannot receive DNR operating permits:

The Department of Natural Resources said Wednesday it will turn over some regulatory duties to the private sector, including preparation of environmental permits for manure handling of Wisconsin’s largest farms.

That's a sweet deal for these polluting special interests, including major Walker donors, especially since there are several such big projects on the table. And, no surprise, big Walker donors are involved.

Note also that the DNR is claiming that it cannot do its traditional work, like permit plans, and other functions it intends to privatize or eliminate, because it doesn't have the staff anymore to carry out the work.

Which is exactly why Walker began cutting the DNR so drastically - - with Secretary Cathy Stepp's approval - - and why more cuts are coming.

It's the self-fulfilling prophecy of Grover Norquist's infamous drown the government in a bathtub theory of governing/non-governing that, by design, makes government inefficient and elevates tprofits over the public interest.

More on this later. 

Wash Post discovers Sheriff Clarke's '16 jail body count

Good to see the Washington Post - - and note the photo accompanying the story shows Clarke before the dye hit his beard - - publishing a warning about appointing Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke to the position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security:

The Huffington Post reported Tuesday that four people, including a newborn baby, have died in Clarke’s Milwaukee County Jail since April, prompting a visit from a court-appointed medical monitor. 

Funny that the Huffington Post got credited, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been covering the jailhouse deaths on Clarke's watch - - 

- - since July - - examples here and here - - and local bloggers have been spreading the word, too. 

Job losses, GOP transparency expose Walker's anti-worker legacy

[Updated] We discover the harsh, true facts about Scott Walker's continuing failure to create jobs in our low-wage, stalled-economy and also gain some truth-telling about Walker's sacrifice of workers' rights -- facts distributed on behalf of the inveterate self-promoting Walker by a national GOP group he chairs.

*  On the jobs front, a paper mill in Neenah announced the wipe out of 85 jobs from a 400-employee operation, again underscoring the nearly-six-year failure of GOP Gov.Scott Walker to create jobs and grow the economy even with full control of the state to cut employer taxes and offer other incentives, reduce wages through 'right to work' legislation, reorganize government to serve business through easing of numerous regulations, the corporatization of the Department of Natural Resources and the establishment of his signature new but deeply troubled business underwriting entity, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

Yet Walker is now nearly two years behind on keeping his key campaign promise to create 250,000 new jobs in four years, and has stood by disinterested as Caterpillar, Oscar Meyer, Manitowoc Crane and even cutting-edge tech businesses have closed up despite, or because of - - one-party, WMC-directed purportedly pro-business but ideologically-stifling rule here.

* And we also learned today, thanks to an email distribution from the Republican Governors Association, (RGA), which Walker now chairs, that partisan, self-serving political goals - - weaker unions and stronger GOP legislative majorities - - were won and are deepening for Walker, his party and the anti-union right in Wisconsin through Act 10.

And speaking of Walker's self-promotion, it's the theme of today's installment in Dave Umhoefer's excellent examination of Walker the consummate pol.

So forget all that b.s thrown out there by Walker at the time about busted budgets and state financial woes to justify Act 10 which he crafted in secret, then dropped like a bomb on state employees.

The RGA news release and headline - -  

Wisconsin’s Reform Lesson 

GOP Governor Scott Walker’s union reform has yielded huge political benefits

- - tell the real Act 10 story:

Wall Street Journal: Wisconsin’s Reform Lesson GOP Governor Scott Walker’s union reform has yielded huge political benefits Wisconsin's Reform Lesson Wall Street Journal, 11/30/2016 The GOP will control the state houses and legislatures in 30 states in 2017, and if Republicans want to use this new power they could do worse than look at the Wisconsin example. Governor Scott Walker’s reform of public union laws has transformed the state’s politics. Mr. Walker’s 2011 reforms, known as Act 10, removed the ability of public unions to collectively bargain for benefits and required that unions be recertified every year by a majority of all members. The law ended the government’s role as the union’s automatic dues collector, and in 2015 Wisconsin also became a right-to-work state. Given a choice for the first time, workers have left the union in droves. A recent analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that since 2011 the state has seen the largest decline in the country in the concentration of union members in the workforce. By 2015 union members made up some 8.3% of workers in Wisconsin, down from 14.2% before Mr. Walker’s reforms. The Badger State has some 187,000 fewer union members than in 2005, and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association has lost some 30% of its members. Unions still have clout but they must now operate on the same footing as other groups that represent member interests—such as trade associations—by providing services in exchange for financial support. Union reforms and right-to-work laws aren’t the only drivers of economic growth, but they do attract many businesses that won’t consider operating in states without them. The reduction in union power has stabilized public finances that were spiraling upward. This in turn gives businesses confidence that they won’t be hit with tax increases year after year, a la Illinois, Connecticut and other states where politics is still dominated by the nexus of public-union donations and government officials. In 2016 Forbes ranked Wisconsin the 27th state in the country for business, up from 40th in 2011. A survey of CEOs by the Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce found that 84% say the state is heading in the right direction. In 2011 Mr. Walker’s union reforms and the public Battle of Madison looked like a huge political risk. This year the GOP added two seats to its state Senate majority, which is now 20-13, and one in the Assembly (64 to 35). Break up the duopoly of politicians and government unions, and good things can happen. Read the full WSJ editorial here.

Did S&P fall for that Chinese climate change hoax?

Maybe Trump and campaign finance chairman-cum-Secretary of the Treasury and former Goldman banker Steven Mnuchin missed this during the campaign.

S&P: Banks that ignore climate risk face credit downgrade 

Published on 06/05/2016, 11:30am

Financial institutions should prepare for “multilayered and significant impacts” of global warming, analysts warn

Possible new US minority group

Trump cabinet members not billionaires.

Here's one, for example - - Attorney General designee Jeff Sessions.

Clarke's jail deaths reported on MSNBC Tuesday night

Journalists Roland Martin (right, below) and Lawrence O'Donnell discussed Tuesday night the recent deaths in Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke's jail as disqualifying Clarke for nomination to the position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. 

Glad the word is getting out.

They also predicted a rough confirmation hearing should Clarke get the nod, because, as O'Donnell pointed out, a nominee testifying before Senators at a Cabinet confirmation hearing can't refuse to answer questions about the jail deaths as Clarke has done to date:

The death of an inmate in the Milwaukee County Jail has been ruled a homicide, four months after corrections officers reportedly cut off his water supply for an extended period of time.

The cause of death was dehydration, with other significant conditions including bipolar disorder, according to autopsy results released Thursday by the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office...

The county jail is overseen by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.

Mark your calendars: big WI DNR reorg. comes down 11/30

[Updated from 11/19] That long-delayed reorganization or 'realignment" of the purposes and personnel at the Scott Walker-defined-Cathy Stepp-managed 'chamber of mentality' Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources 
 
is to be announced after Thanksgiving and the close of the gun deer season at what the agency is calling a Town Hall meeting on Wednesday, November 30th.

In other words, hundreds and hundreds of water, wildlife, land, forestry, parks, air quality, and waste management scientists, technicians, specialists and support staffers will find out if they will remain working with their DNR colleagues on assignments in familiar surroundings, or are to be moved singly or in groups to another DNR office and location across the state, or perhaps to a UW campus or center, or into the bureaucracy at Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection on Madison's far East side, or to a cubicle in the Wisconsin Public Service Commission…or, after next year's downsizing budget…to the streets….

Update: Note that any program or function or policy implementation farmed out to another agency is thus removed from review by the DNR's oversight body - - the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board - - unique in state government history for the citizen input it encourages - - which Walker, with loyal soldier Cathy Stepp's OK, tried to sneak past the people unsuccessfully in his last budget.

So Walker and Stepp are opting for a piecemeal approach this time, using their administrative powers.

If the WNRB is stripped of its purview, you don't get important studies like this one on the frac sand industry which resulted from a grassroots petition to the WNRB. Walker and the 'chamber of commerce mentality' special interests he is serving know this.

Wrapped in obfuscatory and sugar-coated platitudes about 'streamlining' and 'customer service' and consultant-driven metrics and buzzwords - - all cover for faster favor-dispensing to the GOP donors and corporate entities from which Stepp and her senior appointees have come - - forestry, trade, development, etc. - - line staffers and experts alike who won't miss the messages being delivered about who shall be served.

Like the message which was pretty clear not long ago when she wished out loud that her staffers were more like the McDonald's workers she could easily push around when she was a a fast food manager. 

And her original public statement about what she thought of the employees she was soon to supervise because Scott Walker liked what he saw:

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads... 

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

All this ideological, one-dimensional and punitive trampling of public servants and the environment in a state agency once respected nationally for its public health mission - - clean water, clean air, pristine state parks - - and resource stewardship in the public interest - -  but which, under Walker, has become a politicized, partisan and de facto Department of Commerce replacing the he earlier killed by streamlining it into a failed, scandal-ridden public-private job creating corporation, the WEDC.

One thing is for certain: there will be more DNR budget cuts and staff resignations coming, a smaller staff, and a deeper sense of despair as change from above, no doubt cleared with or demanded by corporate special interests and key ideologues in and around the State Capitol, is dropped on an already burdened and dispirited professional staff.

After all, there are big corporate projects on the table and the businesses and donors involved would prefer as 'streamlined' an agency and as little citizen review as Walker can deliver.

And the election is over, so no chance that backlash might jeopardize or embarrass any GOP legislators whose constituents might not like any changes when they hit.

One more thing.

Town Hall meeting! The suggestion of equity, parity, Jeffersonian Democracy, perhaps. 

In the most top-down, buttoned-up Wisconsin administration in memory.

Really.

But Happy New Year.

Of course WI will restrict the presidential vote recount

[Updated from 11/28] The Wisconsin Elections [Sic] Commission said "no" today to the legal request sought by Green Party candidate Jill Stein for a hand-recount of ballots cast in the November 8th Presidential election - - the same careful, focused type of recount which actually discovered that the wrong candidate, Republican Norm Coleman, had been declared the winner of a US Senate seat in Minnesota that was won by Democrat Al Franken:

Stein had an affidavit from a leading computer scientist. The argument is that we should review the paper ballots in the counties in Wisconsin where voters use paper-ballot based systems and that we should examine the electronic voting machines, in use in other Wisconsin counties, which have been proven to be untrustworthy. In Michigan, Trump won by 11,000 votes. But there were 85,000 “blank votes” in which people voted for other races but they left the presidential race blank. That is far higher than any election in history. A hand count of the ballots could determine if the box was merely checked, but the oval not filled in. If so, it will be counted. This can make a difference in the outcome. In Minnesota in 2008, Sen. Al Franken won entirely on a recount of paper ballots. The machine count had declared Norm Coleman a winner, but the hand counting showed Franken was the actual winner.

Here's the Wisconsin ruling:

Elections commission rejects request for hand recount

[Update] - - Gov. Walker has thrown in his ultra-partisan and self-serving two cents, blasting the recount which is allowed under state law (until Republicans restrict it in the next legislative session - - just watch) - - and repeating his misleading talking point about having made it easier to vote in Wisconsin but harder to cheat - - disproven by federal judicial decisions overturning GOP-drafted restrictions on early voting and legislative redistricting gerrymandering which undermined democracy and Democratic voters' constitutionally-protected representation. And Walker cheated the public during his 2010 run for the Governor's office, using Milwaukee County staff and resources to raise money, organize events and support other candidates.

Investigations like the one that sent six of Walker's aides and associates to jail were subsequently made harder under bills passed by the GOP-led legislature and signed into law by Walker. Details and links below where "John Doe" investigations are discussed.

Democrats joined Republican members of the commission in the ruling - - and Stein can sue to force the hand count which can also be done at the discretion of each Wisconsin County -  - - but read further to understand that the Commission is there in the first place because the Walkerites killed the body's non-partisan predecessor and took such decisions out of the hands of a group of non-partisan retired judges and turned them over to party-driven processes.

Citing the results of a 2011 statewide recount that changed only 300 votes, commission chairman Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said this presidential recount is very unlikely to change Republican Donald Trump's win in the state.

"It may not be 22,177," said Thomsen, referring to Trump's win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the vote count. "But I don’t doubt that the president-elect is going to win that."

Thomsen dismissed Stein's claims of problems with the vote as unfounded and misleading. But he directed his toughest criticism to President-elect Trump's unsupported allegations that millions of people voted illegally nationwide, calling them "an insult to the people that run our elections."

The commission is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans. It adopted the recount plans unanimously.

It is disappointing that the commission with no third-party representation is signaling premature and self-serving assurance while ruling out the hand recount sought by Stein, and supported by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Worse, it reinforces the partisan cast of a state where the GOP's candidate narrowly won the state's electoral votes, and Wisconsin is run as a one-party state by an autocratic legislature in league with an imperial Governor and State Supreme Court that sacrificed its impartiality when it had a 4-3 conservative majority that has now risen to an even harder-edged 5-2 right tilt.

The commission is the partisan replacement election and campaign referee created by Republican legislators and signed into law by GOP Governor Scott Walker because the predecessor body, the non-partisan, acclaimed Wisconsin Accountability Board, had provided staff support for Grand Jury-like "John Doe" investigations into allegations of campaign finance law violations which ensnared Walker and several GOP-linked advocacy groups.

The Accountability Board wipe out was part of a Walker/GOP legislative assault on clean government protections that included legalizing candidate/outside financing coordination which had been probed in the "John Doe" investigations, banning the use of John Doe investigations into allegations of political corruption, and loosening campaign donation limits to bring more special interest funding into state campaigns:

Gov. Scott Walker has cemented key changes in time for the 2016 political campaign, signing into law bills giving campaign finance law its biggest makeover in decades and dismantling and replacing Wisconsin’s oversight board for elections and elected officials. 

Walker’s signing of the two bills, announced in a press release, was conducted in private Wednesday. It was widely expected after the bills passed the Legislature last month on votes that largely mirrored party lines.

All of which will help the GOP maintain its enormous legislative majorities that feed Walker the bills he wants and which will find rubber-stamped approvals if challenged in a 5-2 right-wing-ruled State Supreme Court where conservative justices share business and ideologically-driven donor groups with Walker and his legislative majorities.

Note also that this is the same legislature routinely obeisant to the divide-and-conquer Walker and his agenda-setting donors whose most recent gerrymandered redistricting, crafted in secrecy, was such an extreme attack on basic democratic governance that three federal judges just ruled 2-1 that the district maps had been drawn illegally to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

The 'chamber of commerce mentality' Walker installed atop the Department of Natural Resources that has steered rule-making and policy direction towards privatizing state land, water access and clean air enforcement has the same source and intention as the one-party, anti-democratic, corporately-directed GOP rule that has also trashed a century of civil service in the state, obstructed ballot box access so blatantly that a federal judge had to intervene, slashed the UW budget and long-standing tenure system, starved K-12 public school financing, and suppressed wages by nearly entirely wiping out public sector collective bargaining, further discouraged unionization in private-sector workplaces through 'right-to-work' legislation and has frozen the minimum wage to enrich corporate bottom lines at a rock-bottom, poverty-enforcing $7.25-per hour - - even designating it a "living wage."

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed the new state budget into law on Sunday with a last-minute change that strips the words “living wage” from state laws and replaces it with “minimum wage.

The change means minimum-wage Wisconsin workers will earn nearly $6,000 per year less than what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculates is a living wage in the state. And they will have no recourse, according to the Center for American Progress. MIT says a living wage would be $10.13 an hour.

The new law eliminates the ability of low-wage workers to appeal for a living wage. Previously, Wisconsin law stated that employee pay “shall be not less than a living wage,” defined as “adequate to permit any employee to maintain herself or himself in minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.” Wisconsin’s living wage was tied to the state minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour.

In short, Wisconsin is less a democratic state in the traditional citizen-involved/shared-power sense and more an arm of the business community which, again, has wish lists awaiting tilted decision-making on what are really foregone conclusions:

*  Decision-making on the high-end golf course which Kohler Company wants to build in a Lake Michigan shoreline nature preserve filled with rare wetlands and dunes, Native American artifacts, wildlife and thousands of trees. 

As with some of the groundwater-depleting and runoff polluting feedlot expansions and other high-profile land transactions, a major Walker donor is involved and fair environmental procedures waived, as the DNR has proceeded with golf course project reviews in a taxpayer-paid smoothing process without a formal permit application in hand which the company would have to formally defend.

At some point, the DNR is going to have to decide whether to ask for that permit application: with DNR officials also on record saying they may allow some project permits to be written by the applicant and not by the agency - - the ultimate regulatory capitulation to donors and polluters - -  I could imagine Kohler eventually being allowed to write the final permit itself, since the DNR has already goosed the preliminaries along in the company's favor.

*  Decision-making on the precedent-setting 26,000-hog Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operation, (CAFO), complete with nine football field-size manure storage containers and spreading operations set on several nearby farm fields, which an Iowa pork producer wants to locate close to scenic Lake Superior Chequamegon Bay.

Esquire's online columnist Charles P. Pierce routinely puts it this way:

...Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin...

And I see Pierce has changed it up a bit:

It's fitting that the current demand to audit/recount the presidential vote is centered on Wisconsin. The transformation of the state where so much of the progressive improvements to self-government began into the independent Republic of Griftsylvania (Scott Walker, assistant manager for sales) is one of the great triumphs of the money power and its lickspittles in modern American politics.

Truth-in-commentary.

From the Black River Forest/Kohler golf course front

A couple of messages from Friends of the Black River Forest, a grassroots group fighting against environmental and political degradation:

"What 'Steward of the Environment' cuts down a forest for a golf course?
What 'Steward of the Environment' eliminates animal habitat shared with a State Park? Who installs 5 high capacity wells in a Town entirely dependent on wells, bringing its golf course water consumption to over 250 million gallons a year--IN THE MIDDLE OF A STATE GROUNDWATER CRISIS?"
Watch video or read the Read transcript

And

Friends   of   the   Black  River   Forest P.O. Box 804      Sheboygan       53082       friendsbrf1@hotmail.com

Some of our fabulous Prizes: Royal Racer vintage sled with vintage style collectible dolls with $90 Stefanie Weil Center gift certificate, hand knit gloves, winter hats and more. Antique sled for two with  $75. Bullitz sleigh or wagon ride Many restaurant and bar certificates Spa baskets and more. Just some examples of our wonderful collection of prizes! Unique Christmas collectibles & more One of a kind art in the silent auction. Come join us for FUN, FOOD and ENTERTAINMENT !! Sat. Dec. 3 from 2-8 p.m. at Lakeshore Lanes Windjammer Room www.friendsblackriverforest.org

Digital Donald might have super-transparent Presidency

Why?

Because no sane foreign leader, CEO or everyday visitor who needs an accurate record for practical or historical reasons will dare meet with Trump if there is any risk of getting caught up after the meeting in a loopy, 13-Tweet sh**storm like the one he launched over the weekend with apparently too much time and cellphone access on his hands - - including:

	Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump	16h
	Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!
	View details ·

	Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump	19h
	states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!
	View details ·

	Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump	20h
	It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4--
	View details ·

	Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump	20h
	In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
	View details ·

And, seriously - - "the so-called popular vote?"  And "winning the Electoral College in a landslide?"