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"There will be more than 8,000 parade participants representing forty organizations including high school and university marching bands, equestrian corps, first responders, and veterans groups,” the [Trump Inaugural] committee said, adding that more information regarding the parade, such as biographies and the order, “will be forthcoming” and “[f]urther participants may also be announced.”For the record, one Wisconsin organization marched in President Obama's second inaugural parade.
Citing Scripture and declaring that "tyranny is now on our doorstep," Chamberlin likened Trump to Adolf Hitler...
"I only know I could never 'throw roses to Hitler'," she wrote. "And I certainly could never sing for him."
Water preparedness activities appear to have “slowed or stalled” in four of the nine best prepared states – Alaska, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Duly-noted as stalled by The Badger Herald.
According to "Poisoning the Great Lakes: Mercury Emissions from Coal-Fired Power Plants In the Great Lakes Region," Ohio emits the largest amount of mercury from coal-fired power plants (21 percent of the total in the Great Lakes region), followed closely by Pennsylvania (20 percent) and Indiana (16 percent). The remaining five states in the region rank as follows: Michigan (14 percent); Illinois (11 percent); Wisconsin (9.5 percent); Minnesota (6.5 percent); and New York (2 percent). Plants from outside the region also contribute to mercury pollution in the Great Lakes.A few things jump out off the DNR pages:
* Jim Doyle must still be Governor.
In 2007, Governor Doyle convened a Task Force on Global Warming. In July 2008, this task force approved an extensive set of policy recommendations to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in three steps, culminating in a 75% reduction by 2050 from a 2005 baseline. The Task Force report outlined these policy recommendations, which included many significant actions such as:Finally, at the Roles page, the DNR defines itself again through the work of the Doyle administration, leading with, at "What The DNR is Doing":
The Wisconsin Legislative Council prepared summary documents related to the Task Force recommendations, including:
- Expanding the state's existing energy conservation and efficiency programs
- Adopting California vehicle standards for greenhouse gases
- Developing an emission cap and trade program
- Establishing a formal process to track progress, evaluate existing policies and recommend adjustments
- An information memo summarizing the Task Force recommendations [exit DNR]
Along with other important Wisconsin initiatives, Governor Doyle has set important energy efficiency goals including having 25 percent of Wisconsin's power come from renewable resources by 2025. Additionally, the Governor's Global Warming Task Force has recommended reducing the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 75 to 80 percent by 2050.Oh - - if you click through to the link "Wisconsin initiatives," you're referenced right back to a DNR page that also led with work from the Doyle era:
Public officials are developing strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These reductions occur through improvements in vehicle fuel economy, renewable energy purchases, increased energy efficiency, and other actions.
In 2007, Governor Doyle convened a Task Force on Global Warming. In July 2008, this task force approved an extensive set of policy recommendations to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in three steps, culminating in a 75% reduction by 2050 from a 2005 baseline. The Task Force report outlined these policy recommendations, which included many significant actions such as:
The Wisconsin Legislative Council prepared summary documents related to the Task Force recommendations, including:
- Expanding the state's existing energy conservation and efficiency programs
- Adopting California vehicle standards for greenhouse gases
- Developing an emission cap and trade program
- Establishing a formal process to track progress, evaluate existing policies and recommend adjustments
- An information memo summarizing the Task Force recommendations [exit DNR]
A Watertown woman who repeatedly lied to buy guns for criminals has agreed to plead guilty to federal straw buyer charges...
Milwaukee police arrested Eric D. Jackson last August after he ran from officers on the north side. As he fled, he threw away a .40-caliber Glock with an extended magazine. Police traced it to [the suburban straw buyer], who had purchased it and another gun in March from JD Rifleworks in Watertown.- - and remember that it's nothing new, as these multiple examples show:
City-hating GOP legislator forgets suburbanites' ties to crime, gunsJust for the record.
The ideologues intent on scrubbing science off these pages and sowing doubt and confusion about the consensus view of experts worldwide about climate change have edited, deleted and otherwise compressed to whitewash long-standing concepts and facts off a climate change page about the Great Lakes - - the same way, I will add, that Walker edited and watered-down the Wisconsin Idea, which has for decades had been the University system's historic mission statement.And I also noted in a followup posting that there was one remaining DNR web page that continued to supply climate change information, and I said I'd keep checking to see if that page underwent its own sanitizing, or disappearance.
Global climate change poses serious threats to public health, to the economies of the United States and Wisconsin and to the natural environment. We now have a clearer understanding of the role waste and materials management plays in global climate change and, most importantly, the opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the waste and materials management sphere.* The page cites US Environmental Protection Agency information - - and Walker's DNR has been at odds with the EPA over clean air and water obligations for years, so right there is the equivalent of an intergovernmental act of heresy.
If trees are left standing rather than being cut down, those trees remove and "sequester," or withhold, carbon dioxide from the air, thereby reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. In other words, reducing paper use and recycling used paper not only saves much of the energy required to harvest, transport, digest and convert wood to paper, it also helps preserve the carbon sequestration capacity of the forest.
Wisconsin officials are earmarking nearly 40,000 more acres of state forestland for intensive logging — a move pushed by the Legislature to provide a fresh source of timber to the forest products industry...
In 2015, lawmakers working on the state budget directed the DNR to increase acreage eligible for the most intensive timber cutting to 75% of northern state forests. That’s up from the current level of 66%.* I had also posted information a few weeks ago about Walker and DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp adding another private sector executive to the ranks of senior management - - a forestry operations owner and trade association leader to replace a career DNR employee as state forester atop the Forestry Division.:
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.So I figure it's just a matter of time before the new state forestry manager at the DNR aligns that web page and its language about tree-cutting and climate change with the Legislature and Team Walker & Stepp's climate change denial mentality - - and thus also with the incoming Trump administration's belief that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to advantage their exports.
The absurdity of this attack on science and climate change information in particular in Wisconsin is made even more tragically-comedic because when the extremely-far rightwing Wisconsin State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk banned staffers on a state forest management commission from discussing climate change - - and let that craziness sink in for a moment - - his justification was that it should be the DNR that was doing the discussing.
The DNR has 2,000 employees. If there’s one agency that’s going to work on global warming and climate change, it shouldn’t be us, it should be the DNR,” he said.
So clearly in Wisconsin these days, the right hand does not know what the farther right hand is doing - - or at least doesn't check DNR websites too often.A point proven by the DNR's failure "to work on global warming climate change." except by deleting the information it had posted for the public on its website.
So clearly in Wisconsin these days, the right hand does not know what the farther right hand is doing...
More Walkerite/Orwellian censoring of WI DNR climate pages
Air quality. The governor also wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to lift limits on smog-causing pollutants in Wisconsin counties along Lake Michigan.The limits increase costs on area utilities and industries but also cut respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.
Donald J. Trump 