National report says WI models Trump war on environment

Any number of publications - - from this blog to Scientific American - - have noted the intentional and fine-grained destruction of Wisconsin's environmental legacy and everyday clean land, water and air protections by right-wing GOP Gov. Scott Walker and his "chamber of commerce mentality" government.

And have written about Wisconsin as the model for what Donald Trump - - with help from corporate ideologues like Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel who's in lockstep with Trump's big business-obeisant EPA chief Scott Pruitt - - has in mind for the US EPA, climate science and resource extraction.

But I wan to call attention to an excellent publication on these issues with the focus on what Walker has done and Trump appears ready to do to the environment with respect to Native American land, water and rights.

It's a must-read.

The Wisconsin Experiment

Donald Trump’s war on the environment was prototyped by far-right politicians in state government. We can learn from Indigenous communities who fought back in the name of science and democracy — and won...

 Bad River reservation, WI DNR photo

While Trump is a uniquely dangerous figure, he did not start this war. Since 2010, far-right politicians in the Midwest have been running their states as experimental laboratories where they refine efforts to undermine science and democracy. 

(Pruitt himself rose to prominence as attorney general of Oklahoma, where he sued the EPA fourteen times on behalf of corporate polluters and trade associations, many of them campaign donors.) 

The Wisconsin Experiment is particularly egregious. In the past six years, Governor Scott Walker and the Republican legislature, backed by the Koch brothers, have transformed a state once known for pragmatic, decent, common-sense politics into fertile ground for Tea Parties and Trump rallies. 

Walker now has a direct line to the president through House speaker Paul Ryan and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who also hail from the state. To put it bluntly: What’s the matter with Wisconsin?