Latest nutty WI GOP 'idea.' Spend millions buying state lands state owns

Ah, so clever these anti-public sector Wisconsin Republican officials, their hands on state agencies and budgets and the law and ready always to serve special friends and donors.

Without consulting the agencies involved, their scheme - - almost as convoluted  as another one to upend the tax system and keep building roads too big to pay for - - involves having a state land stewardship public purchase fund Walker tried to kill and many of them hate spend down its resources and borrowing authority by buying 76,000 acres of land which another state public lands commission already owns.

Goodbye, stewardship fund, so Mission Accomplished there.

But wait, there's more.

The proponents say their 'plan' is buy the land is not another one of their blatant privatization schemes - - like the groundwater private management and ownership program the Legislature just handed in perpetuity to Big AG and other large users of public groundwater - - because these GOP games-players say with a straight face that the 76,000 acres would be transferred to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and not sold to private owners.

Before you say, "whew," note the other day I reported that the DNR Gov. which Walker is operating with his signature 'chamber of commerce mentality' is busy selling public land and had already sold more than the 10,000 acres which the Legislature had authorized.

Also undermining the plan's credibility: a statement by proponent and inveterate opponent of the UW system GOP State Sen. Steve Nass that the plan's college scholarship component is the sort of good thing for everyone he'd wanted to do for a long time.

Please.

What's next: Scott Walker devising a public employee membership outreach program?

It's appropriate that some of the property which the Republican land barons would sell is swamp land.