To the Foxconn primer I've been expanding over the last few weeks, let's add a fresh question:
If the Walker administration sends spokespeople to the State Assembly's hearing on the Foxconn enabling bill today who will do more than spin - - senior officials and experts with credibility - - who can attest that the state indeed has the water, air, recycling and wastewater treatment and disposal capacity to coordinate with and regulate (yes) the massive Foxconn manufacturing plant and its high-tech exotic materials and outputs, it can't be DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp.
Yet it is that agency (and local officials are going to have to deal with these matters and their funding, too) where many of those responsibilities lie, so how foolish has it been for Walker to repeatedly diminish and weaken the DNR and the health and safety role of the public sector generally.
It's not just the transportation infrastructure which Walker and his administration have mismanaged - - from the modern Amtrak line he killed that could have connected the potential Foxconn's SE WI main plant to a rumored Dane County facility, and the rutted and incomplete interstate highway segments that are tied up in the Legislature because there isn't enough money or political will to finish them.
It's the scientific and intellectual infrastructure which Walker has cut from the DNR, and from his favorite Madison target, the UW system and faculty, that leaves the state without useful resources and advantages it could be putting into play right now if Walker's far-right ideology hadn't the new Wisconsin Idea.
If the Walker administration sends spokespeople to the State Assembly's hearing on the Foxconn enabling bill today who will do more than spin - - senior officials and experts with credibility - - who can attest that the state indeed has the water, air, recycling and wastewater treatment and disposal capacity to coordinate with and regulate (yes) the massive Foxconn manufacturing plant and its high-tech exotic materials and outputs, it can't be DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp.
Yet it is that agency (and local officials are going to have to deal with these matters and their funding, too) where many of those responsibilities lie, so how foolish has it been for Walker to repeatedly diminish and weaken the DNR and the health and safety role of the public sector generally.
It's not just the transportation infrastructure which Walker and his administration have mismanaged - - from the modern Amtrak line he killed that could have connected the potential Foxconn's SE WI main plant to a rumored Dane County facility, and the rutted and incomplete interstate highway segments that are tied up in the Legislature because there isn't enough money or political will to finish them.
It's the scientific and intellectual infrastructure which Walker has cut from the DNR, and from his favorite Madison target, the UW system and faculty, that leaves the state without useful resources and advantages it could be putting into play right now if Walker's far-right ideology hadn't the new Wisconsin Idea.
No deals with Walker and Ryan helping take from the citizens.
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