Walker's 8-year war on Wisconsin's environment. Part 13. 'Policies' based on round, random number

This is the 13th installment of a 21-part series from my blog about Walker's attack on the Wisconsin environment. 

Walker and his team love big round numbers because they fit better into campaign ads, inflate talking points, or fill in the silence at meet-and-greets better than, say, some actual science informing real science.

So in his early gubernatorial campaigns, Walker was all about his pledge to create 250,000 new private-sector jobs even though there was no sound economics on which to base it on.

Same with Foxconn. It's going to be as big as eleven football fields. A factory with 20 million square feet - - until the plans began to shrink after the talking points were talked to death and subsidies were approved. 

...Foxconn now says it first will erect a plant that uses much smaller sheets of glass. Such factories typically are much smaller and less-expensive than the sort of plant Foxconn originally planned, industry observers say.

And here are two more big fantasy policy round numbers which undermine the environment.

* With the encouragement of then-DNR-Secretary-cum-agency-killer Cathy Stepp, the Legislature approved the sale of 10,000 DNR managed acres.

Not 11,327 or 1,059 or 45,173.73 acres based on analyses, or surveys, or best-practices management. 

Just 10,000 acres to bring some money into the treasury and make the point to its base voters that this administration had little use for the public sector, the commons, the public trust.

Likewise, Walker was happy to sign a bill removing state protections from 100,000 acres of wetlands.  Again, not after any sort of scientific analysis, or project submissions. Just a flat, who-needs-those-100,000 wetland acres, anyway?

The legislation removing protection from thousands of acres of small wetlands was called the worst conservation bill in a generation by the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

And 100,000 was the number picked because the original plan to remove protections from an even more preposterous 1,000,000 acres fell flat.

So 100,000 was the magic number - - even though there had been been a series of measures weakening wetland protections during Walker's tenure, summarized here and here in this series.

Remember also that wetlands filter rainfall and absorb runoff waters and mitigating flooding - - more about that in a couple of days - - and keep the lake full and the trout streams healthy - - more about that in a few days, too - - but no matter, as ideology and special interests demanded: 

Fill them in

Part 12 of this series ran October 23, 2018.

Speaking of zeros, here's another one.