Appreciating again Lake Michigan, George Vukelich & "Gales of November"

I found not one but two books yesterday I'd been searching for on and off for weeks- - and then, suddenly, there they were, right where I'd never put them. 

Anyway, what I'd finally laid my hands on were Volumes I and II of North Country Notebook, the essay collections published decades ago by the late Madison-based naturalist, scribe, legendary angler, eclectic radio host, and progressive union activist George "Papa Hambone" Vukelich.

OK: stop reading right now and go order them, here.

And read more at the online archive and website his adult children have posted, here, about their unusual dad and son of Milwaukee's south side who was lost to us impossibly early in 1995.

I was looking hard for my copies of George's books because, if you recall, there were gale force winds predicted for last weekend, and I was positive I'd remembered that George had written one of his wonderful pieces about what happens when those Lake Michigan winds start blowing.

Over the years I'd been clumsily quoting and telling people about that essay without even being sure of the title, aggravated that I could not put my mitts on his written pages, and I really, really wanted to re-read that essay before the winds would drive Lake Michigan and what might have been in it onto the shore about a mile from where I live.

Sure enough, strong winds really blew in the darkness Monday morning, rattling our windows. The TV weather people after the sun came up said there had been a peak gust of 54 miles an hour. That's a big wind and it had roared for hours.

By the time I got down there Monday afternoon, the wind was still gusting 

and the overnight surf had obviously been rough

and was still crashing on the rocks

And while the detritus the gale probably threw onto the land was interesting, I doubt George would have out it into print.

In fact, the most noticeable evidence of roiling water was the volume of tiny, nasty invasive muscles on the sand

which Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan - - another great, Great Lakes observer and author of the highly-readable recent book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes - - has tracked flushed from ocean-going freighters' ballast tanks to the now-thoroughly-contaminated lake basin beds which hold the largest supply of fresh surface water on the planet.

Such is the state of the Great Lakes which had so mesmerized George before people got careless with them.

So while I was disappointed that I didn't have George's essay in hand before the storm had hit, and saw a scene that would have disheartened George, too, I am happy to have George's lens to help me see what there is to see on the walk I try and take along Lake Michigan every day.

And am happiest about being able to dip back into George's words and world, so I commend to you, among stories too numerous to list, "Gales of November," North Country Notebooks, Volume II, pages 116-119, 1992. Here's just a taste:

I walked the beach after our most recent storm. Tangles of seaweed were piled high upon the sands, marking the true boundaries of the lake...

We waded out below a limestone cliff and there in the motionless water lay an endless length of anchor chain, curled, black, monstrous. Each link was wider than a man...

The chain is there yet. Every time I see it I get a funny feeling. What kind of sea was running that day? 

Walker goes out like he came in, cutting off food

The Washington Post shines a bright light on the Wisconsinites whom Scott Walker and his party are OK to starve.

Wisconsin — with its work requirement set to expand next year and a focus on employment and training — is a role model for the Trump administration’s vision of food aid for poor Americans who could go hungry, ratcheting up what many of them are expected to do to get government help.

Walker began cutting off food aid from poor people nearly eight years ago:

The Walker budget narrative explains without a whiff of paternalism how [he] wants to make Wisconsin's poor in the W-2 program grasp the complicated but important relationship between motivation, personal responsibility, job success - - and fasting....

It's right there in the budget, on page 65, in the "Health and Human Services" section: 

"To further encourage W-2 recipients to recognize that the goal of W-2 is for participants to secure unsubsidized employment, reduce the monthly benefit check by $20." 

Hey, you little brat! You think you get that every month?

Right: Walker knows that by taking away that $20 bucks worth of luxuries every month, like that cow's milk by the gallon, and canned tuna fish imported from the ocean and macaroni with cheese, he'll light a fire under those welfare queens... [and send] that same message of frugality and accountability to the kids these parents so irresponsibly addicted to food in childhood: 

Just because there's peanut butter in the house, little mister, doesn't mean you get sliced bread so you can make one of your fancy sandwiches.

Walker has done all this while enjoying a state-provided mansion with two kitchens.

And with the help of his party's legislative leaders who from time to time add more money to their members' taxpayer-provided meal allowance/per diem payments, sometimes collectible tax-free, as reported earlier this year.

Legislators often collect daily travel allowances, also known as per diems, as money for job-related meals and lodging. They are allowed to pocket leftover cash, but some who live near Madison must pay income taxes on the money.

The money is in addition to a legislator's $50,950 annual salary....Most Assembly legislators could claim up to $157 per overnight visit to Madison last year and up to $78.50 per single-day visit. Senators could claim up to $115 per day regardless of lodging needs.

WI GOP readying a perpetually self-kleptofying kleptocracy

[Updated - - 2:25 p.m.] They're not out to steal a mere State Supreme Court seat in 2020 by switching an election day and dinking at some rules, all of which they've done before.

This time they mean to steal the Wisconsin government, and put the single set of keys to the State Capitol in a Republican party safety deposit box.

To settle every vindictive score - - real, wrongly-imagined and some-day-theoretical - - by stashing state power in a Republican-controlled favor-dispensing machine, a self-kleptofying kleptocracy that will make special-interests even more influential and perpetually routes their money to GOP pols, their partisan PACs and privilege-protecting third-party pals.

Update: Some fresh details here, including proposed limitations on early voting days to tamp down turnout in Democratic-leaning large cities. Another hit to local controls.

Walker said he liked 'divide-and-conquer.' Now it's just the conquereing part, as Republicans get ready to scorch the earth so badly and so intentionally divisively here - - on top of their eight-year war on the environment, the poor, the cities, the unions, the public sector and local controls - - that bipartisanship will go from an endangered principle to a dead one.

And the change bills the Walkerits have been drafting in secret for weeks, just as they did with their Act 10 bomb and gerrymandering maps, will not be the "reasonable" nip and tick here and there as State Senate Majority Leader and proven authoritarian Scott Fitzgerald laughably claimed right after Walker and all GOP candidates for statewide office went down in the November 6th election.

(As predicted).

The word is out that the power Fitzgerald and his co-plotters plan to arrogate, and the 'reforms' they intend to ram through the Legislature they command through gerrmnandering are so detailed and lengthy that they may have to rush them through sham hearings in pieces because the swearing-in clock is ticking.

And because some of the changes will be so consequential that in a real democracy, the people would have the final say through the referendum process written into the State Constitution.

He lost on Nov. 6th, but he and the little GOP dictators who run the legislative chambers they grotesquely gerrymandered in 2012 and hope maintain in perpetuity are bent on assuming for themselves some of his office's powers until they can transfer them back to the next Republican the system they're rigging can install. Because to this group, Regular Order Means Republican Order. Kind of like the way the Old Soviet Central Committees worked until Vladimir Putin and Dimitry Medvedev played musical chairs during Putin's 'absence.'

But that would be too drawn out and pesky-messy for this band of sore, self-entitled losers, and would too-ironically validate the same voting processes GOP leaders are shamelessly nullifying by grabbing power away from Democrats who won them fair and square from the voters. 

Ballot boxes Republicans had already tried to block best as they could with obstructive voting ID laws, restricted absentee voting hours and scary billboards put up in minority or Democratic-leaning neighborhoods threatening jail time for cheaters whom the real cheaters presumed lived there.

The GOP goal is turn Democratic Gov. Tony Evers come January into a figurehead Chief Executive until the the next Republican can reclaim an office and lakefront mansion in Madison the GOP believes one of their bots should  always occupy, and where Walker was supposed to enjoy his frozen custard, follow the Packers on TV, book the state plane and watch pretty sunsets - - all of which he kept us breathless apprised about on Twitter - - until he found on his own terms the private-sector job in which his wife just knew he could make the big bucks.

Walker tried once to trash the big vision and historic public service state definition known as The Wisconsin Idea, got caught, lied about it and had to drop what was a clumsy bid for more his own brand of one-person, public-be-damned state governance.

Now he and the little dictators caucus have an even darker goal.

Kill the whole idea of Wisconsin, and make Fitzwalkerstan, with Walker's already-proven-destructive 'chamber of commerce mentality' the permanent replacement.

WI Dems need to tell the GOP gerrymandering story louder, better

I keep seeing major news stories like this one in The New York Times featuring Republicans' dastardly gerrymandering in North Carolina and Pennsylvania - - but what Wisconsin Republicans did in Wisconsin continues to give them unfair advantage even as they lost all five statewide constitutional office elections three weeks ago.

They're even ready to fix the 2020 State Supreme Court race calendar to help a far-right candidate run in a lower-turnout election with presumably few Democrats voting.

Isthmus of Madison reduced the gerrymander, thumb-on-the-scale reality to a single, killer graphic.

C'mon, state Dems, do a better communications' job. Tell our story, because without the publicity, Walker's hench-people are going to grab more power as Walker goes out the door and Republicans nationally are going to be emboldened by these 11th-hour, one-party-rule tricks.

Amicable breakup? So who plugged up the toilet and keyed your car?

In Wisconsin, election-losers fairly facing a power loss

hope to squirrel away spoils which they can access only through insiders' brute-force.

This vindictive abandonment of democratic tradition that Wisconsin GOP pols are openly engineering after Gov. Walker's Nov. 6th rejection at the polls by Tony Evers would be like the Milwaukee Brewers, having lost last month's decisive playoff game at home to the Los Angeles Dodgers, then used the Miller Park master keys to slip into the Dodgers locker room before they left town, spread lice in their uniforms and drilled cracks in their bats.

Or it would like you had lived for some years with a partner named Scott, and had a break-up you thought would be amicable.

Then you hear he's sending his pals to the house you had shared to vandalize the furnishings, plug up the toilets and poison the dog. 

And work on rigging the selection of one of the top judges who might someday hear any case you might bring. 

You find Scott's maneuvering doubly troubling because you remember that Scott was an Eagle Scout, and had once looked up what that meant:

From the Eagle Scout ceremony:

The foremost responsibility of an Eagle Scout is to live with honor. To an Eagle Scout, honor is the foundation of all character. He knows that 'a Scout is trustworthy' is the very first point of the Scout Law for a good reason. An Eagle Scout lives honorably, not only because honor is important to him, but because of the vital significance of the example he sets for other scouts. Living honorably reflects credit on his home, his church, his troop, and his community. 

And triply-troubling as you try to explain his scheming to your friends and family because you remember that one of the things you had noticed about Scott when he was approaching his biggest public service win yet that he had a publicly-declared code of ethics based on this principle:

""The culture of government has destroyed the integrity and the idea of public service," said Walker. "My plan seeks to restore the public trust, and instill the confidence that our elected leaders are working for the people," Walker added."

Then you come to your senses, remembering this isn't the first time that Walker and his partisan allies, when feeling the sting of rejection, had shamelessly embedded advantage into the system, as noted in 2011:

On top of efforts to hamstring legitimate recall petition circulation, having run fake Democrats in this summer's Senate recall elections, having added voting and registration barriers in the unneeded Voter ID bill and changed the 2012 primary to a date obstructing college voters, hasn't election tampering by the GOP and Walkerites gone far enough?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2011

Wisconsin Republicans AGAIN Want Quick Rule/Law Changes To Preserve Their Majorities

In case you missed it:

(originally posted, Saturday, 10/29, 10:30 p.m.) Wisconsin Republican legislators continue to manipulate the electoral process into an un-American, one-sided game where the playing field is permanently tilted because they have the power to make, undo and change the rules to ensure they win.

Did they swap their oath to obey the law and protect the State Constitution for a secret handshake with Scott Walker and a pledge of allegiance to Americans for Prosperity?

Imagine that the Cardinals or Yankees got to adjust the rules in the eighth inning, at will, to give themselves four strikes to make an out, or to score a double as a three-run homer.

How often can these serial cheaters reporting to Scott Walker and the Fitzgeralds be allowed to rig the system? What happened to Scott Walker, Eagle Scout?

[Update: They're at it again]

Consider their machinations just this year, framing 2012 as its Year of the Stealathon:

*  They ran phony slates of Democrats in the Senate recall elections to confuse the electorate and game the calender for scheduling and fund-raising advantages.

*  They are moving to add burdensome notarization requirements to help make Scott Walker's recall more difficult - - even though Walker benefited from a traditional, unfettered, Constitutionally-guaranteed recall system in 2002 to become Milwaukee County Executive prior to his successful run for Governor last year.

*  Now the Republicanss are rushing forward with a plan by New Berlin Senator Mary Lazich - - no surprise there - - to undo part of a just-passed GOP-crafted redistricting plan because they see a fresher way to adjust election schedules, again in their favor, to hang on to a one-vote Senate majority. 

Some months ago, I wrote that no one likes a cheater in politics, and I believe the GOP will get what's coming to it when these manipulations - - and don't forget the exclusionary goals of the Voter ID law take effect next year, too - - help the Recall Walker Movement gets its signatures:

Partisan politics is one thing, but repeated twisting of the rules, the legislative process and the essential need for fair play in a just society to cement office-holding by the group that happens to be in office - - and also with Walker being elected by just 52% of the voters who turned out - - should backfire, and is, the polling suggests.

Foxconn lays off 155 in Indiana

Subsidiaries of Foxconn - - the Taiwan-based corporate entity which 'won' from Wisconsin the largest subsidy ever awarded a foreign corporation - - announced cutbacks at a plant in Indiana

near Indianapolis, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Two subsidiaries of computer electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group plan to lay off 155 employees at a facility in Plainfield over the next three months. 

Q-Edge Corp. and Foxconn/Hon Hai Logistics California LLC notified state officials of the impending layoffs on Wednesday.

Foxconn recently announced company-wide deep cuts in investment, scaled-back the initial phase of the plant it is building in Mt. Pleasant, WI, and has floated the idea of importing workers there. 

And the company is acknowledging that assembly-line automation will be part of the Mt. Pleasant operation. 

Translation: robots are coming,  they don't need vacation and health-care benefits, and will never unionize, so heads up, Bucky and understand who and what you are subsidizing.

I will add this posting to an archive of Foxconn items I have maintained since last year, and where you sill see that Walker has literally bet the farm on this boondoggle.

Cabbage fields on the Foxconn site, 2017

No denying Walker's costly, ideological & stubborn ignorance

Warnings ignored. At great cost.

* This 11/28/18 article leads with the summer's flooding in Cross Plains, WI, just outside of Madison, the Capital City.

As rainfall intensifies, cities prepare for more stormwater

Between the afternoon of August 20, 2018, and the next morning, 14.7 inches of rain fell on Cross Plains. Homes, businesses, bridges and parks were washed out along streets, rivers and ponds. It took six days for the main highway out of town to reopen.

The August 20 event in Cross Plains and western Dane County was deemed a 1-in-1,000-year event, which means that a rainstorm of that magnitude historically has a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in a given year.

But we didn’t get a break anytime soon. Unrelenting storms rolled through southern Wisconsin for three weeks...

Wisconsin isn’t the only place getting wetter

Intensifying rainfall is a well-documented climate change trend. Across the country, local governments are making infrastructure investments in the hopes of preparing for more water.

But planning for stormwater is challenging when the rainfall probabilities that planners and engineers once relied on to design infrastructure are no longer accurate. Wisconsin, for example, experienced historic flooding in 2008, 2013, and 2016, in addition to 2018. Probabilities based on long-term averages don’t necessarily capture what can be expected from future – or even current – storms.

* On June 8, 2008, in the early months of this blog, I posted this:

In 2003, EPA predicted heavier rain events 

Then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and I attended a conference in Chicago in 2003, hosted by Mayor Richard Daley, where officials from the EPA told Midwestern elected leaders that climate change models predicted heavier rain events.

The EPA officials were urging the Midwestern leaders to adapt their planning and spending to more aggressively confront storm water and related services because heavier, intense rains were going to be come more frequent.

Part of the message was: forget the notion of the "100-year-storm." They'll come more often than that in the Midwest as the atmosphere warms.

Again - - this wasn't advocacy science or partisan scare tactics.

This was basic municipal planning/dollars-and-sense advice from people in the George W. Bush administration to Midwestern mayors offered as an inter-governmental service because climate change was going to hit cities' budgets and constituents in difficult new ways.

The EPA officials had it all in a very power point format - - which I requested, and was assured was coming - - but it never did, and I left the Mayor's staff in January 2004 and didn't make a federal case out of not receiving it.

Now I wish I had.

Seems pretty relevant this weekend, no?

* On January 1, 2017, I posted this:

Documenting Gov. Walker's attacks on science, climate change

On December 22nd [2016], this blog carried the first disclosure that WI GOP Gov. Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources, (see part five of a recent series about his redefining the agency, here), had again deleted from taxpayer-paid, public web pages wording and information about climate, climate change and its human causation.

This time, the scrubbing destroyed the integrity and value of the intentionally and ideologically beaten-down agency's key remaining climate change web page:

More Walkerite/Orwellian censorship of climate change from DNR climate change web pages

During the following few days, I updated the page and have posted twelve fourteen additional posts with related information. 

* On August 28, 2018 - - eight days after the rains fell on Cross Plains and across much of the state, I wrote this:

Who needed those axed climate scientists, and their expertise? We did.

[Walker] signed a public pledge to ignore climate change science, deleted climate change science and also deleted links to valuable climate change-storm materials from state webpages which said our changing climate was likely to bring heavier flooding.

And fired the experts who understood the predictions...

Because [Walker] already had:

Ignored the wake-up calls sounding the alarms your ideology masked.

Thereby setting the table for more flooding, property damage, and loss of life

in the state where you purport to be chief executive, but tell us often how much you are enjoying the executive mansion, sports' game days, and your favorite foods.

* And on September 8, 2018, this:

Wisconsin flood damage estimated at $209 million

Damage estimates are soaring in southern Wisconsin after weeks of severe flooding and storms destroyed pavement, left basements underwater, ruined crops and killed livestock. 

And in a post I put up on November 27th, a reminder that in the death trip also known as Walker's eight years in office, people have died in the state's intensified flooding:

...deaths in state flooding in 2016, and in Sawyer County and Dane County in 2018 - - violent storms which are projected to worsen in the changing climate Walker has steadfastly refused to acknowledge or address. 

The bottom line?

Warnings and science were ignored. Wisconsin homes and incomes were lost (Also in Texas, the Carolinas, the Jersey Shore, Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, your town, my town, small town, downtown, out-of-town). 

Remedial spending will soar, and if taxes don't, other programs will starve. Republicans from Big Daddy Trump to the littlest lieutenants like Fitzgerald and Vos will tow the polluters' lines, whether laid down by the Koch brothers or King Coal. 

The planet will warm. Unconcerned about his legacy of damage and despair, Walker will hit the lecture circuit. And it will rain hard again, as thousand-year storms become every-few-months' events. 

It's enough to make ya crazy. 

Hey, sore losing GOP 'leaders' - - consult this vocal opponent of election calendar changes

[Updated, 3:00 p.m.] All that expertise right in the right's backyard.

Which means the grasping after election advantage by Wisconsin Sore Losers' Club, FitzWalkerVos Chapter could be easily side-tracked if club members would consult the in-state elections and budget expert who had earlier very publicly-framed the issues in a way all Republicans could easily understand.

Remember earlier this year, when Walker decided that his creating two legislative vacancies by moving Republicans incumbents into cushy, pension-boosting Big Government jobs didn't mean he had to call routine special elections to prevent thousands of Wisconsin citizens from being stripped of State Capitol representation for up to a year.

Set aside for a moment that the wonderfully-ironic slap down Walker got for that stunt was delivered by a judge Walker had appointed.

Instead, keep in mind that it was The Sore Losers' Club Fitz himself 

who argued at the time that any reasonable person would understand all the problems an extra, out-of-sequence would create:

“The logistics of this is very messy,” Fitzgerald said... The average taxpayer is going to be like, ‘You’re kidding me.’”

[Update] In fact, an even more senior expert said it would throw taxpayers' money away:

Walker himself cited cost as a factor, speaking to reporters in Pewaukee: "It’s just a waste of taxpayers’ money..." 

But, you know, this time's different, because a) it's what the party used to one-party rule prefers, and because only 30 county clerks have complained about the $6.8 million tab.

$6.8 million? Chicken-feed to these fiscal conservatives.

Remember, the same FitzWalkerVos trio have set it up so that state and local taxpayers will shovel almost exactly that same amount Foxconn's way ($3 billion divided by 15 (years) divided by 52 (weeks), or $3,846,133 per week) every two weeks - - with Racine-area local taxpayers - - a/k/a Vos constituents - - paying extra, so about the money - - pffft!. 

WI's little dictators may tilt '20 WI high court election to embed Walkerism

So Walker-the-incumbent-Governor just lost an election and the geniuses in the loser's inner circle want to saddle a sitting State Supreme Court Justice with an even heavier Walker identity than merely having been hand-picked in 2016 by Walker to serve after Justice David Prosser had quit?

This is like watching The Three Stooges build an airplane and try to fly it from New York to LA.

Not content with having gerrymandered the State Legislature to give themselves lopsided advantages, the little dictators serving as Republican leaders in their already rigged Assembly and Senate chambers are working on something even more brazen - - and potentially suicidally-stupid - - on the eve of Walker's boot by voters from the State Capitol.

Their scheme: a gerrymander-like rigging - - not by packing partisan voters and addresses into easy-to-win districts, but by packing the State Supreme Court and guaranteeing easy-to-win special interest cases.

How? By manipulating the routine election calendar to give a perceived leg up to Daniel Kelly, a State Supreme Court Justice appointed earlier by Walker to fill a vacancy, and thus a potentially weak candidate without an election win and proven base of support among voters.

What the GOP legislative leaders are considering is separating the presidential primary contest and the State Supreme Court election from the same 2020 spring ballot those races would normally share, and where a big Blue Democratic turnout in April 2020 drawn to a large field vying to take on Trump that fall would likely also vote for a presumably more-progressive alternative to Justice Kelly.

This manipulation of the Wisconsin election calendar by Republicans through a special legislative session allegedly called to consider a subsidy for Kimberly-Clark which Republicans are fumbling away will backfire, I guarantee it.

People will see right through the hypocrisies, having heard Walker say eleventeen-billion times with robotic sanctimony that the GOP in Wisconsin was all about making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Except when the cheaters are in power and calling the shots, whether by drafting deliberately-distorted legislative district maps in secret, or scheming out in the open to monkey with a scheduled State Supreme Court ballot.

And we put "Justice" in those very important job titles? Please.

Justice Kelly, already having been appointed by Walker, will be perceived by voters as a post-Walker-defeat-Walker-surrogate and a GOP plant helped along by a blatant abuse of state power and waste of public monies.

And Republicans want you to believe they are the law-and-order and fiscally-conservative party? Please.

Kelly might as well change his name to Scott Walker, because a surge of people drawn to the polls will fill in another anti-Walker ballot.

Just like they did three weeks ago. 

And just like all those voters did nationwide when they went to the polls, 'saw' Trump on the ballot and threw out dozens of Republicans who would have carried Trump's water had they won.

I'm telling you right now, go ahead, ye little dim-bulb dictators also known as Fitzgerald and Vos: go ahead and grasp, at your instant disgrace and enduring peril, for the reins of power which are already being pulled from your hands.

You know, I'd intended to retire the photograph below of Walker once he left the Governor's mansion for appearances, perhaps with fellow has-been David Clarke, on the big-check-and-rubber-chicken circuit, but I'll hold on to it for the 2020 State Supreme Court race should Walker's hand-picked candidate - - apparently unsatisfied with already having received one Walker favor to get appointed to the State Supreme Court - - try and remain there for a full ten-year term through a power grab enabled by Walker's trusty lieutenants and one last hand-drawn "SKW."

Wisconsin's eight-year death trip is ending, partisan taxidermy is not

I can't put my hands on my copy of Michael Lesy's classic photography-rich non-fiction classic Wisconsin Death Trip, but you could say the Walker years now drawing to a close are Wisconsin Death Trip 2.0.

Oh, too harsh, you say?

* I think the death of 50 dairy farms month-after-month isn't much of a legacy to brag about.

* Along with doubling the number of Wisconsin 'impaired' waterways.

Dead brookie in The Litter Plover River, with water-sucking big ag operations nearby. River Alliance of Wisconsin photo.

* Not to mention seeing Wisconsin for a second-straight year in 2018 placing a state waterway on a national top-ten "endangered rivers" list.

* And having The New York Times come to Wisconsin to get a closer look at "polluted water too dangerous to drink."

* While there's been a relentless spread of deer chronic wasting disease, with even Walker's DNR saying 55 of 72 Wisconsin counties meet the agency's "affected" criteria.

* Or the persistence of a large, and persistent "dead zones" in the waters of Green Bay linked, by the way, to the expansion of the larger dairy cattle feeding operations, (CAFOs) which are killing the smaller ones, and phosphorous discharges from CAFOs and other big ag operations enabled by pollution rules Team Walker had eased.

* And deaths in state flooding in 2016, and in Sawyer County and Dane County in 2018 - - violent storms which are projected to worsen in the changing climate Walker has steadfastly refused to acknowledge or address.

* And tracking opioid abuse cases which put the state in this March spotlight:

Emergency room visits for suspected opioid overdoses increased 109 percent in Wisconsin from July 2016 to September 2017, the highest spike among 16 states closely tracked, federal health officials said Tuesday.  

The ER data show trends in the opioid abuse epidemic before deaths do, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the study.

* Combined with the documented tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who lost their health insurance under Walker's 'refs-the-federal-funding' plan.

I'd say "death trip" is a fair descriptor, and once Evers becomes Governor the mist will begin to lift.

Though some of the political diehards are trying to work their self-defeating taxidermological magic:

...before Democrat Tony Evers is sworn in as Governor and replaces the Republican incumbent whom the electorate unambiguously rejected, a defeated Scott Walker and his lead legislative hench-people will have codified some 11th-hour changes to Wisconsin traditional law and tradition through which they will desperately try to make their beloved FitzWalkerStan permanent.

You'd think Republicans would have learned something about clever legislating and unintended consequences after tightening up the state's recount law in 2016, only to have restrictions they pushed through make it harder and costly for Walker to obtain one following his 2018 defeat.

Literature and language are replete with this lesson. 

Google the phrases "of mice and men," or "the best laid plans." Or "be careful of what you wish for," "payback's a bitch," or "vengeance is a dish best served cold." 

You get the picture. 

Label GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos defiantly clueless, though he seems to get the metaphor: 

"We are not going to roll over and play dead like they assume we probably should," Vos said."

Foxconn water bid gets more backers, slowed court calendar

Site preparation for the Foxconn project has work orders and schedules, but legal proceedings over its bid for a Lake Michigan water supply have a separate ebb and flow.

I'd summarized about two weeks ago some of the objections raised by several jurisdictions and petitioners to various aspects of the Foxconn project.

A Wisconsin administrative law judge had established a schedule for the filing of briefs in one of those pending matters - - a case brought by multiple petitioners opposing the DNR's approval of a diversion from Lake Michigan 

to supply millions of gallons of water daily for Foxconn manufacturing at its Village of Mount Pleasant site. 

However, additional parties intervened in support of the diversion, so the judge on November 14th issued an amended order extending deadlines for the filing pf briefs - - written arguments, as it were.

The extension is not particularly lengthy, but it illustrates the fluidity of complex and unresolved land, air, water and legal issues facing the company and government regulators while site preparation for the state's most heavily-subsidized private-sector project continues unabated. 

A project which out-going Wisconsin Governor and lead Foxconn booster was touting on his official Twitter account as recently as Monday with a link to this photo essay and story and this Tweet:

 “Aerial view of Foxconn contractors preparing land for more buildings” 

An archive of more than 250 posts about Foxconn is here.

So here is the heart of the judge's order stretching out the schedule for the filing of briefs for and against the diversion: 

STIPULATIONS

1. The Village and County filed a Motion to Intervene via U.S. Mail on October 11, 2018.The parties did not object to the Village and County becoming parties to this action, and the Administrative Law Judge granted their admission as parties.
2. The Petitioners advised they will provide additional facts.
3. The parties agreed that this action can proceed through summary judgment briefing.
4. The Petitioners requested an extension to submit their reply brief due to the addition of four more parties to this action. The Administrative Law Judge granted this extension, and the parties agreed upon an amended scheduling order.
5. The Department agreed to publish the amended scheduling order on the DNR website so interested Amicus parties are aware of the new deadline to file their briefs. 

AMENDED SCHEDULING ORDER

Based upon the representations of the parties, the following schedule has been amended as follows:

1. In this order, whenever the term "filed" is used, it shall be understood that this means received by mail, facsimile, or email by the Division and all other parties listed above.
2. Any party wishing to participate as an amicus shall file a motion to the Administrative Law Judge by November 15, 2018, requesting leave to file an amicus brief.
   
   1. Petitioners shall file their Summary Judgment Motion Brief by December 17, 2018.
   2. The Department and all other parties shall file their Response Brief by January 31, 2019.
   3. Petitioners shall file their Reply Brief by March 4, 2019.
   4. Any Amici allowed to file a brief shall file their brief by March 4, 2019.
   5. The parties reserve the right to request permission from the Administrative Law Judge to file a sur-reply to any Amicus brief that raises an issue not previously addressed in a brief submitted by the Department or Petitioners. Any request will be filed, with a copy of the sur-reply, by March 22, 2019.