Two more WI Republicans extend GOP's COVID coddling

Polling data show a stark division between Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats on many matters pandemic:

A new statewide poll shows a partisan divide in vaccinations and more negative perceptions toward last year's shutdown

Here's up-to-date-data highlighting another straight line to follow in COVID-slammed Wisconsin - 

Cases	1,391	+45%	709,504
Tests	10,357	–14%	—
Hospitalized	671	+124%	—
Deaths	4	–34%	8,336

- that you can trace from this ideological insanity - 

Congressman Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) spoke against masks at the (Monday night Rhinelander School Board) meeting, equating the CDC guideline on masks to its one on eating raw cookie dough.

* To this even more serious and unfolding story:

GOP Senator Railed Against Vax, Caught COVID, Then Hid It From Dem Colleagues

A Republican state senator who has proven to be one of Wisconsin’s most virulent critics of mask and vaccine mandates became sick enough to be hospitalized last week after contracting COVID-19, his office confirmed to The Daily Beast.  

What’s more, a possibly infectious Sen. André Jacque, who testified maskless during a Joint Senate and Assembly Education Committee meeting last Wednesday at the statehouse in Madison, neglected to inform his colleagues about their potential exposure—and they’re not happy. 

I wish State Sen. Jacque - 

- and his family full and speedy recoveries; let's also hope COVID19 and its super-infectious Delta variant was not spread to constituents, other legislators, Capitol staffers, medical workers and random contacts.

No more suffering!

But let's be honest: 

* The seeds of this dangerous resistance to science and common sense were planted last October, for example, by Sen. Jacque's Racine County GOP colleague Sen. Van Wanggaard - 

...three weeks-and-a-day-ago on October 8th, Racine's GOP State Senator and unofficial lead state COVID shoulder shrugger Van Wanggaard said Wisconsin's cases could multiply ten-fold and he still wouldn't support a statewide making order.

* And to an even earlier display by WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos - 

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, wore a mask, gloves and other protective gear as he sought to assure voters it was "incredibly safe" to vote in person for Tuesday's election amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

"You are incredibly safe to go out," Vos told The Journal Times in a Facebook livestream. Vos said he was serving as an election inspector and that wearing the personal protective equipment, or PPE, was mandatory. 

Standing in front of cars lined up for curbside voting, Vos said people working at polling locations and those voting in person face "very minimal exposure."

To others: 

* On May 5th, 2020, The Wisconsin Supreme Court - meeting virtually and respecting COVID19 distancing guidelines -  heard arguments in a case brought by GOP Legislative leaders to overturn Democratic Gov. Tony Evers 'Safer-at-Home' order extension. The Justices overturned the Evers order several days later by a 4-3 vote.

During the May 5th argument, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack (the Court is officially non-partisan, but has a 4-3 majority which usually supports conservative and GOP positions) opined that a highly-publicized outbreak of COVID19 in Brown County (the Green Bay-area) meatpacking plants which employed large numbers of migrant workers in close quarters had not hit "regular folks."

The food and commercial workers union called it "shocking and deeply offensive that Roggensack would suggest that workers in meatpacking plants aren't 'regular folks' who deserve protection."

On May 5th, state data showed a total of 1,966 confirmed COVID19 cases and 13 confirmed deaths in Brown County. Using the latest, December 18 data, those Brown County numbers had soared to 25,042 confirmed cases and 155 confirmed deaths, with both categories having jumped by more than by a factor of 10....

* On August 3rd, 2020, GOP Senate Majority Leader [and now-US Rep.] Scott Fitzgerald urged the Senate to overturn a statewide mask-wearing order issued by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. 

“I just said I think it’s a mistake,” Fitzgerald said of the mask order. “I think things are going well right now. People are complying if they want to.” 

On August 3rd, the confirmed COVID19 case number in Wisconsin was 55,328 and the death toll was 949. By December 18, the confirmed case number had soared to 451,676 and the death toll to 4,345....

Which brings us to Wisconsin's senior GOP US Senator and all-in Trump enabler Ron Johnson. 

* In fact, in the very early days of the pandemic on March 18, 2020 - note that Wisconsin did not report deaths until March 20th, state data show - Johnson was sugarcoating COVID19's risks and framing them in business-like/balance-sheet statistics, as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:

"...97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this. But we don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu,” Johnson said.

Johnson acknowledged that coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the seasonal flu, but said, “getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population (and) I think probably far less,” he said...

By the way, 3.4 percent of the US population is more than 11 million people. 

Frustrated Reaper still sees insufficiencies in COVID toll

The reader who risks bafflement at the words of Ron Johnson - 

- might be freshly dumfounded that Johnson, despite 8,300 Wisconsin fatal COVID illnesses and more than 600,000 in the US, opposes vaccine mandates unless there were some "incredibly deadly virus" out there - 

"No, not unless there's some incredibly deadly disease. I mean, much higher infection-fatality rates than we have with COVID.

"We don't know the final infection-fatality rate but right now it's looking like it's not going to be much more than double a bad season of flu."  

- but the reader navigating Johnson's collapsing circuitry may be less stupefied knowing that he had already shrugged off a possible US death toll from COVID of more than 11 million:

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson downplays possibility millions could die from COVID-19

“Getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population"

We don't shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It's a risk we accept so we can move about. We don't shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu." 

Vos provides rare honest look at GOP goals, state vision

I often note the hypocrisies, twisted language and outright misbehavior and lies foisted on Wisconsin taxpayers.

* Like the claim that Foxconn with massive public subsidies is creating a manufacturing "ecosystem" - while bulldozing, paving over and polluting an authentic, Wisconsin-to-Illinois ecosystem-  

Wetlands being filled in, silt spilling into Des Plaines River due to Foxconn development, Lake County study finds

- which includes streams, wetlands and prime agricultural land.

* Or the belief validated to date by the Wisconsin DNR and its oversight board that a portion of a popular lakeshore state park should be transferred to a private-sector developer/major GOP donor for what it calls "a minimalist-design world-class [golf] course reflecting the company’s decades-long commitment to sustainability"- but which state records show would cut through rare dunes, Native American relics, wetlands, migratory bird habitat - and an estimated 50,000 trees.

* Or the notion propagandized through amber-waves-of-grain word-smithing that hunters "harvest" wolves -  while those particular 'hunters' in fact released truckloads of dogs that chased and snared hundreds of wolves in leg traps before receiving kill-shots to the head - pregnant females among them:

“These animals were killed using packs of dogs, snares and leg-hold traps,” Kitty Block, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, said on Tuesday. “It was a race to kill these animals in the most cruel ways.”

Note also that the next wolf 'harvest' mandated by a state law adopted by conservative legislators not interested in conservation is being overseen by that same DNR policy board whose chairman is refusing to give up his seat though his Walker-appointed tenure has officially expired.

Which adds a new chapter to the Wisconsin right's penchant for power-abusing-and-grabbing at the expense of tradition, science and and fair play. 

In fact, there is fresh evidence Monday that February's wolf 'harvest' was actually a species-threatening slaughter here, data show. 

Again, who's loyal to ecosystem stewardship for the public in Wisconsin, and who sees the natural world in their temporary care as collections of separate fiefdoms or commodities reserved for the most self-centered or well-connected here?

* Which brings me to the bragging by GOP Assembly Robin Vos about his about statewide "clean water task force" - 

- while he actually let his caucus strip away funding to replace hazardous lead drinking-water pipes in Milwaukee.

And obstructed actions intended to battle harmful, industrial 'forever chemicals' from getting into state waterways.

And supported the expansion of already under-regulated industrial scale animal feeding operations though it has been shown time and again that such operations regularly leave feces and toxic nitrate deposits in rural Wisconsin residential wells. 

Yet, I want to give Vos and his party credit for some welcome budgeting and policy transparency when they recently cut state funding for transit operations by a flat 50% in just two cities - Madison and Milwaukee which are controlled by Democrats - while exempting other municipalities from that meat-axe approach.

While at the same time mandating the state spend one billion dollars to widen a three-mile stretch of interstate highway which borders several heavily minority city neighborhoods as it connects westward to higher income and whiter Waukesha County suburbs.

That's called shouting the normally quiet parts about dividing-and-conquering despite equal protection over a stadium-quality microphone.

Even though without Milwaukee and Madison's contributions to the state budget, the rest of Wisconsin would go into quality of life and public service meltdown.

Vos's refreshingly transparent budgeting also:

*Clarifies core Republican antipathy towards big cities, and to the lower-income or people of color who live there - as Walker made clear while campaigning in Waukesha County while Governor:

 "'People do not Wisconsin to "become another Milwaukee," Walker said.'"   

* Further amplifies the fundamental Republican practice in Wisconsin which uses law and taxpayer dollars to isolate lower-income or minority workers - as Walker did with the Federally-funded Zoo Interchange project - and keeps them disconnected in Milwaukee from housing, recreation, schools and jobs in the suburbs.

* And cleared away some of the fiction that Wisconsin has a "Department of Transportation" - a label which deceptively suggests the agency is a provider of a broad array of programs that approaches "transportation" with user equivalency - when Wisconsin basically has a State Highway Department which principally serves a politically-connected politicians-and-road-builders' complex that secondarily handles some pesky bus, rail, bicycle and pedestrian programs which the Legislature generally starves.

A mutually-beneficial political-and-business system which occasionally has some Democrats' participation, as I have noted.

But as I wrote in 2014, if it were all up to Vos, transit in Wisconsin would have already been removed from the Department of Transportation budget, and placed in the state's general budget from which Republicans regularly excise people programs while regularly using it as a favor bank for businesses and upper-income tax filers, as recently as last week: 

The Assembly late Tuesday passed the $87.5 billion Republican-authored 2021-23 biennial budget, which cuts taxes largely on businesses and the wealthy more than $3 billion, lifts a UW tuition freeze and rejects many of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ top priorities.

Vos would have buried transit in a losing, rigged bi-annual free-for-all alongside countless other competing tax-supported programs which Vos and company regularly diss and strangle - because those programs are "social" in nature:

Robin Vos, the GOP WI Assembly Speaker, thinks transit funding should be removed from the transportation fund:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has pushed for public transit to be funded through the state’s general budget instead of the DOT, saying he considers transit a social program....

This is part of the GOP plan to define "transportation" as roads and highways - - facilitated with the just-approved state constitution highway lobby dream amendment to dedicate gasoline tax revenue to their version of transportation. 

And were the GOP-led Legislature to fund and promote something "social," like clean water or transit or expanded Medicaid, Republicans told us last year what would come next:

Wisconsin Republicans Warn Of Anarchy, Socialism At Annual State Convention

Vos and Friends have given us some rare truthiness, so be social, and pass it on because the 2022 elections will be here before you know it. 

Ron Johnson's new embrace of COVID death is also old news

While the nation's leading COVID19 expert 

New shoulder shrug is just like the earlier ones

headed to the airwaves to correct Ron Johnson's blasé, dangerous take on the common sense value of life-saving vaccines, please remember that Johnson has repeatedly downplayed and distorted the pandemic's consequences and toll.

And even considered the deaths of 11 million Americans from COVID19 as an acceptable price for others to pay -  

GOP Senator Upbeat Coronavirus May Kill ‘No More Than 3.4 Percent of Our Population’

- in exchange for unfettered access to cheeseburgers, date night movies, the kind of air travel he gets for free as a Congressional perk, and other measures that protect his freedom.

"I certainly am going to vigorously resist any kind of government use or imposing of vaccine passports.... That could be a very freedom-robbing step and people need to understand these things."

And when The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had earlier given numbers' guy Johnson a chance to explain his callous COVID math, he came up with this: 

But we don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu,” Johnson said.  

Johnson acknowledged that coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the seasonal flu, but said, “getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population (and) I think probably far less,” he said.

By the way, 3.4 percent of the US population is about 11 million human beings.

WI science foe Vos now expert on immunology. Also "The Matrix."

[Updated 4/22/21 with this example.]

You may have missed Robin Vos's latest, self-serving manipulation of the COVID crisis - check the Wisconsin Examiner's piece linked below - and this reliably anti-science Republican officeholder is also trying to use science itself to back up what's just another outburst of traditional GOP anti-intellectualism -  

Was Vos’ immune-system 💪🏻 brag anti-vaccine? 

- spiced up with some odder, oddball Twitter words and images that are science-based only if you think "The Matrix" was real:

Initially, on Thursday morning, he went on a rant in a new post, with a meme of Keanu Reeves with the words: “I HAVE AN IMMUNE SYSTEM THAT’S WHY VACCINES WORK.”

Before we scientifically catalog some of Vos's science-bashing, let's offer for support and COVID context his blaming immigrants in his own district for contracting the virus, his nationally newsworthy contradictory walk-and-talk about COVID prevention and his multiple work - an example - against public pandemic protection orders in favor of 'you're on your own' behaviors as the pandemic was raging.

Republican legislative leaders went to court Friday to show support for a lawsuit against Gov. Tony Evers' statewide mask mandate after more than 17,000 people in Wisconsin tested positive in the last week and some hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed. 

Now back to Vos, who become Speaker of the GOP-gerrymandered Wisconsin Assembly in 2013 -  

- and stamped more than a dozen intentional anti-science blemishes (I once counted 33 such anti-science instances and initiatives by Walker) on the Vos permanent record when he:

* Shut down after 15 seconds a special session of the Assembly called to address gun-related injuries, suffering and deaths. A leading Wisconsin physician has labeled gun violence a "public health issue."

* Has repeatedly blocked the expansion of Medicaid health services to low-income Wisconsin residents. Science says people with access to medical care enjoy longer, happier and more productive lives.

[Update] * Stripped money from the budget because too much of it was aimed at replacing water pipes in Milwaukee made of lead. 

Which is toxic. 

And causes brain damage in children whose low-income families which are concentrated in the city cannot afford the hefty price for the pipe replacement, let alone new housing which no longer uses lead pipes.

Or the landlord will not make the upgrade.

So Vos's party cut the funding. 

Despite, you know, a record $4 billion in public monies rubber-stamped for Foxconn by Team Walker-Vos in record time. 

Including millions to pipe in fresh Lake Michigan water despite a multi-state/two-nation agreement to conserve the Great Lakes water except for last-ditch public health reasons, but in this case to help a Taiwanese multi-national corporation make money by manufacturing big-screen TVs in Vos's home county.

A plan now jettisoned, as predicted, but the water piping moves forward to fuel sprawl.

* Repeatedly helped restrict or been willing to sacrifice food assistance to low-income Wisconsin residents even though science knows people need food to learn, succeed and live.

* Blasted UW System funding and scholarship with the crudest and least-scientific argument possible. 

Vos, who led an assault on university officials over fund reserves last year and backed Gov. Scott Walker’s tuition freeze, said this week that he wants to ensure that faculty at the university spend more time teaching and that research ought to be geared toward helping the state's economy.

“Of course I want research, but I want to have research done in a way that focuses on growing our economy, not on ancient mating habits of whatever,” said Vos.

* Recently maneuvered to allow the continuing practice of so-called 'conversion' therapy which aims to rid people and especially children of the sexual identity of their choosing. Or as the GOP-leg Legislature would frame the scientific field it supported: Child development. 

The GOP-led Legislature used the same parliamentary maneuver to block enforcement of rules that were to restrict the dumping of so-called 'forever' toxins in Wisconsin waterways. Both of these unscientific GOP-led maneuvers were reported in the same story, here.

* Backed the flawed, failed plan through sweetheart legislation to level the pristine Penokee Hills in northwestern Wisconsin by a politically-connected out-of-state firm. It was plan was to dig a gargantuan open pit iron ore mine despite known threats to the region's clean air, drinking water and life-sustaining Native American wild rice growing estuaries. 

Among the scientific disciplines honored: Wisconsin history, Native American treaty rights, maintenance of rural life, clean air and groundwater quality. 

* Promoted the easing of rules intended to stem the release of polluting phosphorus into state waterways that helped bring about sharp increases in the impairment of Wisconsin rivers, lakes and streams 

* Backed large groundwater-hogging-and-contaminating cattle feeding operations over the interests of nearby residential well owners and others wanting equity in water policy decisions-making. Disciplines honored include groundwater quality and blue-baby syndrome research.

* Helped bring about higher speed limit for big highway trucks despite predictions by non-partisan expert of more crash injuries and deaths. 

As I wrote in 2016: 

I mean, why listen to stupid experts with facts in hand when a Robin Vos knows better?

AAA Wisconsin is urging the Wisconsin State Senate to stop proposed legislation that would raise the maximum speed limit on rural highways to 70 mph due to concerns that higher speeds make it more difficult for vehicles to slow or stop in order to avoid a collision, and can increase the severity of resultant crashes. AAA is particularly alarmed about the potential implications for trucks, as their weight makes those considerations even more pressing....

The evidence from neighboring states provides a clear warning: higher speed limits lead to higher rates of truck involvement in fatal crashes.

* Pushed for fast approvals of the flawed Foxconn project in a flood-prone county he represents without the production of a routine, science-based environmental impact review of construction on prime agricultural land and wetlands which are nature's defense against flooding.

* Made no complaint when the US Environmental Protection Agency overruled its own scientific staff and eased air pollution regulations over portions of Southeastern Wisconsin including Vos's home county of Racine. The eased regulations were another break for the Foxconn project.

* Killed a Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line, and led the elimination of Regional Transit Authorities statewide despite the contributions transit makes to cleaner air, eased road congestion and economic development along bus and rail routes.

 

Walker, & GOP malignant neglect gave WI poor roads & bridges

We are told that Wisconsin's infrastructure gets a grade of "C."

Which actually surprised me, since the previous Governor a) so repeatedly starved road repair budgets while b) short-changing or outright c) killing transit that could have reduced highway wear-and-tear that he earned him a politically-embarrassing "Scottholes" billboards, TV spots and other negative, statewide attention.

Which arguably contributed to his 2018 defeat (as did with the multi-billion-dollar Foxconn fiasco).

Which itself included its own quarter-billion+ in wasted new highway lane construction which Walker funded in part with millions of dollars ticketed for pressing road needs statewide that were deliberately sacrificed:

“Therefore, the use of state highway rehabilitation funding to complete this work near the Foxconn site would likely result in the delay of other, previously planned rehabilitation projects on state highways,” [fiscal bureau analyst John] Wilson-Tepeli wrote.

And I have not been shy about calling out the Evers administration when it imitates the worst of Walker's road-building excesses. This is not what voters were hoping for when they voted Walker out.

I will include a few grafs from a summary, 2018 item below which includes multiple links that puts the blame squarely where it belongs.

And don't forget that Republicans intentionally hamstring and degrade the public sector - whether it's education, science, roads, environmental protection or public health -  because GOP ideology with its emphasis on private sector control requires governments and the cities in which most people live struggle to provide services for the people.

Lest Ronald Reagan be proven wrong when he said 'government is the problem.'

Record shows Governor Pothole worked hard for the title

* Begin with this 2014 post:

Fix the potholes? Wisconsin pols buying more lanes instead

A particularly tough winter has battered the pavement, motorists' nerves and wallets. Potholes, everywhere, with some worthy of building permits and environmental impact statements, but has the state, awash in surplus dollars, directed added funding to local street repair budgets that have been getting routine, budget-season reductions?

Even in a $43 million supplement of highway spending?

Nope.

The Government/Road-builder Complex run out of the State Capitol, and in satellite offices in nearby trade associations and lobbying shops, has chosen instead to pour extra millions of our tax dollars into more new lanes - - big-dollar projects that will, after a freeze-thaw cycle or two acquire their own axle-breaking-tire-popping cracks, splits and degradation.

Why not fix what we have first?

Because there are bigger profits to pocket and ribbons to cut and news releases to Tweet when adding new lanes than fixing the cracks and holes with lower-profit asphalt. 

* A 2015 post: 

With giant potholes, freeway in Walker's Wisconsin hardly free

We've noted on this blog here, and here the degradation of local roads as Walker's budgets starve municipalities of revenue, but yesterday on a warm, but by no means blistering spring day on the regional 'freeway' system north of Milwaukee built and maintained by the state, there were monster potholes damaging vehicles and shutting down traffic that were monsters....

Walker keeps talking about exporting his model and methods nationally. With Wisconsin's roads falling to third-worst among the 50 states, you might want to boost your auto insurance before heading to the polls:

The numbers mark a dramatic decline in road quality. As recently as 11 years ago, Wisconsin's roads ranked No. 22 in the nation, and their deterioration affects almost every industry and motorist in the state, according to the study commissioned by the Local Government of Wisconsin Institute.

Poor roads in the Milwaukee area cost drivers $700 a year in extra vehicle repairs, according to the study; in the Madison area, road conditions cost drivers an additional $615 in annual tire wear, maintenance and accelerated deterioration. Nationally, substandard road conditions cost drivers an average of $377 per year, the study found.

The primary culprit: State budget cuts that have slashed the amount of money dedicated to repairing both state highways and local roads, which has left fewer than half of Wisconsin's roads rated as "good" or better, the report found. 

 

* Also from 2015:

Fresh pavement fail shows potholes in Wisconsin road priorities

Yet while the state keeps building politically-enabled and pricey new lanes and wider ramps - - have you recently driven through the perpetual $1.9 billion 'improvement' to I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois border, or the $1.7 billion Zoo Interchange battle zone? - -  the condition of Wisconsin's roads are now rated third-worst in the nation, data show.

So how telling was it yesterday that busy State Highway 45 north of its connection to the Zoo morass was closed for hours because huge potholes had opened up on the pavement.

* From a 2016 post:

Billions for new freeways in Wisconsin/pothole nation 

The road-builders make a lot more profit laying concrete than they earn filling potholes and repairing existing roads, so our infrastructure continues to deteriorate while Walker and WisDOT are  throwing billions into the SE WI 'freeway' system  - - as seniors and millenials drive less.

Noted in 2013. 

Noted also in 2014. 

Noted also in 2015.

* Among several posts in 2017:

For Foxconn, Team GOP bets your farm, breaks you bank(s)

Note, however, that Walker tossed 250 million borrowed dollars into the $3 billion deal for Foxconn via the state budget whenever its approved to hurriedly complete the over-built, under-funded reconstruction and expansion of I-94 though Racine and Kenosha Counties which Vos had been demanding even before Foxconn made the news.

Two things about a quarter of a billion dollars which Walker is treating like campaign support Kohl's cash:

*  Is $250 million in dedicated borrowing for highway work right through portions of Vos' district enough of a concession to get him off Walker's back; Walker will never budge off the no-new taxes bumper sticker he needs to frame his '18 re-election campaign, so maybe it's time for Vos to to take the $250 million bouquet and live with being another modern Wisconsin borrow-and-spend Republican.

*  $250 million could have filled most or all potholes on our state's rutted and poorly-ranked roads, which is why it would be useful to ask the good people of cash-strapped Northfield, Wisconsin across the state from Vos' district where the main road has crumbled back to gravel:

In Small Wisconsin Towns, Paved Roads Return To Gravel

Communities Feel The Pinch Of Construction Costs And Budget Cuts 

* More from 2014, and 2015, and 2016, and 2017.

USDOT's urbanist Mayor Pete should nix I-94 widening through Milwaukee

You have have read that despite it being too expensive for Scott Walker - and also a looming setback for environmental justice across the west side of Milwaukee - the Evers administration has revived a billion-dollar plan to shoe-horn two more lanes onto the I-94 corridor between the Marquette Interchange and 70th St.

While transit in Wisconsin is continually short-changed, and bridges and roads go un-repaired.

And while no one knows if pre-COVID traffic volumes will increase.

I've posted - for years - information about our expensive and misnamed 'freeway' system - here, for example - and said this in July when Team Evers began embracing the West side expansion:

There is no constituency or true priority for, and zero fit with environmental justice and climate science facts and agendas to justify rebooting the Story Hill-area I-94 expansion which even road-building-boosting Walker had abandoned.

Why are we still dreaming about adding expensive 'freeway' [sic] lanes while the potholes ('Scottholes') and crumbled pavement statewide which helped drive Walker out of office remain unrepaired?

More recently, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist recently wrote extensively about it for Urban Milwaukee:

Evers Is Wrong on I-94 Expansion

...WisDOT and the Highway Lobby have never let up. They keep pushing to widen the freeways already built. They’ve included the I-94 widening in the state budget despite the elected officials that represent the people in the corridor opposing it. US Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) opposes it. Both aldermen Bob Bauman and Michael Murphy oppose it. State Reps Daniel Riemer and Evan Goyke oppose it. Regardless of the opposition of these locally elected officials, WisDOT is trying to get the Federal Highway Administration to break past precedent and go along with using a 5 year old Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to speed up a project that Milwaukee isn’t asking for. In a recent phone conversation Mayor Tom Barrett indicated that Governor Tony Evers gave him no heads up before including the I-94 project in his state budget. 

So I was interested see this piece posted today by CNN which draws attention to the more progressive urbanist views of newly-confirmed US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; perhaps a new Secretary serving an Amtrak booster in the White House might prevent Wisconsin from yet another widening of Interstate Highway lanes 

 

that were supposed to connect cities, not bisect and devalue them:

Secretary Pete, going 'big' on road projects won't fix America's cities. This is what will.

While the theme coming from Secretary Buttigieg seems to be "go big," the projects most likely to meet all of the administration's goals will need to be small, incremental and city-focused. They would repair damage from past grand initiatives instead of launching new ones....

For small and mid-sized cities, the administration need only look to Buttigieg's hometown of South Bend where, as mayor, the secretary dramatically changed the city's approach to transportation and community investment.

Focusing on the struggling downtown, Mayor Pete made investments to shift traffic patterns from high-speed, one-way corridors to two-way streets with much slower speeds. This shift in emphasis allowed public biking and walking projects to pay off through increased private investment. As a result, South Bend has significantly grown housing, jobs, businesses and its overall tax base while improving safety and reducing its long-term liabilities.

Much of this renaissance happened by fixing highway corridors built decades ago through the center of the city. Those highways did great damage to South Bend's economy while denuding the community's wealth. Today, they present the greatest opportunity for revitalization. 

There are many American cities with the same challenge. Federal leadership and resources can shift state departments of transportation to support efforts to undo the damage of past highway building, restoring local communities and reducing long-term maintenance costs in the process.

I'm happy to see intelligent, non-partisan commentary coming to the fore. We need to amplify it, stop making the same mistakes over and over again and match policy and spending with more care for people, clean air and the environment.