Fresh pavement fail shows potholes in WI road priorities

You must live on the International Space Station if you didn't know that Wisconsin roads are sporting potholes which appear to be created by land mines.

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:

The holes grew to nearly five feet by five feet -- a major traffic concern for motorists.

How would you like to run through at highway speed a pothole big enough to hold a couple of refrigerators?

And that's the second time in recent weeks a major Southeastern Wisconsin 'freeway' was closed for emergency repairs because of dangerously large potholes. 

What are we in for when the first late fall freeze-thaw cycle turns more of our roads into gravel?

I recommend reading Steve Walters" continuing reporting on the Wisconsin highway policy and spending debacle.

Good news, bad news in WI job numbers

There's good news and bad news for Wisconsin and Gov. Walker in the latest workforce numbers.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first: Wisconsin still trails the national rate of new jobs added.

The good news - - Wisconsin has skyrocketed (again) all the way up to 30th among the states in new jobs - - and that's the highest ranking Bucky's had since Walker became governor more than four years ago.

30th place! We've taken over the very top of the second fifth from the bottom.

A breakthrough into the top half can't be far behind.

Through 2 debates and 5 hours, CNN's biggest fail

CNN had its chance to focus the debate Wednesday night on climate change, but blew it, as did some of the candidates, predictably. 

I guess no one had been outdoors there the last few days or weeks, or had flown there sitting in a window seat, or read a newspaper or had their television sets on.

You tell me how CNN, its producers, debate moderator and two additional panelists didn't ask this question staring all the participants in the face at the GOP presidential debates in Simi Valley, California, part of the Greater Los Angeles area:

"We're right here in California - - which is having its worst drought in 500 years, and, along with other Western states, is beset by a record-setting wildfire season - - made worse by the drought - - which includes recent loss of life - - 

The Valley Fire, now the state's most destructive

- - so imagine that I am a homeowner whose property has been reduced to ashes, or I run a farm or business now under mandatory watering restrictions, and I have been told that trends show more drought, earlier and longer fire seasons and more climate change ahead. What are your plans to address these realities?"

California wild fire, 2008

Gun range, ATV's in Baraboo conservation area plan?

The public can still push for greater conservation in the plan to restore the former Baraboo ammunition works property, but it's gratingly frustrating that the DNR in the Walker era can't or won't get these things right:

There is a heavy hand at work when land use planners at the DNR propose on/off road motorcycles through a prairie teeming with grassland birds. 

In a conservation plan that biologists have otherwise deemed stellar, the recently released draft Master Plan for the future Sauk Prairie Recreation Area proposes a multitude of activities from on/off-road motorcycles and mountain bikes to sport rocketry. A future gun range is also discussed. Really?

Your opportunity to submit public comment on the draft Master Plan ends Sept. 25. Click on the Action Alert at www.CSWAB.org to send an email to the DNR. Copies of your comments will be sent to local, state and federal legislators. 

So we'll add this to a long list of locales where people at the grassroots are pressuring the state to keep its eye on the ball

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, despite its overt corporatization, is still telling the world on its website - - read and copy before it gets deleted or watered-down - - that Wisconsin's waters belong to everyone. By law.
But time and time again, as this blog has noted for years, Wisconsinites find themselves fighting to protect their rights to water quality and quantity, access and enjoyment.

Suburban freakout: bus shelters, ads would ruin Bluemound Rd.

[Updated, with photos, from 10:57 a.m.] Bus shelters are banned in Brookfield, the Waukesha County suburb bordering Milwaukee.

Some of the 'burbs look down on icky transit, including the light rail former Brookfield GOP State Rep. Scott Jensen helped kill, but seriously - - no shelters? 

In our weather? Imagine heading for work in the Polar Vortex or coming home from the mall or the day care in a deluge, or just standing out in the elements.

Remember that similar disrespect took place when Southridge Mall in Greendale at the Milwaukee border no longer wanted a bus stop close to its main entrance?

Do I read this correctly?

Nearly five months of study didn't satisfy all of the concerns of city of Brookfield aldermen. 

On a unanimous vote, a discussion of allowing bus shelters in Brookfield ended with the issue being postponed for the second time. 

In April, Clear Channel Outdoor came before the city requesting that the council make an exception to its rule against off-site advertising in order to pave the way for six bus shelters to be installed along Bluemound Road.

Bluemound Rd.?  Already replete with shops and businesses and strip malls and commercial signage, but does Brookfield view it more as a scenic byway that would be ruined with bus shelter ads:

"People living along North Avenue, Capitol Drive, Bluemound, Pilgrim, these are all major arterials," [Ald. Scott] Berg said.  

"There are stretches (in Milwaukee) that are housing areas that look a lot like what we see in some of the older areas of Brookfield. People in Milwaukee seem to have adjusted to (shelters with advertisements) just fine. Whether an identical development is inherently different because it's in Brookfield is an interesting judgment we're being asked to make." 

"I really think that we really need to look at this," [Ald. Lisa] Mellone responded. "This is Brookfield. This is not Milwaukee."

Ah, now we're getting to the heart of the matter.

Bus shelters are too Milwaukee, and in Brookfield, shelters and ads could spread from Bluemound Rd. to residential areas. In fact, shelters, with or without ads, just might attract more users, and is that the problem?

When I have time today I will head over to one of the awful bus shelters in Milwaukee and other suburbs so you can see the horror for yourselves:

This woman and her children have managed to walk unescorted past a bus shelter in suburban Whitefish Bay that is also perilously close to the high school and nice housing. Whew!

There are four bus shelters - - an outbreak - - at the intersection of Wauwatosa and North Avenues in suburban Wauwatosa. No visible damage to the bank, school, city hall and nursing home/medical complex on the corners, and the passersby seem OK. Whew! 

This shelter with advertising at the corner of North and Oakland Avenues in Milwaukee seems to have left the new housing and pedestrians there unscathed Whew!

Bayshore Town Center and these unsuspecting citizens in suburban Glendale seem to have survived this bus shelter on E. Silver Spring Dr. Whew!

See Milwaukee-area citizens co-exist with bus shelters!

Just a tease to this reposted item about Brookfield barring bus shelters.

While other nearby communities have figured out how to live and prosper with them.

Even bus shelters, with - - wait for it - -  advertisements. 'Merica!

Bus shelter in Glendale. Bayshore Town Center surviving in background.

Bus shelter in Milwaukee. Note new housing, not ruined!

More big dairy pollution fouls Wisconsin groundwater

I know it's hard to keep up with (and to stomach reading about) the pollution of Wisconsin groundwater by mega- dairies - -here's a few put up recently by Wisconsin Public Radio - - but, yes, there is yet another stark, stinking finding:

SARATOGA — The backer of a proposed 5,300-head dairy farm in southern Wood County is coming under fire after heavily contaminated groundwater was found at another farm owned by the same company.

“We think it’s important that the public be aware that the concerns that we’re raising are not just theoretical,” said Madison attorney Paul Kent, who represents the town of Saratoga, where the proposed mega-farm would be located…

On Monday, the town issued a press release calling attention to a report filed in August with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that shows monitoring wells at Central Sands Dairy, in the town of Armenia in Juneau County, recently contained nitrate levels substantially higher than state drinking water standards.

The report was prepared by an environmental testing agency hired by the Wysocki Family of Companies, which owns Central Sands Dairy, under a groundwater monitoring plan the farm is required to follow. Central Sands Dairy has about 3,800 cows, according to the Juneau County Land and Water Resources Department.

N. WI water bottling plan comes…and goes

Good to see that a proposal to take water out of a small north woods Wisconsin lake - - I'd just written about it - - has come and gone, leaving the Great Lakes Compact of 2008 intact and making a strong statement about water and the law.

MN shames WI on water, pipeline public policies

The divide between progressive Minnesota and the Wreakhavocstan that Wisconsin has become under Walkerite Republicans is highlighted today by Minnesota actions on behalf of its citizens and their environment.

*  While Wisconsin's 'chamber-of-commerce' DNR is carelessly green lighting a major crude oil pipeline expansion without a full environmental review, Minnesota is being ordered to conduct that very level of review for a different pipeline:

Minnesota regulators must rewind their work on the Sandpiper crude oil pipeline after a state Appeals Court panel Monday overturned a June decision that the project is needed.

The judicial panel ruled that a comprehensive environmental study about the pipeline's impact as it crosses northern Minnesota must be completed before the state Public Utilities Commission decides the pipeline is needed.

The decision means that after the environmental impact statement is completed, the commission may reconsider issuing the "certificate of need" it already approved on June 5. If it is approved again, the commission may proceed to approve a specific route.

And while Wisconsin regulators and legislators continue to water down the state's historic commitment to clean and accessible water, Minnesota is embarking on a major overhaul of its water policies that emphasize the public interest.

Both pipelines are Enbridge projects; the company has a checkered record that includes spills and violations in Minnesota, and Wisconsin, as well as its unprecedented inland spill into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

Can you imagine such a Minnesota-style, publicly-spirited action in Wisconsin, especially if it ended up at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, itself a subsidiary of corporate interests?

In fact, to make sure the controversial Wisconsin pipeline would get into the ground the entire length of the state with as few obstacles - - and public protections - - as possible, legislators serving the already-troubled pipeline operator slipped a special, last-minute amendment into the just-adopted Wisconsin state budget that exempted Enbridge from providing local officials with spill and cleanup insurance.

*  And while Minnesota moves intentionally to protect its waters and the lands that buffer them, Republicans running Wisconsin government on behalf of special interests have been systematically degrading regulatory and scientific rules and expertise designed to keep Wisconsin waters clean and accessible.

Repeatedly forcing local residents, taxpayers and small communities to fight for their water rights, often against the DNR and state officials.

Wisconsin is selling public land - - even prime trout stream headwaters acreage - - cutting DNR scientists, enabling big-dairy groundwater pollution, turning a blind eye to a growing dead zone in Green Bay from farm-and-phosphorous runoff (also freshly deregulated), giving kid-gloves treatment to a politically-connected-and-polluting septic hauler, and treating water more like a commodity and less like the life-sustaining glacial-era gift which the Wisconsin Constitution says belongs to everyone.

Minnesota weathered the recession far better than did Wisconsin, and while the upper Midwestern states share a picturesque Mississippi River border, Lake Superioe
and sports rivalries, the more appealing and successful Minnesota is leaving Wisconsin in the dust and with far less upon which to build: 

Minnesota’s economy outperforms Wisconsin’s economy. The trends have accelerated since the end of the Great Recession. Economically, Minnesota continues to pull away from the Badger State.

Australia boots its climate change denier leader

Remember when Australia was burning - - as is California and US West - - with climate change believed to be making a bad situation worse?

So the Australians just dumped their leading climate change 'skeptic' - - and who knows - - maybe Canada's tar sand oil champ may be next, The Washington Post reports.

Can't wait to see the issue discussed in sympathetic detail at Wednesday's GOP debate. Oh, wait a minute…

Conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, much of whose wealth comes from fossil fuel-related industries, unveiled their plan earlier this year to spend $889 million in the 2016 elections through their group Americans for Prosperity. This amount would dwarf what either of the presidential candidates raised in the 2012 general election, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Koch brothers, each worth more than $40 billion, have been public in their opposition to government intervention to combat climate change. The brothers successfully persuaded many elected officials — including presidential hopefuls Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul — to sign a pledge that would "oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue."

CA driest in 500 years, more drought to come

[Updated] For your climate change file - - an issue unlikely to take center stage at Wednesday's GOP debate in California though the state has already seen 1,000 more wildfires than last year and the snow pack has all but disappeared, The Washington Post reports:

California is in the fourth year of a severe drought with temperatures so high and precipitation so low that rain and snow evaporate almost as soon as they hit the ground. A research paper released Monday said an analysis of blue oak tree rings in the state’s Central Valley showed that the amount of mountain snow California relies on for moisture hasn’t been so low since the 1500s. That was around the time when European explorers landed in what became San Diego, when Columbus set off on a final voyage to the Caribbean, when King Henry VIII was alive...

And the news keeps getting worse. A study by scientists at NASA and Columbia University said California was one of several states in the Southwest facing a mega-drought that could last up to 30 years if greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically curtailed by 2050. A study by scientists at Stanford University said a future of more-frequent drought in California is a near certainty because temperatures are increasing at a time when precipitation rates are steady, allowing heat to overwhelm the moisture. And another Columbia study said California’s current drought is part of a natural pattern, but human-caused climate change has made it significantly worse.

Another WI community fights for its water

[Updated] The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, despite its overt corporatization, is still telling the world on its website - - read and copy before it gets deleted or watered-down - - that Wisconsin's waters belong to everyone. By law.

But time and time again, as this blog has noted for years, Wisconsinites find themselves fighting to protect their rights to water quality and quantity, access and enjoyment.

The latest example: people who live near Carlin Lake, in Vilas County, who have written to media (below) to protest, in detail, plans by a water bottler - - (and I do find through a simple Internet search this information about one such fledgling effort) - - that could send water away from this relatively small, 155-acre northern Wisconsin lake:

Those of us who own property on Carlin Lake in Presque Isle believe that we are caretakers of this beautiful natural environment and for years, have committed ourselves to maintaining it for future generations. Thus, we are alarmed by the present proposal to pump water from Carlin's aquifer to be transported for bottling. 

We believe that several practical and legal factors indicate that this proposed business should not be allowed to proceed. 

1. Carlin is a headwater lake, so our lake's sole water supply comes from rainwater. No water drains into Carlin from any other source. Therefore, our groundwater remains stable only when output equals input, that is, when rainfall is able to replenish any water that is used.

All water currently drawn from our household wells returns to the Carlin Lake aquifer, including bathroom and kitchen uses. Any water which would be pumped and taken away to be bottled and sold would never return to the aquifer from which it was taken... 

We believe that allowing this groundwater, everyone's natural resource, to be taken and sold for commercial profit would set a dangerous precedent, potentially opening the door to similar operations across the water-wealthy Northwoods. 

For decades, residents of Carlin Lake have worked diligently to protect both our lake environment and our residential neighborhood. We ask that both citizens and government agencies scrutinize all aspects of this proposal and take any necessary steps to protect our water resource. 

We believe that when all legal questions are answered, this proposed development will be shown to be a real threat to our shared values.

Carlin Lake Association 

Committee: Ramona Kubica, Cecil Davis, Bill Huemann, Carmen Farwell 

The Carlin Lake committee hopes the Great Lakes Compact of 2008 would bar the removal of water in bottles, but as was pointed out when the Compact was drafted and debated, an exemption for export in bottles - - echoing the tolerance for exported water in beer cans and other so-called "consumptive uses" - - was included in the agreement, principally to please the Michigan water  bottling industry (see "Ice Mountain," for example), and now that flaw may create an unforeseen and regrettable impact in Northern Wisconsin.

The struggle for water conservation and access does remind me of what faced in NW Wisconsin, where residents fought to protect rivers and rice-growing wetlands near the proposed open-pit iron mine, or south of Sheboygan where a major golf course plan imperils wetlands and the Black River Forest, or in Western Wisconsin where frac sand has spilled into the rivers, or near the Little Plover River in Portage County which regularly is drained by nearby potato farm irrigation, or in Central Wisconsin or Kewaunee County, where mega-dairies are fouling the water table - - because Wisconsin has sidelined the DNR and now puts business uses of water above ordinary residential and recreational priorities, and these regulatory changes are being embedded in the law.

Study shows environmentalism survived Great Recession

Environmental priorities in Wisconsin under Walker's 'chamber-of-commerce' rule have taken a beating, but an interesting study says that environmentalism did survive the Great Recession - - so food for thought:

Political interest in environmental issues persisted despite economic recession

"To our surprise, we found that interest in environmental issues is well and alive," said Robert Rohrschneider, the Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas. "People are just as concerned with ecological issues as they were in 2000 and even in 1993 when the movement was by all accounts quite vibrant." 

Rohrschneider co-edited a special issue of the Environmental Politics journal titled "Environmental concerns during a time of duress," in which researchers examined public opinion polling surrounding environmental issues. 

 "There's an infrastructure in place that actually sustains interest in these issues beyond ephemeral public attitudes, and that seems to help the environmental movement now," Rohrschneider said. 

Another factor that seems to have kept environmental issues on the front burner has been news stories and exposure to environmental problems, such as drought, climate change and melting glaciers, for example.

Russell Dalton, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, is Rohrschneider's co-editor on the special issue, which is geared toward social scientists, policymakers and environmental advocates. 

WI's $7.25/min. wage = 1/3rd of small family living wage

Wisconsin is open for state-enforced poverty: Walker and the GOP legislature have refused to consider an increase in Wisconsin's relatively-minimal/minimum wage, and now a new interactive map shows that rate of pay only equals about one-third of a living wage for even a small family in Milwaukee, Dane and other Wisconsin counties.

WI bear hunting under citizen microscope, other lenses

[Updated] Haven't seen much mainstream media attention to this northwoods WI story:

VIDEO: Day 4 of the campaign to end bear baiting & hound hunting in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest

The Wolves of Douglas County Wisconsin blog has been posting the information, and a couple of weeks ago...

...as the Wisconsin bear hunting season opened I noted that Wisconsin had eased some bear hinting regulations.

Update: The Wisconsin DNR has announced that two three more bear hounds - - the 18th, 19th and 20th this year - - have been killed by wolves.

Wisconsin allows bear hunters to place bait, even in known wolf-activity areas, thus increasing the odds of wolf-hound fighting.

Wisconsin is also the only state which pays dog owners up to $2.500 for each dog killed by a wolf - - even if the attack happens in a known wolf-activity area, and also even if the dog owner is a scofflaw or previous recipient of a dog depredation payment, it has been reported.

WI roads seem no safer, data show

Data on the WisDOT website tell the story. 

Basically, no improvement in the numbers of deaths and fatal crashes on Wisconsin roads over the last five+ years despite reduced miles driven generally and substantial road-work often pegged as safety-related spending. What's the deal:

As of September 6, 2015

Fatalities
September 2015 fatalities	10
August 2015 fatalities	63
2015 Year-to-date fatalities*	368​
2015 Year-to-date fatal crashes*	338
2014 Year-to-date fatalities	325
2014 Year-to-date fatal crashes	293

Five-year fatal trend comparison
		(Year-to-date)						2010-2014
		2015*	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010	Average
Fatal crashes		338	293	333	362	341	353	336
Fatalities		368	325	358	411	369	381	369

Long RR tradition lives on: outsiders can drop dead

The old railroad barons may have passed on, but their up-yours tradition to outsiders lives on:

Asked for info on bridge conditions, railroad carrying Bakken crude tells cities no

Bridges must be inspected annually by railroads. But railroads are not required to submit the information to the federal agency. Railroads also are not required to make the information available to the public. 

Which works well for the companies running trains through Wisconsin, where policy-makers have decided that one state rail inspector for 4,500 crossings and 3,000 miles of track suffices as the state's rail safety front line.

'Old Rusty,' a nearly-century old rail bridge in downtown Milwaukee, is getting some company-paid reinforcement to its pillars. 

Journal Sentinel: Toss Boss Vos

The Journal Sentinel editorial board gives GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos what just might be an unprecedented drubbing in its Sunday Crossroads section for continuing to try and blow holes in the state's open records law.

The editorial board even calls for Vos' removal by his colleagues as Assembly Speaker and urges voters in his Racine County base to find an alternative representative.

So this was not your basic knuckle-rapping by the paper's lead commentators on this the opening day of the NFL season, where the Packers take on the Bears in Chicago.

The editorial writers did everything to Vos but say he should be expelled across the border to Illinois and made to wear a full-body Bears uniform tattoo.

Don't forget that Vos is out to remake the non-partisan Government Accountability Board into a partisan agency that would be less interested in elections, fund-raising and lobbying in the public interest.

As he also directed the sweeping, secretive, partisan power-embedding redistricting of both GOP-led chambers that keep's the state in a one-party chokehold, as Vos is a master of behind-the-scenes manipulation, as the unusually-strong newspaper editorial points out.

Would that the paper had made a similar break with Walker some years ago, as Walker, with Vos' assistance absorbed more and more power, whether through partisan budget reclassification of agency attorneys, government-wide rule-making approvals and limitations on local voting, environmental, residency and collective bargaining rights and procedures statewide

But, as to the editorial blow at Vos on its own - - come Monday, no doubt, we'll find Vos redefined as the latest right-wing martyr to a bullying mainstream media and sure to get a morning-to-evening talk radio defense.

In the long run. we'll assess whether the editorial board the clout to dethrone the powerful Assembly Speaker, so stay tuned.

DNR/'justice' tag team lifts cap on mega-dairy

So it's been decided that Wisconsin isn't going to regulate to ensure water quality for people if the size of a dairy herd is the issue, even though a judge had looked at the Kewaunee dairy and the water quality problems linked to it and had looked at the case and cited the DNR for a massive drinking water regulatory failure.

The DNR/DOJ position would also seem to blow a hole in separate efforts, like this one to keep a Vilas County lake in Northern Wisconsin from being turned into a bottled water source for export.

And big agricultural groundwater users are going to escape more DNR oversight, if GOP legislators get their way, further eroding the DNR's public mission and ensuring an adequate supply downstream, as guaranteed, we thought, by the Ninth Amendment to the quaint old Wisconsin State Constitution.

The issue is acknowledging the importance of water usage's "cumulative effects," since the water belongs to all the people, including those near the dairy in Kewaunee.

And the other, so-called CAFO's in Wisconsin.

But the new Wisconsin Idea is that the borders of the private sector are the borders of the state.

So get ready for the huge pig farm the DNR is 'reviewing' up north, too.

Clean water for people in Wisconsin is so yesterday - - but the endless ironies in Walker's "chamber-of-commerce mentality" DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp's partisan whine about others denying her a level playing field are always up-to-date:

It's always the fine print in these things that have the heaviest hit. 

Just another example of the democrats game plan: Change the Rules to Fit the Players.

Shout it with me, now: HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT.

But the news about policy-making and insensitive bureaucrats is not all bad: Stepp has noted that yes, while her agency will now allow the dairy herd in question to grow by thousands of manure-producing animals, she does recognize the  "challenges" it creates.

Shout it with me now...

This mess has been years in the making, and will take generations to undo, if ever, since they're not making much new water these days as the land which supports it is trashed and toxified. 

All eyes will be on this huge WEDC grant

Just saying:

Quad/Graphics Inc., which won a major new magazine printing contract this year, plans to create 500 more jobs in Wisconsin in the next few years. 

The company will be eligible to earn $15.7 million in state tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. as part of the planned expansion.

Given the bigger picture in recent focus:

Wisconsin's troubled jobs agency did not independently verify whether businesses receiving tax dollars created the jobs they promised, state auditors told a panel of lawmakers on Wednesday.  

Addressing the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, officials with the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau detailed a May audit of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. The audit found cases in which WEDC didn't comply with state law or its own policies, made awards without the proper review and didn't require confirmation that jobs were created after businesses received awards.

And this bit of fresh official, WEDC shoulder-shrugging:

Walker's signature Wisconsin job-creating agency failure doesn't have the time or the will to crack down and police itself after being caught giving public subsidies to companies sending work overseas. 

No matter that it's an old story; we're on The Big Government Real Slow Time Clock these days, Bucky. 

Or that when the WEDC was in full buzzword-and-propaganda mode, the agency used to brag about how "nimble" it was.

WEDC board puts off outsourcing issue for a month

WEDC’s mission of supporting economic development and job creation through bold initiatives aimed at propelling Wisconsin’s economy forward remains intact.  

While undergoing a complete restructuring of human resources, information technology and accounting systems as part of its transformation, WEDC has successfully created a nimble, efficient, customer-focused organization—one that is better positioned to meet the needs of businesses operating in an intensely competitive global economy than the old Wisconsin Department of Commerce.