About Walker pledges breakable, inkable

Quietly noted by Walker on Twitter without irony, or the words, "OUR LEGACY," "four years late," and "sorry about the tattoos," this:

Verified account Dec 20More...We also added nearly 10,000 Private-Sector Jobs in November, bringing the total jobs created since we’ve taken office to over 250,000.

Oh. Thanks for the info.

So you might also enjoy this understated headline and a few classic Walker lines taken from a news story on December 23rd, 2011 - - almost exactly seven years ago when it was obvious that Walker's signature campaign pledge was a farce:

After one year, 250,000 jobs pledge looking harder to attain for Walker

And while he wishes job creation numbers were better, Walker emphasized the pledge was over a four-year period. 

"We weren't going to see them all happen in one month," he said... 

"I want my Cabinet secretaries to have branded across their heads, '250,000 jobs,'" Walker said at a December 2010 meeting of the Dairy Business Association. 

Just to close one loop, note the $2+million donations to Walker and GOP campaigns by big dairy-linked interests during recent years. 

And as to the inking and the jobs' pledge, I'm not sure which option would have carried more pain: making it and having it arguably help drag its maker down, or getting and sporting that tattoo, or having it removed. 

"Sue the bast*rds?" Agreed. Pitch in, Bucky.

"Somebody should file a lawsuit...someone should sue."

Well, let's talk about that.

I've seen that a lot of that sentiment on Facebook, or in blog comments, when the discussion turns to the multi-various attacks on clean air, fresh water
 
wildlife and open space through which the Walker administration defined itself.

And had twisted law and government to serve its donors at the expense of the public trust, as I catalogued in a 21-part series published and concluded here several weeks ago:

Begin with what I wrote in December 30, 2010, in this blog's third year but only hours before Walker's first-term swearing-in:

Stepping on open space, wetlands, forests

For the environment in Wisconsin, this is the day the music died.

With anti-DNR zealot Cathy Stepp's preposterous (read: management by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the home builders organizations) nomination as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, Walker's legacy as the environmental destroyer of the land of Gaylord Nelson, John Muir and Aldo Leopold has begun.

So there has been a lot of litigation these past eight years. It became so routine  that when some environmental attorneys showed up at a meeting with state officials, a DNR representative began by saying, 'You won't like it, so just go ahead and sue us." In other words, no discussion, end of discussion.

But here's the thing. 

Litigation costs money.

And it can produce wins, like Clean Wisconsin's victory against groundwater giveaways, Midwest Environmental Advocates continuing battle for clean drinking water near industrial-scale animal feeding operations, and the protection from destruction for a large and rare forested wetland won by a coalition of groups despite efforts by the DNR and the legislature to permit it.

And let's hope Wisconsin citizens have to fund a lot less of it, given that Tony Evers' has pledged a renewed, pro-science direction at the DNR. 

But these are complex matters, as are others, and they are at different stages:

Look no father than the continuing litigation against the Lake Michigan water diversion for Foxconn, and privately-funded efforts by the grassroots organization Friends of the Black River Forest to save public park land, rare dunes and other significant resources from golf course construction goosed along by the DNR, its oversight board, the City of Sheboygan and the state Department of Administration which approved a quickie annexation of the site from the Town of Wilson, and its opposition, to the city.

So if you to help keep up the pressure in all these righteous fights, write one of these groups a check. Pick one. Or two...or help out another group you like and add its website in a comment and tell us something about your choice (s).

I have supported many of the groups below. I'm not a huge donor, but I try and give regularly. I apologize to those I'm overlooking, but here's a short list of ten with the websites of organizations fighting in one way or another for public resource protection and environmental justice in Wisconsin:

Midwest Environmental Advocates

Clean Wisconsin

1000 Friends of Wisconsin

Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters

ACLU of Wisconsin

Friends of the Black River Forest

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign

River Alliance of Wisconsin

One Wisconsin Now

Sierra Club - John Muir Chapter

Note that not all are litigants, but they're in the fight.

1K Friends of WI's short, brilliant Foxconn summation

I am a proud founding member of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, special among Wisconsin's environmental groups because of the group's focus on transportation - -  or as its latest newsletter "Landscape" puts it - -  "the link between good community design and protections of the natural environment."

I was struck by a short item in the newsletter on the Foxconn project which ties many of its environmental impacts all together.

So I am inserting it below,

will include it in my every-expanding, 18-month-long Foxconn archive, here, and also copy out the text should the photo be imperfect:

Foxconn - - BAD DEAL for the environment and human health

- - no environmental impact statement required

- - diverts millions of gallons of water each day from Lake Michigan

- - will emit pollutants including nitrogen oxides, VOCs, particulates, carbon      dioxide and greenhouse gases

- - rural location requires expanded highways and increased emissions

- - pollutants contributing to lung and cardiovascular disease.

Foxconn could have addressed huge release of greenhouse gas with an on-site investment in renewable energy generation. I was not required - it did not happen. This is only the beginning of the story.

To that summary I'd add the devastating impact on local property owners and the soul of the community.

Embittered WI loser guaranteed we'd feel his legacy's broad sting

By giving another bitter GOP pol a fat job we're all paying for:

BREAKINGTOP STORYWALKER APPOINTMENT | BRAD SCHIMEL
Scott Walker passed over 13 applicants to appoint outgoing AG Brad Schimel as judge

More insider-rewarding legacy sh*t.
 

Blog interest in 2018 signals 2019's focus

Some feedback for you, and thank you again for the readership.

These items were the five most-downloaded in 2018:

*  Foxconn Fever, a primer

This posting is a running archive over a year-and-a-half with more than 260 separate items.

*  Walker's eight-year war on the WI environment. 21 parts. 1 post.

This posting was a series and covered a lot of topics.

*  Water pollution in Wisconsin skyrockets during Walker reign

*  "#Scottholes" land on Twitter, Wausau "STOP" billboard

*  Walker gets the blame for poorly prepping Foxconn

And, by the way, since Walker's defeat, this is the single most-downloaded blog item, so I think we can see in what direction

you and I are headed:

The disrespected, manipulated Wisconsin electorate, 2.0

As we watch Vos and Fitzgerald - - obviously with Walker's approval - -

scheming to restrict Evers' governorship and essentially extend the defeated Walker's influence after being given the boot, I want to post another reminder - - I say "another" because I added this earlier today - - about what Walker had already put Wisconsin through before launching his ill-fated, egomaniacal presidential run in 2015.

This was the item's title:

The Disrespected, Manipulated Wisconsin Electorate

My point is that they're doing it again, big-time.

As you comb through this list which I was aiming at out-of-state media and potential primary voters, never forget that Walker actually bragged in his failed memoir about what he read to his senior staff in the early days of his first term, and know that no Democrat elected Tuesday would ever comport herself or himself this way, as I wrote in 2015:

Most politicians like to please as many people as possible.

Few Governors would read a snotty Top Ten Public Employee Insult List to the senior staff, including:

"On a snow day when they say “non-essential” people should stay home you know who they mean. 

"You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe. 

"You have a Democratic congressman’s lips permanently attached to your butt."

This is the sort of garbage that finally caught up with Walker on Tuesday, yet his legislative henchmen want to further embed his disrespectful and damaging legacy into the Wisconsin political environment.

Tell them "no!" And organize.

WI rings out the year in a brownish sort of way

Another brown water event. Yes, in Brown County:

DNR confirms manure spill in Brown County 

GREEN BAY - Department of Natural Resources staff and the owner of New Horizon Dairy, De Pere, are working to contain a manure runoff event near Wrightstown off Fair Road west of State 57. 

The dairy's owner is working to control and contain manure contaminated water from running off the field. The runoff has entered an unnamed stream along the east and south sides of the field and into a ditch on the north side of the field. 

The farmer notified the DNR of the spill and is working with the agency to implement control measures. DNR staff is still determining the downstream impact of the spill. 

An estimate of the volume of runoff is not yet available, but it is estimated about 60,000 gallons of manure-contaminated water has been collected by vacuum trucks. DNR will continue to work with the dairy owner to contain the spill. Additional information will be provided as the situation develops.  

----------------------------------

According to DNR records, New Horizon Dairy planned to reach the '1,000 animal unit' CAFO threshold some years ago.

The DNR offers some CAFO information through this web page, though I would note that both of these outside agency links' are dead - - 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency CAFO and NPDES information

• Federal NPDES Regulations for Animal Feeding Operations [exit DNR]

U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)

• Wisconsin statistics [exit DNR]

- - while this link - -

• Map of WPDES permitted CAFOs [PDF] – the points on the map are an approximation of the operation’s main farm location. Satellite operations covered under the permit are not included.

- - takes you to a map based on January 17, 2017 data and is credited to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resiurces[Sic], and noted here a month ago without being fixed, and which I point to as proof that incoming DNR-Secretary Preston Cole's huge rebuilding task at the agency includes a vital return to science, and other basics.

When it comes to the CAFO/pollution/policy matter, I have argued that there are direct connections among several factors which Cole and Governor-elect Tony Evers and others will have to untangle, re-prioritize and repair, including:

The Walker administration's coordinated Big Dairy-friendly enabling of CAFO expansions through fast-tracked permitting, shrugged-off inspections (like 94% of the time) and other favors; greater manure runoff and airborne contamination, including the so-called 'brown water' in rural kitchen taps; and the accelerating smaller Wisconsin dairying death spiral noted on this blog and national media.

Some Wisconsin groundwater's bears a distasteful similarity to Flint, Michigan's - - just a different contaminate and source, reported The New York Times in November:

ARMENIA, Wis. — The groundwater that once ran cool and clean from taps in this Midwestern farming town is now laced with contaminants and fear. People refuse to drink it. They won’t brush their teeth with it. They dread taking showers. 

Rural communities call it their own, private Flint — a diffuse, creeping water crisis tied to industrial farms and slack regulations that for years has tainted thousands of residential wells across the Midwest and beyond.

This is what an earlier 'manure runoff event' looked like in Kewaunee County.

 

Walker's Twitter feeds are flat-out pathetic

As clock runs down, both his official and personal accounts look like Internet road kill.

I ask you, what the heck does all this pasted into his official feed actually mean, other than the word salad ingredients got spoiled but the staff is serving them?

Verified account Dec 14

These bills increase transparency, accountability, stability, and protect the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

And he posted on his personal account this selfie with another failed Governor on what might have been Walker's last junket there. And for your Chris Christie/Scott Walker pals' files, this and this and this before you get to cute their photo:

Verified account Dec 17

Hanging out with my pal Chris Christie at the White House!

More Walker legacy material surfaces in national media

The Dairy State gets highlighted, though I don't see the subject in Walker's Legacy File while this Washington Post story with a Wisconsin dateline encapsulates it in a strong news feature:

After 40 years of dairy farming, I sold my herd of cows this summer. The herd had been in my family since 1904; I know all 45 cows by name. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to take over our farm — who would? Dairy farming is little more than hard work and possible economic suicide.

The Journal Sentinel has a related Saturday story, and I'd been writing about it for a while, including this September post:

Small dairies in Wisconsin remain under pressure, as trade negotiations with Canada approach a critical deadline later this month, reports the industry publication Dairy Herd: 

Wisconsin has lost another 47 dairy farms in August, with the total number of licensed farms standing now at just 8,372. The loss of 47 farms is just slightly lower than the 54 farms lost in July. The state has lost 429 farms since the beginning of the year, a decrease of 4.9%, and 588 the past year, a decrease of 6.6%.

Of course, Walker's priority is serving the big dairy operators' agendas, including environmental deregulation, that would help them increase their market share:

State records show that one day before Walker’s October speech in Trego, in northwestern Wisconsin, the governor’s office received detailed plans from the Dairy Business Association on legal requirements and strategic options to move the program. 

I'd noted those depressing, going-out-of-business trends in Wisconsin, here and also here: 

Walker no friend to Wisconsin family farmers. Or their water.

So here's the state of the Dairy State in one new headline:

More than 4% of Wisconsin Dairy Farms Call It Quits in 2018—So Far

Meaning that almost two WI dairy farms are closing every day this year - - 382 through July 31. 

Echoing this late 2017 headline:

Western Wisconsin Had Most Farm Bankruptcies in the US

Not to worry. Walker's on it, as we can easily see in this recent Tweet: 

Verified account Dec 17

More

Hanging out with my pal Chris Christie at the White House!

Vos displays his 'give a man enough rope' persona

I could not be happier to see this story, headline and copyrighted photo (click on the link below) displaying self-inflicted political grandiosity put up by the Wisconsin State Journal today.

Robin Vos moves to check Tony Evers in new era of divided government

And constructed with Vos' full, breathtakingly narcissistic, self-destructive participation.

Seriously: who thinks everyday Wisconsin taxpayers will endorse this self-indulgence at their expense promoted by one of the most-repetitive broadcasters of Wisconsin Republicans' increasingly laughable and dishonest 'principles' - - small government/fiscal conservatism - - with this message of pure gimme...gimme...gimme:

Vos, 50...is set to preside over an increasingly empowered Legislature craving more resources as it acts to check Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers. 

The longtime speaker said Thursday in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal he’s prepared to supply those resources in the form of increased Republican Assembly staff to help craft an alternative budget in the Capitol’s west wing as Evers takes office in the east.

Imagine a Major League baseball player announcing in spring training that he is  the Most Valuable Player; Vos is inviting every other legislator, the Governor and everyone else who can take the field to throw at him, sharpen their spikes, and whisper dirty little secrets to the writers who will take down every word.

Boss Vos? Politics is competitive, and as they, not bean bag. Did Vos not get that memo?

The game now, of Vos' choosing is, Take Him Down A Peg.

For example, does GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, certainly as much a self-appointed-and-anointed new shadow governor as is Vos, vote to give the GOP Assembly leadership all sorts of added staff without getting as big a gob of new taxpayer money and the political assistance those hires could bring to the upper legislative body, too? 

Will the public and the real Governor countenance a two-chamber arms race that serves Republicans and promotes more one-party rule?

When the state faces a deficit, can't fix the roads and remains mired in perpetually-middling growth in a larger economy on the precipice of recession?

Vos should be looking hard at Scott Walker's fate. 

There are plenty of reasons for his upset loss, from eight years of Walker fatigue to the Foxonnn albatross he willingly strapped on, but at the top of the list is the fallout from Walker's ill-fated, ego-driven, image-crushing run for the Presidency away from the state and job he purportedly loved.

The presidential overreach exposed Walker as too far in over his head and unable to stay afloat while everyone else knew he would go under.

Vos has already begin to overplay a hand he dealt to himself from a deck he helped to stack and fix.

And he's so blinded by the lure of the camera that he's already posing for holy pictures before he's accomplished a dam thing - - other than cashing a lottery ticket with he winning Power Ball number he'd hand-selected behind closed doors.

Forget the Democratic opponents in the Legislature who will come after him; partisan colleagues will begin to resent his Era of Vos declaration, which begins with the public's need to pay him for more foot soldiers and equipment.

Voters will not react generously. Which is just happened to Walker, a reality now part of state history which Vos either can't see, or thinks he can outrun.

It would be different if Vos had risen without self-dealing to a position of added power as a result of openly traveling the state's back roads and big city streets, checking in at every bean feed and church supper and 4-H awards ceremony and central city block party and suburban 4th of July picnic and parade.

And there had pressed the flesh, pitched his plans briefly but listened longer, promised and provided an open door and caucus - - and then returned every few months to report back, and listen some more.

But that kind of small "d," democratic grassroots activity was not how Vos  ascended to the kind of political rock star status he's announced as his right.

While already ascending too close to the flame which has consumed plenty of high-flying wannabes before they realized they'd never had enough fundamental authenticity for the flight, let alone enough personal charm and 'it' factor to help with a safe landing.

WI legislator would bar WI tax credits for out-of-state Foxconn work

Props to Wisconsin Democratic State Senator Dave Hansen 

for introducing legislation barring Foxconn from receiving any state tax credits for hires out of state.

From a Bloomberg news website:

Democratic lawmakers want to place new limits on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation after an audit revealed the agency had adopted procedures that could grant Foxconn tax benefits for out-of-state employees. 

Sen. Dave Hansen (D) said he would introduce legislation prohibiting the state from granting tax credits to electronics giant Foxconn Technology Group for any jobs done by out-of-state workers as it develops a $10 billion technology campus in Southeast Wisconsin. 

In a normal political environment, the blatant out-sourcing of taxpayer-paid employment would not have been considered, let alone allowed.

But Wisconsin's political environment has been distorted since GOP Gov. Walker - - defeated last month for re-election - - last year pushed through the unprecedented and fiscally-irresponsible Foxconn subsidy package which also came with significant legal and environmental privileges accorded to no other Wisconsin venture.

A full archive on the Foxconn debacle is here.

Hansen's bill faces an uncertain future in the Legislature, where GOP leaders - - apparently oblivious to the role Foxconn played in Walker's defeat - - have reserved for themselves and their party in Walker's pending absence special Foxconn oversight roles and other perks in their lame-duck special session power grab.

Like I said, we're not in a normal political environment in Wisconsin despite Walker's defeat.

Yet.

Gov. Fitzgerald lectures Evers on nominee's correct behavior. We remember an example.

Wisconsin Republicans keep having those 'do as I say' moments.

Governor Vos must have the day off - - is it another Winston Churchill weekend? - -  so Tribune Fitzgerald takes the stage to harrumph that no one cleared a cabinet nomination with him: 

[WisDOT Secretary-nominee Craig] Thompson could have a rough road to confirmation. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement Friday: "Governor-elect Evers would be better served by nominating someone who worked in a less controversial role during previous policy debates."

No about Fitzgerald is referring to cabinet nominees like Cathy Stepp, his former Senate colleague whom he rubber-stamped through the confirmation process  for a seven stint during Walker's tenure as DNR ball after having correctly modeled the correct behavior and 'worked in a less controversial role during previous policy debates,' as she described them on a blog site ironically called "The Real Debate."

In her own "waaay wordier" words, below, in full:

And Another "Do as I say moment"...

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. Without bogging everyone down with some really boring procedure talk, suffice it to say that many of these great ideas (sarcasm) come from deep inside the agencies and tend to be reflections of that agency's culture.

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

I could go on and on with examples of some of the most ridiculous stuff I've seen come down the pike, (no pun intended), but for the purposes of this post, I am going to pull out a quote from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau's summary report on the outcome of the "budget negotiations" that legislative democrats had with each other. (Note: I said with "each other." There were no republican ideas or motions accepted AT ALL during the Conference Committee process. No surprise there.)

When an agency sees an urgent need--example would be Chronic Wasting Disease management plans--they're allowed to implement an Emergency Rule. Understandable, since these ideas get an urgent run through the Joint Committee to Review Administrative Rules (affectionately known as JCRAR) without much public notice or scrutiny. The process is there to address emergencies ONLY. 

Well, sometimes agencies try to use this process as an end-around the legislative process to implement Rules, which end up having the same affect as Laws. (Those of you who have piers in lakes or culverts at the end of your driveways have probaby experienced these Rules.)

O'k, I went waaay wordier than I intended, but here's some language that was inserted into this BudgetPig that should scare everyone--regarding one of our agencies, the Department of Commerce: "it may promulgate the initial rules as emergency rules without the finding of emergency."

Why should this scare you? When (not if, I said WHEN) they give this authority to the DNR there will be more of a whooshing sound as businesses run for the borders. 

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.

Walker, Ryan root for Trump. Add Putin to the chorus, says Russian media.

The week ends with more White House resignations, a Trump-engineered-government-shutdown-by-tantrum, more Mueller activity, freshly tanking markets and disappearing savings while Putin keeps playing Trump and Trump plays Foreign Secretary for Putin's grand plans, Russian media reports:

"Donald's right. I agree with him."

And did you catch these lines from today's The New York Times, again quoting Russian media?

“Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving,” said Vladimir Frolov, a Russian columnist and foreign affairs analyst. “Trump implements Russia’s negative agenda by default, undermining the U.S.–led world order, U.S. alliances, U.S. credibility as a partner and an ally. All of this on his own. Russia can just relax and watch and root for Trump, which Putin does at every TV appearance.”

It's important to remember that from Scott Walker's endorsement embrace of Trump at the GOP nominating convention in 2016 to Paul "the Deficit King" Ryan's love affair with the tariff king,

maistream Republican officials in Wisconsin stood and continue to back the man they kept telling would make make the best President.

Thank you, Badgerland GOP.