Air pollution from CAFOs is a killer; WI GOP pols love them

This data-driven Washington Post story disclosing that polluted air from big animal feeding operations kills more Americans annually than airborne particles from coal mines deserves plenty of attention in states like Wisconsin which have many such industrial-scale farming operations:

Air pollution from farms leads to 17,900 U.S. deaths per year, study finds

The first-of-its-kind report pinpoints meat production as the leading source of deadly pollution 

Animal agriculture is the worst emitter, researchers say, responsible for 80 percent of deaths from pollution related to food production. Gases associated with manure and animal feed produce small, lung-irritating particles capable of drifting hundreds of miles. 

These emissions now account for more annual deaths than pollution from coal power plants. Yet, while pollution from power plants, factories and vehicles is restricted under the Clean Air Act, there is less regulation of air quality around farms. 

Regrettably, this report will not come as a surprise to numerous Wisconsin residents and organizations which have been battling poorly-controlled Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, (CAFOs), for year over water water issues - 

A 2016 review by the state's Legislative Audit Bureau found significant problems with the program's ability to keep up with its workload. One illustration of this issue: In 2017, one-third of CAFOs were operating under expired permits because of a permitting backlog. Two years later, the DNR has closed the gap somewhat but remains unable to keep up with oversight. Nearly a quarter of CAFOs were operating with expired permits in June 2019.

- but CAFOs have strong support from Republican politicians who cater to the CAFOs and put loyalty to donors and the industry ahead of people and public health - 

Remember that Vos-Gerald are the same two captive enablers of Big Ag special interests who just three months ago signed a public letter - - you can see and read it here - -

Vos, Fitzgerald go to bat for 'existing and expanding CAFO operations'

- - lauding the continued expansion of the very industrial-scale /groundwater-draining/drinking water contaminating/barely-regulated dairying operations known as CAFOs whose production and state-promoted, politically-driven market advantages have helped push small farms and dairies out of business.

I noted Walker and his party's ideologically-driven ag policy failure in part nine of an environmental blog series 

Walker's 8-year war on Wisconsin's environment. Part 9. CAFOs 

You may remember that I began this series focusing on moves Walker made in the first hours of his administration to ease wetland protections and even to suspend the rules so a campaign donor could quickly get a permit to fill and wetland and build a development.

Fast forward to this year, when Wisconsin Democracy Campaign discovered that major Walker donors were getting permits basically in perpetuity to acquire all the groundwater they wanted to fuel their CAFOs.

The bigger the CAFOs, the bigger the Walker-driven supply/over-supply of milk, driving out smaller farms and leaving the big operators more ready to weather that storm.

Here is a link to the entire, 21-part series, which takes note of perhaps-forgotten Vos play to protect CAFOs, including one of Wisconsin's largest, from a modicum of public-interest oversight.

Manure flowing from a Kewaunee CAFO is a known water contaminant. A new story shows air pollution from CAFOs is a major killer across America.

Federal health $ could treat WI GOP leader's amnesia

I note WI GOP Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu's tweeted complaint about Wisconsinites (meaning ego-driven GOP legislators) being given no say by Gov. Evers over how Federal dollars are being spent.

Oh, the harm done to good government:

State Sen. Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg

@SenatorDevin Apr 22. @GovEvers Vetoing our bills sends a clear message to the people of Wisconsin that they will have little to no say in how their federal tax dollars are spent. He has once again rejected the opportunity to work w/ legislators on a basic spending plan. This is not good government. 

After recalling that these same whiney GOP legislators treated themselves to an all-expenses-paid nine month vacation in 2020 after failing to provide Evers with their promised COVID19 battle plan, I also remembered this and other examples of Republicans' good government [sic] management [sic] of Federal funds during the Walker years - a costly series of ideological and deliberate high fiscal crimes which continue during Robin Vos' Governorship in His Mind: 

State giving back stimulus funds intended for broadband expansion

State officials are returning $23 million to the federal government, saying there were too many strings attached to stimulus money that was supposed to be for expanding high-speed Internet service in schools, libraries and government agencies.

The money was to have boosted broadband connections in 380 Wisconsin communities, including 385 libraries and 82 schools. It also could have been used to improve police, fire department and hospital communications in rural areas.

And this: 

Following Wisconsin's High-Speed Rail Funding Down The Tracks

A Look At What Happened To Federal Money 

The state of Wisconsin keeps on paying for trains that aren't running in, to or from any of its communities. In August, the state reached a $9.7 million settlement with Spanish train manufacturer Talgo over two new sets of rail cars. These Talgo 8 trains were originally intended for Amtrak's Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago, but instead ended up in the Pacific Northwest.

Wisconsin taxpayers previously spent $42 million on these trains before the train manufacturer sued the state in 2012. That puts total costs for this particular rail project about 10 percent higher than the $47.5 million price tag, funded through state bonds, set by Talgo in its initial 2009 no-bid contract with Wisconsin's then-Gov. Jim Doyle.... 

It's the latest chapter in a now-familiar story of passenger rail investments being diverted from Wisconsin. In 2010, Gov. Scott Walker rejected $810 million for a Madison-to-Milwaukee line. This was part the Obama administration's nationwide, $10.1 billion push to invest in high-speed passenger rail.

And this: 

Wisconsin Could Get $1.6 Billion by Expanding Medicaid

Wisconsin could save more than $1.6 billion over the next two years by expanding Medicaid to cover nearly 91,000 additional low-income people, a move Republicans continue to block.

Which is a continuing story. 

Vos says no to plan that would provide Wisconsin with $1.6 billion for health care

MADISON - The state would reap $1.6 billion in tax savings — more than 2½ times original projections — if it provided health care to more Wisconsinites under a provision of the recently passed federal COVID relief legislation.

Also, Bruce Murphy at Urban Milwaukee had noted other GOP-provoked federal funding losses beyond Amtrak, broadband and Medicaid that cost Wisconsinites access to programs and/or drove up state taxpayers' costs: 

What Walker Cost Wisconsin

New report shows big decline in federal aid for state while he was governor.

Walker also rejected another pot of federal money for political reasons. The governor and Republican legislators implemented a law that disqualified any able-bodied adult without children who works less than 80 hours per month from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The new policy cuts off their food assistance if they have not worked for a cumulative total of three months during a three-year period. 

The result was a loss...of $166 million in economic activity in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, the state allocated more than $58 million to administer this program, meaning state taxpayers would pay for a new bureaucracy whose goal was to stop some $92 million in annual federal SNAP assistance from going to the poorest of the poor....

Walker also slashed state spending at the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, spending the minimum possible under the law to prevent being subject to federal penalties, as a story by the Wisconsin Center for Investigation found. 

Wisconsin could have gotten an additional $14.2 million in federal funds if it were to come up with a $3.9 million match to cover funding for the next two years, the story noted in 2013. Instead DVR was left far short of resources, forcing “thousands of people with disabilities” to “wait for months to access state employment services,” the story found. 

Talk to me again about your good government, and who controls federal spending, or triggers more state spending than needed? 

Small-town lawmakers to remake WI big cities' police/fire boards

Continuing their willful abandonment of local control principles and practices to enforce an ideologically-driven dominion over Wisconsin's big cities, the GOP-led Wisconsin Legislature with its lopsided rural, smaller-town and suburban majorities has decided to dictate changes to the structure and operations of Madison and Milwaukee's law enforcement oversight commissions.

Imagine if this situation were reversed: we'd be hearing calls from Republican communities to secede and affiliate with Iowa or Michigan.

But this Big Government intrusion from the State Capitol into traditionally local operations is the very kind of heavy-handed meddling that happens when one party gerrymanders itself into more-or-less permanent control of lawmaking, policy agendas, Legislative district boundaries and state spending.

The Republican-controlled Senate is scheduled Tuesday to adopt Senate Bill 117 to change how police and fire commissions in the state’s two largest cities — Milwaukee and Madison — operate....

[Milwaukee Mayor Tom] Barrett called the bill a "direct assault" on local control. He criticized it for allowing people who live outside Milwaukee to sit on the city's commission. 

"This is the farthest thing from reform you can imagine. This is not police reform. This is pure and simple state interference in local matters driven by the police association," he said. 

For the record, the State Senate's new GOP Majority leader after Scott Fitzgerald was promoted to a safely-gerrymandered seat in the Congress is Devin LaMahieu, from Oostburg, pop. 3,077.

While habitual power grabber and State Assembly GOP Speaker Robin Vos -

2018 photo

- is from Burlington, pop. 10,956 - and both of these leaders' communities have white populations of 95% or more.

Yet these are the political leaders who have positioned themselves to make quality of life decisions in what now passes for normal across the Bizarro world of Wisconsin politics statewide and for 5.82 million citizens.

Note that Milwaukee is a 'donor' municipality' to the state treasury - and no doubt fast-growing Madison and Dane County are, too - though thanks these days to punitive penny-pinching, the state sends back smaller and smaller sums to the bigger donor communities.

While Walker slandered Milwaukee despite its subsidization of the very sort of smaller community where he launched his dog-whistling smear, and the GOP-dominated Legislature and continues to aggregate to itself more and more power over the state's heavily-minority, urban populations 

WI GOP pol projects 'crap' on Democratic opponents, people generally

Wisconsin's Republican-led Legislative budget 'writing' committee basically threw out Gov. Evers' document - and 400 or so of its specific proposals - and will craft their own budget which will only further distance this gerrymandered GOP gang from what people in Wisconsin want and need (my analysis), as the AP reports:

Republicans Scrap Evers' Priorities, Start Writing Budget

Republicans, along a party line vote, essentially scrapped the Democratic governor's entire two-year spending proposal and instead began crafting their own budget based off of the current budget, which the GOP-controlled Legislature passed two years ago without a single Democratic vote and which Evers signed into law....

And Assembly Speaker and shadow Governor Robin Vos's spiteful and continuing "#Never" refusal in 2019 to allow more low-income citizens into the Medicaid program means the state is passing on Federal Medicaid expansion funding that would save Wisconsin taxpayers more than a billion dollars. 

Agaln, as the AP explains:

The items Republicans killed would have brought in $3.4 billion to the state, mostly through higher taxes on capital gains and manufacturers, and by accepting federal Medicaid expansion. That alone would have saved the state $1.6 billion, when including federal money that would have come to Wisconsin....Committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born called Democratic criticism of the rejection of Medicaid expansion “crap,” saying they were being dishonest in not calling the initiative a welfare expansion. 

State GOP Rep. and Finance Committee Chair Mark Born said efforts to expand Medicaid health care coverages in Wisconsin were "crap" because the Democratic proponents won't call it a welfare expansion. Classy!

Brings to mind Walker's rejection of a jobs-and-development Federal grant of $810 million to extend Amtrak service to and through Madison even though Wisconsinites pay Federal taxes, yet saw none of their dollars coming back to the state for expanded passenger rail and new jobs.

But back to Beaver Dam Republican Born, who tried to divert attention with the bogus notion that Democrats failure to adopt Republican red meat rhetoric to justify Medicaid expansion plan is the issue, or any issue at all.

One real outrage is these GOP #Never legislators are guaranteeing that Wisconsin Federal taxpayers will not see any of their dollars routed back home to bring new help for ill Wisconsinites.

That kind of 'we're-all-in-this-together/Golden Rule assistance.

And when the state has to spend more of its own money/our money paying for healthcare that Federal funds could have covered, well then, there's less state funding available for other services - so, do ya see, Bucky - the public sector isn't there to help you - as Republicans have been saying and proving through self-fulfilling prophecies and flat-out meanness forever, or at least since Ronald Reagan said government IS the problem.

Also among the items that the #Never caucus is robotically excising from the Evers budget is a long-overdue increase in the legally-required Wisconsin minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

An action which will keep some people trapped deeply in poverty, and which I believe is more than just a disgusting sop to business lobbies and the rightwing advocacy groups they finance.

Enforcing poverty through official action is public service by perverse stratgery - much like the willful and callous Medicaid restriction - that deliberately adds to the stresses which already weigh down thousands of Wisconsin's least powerful and most vulnerable citizens.

Something Rep. Born et al, with their guaranteed salaries, receipt-free meal reimbursements, top-shelf health insurance coverages and other perks do not have to contend with.

And why would the GOP, or any political party, let alone any human do such a thing?

Because the people running an authoritarian political party know it's easier to stay in power and maintain control over people who must work two or three minimum wage jobs to survive, or who are hobbled by untreated health problems that can turn a simple errand into a time-consuming and fraught endeavor.

Cold-heart politicians with a distorted commitment to ideology and incumbency also know that people scrambling to pay the rent or put food on the table or take care of their slowed or sick relatives or friends have less resources or time for political work - the very activity that could help defeat punitive, self-serving and empathy-free legislators who are always eager to stick out a foot and trip someone instead of offering a helping hand to a person who's just trying to get by.

Now that's crap politics.

Milwaukee Tool deal looks better than Foxconn 1 or 2.0.

There has been controversy over wage and benefits for contract workers in the City of Milwaukee's $20 million-for-1,200 jobs' deal with Milwaukee Tool, but the agreement looks pretty good by comparison to Walker's $3-billion-to-$4+ billion package of subsidies and taxpayer-provided amenities shoveled to Foxconn which Evers - despite GOP false and ridiculous monkey-wrenching - managed to knock down to about $80 million in tax credits for a promised 1,450 jobs.

I had noted the comparative benefit advantage of the Milwaukee Tool prospective deal in 2019, here.

Remember that the original Foxconn job promise was 13,000, and in 2019 the company seemed to suggest that its emphasis for the Wisconsin project would be less on blue-collar manufacturing or assembly positions and more on highly-skilled-and-paid engineers: 

Foxconn's special assistant to the chairman, Louis Woo, on Wednesday told Reuters in an interview that the company may scale back or even shelve some of its plans in Wisconsin, citing steep costs over the difficulty of manufacturing televisions in the U.S.

Then on Friday afternoon, [Foxconn Chairman Terry] Gou, in a Facebook livestream broadcast, said that his company's focus in Wisconsin will turn from production to R&D, creating a technology hub there. "Foxconn plans to hire more than 10,000 engineers to do research and development," he said.

Of course, the reworked Foxconn deal does not recoup any of the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent  for land acquisition, highway construction, water diversion piping and electrical line and substation construction for sprawl -

 

- into homesteads, farm and wetlands.

And neither the Foxconn or Milwaukee Tool deal addresses the persistent flow of money from the public sector to the private sector in the name of job creation, or the community vs. community competitions which stain the interconnected business, employment and natural environments all parties should be working to improve.

But this is the world we're living in, and it's good to see investment in the city than on highway-dependent exurban or rural acreage, so Milwaukee Tool looks  better for people, budgets and the land than the Foxconn fiasco, explained in detail at this continuously updated archive maintained since June, 2017.

WI GOP has remade WI into a human shooting range

The NRA and rightwing Republicans have whittled away gun safety in Wisconsin, so this headline about the multiple-shooting at a Brown County casino is not a surprise: 

Radisson gunman threatened former co-worker before deadly shooting but allowed by court to possess firearms

And remember that when asked in 2019 by the Governor to get serious about gun safety, the GOP-led Wisconsin Senate and Assembly adjourned without action - in seconds - 

because the only outcome these GOP 'leaders' cared about that day was making Evers their political casualty. 

Senate, Assembly adjourn special sessions on gun control immediately after they begin

And for context, I add below a Twitter posting by Wisconsin State Rep. Robyn Vining:

Robyn Vining

@RobynVining

·

May 2

.

@GovEvers

included Universal Background Checks, and ERPO in his budget. The Wisconsin GOP announced late last week they plan to strip those provisions next Thursday. Approval ratings for these policies in Wisconsin are overwhelming.

Quote Tweet

Shannon Watts

@shannonrwatts

· May 1

Wisconsin does not have:

Universal background checks

Gun owner licensing

Extreme risk protection orders

Assault weapon restrictions

Large capacity magazine ban

Waiting periods

Strong concealed carry law

Open carry regulations  

Furthermore, in the last 24 hours:

* A gun battle in a popular Milwaukee shopping area - video and sound of more than very rapid 300 shots.

* The Roundy's warehouse killings' case closed without a clear motive established.

* A larger mass causally shooting at Miller Brewing closed without a clear motive established. 

In other words, in Wisconsin, with so many commonsense gun safety measures eliminated to serve partisan special interests, angry or disturbed people (mostly males) can more easily gain the tools they need to leave a body count in plain view.