Tom Tiffany, cookie monster

I'd noted Tom Tiffany's penchant for using his Congressional perch and perks - like a taxpayer-paid newsletter - to spread bad information.

Or through public remarks that downplayed the Jan. 6th violent attack on the US Capitol - his workplace - as "one isolated event" while also voting against the legal certification of Joe Biden's legal election win. 

US Cong. Tom Tiffany, (R-WI)

Regrettably, he's at it again.

Tiffany appeared before a school board meeting Monday night in Rhinelander where he a) spoke against a proposed mask mandate made reasonable by the ominously dangerous and rapidly-spreading COVID Delta strain: 

C.D.C. Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox

The amount of virus in a person infected with Delta is a thousandfold more than what is seen in people infected with the original version of the virus, according to one recent study....Infection with the Delta variant produces virus amounts in the airways that are tenfold higher than what is seen in people infected with the Alpha variant, which is also highly contagious, the document noted.

and, b) compared Centers from Disease Control about COVID prevention to its advice against eating cookie dough to avoid what are occasional cases of food poisoning.

From a Wisconsin radio station report, this:

School District of Rhinelander Board Adopts Optional Mask Policy with Room for Admin Changes

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

Why would a Member of Congress trivialize risk to constituents and children during pandemic times?

COVID is not the seasonal flu and it is certainly not food poisoning, as seriously nasty as it can be.

For the record, more than 640,000 Wisconsinites have contracted COVID19 - that's more than 10% of the state's 5.85 million residents - and the virus has killed nearly 7.500 Wisconsinites, current state data show, while illness outbreaks caused by what may be in tainted cookie dough are infinitesimally smaller. 

And whether this useless Covid-to-cookie dough conflation came from Tiffany's personal Internet browsing, Republican talking points or incompetent staff work, his bit wasn't even original, as this recent news report from North Carolina seems to suggest.

North Carolina reverses course, urges masks in all schools

Top North Carolina Republicans worry the abrupt shift in recommendations from state and federal health officials will prompt fewer residents to come in for a vaccine because they’ll still need to wear masks indoors.

“All we’re getting from public health authorities are shifting rules and perpetual panic,” Republican Senate leader Phil Berger’s office said in a news release. “The CDC offers more consistent guidance on consuming raw cookie dough than on masks. That’s a problem and here’s why: If the CDC erodes its credibility on masks, then it risks eroding its credibility on the far more important message of vaccines.”

Honestly, I don't see much difference between Tiffany's advice on masks and vaccines, (even to his own family) and some nameless parent at a school board in Anywhere, USA endorsing driving the carpool to school without buckling the kids in their seat belts.

WI hunters keep throwing hounds to wolves in Bayfield Co.

Every summer and fall, it's the same nasty story:

So-called 'hounders' - presumably releasing their GPS-collared hunting dogs as training for the fall bear season  - keep running some of their dogs despite warnings posted online by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources straight into the jaws of wolves in Bayfield County where known wolf activity is mapped and posted online

Between July 9 and August 13, five hunting dogs have been killed - four of them Walker hounds like this one - 

- and two additional Black and Tan hounds were injured by wolves, according to WI DNR data and maps.

One reason for this gory sloppiness: 

A unique Wisconsin state reimbursement program wherein the owner of hound killed during hunting training by a wolf - even if killed in known wolf territory, or released into a fatal encounter with a wolf by an owner who has done so in the past and is even a scofflaw has even run afoul of the law - is entitled to a $2,500 state check.

I have written often about this shameful state-subsidized wolf-dog carnage; a sample post put up nearly two years ago to the day is here -

2 more WI hounds thrown to wolves. Total DNR reimbursements to owners will exceed $800k

Life continues to be cheap for too many Wisconsin hunting hounds, but their sacrifice sure is remunerative to their owners, even to repeat state check applicants. Even to scofflaws....

Two more hunting dogs have been reported killed by wolves during this summer's continuing bear hound 'training season' - - a two-months period during which bears and wolves are needlessly chased, harassed, and traumatized, while anyone out in the woods not running hound packs gets no relief.

That brings to twelve the number released off-leash this summer to their deaths by owners now eligible for $2,500 state reimbursement checks. That's $30,000 down the drain, too.

- And this state-enabled practice and payment plan operates in a state that otherwise outlaws dog fighting and cruelty to animals. Talk about your double-standard, as I noted in 2014:

In Milwaukee,  a man involved in dog-fighting for money got five years in prison....

Elsewhere in rural Wisconsin - - right now - - other dogs are being allowed to chase bears as part of hunting dog training.

And should a dog get killed by wolves in the bear-hunt training, even if the dog was let loose in a known wolf activity area - - not to worry - because the same state and taxpayers now housing the Milwaukee dog-fighting perpetrator will pay the hunter who let his dog get torn apart by the larger wolves up to $2,500 - so the hunter can go get another disposable dog.

This Wisconsin DNR chart shows that state payments for so-called wolf 'depredated' dogs is approaching $850,000 since the program began decades ago.

The state, as the chart shows, also pays farmers for wolf-related livestock losses and pet dog owners for animals killed by wolves, too.

More about the whole sad, sick and worsening Wisconsin FUBAR wolf 'policy' is here, as I wrote Friday:

Another Wisconsin wolf policy announcement came by email Friday, below. 

It needs close examination because:

1. The state's Natural Resources policy [sic] board - chaired by a Walker appointee who refuses to relinquish his now-expired appointment, influence and seat - just arbitrarily threw out a DNR staff recommendation for a fall wolf kill of 130.

2. And substituted instead - against the recommendations of DNR staffers, scientists, Native American and allied advocates - the authorized and unprecedented science-free wolf-slaughter of 300 wolves. It's a number pulled from a Republican special interests' grab bag of bloody treats that echoes the winter, 2021 all-too-predictable Wisconsin quota-busting overkill, so...

I urge the DNR and the WNRB to add this simple disclaimer to future invitations for public participation in decisions which effect the people's water, land, clean air and wildlife:

*Note: Any decision by the Department of Natural Resources or its oversight body Wisconsin Natural Resources Board is subject to partisan tampering, special-interest manipulation or outright cancellation regardless of documentation, facts or other pesky evidence and/or commonsense.

Wisconsin climate crisis deepened by damaging GOP mischief, denial

After welcoming back our electricity and tossing our fridge-and-freezer-loads of food - minor inconveniences compared to downed trees and even a lightning-destroyed home not far away - I noted this for-Journal Sentinel-subscribers-only headline and story: 

Severe storms and tornadoes pummeled Wisconsin in August. Climate change could make them more frequent

The headline a) understates the obvious, and, along with the text, b) omits the Walker-era's malignant neglect of science and realities which guarantee that Wisconsin's climate change burden which has already has harmed people, businesses, budgets, waters, forests, land and longevity will be needlessly painful.

I'm listing below just some of evidence I'd previously gathered, so let's expand the record:

* From October, 2018:

Walker's eight-year attack on the environment, in 21 parts

...the political environment and natural environment absolutely are in trouble. Hence this 21-part series, "Walker's 8-year war on the Wisconsin environment" -  covers climate science, clean water, fresh air, critical wetlands, public trust wildlife, science, information, expertise, budgets, transparency and fairness.

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

Also:

* From March, 2018:

About that wildfire season the DNR says is 'heating up.'

Academics have been studying the projected impacts of climate change and temperatures increases on Wisconsin forests for years. 

In the coming century, forecast climate changes caused by increasing greenhouse gases may produce dramatic shifts in tree species distributions and the rates at which individual tree species sequester carbon or release carbon back to the atmosphere. The species composition and carbon storage capacity of northern Wisconsin (USA) forests are expected to change significantly as a result. Projected temperature changes are relatively large (up to a 5.8°C increase in mean annual temperature) and these forests encompass a broad ecotone that may be particularly sensitive to climate change. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists sees a link between a warming climate and greater wildfire danger- As the world warms, we can expect more wildfires

 * From August, 2018:  

Wisconsin landscape flooded with water, dismissal of science, too

Wisconsin was hit earlier this year by flooding that scoured away cars, pavement, and land. Now it's happened again.

We've also got Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' management that scrubbed away important information about why the flooding is likely to get worse, having ignored expert, public warnings about insufficient stormwater management and funding since 2003.

The rains in SE Wisconsin did stop and flooding from Dane County to Ixonia to Watertown to I-43 in Milwaukee County has receded, but water levels will continue to rise and more rain is in the forecast.

So I wonder: is there a bigger picture to this?, since parts of Wisconsin - - Watertown, 2016, Racine County,2017, Racine County, 2008, Madison, 2018, historic flooding in NW Wisconsin in 2018 and 2016

 etc.  - - have been hit by rains routinely labeled heavy, historic, worst ever, and so on. 

* From August, 2017:

Wisconsin dismisses climate science as farms, roads and people suffer

For perspective - - Many Western Wisconsin roads and other infrastructure washed out in 2016 floods are still not rebuilt; one NW local official says he has seen a dozen 100-year-storms in the last 30 years, while a state official says road-building standards have not caught up with "evidence...pointing towards increasing frequency of large" storm events.

 * From May, 2017: 

Climate change threatens WI walleye, yet WI DNR denies climate change 

Probably no fish is more dear to the state's recreational economy and thousands  of anglers - -  "highly prized," says the Wisconsin DNR - - than walleye.

So maybe that same Wisconsin DNR will rethink its decision to scrub climate change from its websites now that climate scientists are saying measures should be taken because climate change will lessen the ability of some state lakes to support walleye.

* From December, 2016

Many ways WI ideologues killed climate science, data

I've noted several times on this blog - - here or here and most recently, here - - that Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources had deleted information and links to outside sources about climate change which had been posted on a DNR climate change website before Walker took office.

Walker also wiped out DNR science positions as part of his effort to weaken the agency and its research, inspection, enforcement and information-gathering roles.

Let me also excerpt additional information I'd posted in a comprehensive review of Walker's damage to the DNR which was supplied from current and former Wisconsin DNR staffers about internal methods other than outright website scrubbing that DNR decision-makers and Walker budgeting have used to downgrade, obstruct or otherwise minimize public, scientific information in the agency's possession:
-------------------------------------------------------------
 *  A third former staffer said: 

The most alarming issue to me is the great waste of decades of sound science, compiled overtime in on-going studies and data collection. WI had more information about our natural landscape than most states. Abolishing science services put an end to decades long studies vital to maintaining and recovering rare and endangered plants and animals as well as understanding natural communities as information on resilience for climate change. 

* A current employe on personal time echoed many of the lobbyists and former staffers' observations:

Under Walker and Stepp, science is not a priority. Scientific knowledge is ever-changing but in Wisconsin our staff are being left behind. We no longer have a statistician to help interpret data, a library to provide journals or books, or researchers that monitor fish counts, wildlife health, air quality, water quality and etc….employee scientific knowledge and data specific to WI is stagnant...we cannot do the best job possible for our state. 

The DNR is currently run by people who understand public relations spin but not the complexity of the natural resources they are responsible for...Communications staff, generally not trained specifically in resource communication, answer questions with talking points..usually developed by upper management - political appointees - and legal staff. The information provided is biased and superficial.

And here's a summary of the devastating impact that Walker is having on the Wisconsin environment through the DNR he has damaged with the cooperation of our corporate-obeisant State Legislature:
------------------------------------------------
It was just a few days before he took office in late December, 2010 when GOP Governor-elect Scott Walker suffered a rare outburst of transparency by saying he'd chosen Cathy Stepp - - Racine-area developer/ex-state senator/former McDonald's manager and openly sarcastic, partisan critic of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - -  to head up that very agency because he wanted a "chamber of commerce mentality" in charge there.

 * Note the relevancy of the conclusion of this item and string that dates to 2003: 

The Bush EPA urged states, cities to prepare for climate change in 2003: 

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

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

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

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

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

Seems pretty relevant this weekend, no?

And, finally, this from August, 2018:

A few comments on Dylan Brogan's must-read piece in the current Isthmus about flooding in Madison.... 

Brogan's reporting gets Walker on the record about climate change - - a rare feat in itself -- and exposes Walker's defensive, talking point superficiality on a matter he's dismissed that is contributing to tens of millions of dollars in repetitive events, and has again killed state residents.

Brogan wrote:

Marston Avenue resident Bob Spoerke spent the last week watching the Tenney Park lagoon creep up to the sidewalk in front of his house. He says he questioned the governor about the state Department of Natural Resources purging language on its website attributing climate change to human activities and rising levels of carbon dioxide. He also told the governor that climate change was real. 

“[Walker] looked at me and said ‘that’s your opinion.’ But climate change isn’t my opinion, it’s established fact,” says Spoerke. “I’ve been agitated ever since. There’s been two catastrophic floods in northern Wisconsin the past three years. These 100- and 500-year events are happening every few months.”

I was also happy to see Brogan bring the UW-Madison's Center for Limnology lab into the discussion, given its status in lake science and karmic proximity to the Madison area's flooding problems....

Like the DNR he has weakened, and the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts he disconnected from the DNR's climate change web page which Walker had censored, the Limnology resource is another state asset his corrosive lack of curiosity leaves unexamined to our collective harm.

I noted a bit of this a few months ago after Walker had posted what was essentially a tourist's photo of Lake Mendota on his twitter page: 

And it was on the Limnology school's blog just over a year ago that UW professors blasted Walker's DNR for having scrubbed ciimate change data and science - - facts impacting Lake Mendota and other bodies of water in Wisconsin which Walker does not see or appreciate from official state websites - - and I will italicize what is most relevant right now among eight connected scientific and economic findings the experts had listed:

* Increases in extreme rain events are increasing runoff from farm fields into downstream waterways and lakes, reducing water quality. 

But the real gem, the must-memoralize keeper in Brogan's report, is how Walker tried to sucker a citizen into cursing the governor that would have been immediately amplified by the right-wing noise machine to distort and deflect the story away from climate science and flooding to 'bad liberal insults hard-working governor.'

Tom Kasper, a resident of Elizabeth Street, held a sign behind Walker that accused the governor of staging a photo op while ignoring climate change.

Another man biked up to Walker to confront him: “Gov. Walker, I want to say that your time and energy would be much better spent enacting policies to counteract climate change rather than shoveling sand into bags. Would you agree?”

“Glad you’re here. Thanks for watching,” replied Walker. “You can say what you want. You can call me a F-word if you want.”

“I’m not doing that,” the man countered. “I’m just saying climate change policy would be more effective than shoveling sand. Otherwise, you’ll be out here next year, too.”

Props again to Dylan Brogan and Isthmus for the outstanding report.

Man on an island. Judith Davidoff photo also credited here.

 

Latest WI DNR wolf policy invite needs an asterisk. I'll supply it.

Another Wisconsin wolf policy announcement came by email Friday, below. 

It needs close examination because:

1. The state's Natural Resources policy [sic] board - chaired by a Walker appointee who refuses to relinquish his now-expired appointment, influence and seat - just arbitrarily threw out a DNR staff fall wolf kill recommendation of 130.

2. And substituted instead - against the recommendations of DNR staffers, scientists, Native American and allied advocates - the authorized and unprecedented science-free wolf-slaughter of 300 wolves. It's a number pulled from a Republican special interests' grab bag of bloody treats that echoes the winter, 2021 all-too-predictable Wisconsin quota-busting overkill, so...

I urge the DNR and the WNRB to add this simple disclaimer to future invitations for public participation in decisions which effect the people's water, land, clean air and wildlife:

*Note: Any decision by the Department of Natural Resources or its oversight body Wisconsin Natural Resources Board is subject to partisan tampering, special-interest manipulation or outright cancellation regardless of documentation, facts or other pesky evidence and/or commonsense.

This will add some truth-in-advertising to the way Wisconsin continues to do business despite elections, procedural norms and basic democratic fairness, and may help cut down on the amount of time which citizens have been wasting as they are reminded again that the deck is stacked in favor of special interests and their expanding and partisan embrace of death cult politics.

Here is the DNR's Friday invitation:

Wolf Management Plan Committee Virtual Meeting Aug. 19 – Open To Public

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will hold the second of four Wolf Management Plan Committee meetings on Thursday, Aug. 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The meeting will be held virtually, and the public is invited to attend and observe the proceedings. No pre-registration required, and public comments will not be taken during the meeting.

Those wishing to attend can use this link to watch a livestream of the meeting.

The Wolf Management Plan Committee has been formed to discuss important issues related to wolf management in Wisconsin and to provide input as the department updates the state’s wolf management plan. More information on the wolf management plan update process and timeline, including the formation, membership and work of this committee, is available on the DNR wolf management plan web page.

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

 

Can Milwaukee challenge its census population data drop?

August 14, 2021 update: Mayor Barrett says an appeal of the census data is under consideration: 

Less than 24 hours after the results were released, Barrett said he may file an appeal after the city of Milwaukee recorded it lost about 17,000 people over the last decade. 

"We went through this a decade ago where we felt the numbers were too low and we had a successful appeal, so we're examining that right now," said Barrett. 

I know from my previous work in Milwaukee city hall that census data can be challenged by a local government if it has its own data to show.

In anticipation of census processes which undercount low-income and communities of color, the city supplemented the federal counting effort with surveys and door-to-door work of its own authorized budgetary by the Common Council and carried out by contractors coordinated with the Department of Administration. 

Adequate population-based representation at the state and federal level along with allocation of millions of dollars in grants which the city 

needs as already-dwindling state shared revenue continues to fall depends on having the best data possible, so the question is whether Milwaukee carried out its own supplementary work and has numbers in hand that are ready to appeal this troubling published finding?

I seem to remember at least one prior successful challenge; anyone out there from the '90 census have anything to offer?

Anti-vax resistance is GOP 2021 'Pro-Choice' variant

In the loopy, coherence-challenged world of anti-vaxxer orthodoxy as an historic killer pandemic regains strength, a top Wisconsin Republican in the name of worker rights - 

Wisconsin Senate President Chris Kapenga urges health care workers opposed to vaccine mandates to 'stand up,' take action

- urges organized resistance against private sector health-care bosses who want full workforce use of the life-saving product of Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" initiative.

Waiting for rabble-rousing Republicans to don "Pro-Choice" T-shirts, sing "Solidarity Forever" on the Senate floor and march on the nearest hospital filling up with fresh deadly delta variant COVID cases.

WI State Senator Chris Kapanga

As planet roasts, hostile Sen. Indifferent, (R-WI), can't be bothered.

As vital polar ice disappears, and wildfires incinerate forests and entire communities in the US West - (not to mention globally in Russia, Greece and Turkey) - "Code Red" is a good Google shortcut to the latest scientific report echoing decades of earlier work on human-caused global warming and climate change that is  here and now.

No bullish*t; that's for real.

Here's another useful Google shortcut to human  activity, science and climate change with a uniquely-lamentable Badger State flavor: 

Google the words "bullsh*t Wisconsin climate change" and up comes news reports like this: 

GOP Sen. Ron Johnson mouths to GOP luncheon that climate change is 'bullsh*t'

Also not bullsh*t; Johnson - 

 

- is a member of the US Senate's science committee - full name, US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation - where Senate science oversight responsibilities were consolidated and expanded in 1977.

Pardon the redundancies, but that's not a bullsh*t assignment. 

Which makes this recent and very comprehensive Journal Sentinel story behind a paywall for subscribers even more on point, consequential and depressing:

'Fundamentally dangerous': Ron Johnson has long history of promoting view at odds with scientific research

With Johnson, it began more than a decade ago when the Republican first ran for the Senate and he regularly made fringe comments about climate change, such as that it was due to sunspots. 

When the pandemic hit, Johnson, then the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, held three hearings on the crisis, and the senator and his hand-picked witnesses made claims unsupported by solid evidence. 

WI GOP power plays put natural resources actions under a cloud

A reminder that the Wednesday, Aug. 11 meeting of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board - the oversight board which sets policies for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - will produce multiple high-profile agenda decisions.

That agenda includes establishing yet another 2021 wolf kill quota and will also affect storm water pollution rules, angling, fisheries, wild rice harvesting, clean water goals and programs, and other matters of statewide importance, yet Board chair Fred Prehn, a Walker appointee whose appointment expired in May, continues to refuse to leave his position.

That intransigence goes against Wisconsin custom and democratic fair play and exploits the partisan unwillingness of the GOP-controlled Wisconsin State Senate to schedule a hearing on the replacement Board member nominated by Gov. Tony Evers:

Nearly two months since his board term expired and Gov. Evers appointed his replacement, Sandra Dee E. Nass of Ashland, [Prehn's] holding on to a rarely-used state law to buck a tradition that nearly every NRB member has adhered to throughout its history. 

The law allows for the senate to confirm a governor’s choice for the board; throughout the board’s 53-year history, members largely step aside instead.

Attorney General Josh Kaul has been asked to intervene; no doubt any action he were to take one way or the other could be appealed, so it seems that for the foreseeable future the Board and its public health, recreational, safety, and environmental decisions will remain under a cloud - 

The cloud under which the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board now operates has been created by partisan politics, not Mother Nature.

- of illegitimacy that began with the GOP's power grab carried out after Evers defeated Walker in November, 2018: 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signs lame-duck legislation that curbs his Democratic successor's authority 

By the way, here is how an agricultural news website described Sandra Dee ("Sandy") Nass, the educator, scientist, hunter, angler, business owner, angler and hunter whose Wisconsin Natural Resources Board service is being blocked: 

Naas has more than 30 years of experience related to conservation and currently serves as an Agriculture and Natural Resources Instructor and FFA advisor at Ashland High School. She is also the owner and primary Natural Resources Scientist at Stable Solutions, an environmental consulting firm in Ashland. Currently, she is the chair of the Bayfield County Conservation Congress and vice-chair of the Bayfield County Deer Advisory. Prior to these positions she also worked as a Soil and Water Scientist at JZ Environmental and held the position of County Conservationist at the Ashland, Bayfield, Douglas and Iron, and Adams County Land and Water Conservation Departments. Naas is an avid hunter and angler, and a certified trapper education instructor. 

 

 

Grothman's 'both-sideism' boosts 'Worst in Wisconsin' status

One of Wisconsin's least-productive and most ill-informed permanent squatters at the US Capitol public trough said Wednesday he won't disclose whether or not he's been vaccinated against the raging COVID pandemic.

What could provoke such a block-headed and potentially-damaging leadership fail?

Because...he doesn't want to take sides:  

...the congressman declined to answer before taking off the microphone and walking away from the interview.

"I don't like to get into taking sides on it," [Cong. Glenn] Grothman said.

Who knew there were sides to public health advocacy during a planet-altering pandemic? 

Is he afraid to upset the 'bleach injections work best' caucus, or the 'indict Dr. Fauci followers'?

Does Grothman know that the fast-spreading COVID delta variant is running rampant? 

Delta variant accounts for 79% of COVID-19 samples tested in Wisconsin

And that even more ominous strains of the virus threaten to kill people, further upend the economy and undo the progress made against COVID.

Progress at great cost led by medical personnel, first-responders and everyday people - progress which can be undone by the partisan ideologues and selfish fools who have put Grothman and his oath-breaking, damage-inflicting colleagues in positions of power.

By the way, here's a one reminder among many of Grothman and his useless GOP colleagues' approach to science, COVID, and disease prevention.

And, for the record, and despite [his campaign ad's many] rambling tangents - from a pitch for Vitamin D (a good thing for seniors like me in our sunlight-deprived winters) - to the robotically-Republican/xenophobic-and off-note slam at China - give credit to Glenn Grothman for airing some masked-up images in a TV spot before its last-second reveal.

But don't put your hand in that whole bin...oops...well, too late.

 

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." 

WI DNR wants another 130 wolves killed this fall

On top of more than 200 wolves killed in a legislatively-ordered, state-sanctioned and dog-assisted hunt in February - a number which does not include poaching - the WI DNR is seeking permission from its oversight Natural Resources Board to run a fall hunt in which another 130 wolves statewide can be killed, documents show.

Let's talk about these so-called wolf 'harvest' quotas, science, data, proposed strengthened wildlife policies and practices, and some other things:

* The quotas in all four previous Wisconsin-sanctioned hunts - including those in 2012-2014 - were broken. See this link for quota histories and related material.

*  The DNR's recommendation for a fresh 130-wolf kill this fall has been made despite its own acknowledgment that there are gaps in its wolf population estimates - - yet the Natural Resources Board is likely to either rubber-stamp the agency's recommendation, or substitute a higher humber to satisfy the special 'sporting' interests which Wisconsin's official wolf 'management' policies routinely favor. 

* The bill establishing Wisconsin's wolf hunts was enthusiastically-signed into law by former GOP Governor Scott Walker. He even cut the inexpensive license fee in half: 

Speaking at the Wisconsin NRA convention in Wausau on Friday, Gov. Scott Walker announced his intention to reduce the price of the wolf hunting license to $50.

Because why should the Legislature get all the headlines?

* Fred Prehn, a Walker appointee to the Natural Resources Board, has refused to step down as member and chair even though his term has expired. An appointee of Democratic Governor Tony Evers is waiting to take Prehn's place.

Walker was defeated in November, 2018, but the GOP-led Legislature has refused to hold confirmation hearings for some Evers' nominees.

Several organizations have asked Attorney General Josh Kaul to remove Prehn.

In my opinion, the longer Prehn remains Natural Resources Board chair, the longer the Board's credibility will slide and taint the DNR's performance.

* A final thought. Contrast Prehn's arrogance - 'this is my choice' - and official Wisconsin's growing national reputation as the place where wolves go to die -

A wolf hunt blew past its kill quota in February. Another hunt is coming this fall.

- with a collaborative, big-picture wildlife stewardship guide just released which views wolves as key contributors to a healthy forest, state and planet.

The resources shared here are a compilation of practices and policies for wolf conservation and stewardship in the United States, based on best science, democratic processes and inclusivity, and ethics. These products are the result of an intensive collaborative effort by multiple organizations, and a comprehensive vetting process with input and critiques from a broad array of scientists, ethicists, retired and current agency professionals, Tribal biologists and representatives, and academic experts.  

This Advocate Wolf Planning Guide identifies the fundamental elements of a state wolf plan and walks through the planning process so advocates have the information needed to ensure the conservation and full recovery of wolves throughout the contiguous United States.

Those kinds of methods, standards and goals are needed more than ever to create fair snd enlightened wildlife policy-making and to help systematically confront the accelerating climate emergency, but will fall on deaf ears at Wisconsin's Natural Resources Board as long as Prehn - a backer of substantial wolf kill quotas - extends Walkerite influence and its environmentally-hostile attitudes over the wide range of DNR programs, public health obligations and policies.