With $88 per-day available in tax-free meal and mileage money, let's make sure through Open Records we find out how many of our small-government, cut-the-budget Republicans made sure they set the requisite foot in the Capitol to collect that nifty per diem payment when they are scheduled for just a single day of work this September.
Continuing to build a strong presence here, The Congress for the New Urbanism brings historian John Gurda, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, and former CNU communications manager Steve Filmanowicz to the Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Pl., Milwaukee, for a series of talks tonight.
I'm expecting a good crowd and a great program.
Detains, here.
The deniers will say it is not human-related though greenhouse gas emission increases correspond to the Arctic's fast-melt period.
The ice caps function as reflectors for the sun's rays, so expect the earth's surface and water temperatures to continue to rise.
But the deniers keep on trying to deflect the science.
Public meeting today, beginning at 4:00 p.m. at the Wauwatosa Civic Center, 7725 W. North Ave.
Seems corporate and other powerful interests just can't keep their hands off what's left of open space at the west edge of Milwaukee County: The Zoo Interchange project, UWM's Engineering and Innovation Center, Underwood Creek as Waukesha's wastewater dsicharge point, etc.
I've posted any number of links and items about fuel pipeline leaks in Wisconsin, Montana, Michigan, and Canada, and this weekend the The New York Times catalogued many of these spills as the feds are considering green-lighting the granddaddy pipeline of them all - - the 1,661-mile Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL tar sand crude link over the biggest underground supply of fresh water in the US.
And finds that government inspections and oversight are woefully lacking.
Not a good prescription for keeping tar sand oil in the line and out of the environment.
Republicans continue the politics of disrespect.
And Tea Partiers can't let it go, even on the eve of 9/11, with Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch playing to the mob.
A paper raising doubts about climate change leads to its publishing journal editor's resignation over his role in disseminating bad science.
The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase.So much for the climate change deniers' great hope.
It was seized on by "sceptic" bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists.
Wolfgang Wagner, editor of Remote Sensing journal, says he agrees with their criticisms and is stepping down...
The paper became a cause celebre in "sceptical" circles through its claim that mainstream climate models inflated temperature projections through misunderstanding the role of clouds in the climate system and the rate at which the Earth radiated heat into space.
This meant, it said, that projections of temperature rise made in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports were too high...
In essence, Dr Wagner, a professor of remote sensing at Vienna University of Technology, is blaming himself... But he also blames the researchers themselves for not referencing all the relevant research in their manuscript.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb is just the latest Republican official - - from George Bush-to-Dick Cheney-to-Donald Rumsfeld-to-Scott Fitzgerald-to-Scott Walker - - to adhere to the party's first principle: no apologies, no backing down, regardless of how badly you've screwed up or how flat-out wrong you are.
Gottlieb endorsed his party's love affair with "no" defending Steven Krieser, a former DMV manager recently elevated to senior management, who had told line workers in writing to withhold from citizen customers applying for the new state voter ID that the ID is free, reports the Capital Times, the paper that found Krieser's Don't-Tell-Unless-They-Ask written directive last week.
To jam himself into the requisite Republican negative template, however, Gottleib's tied himself in nots with the rare quintuple negative. Few have jumped through that many hoops to validate something so loopy:
The fact that not all IDs are issued for free does not mean that effective notice is not being provided or that anyone who is entitled to a free ID is being denied that product," writes Gottlieb, a former Republican lawmaker recently tapped by Walker to head the department.But that's what you have to do to justify a sneaky policy and keeps its essential voter suppression goal in place.
"Not all customers require a new or additional ID for voting purposes, and therefore, not all customers are eligible for a free ID under the statute," Gottlieb adds.
...Krieser defends the directive he gave employees, saying in an interview Tuesday that when the law was written, it did not contain language that requires Division of Motor Vehicles employees to specifically ask those requesting a photo ID if they would be using it to vote or for another purpose.Again - - no apologies, no backing down. And in this case, no being upfront with taxpayers.
"If the person initiates that direction, then certainly, we will help them. We will not be coy," Krieser says. "But we still are not going to be selling it at the counter as a free ID.
For this blog, a day of silent reflection.
Eric Cantor is getting credit for offering a compromise to President Obama on national transportation funding, but hold on.
Facts, please.
Cantor says he wants Obama to reprogram the 10% of highway funding Cantor claims is going to projects that do not directly pay for roads, bridges, etc.
In a statement responding to Friday’s disappointing jobs report, Cantor highlighted a proposal to eliminate a rule requiring states to set aside 10 percent of federal surface transportation funds for “museums, education and preservation.” Scrapping that provision, Cantor said, “would allow states to devote these monies to high-priority infrastructure projects, without adding to the deficit.”Facts, please.
In their response to the President’s remarks, House Republicans call for the elimination of the Transportation Enhancements program; they say it is ten percent of the transportation funding program. It is not. The Transportation Enhancements program is 1.5% percent of the overall transportation program, of which roughly one half is usually spent on bicycling and walking infrastructure.More about Cantor's errors and misstatements from the experts at t4America:
Ending this popular and successful program after 20 years would jeopardize investment in thousands of small‐scale, labor‐intensive projects that can be implemented quickly and efficiently. According to the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), bicycle projects yield 11.4 jobs per million dollars spent, versus 7.8 jobs created per million spent on road only projects. These bicycle projects also generate economic activity for a very low up‐front cost, offering tremendous returns on investment. In this economic climate, this is exactly the kind of investment our cities and our businesses need.
Correcting some misinformation on bicycle and pedestrian spending
September 9, 2011
By Stephen Lee Davis
Facts, please.
Bike and pedestrian projects get less than 1.5 percent of federal transportation funding — despite recent misinformation to the contrary
A career Capitol Hill GOP staffer leaves a failing Congress and the party he says is now a cult.
Read it.
Thanks to Xoff for spreading the word about getting those No Guns signs in your favorite
coffee shop, book store or shoe store.
What we have to go through these crazy days - - and nuttier in Florida, where these signs are outlawed.
Remember the Wisconsin man who made your eyes roll and your stomach turn over for admitting to eating Big Macs every day since 1972 - - downing something like 25,000 at last count.
So what do we make of Scott Walker's claim in a video about 250 sandwiches ago that he has lunched on two ham-and-cheese-and-mayo-on-wheat sandwiches daily over the last twenty years.
That's more than 14,000 such sandwiches, and counting.
If you laid that many normal-sized sandwiches crust-to-crust, they wouldn't go around the globe, but would run from about from Bascom Hall to the State Capitol (demonstrations permitting).
If each had a mere two ounces of ham, and two ounces of cheese, that's roughly eight ounces, or a half-pound daily of the main ingredients, or more than 3.5 tons of ham and cheese total in Walker's brown bags for the last two decades.
Does this rise to the level of concern and interest we had for the Big Mac guy? Well, Big Mac guy isn't the Governor.
Do we praise Walker for being an ambassador for the state's dairy and pork products industries? For choosing wheat over white, and that possible germ of nutrition?
Should we credit him for thrift, or grade him down for inflexible habitualism, and for being penny-wise but cholesterol foolish?
For salting away too much of a good thing while eschewing roughage during his salad days?
Pass the Lipitor, please.
What can I say? Some of these items write themselves:
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Talk about transit-induced-development, on a massive scale.
As I have mentioned, the British have this wacky notion that transit has value.
This has been going on to a lesser extent in most American cities where light rail is being built, and was an historic element of the country's western push a long time ago, but is stalled in Milwaukee, where right-wing politics has trumped retail, commercial and residential growth and jobs near corridors and stations.
Cong. Paul Ryan, (R-Janesville), is among those cited in a Washington Post column mocking President Barack Obama - - thus the Presidency, too - - during his jobs speech to a Joint Session of Congress.
President Obama gave one of the most impassioned speeches of his presidency when he addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. Too bad so many in the audience thought it was a big, fat joke
“You should pass this jobs plan right away!” Obama exhorted. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled.
"Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix,” Obama went on.
Widespread laughter broke out on the GOP side of the aisle.Ryan considers himself a national figure, pundits have anointed him as really smart, perhaps Presidential, and he's responded with all due humility that he won't run for President, but is available to be considered for Vice-President.
“This isn’t political grandstanding,” Obama said. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) guffawed.
“This isn’t class warfare,” Obama said. More hysterics on the right.
Spend $240 million on air time, consultants and attack ads in 2012 presidential campaign.
The self-appointed friend of the Jewish people says Jews are always talking.
Beck's gone down this stereotyping path before.
So today we'll keep it to a short retort.
"Anti-Semite."
Let's look closely at the email sent to co-workers that cost a state employee his job
and see who is behaving inappropriately.
Here is its text:
"Do you know someone who votes that does not have a State ID that meets requirements to vote? Tell them they can go to the DMV/DOT and get a free ID card. However they must ask for the free ID. A memo was sent out by the 3rd in command of the DMV/DOT.
"The memo specifically told the employees at the DMV/DOT not to inform individuals that the ID’s are free. So if the individuals seeking to get the free ID does not ask for a free ID, they will have to pay for it!!The state has said the sent email was part of a pattern of email abuse about which the employee had been counseled, so was essentially a final straw - - but the worker, who, as a limited-term employee cannot use state appeal procedures to win back his job, denies that.
"Just wanted everyone to be informed!! REMEMBER TO TELL ANYONE YOU KNOW!! ANYONE!! EVEN IF THEY DON’T NEED THE FREE ID, THEY MAY KNOW SOMEONE THAT DOES!! SO TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!"
Candidates have undone themselves quickly. The entire environment is unforgiving, especially if you are unprepared or foolish.
Texas Governor Rick Perry's repeated, no-retreat attack on Social Security during his real first national exposure - - "a lie," "a Ponzi," etc. - - and Mitt Romney's pouring it on for the next 24 hours could spell trouble for the Texas macho man, and for Republicans that might line up with him..
And a civics lesson on the value of government. I loved it.
[Apologies for a spelling error in the first ineration's headline. Blogger spell check doesn't do headlines and I shouldn't write with one contact lens out.]
Charging people for their free Voter ID doesn't sit well with one Republican legislator who voted for the bill.
I wonder how he feels about the Walker bunch then firing a fall guy - - apparently a limited term employee in another agency mail room - - for sending out an email setting the record straight.
While protecting the stae DOT's #3 official, who advised employees, in writing, to hide the free feature from applicants.
I also wonder why we haven't heard from the Senate President, Mike Ellis (R-Neenah), as he is often unafraid to call out his own party's stupidity.
Lord knows, this is some low-hanging fruit.
Scott Walker and his crew again shows they have one and only one approach to state workers.
Brute force.
The recall movement percolating against Walker is now guaranteed.
The Walker people think they can fire a guy from the mail room for talking about the higher-ups' reprehensibly partisan and suppressive Voter ID policy - - making people pay $28 for the free ID - - and bouncing a fall guy that solves the problem?
It's plain the Walker people hate their employees, as the firing makes a bad situation worse.
Bad media over voter suppression? Head for the football cameras in Green Bay today.
A retreat by Walker mentor Ohio Governor John Kasich over his back-firing assault on collective bargaining rights might portend a compromise in Wisconsin by Walker - - but I strongly doubt it, given Walker's 'style.'
Kasich began looking for a deal the day after Democrats won back two State Senate seats in recall elections - - and who's to say there won't be another round next year - - to avoid a November referendum that could roll back the Ohio version of Walker's collective-bargaining bomb. So far, Kasich's got no takers - - with Labor sensing a ballot-box win.
And any such move by a suddenly-more moderated Walker would be instantly and correctly viewed as suspect, insincere, insubstantial, and entirely strategic as a defense against a looming recall action headed his way.
Remember that Walker called his anti-union approach "a modest proposal," misrepresented it repeatedly, found his early explanation labeled "False" by Politifact, and finally had to own up to his duplicity with his right hand raised before Congress and admit that he had withheld his union-busting intentions during the Gubernatorial campaign all along.
Walker's brute force in crushing collective bargaining, along with stealth motives and moves that he unwittingly revealed with a chuckle to the fake David Koch, is what triggered a year of protests, Senate recall elections and the perpetual Wisconsin campaign, so this isn't a simple matter that Walker - - the instigator - - can fix with a budget amendment, a few crumbs, and a fresh set of talking points.
PolitiFact, by the way, has awarded Walker with far and away the most False ratings among Wisconsin politicians this past year. So he's got profound credibility problems - - all of his own making.
Walker is the guy who shakes your hand with his right, but has the left behind his back, with fingers crossed.
If "Walker 2.0," like the "New Nixon," gets rolled out - - this new Walker being a moderate, compromising, reasonable fella who can wink his way through a crowd - - remember that he's the one started this entire mess here when he "dropped the bomb," and forfeited his moral authority to lead.
Has he really learned anything over the last few months? Has he changed his tone, his approach, his spots, as they were all honestly disclosed in the David Koch prank call. Can you trust this guy?
"Came home from the Super Bowl...had all of my cabinet over...it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb."Here's some new evidence to ponder.
Romney knows Perry's wild talk about Social Security being a lie and a Ponzi scheme rattles Republican retirees from Miami to Phoenix, but right now, Perry is campaigning for conservative, Tea Party votes in the Deep South and Bible Belt, where Romney's Mormonism is predicted to hurt him.
So I figure for tonight, Perry is in better shape with the activist base of the conservative movement, and in some early primary states - - but that is not a 50-state strategy for victory.
Creepiest moment in the debate: The ovation for Perry's ranking as number-one enforcer of the death penalty.
What a line-up:
Scott Walker has sent a $6.8 million transit dagger Milwaukee County's way - - this is governance by payback - - and without new revenues, the County's bus system will further degrade at the very time that high unemployment makes transit a more vital option.
Several community meetings are set for this week to focus attention on the crisis. Here is the schedule, beginning tonight:
You don't need anything more to prove that the Voter ID craze sweeping across the country at the behest of conservative legislators and Governors is pure Voter Suppression than a memo obtained by the Madison Capital Times showing Wisconsin state employees being instructed not to inform applicants that the new Wisconsin Voter ID is free.
An internal memo from a top Department of Transportation official instructs workers at Division of Motor Vehicles service centers not to tell members of the public that they can obtain voter identification cards free of charge -- unless they know to ask for it.
The memo, recently obtained by The Capital Times, was written by Steve Krieser and sent to all state Department of Transportation and Department of Motor Vehicles employees on July 1, the same day employees were to begin issuing photo IDs in accordance with a controversial new Voter Photo ID law adopted earlier in the year.
As laid out in the memo, failure to check a box when applying for photo ID with the Division of Motor Vehicles will result in the payment of $28. Interviews conducted about the memo suggest the state is more interested in continuing to charge the fee, which is required for a photo ID used for non-voting purposes, than it is in removing all barriers and providing easy access to a free, photo ID.If the state government really wants residents to get the ID, and thus use it in elections, it would put that information on a huge sign at the entrance to the Division of Motor Vehicles stations, where the ID is offered.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is trying to raise $200,000 to sue over the law, arguing it violates a provision of the state constitution that limits what restrictions can be put on voting.Bottom line: Telling line employees to stay silent on the Voter ID's free status is more proof that Republicans in charge of Wisconsin's government want to suppress Democratic-leaning election turnout while maximizing voting among Republican homeowners, with fixed addresses, who will not be likely to need or seek the new ID.
Lester Pines, the attorney for the league, said he was concerned about the DMV policy on not telling voters they could get IDs for free.
"Potentially there is a legal problem in that it shows the state is interested as a matter of policy in charging for these (IDs), and that would be a poll tax," Pines said. "The agency's policy is to put revenue above protecting the right to vote."]
Two things interest me about the news that Wisconsin finds itself #1 on a list of states in per-pupil school aid cuts.
As the reporting expanded Tuesday on JS online, Walker's flack got into the story with the Governor's tag line that the state had given local districts the "tools" to better manage the cuts.
They've been on that talking-point relentlessly for months, as if that compensates for the impact of the cuts in classrooms and on programs - - but give them credit for message discipline.
It's also interesting to see this story migrate from the policy group that posted it last week to Facebook, where I saw it Sunday, to the blogs (I posted it also Sunday, and moved it to Twitter, too) to the mainstream media earlier Tuesday.
Many bloggers often repost traditional newspaper items.
But this story is a good example of news flowing in the other direction.
You don't want to prepare the Governor's brown-bag ham, cheese and mayo sandwiches on just any old counter-top.
Bring on the special interest donors who can support a Mansion make-over at a by-invitation event, reports Dan Bice.
Top donors get a Mansion tour, entree to a reception, their names on a sign and tickets to a croquet tournament.
I am guessing ham-and-cheese with mayo isn't on the menu.
Mass protests and arrests at the White House have received little national attention.
Efforts to stop a cross-country pipeline carrying Canadian tar sand oil for export from Texas present a political problem for Pres. Obama - - he has to say aye or nay - - whose relations with environmentalists have been weakened by his recent abandonment of new clean air regulations.
You have to hand it to Waukesha: It spent years fighting federal clean drinking water standards and dunned its water utility ratepayers big-dollar legal fees as inflation and the passage of time kept the meter running and added to the cost of the inevitable, eventual and predictable order-to-fix.
And new consultant and legal fees have been spent to create the inevitable and eventual and fix - - a controversial application to divert Lake Michigan water into Waukesha - - and even though Waukesha is in the heart of one of the reddest, anti-big-government counties and area codes in America, it wants $75 million in federal grant subsidy to help defray some of its inevitable, eventual costs - - and its rabidly anti-spending, anti-earmark Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner is already working on it.
I was pleased to see that the Journal Sentinel's truthiness rating service PolitiFact finds that Scott Walker has the most negative ratings among Wisconsin officials, leaving Democrats like Tom Barrett in the dust.
I'd done the tally myself more than once - - a recent example is here - - and am glad to see Walker with the first-year PolitiFact First-place Falsehoods' Finish.
Turns out our Governor is more transparent than he intended.
Both PolitiFact and this blog show Walker with the most false ratings, though my total is larger (I credit Walker with 31, opposed to PolitiFact's 13) because I fully credit Walker with "false" if the rating begins with the category "mostly false" all the way through "false" and "pants on fire."
PolitiFact balances its findings by also saying Walker has the most "true" ratings - - four - - and explains that as a lightning rod, he has had the most statements rated.
Faint praise: Walker's habitual unfamiliarity with facts has helped vault him into first place, and a 3:1+ ratio of false to true using PolitiFact's strict false-to-true measurement (leaving out the "mostly" or "half" ratings) isn't much to write home about.
Look at the evidence Walker's spokesman Cullen Werwie offers for his boss's money-saving claim, when simple math shows that the new arrangement adds significant costs to the Wisconsin students' bills:That's not about Walker being a lightning rod. It's more about being a dim bulb.
Werwie didn’t have any.
A new college tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota "makes college education more affordable for Wisconsin residents."
Says under his budget-repair bill, "collective bargaining is fully intact."
"Under our (2011-’13) budget, the average (Wisconsin) property taxpayer will save $700."
Says many public-employee unions falsely told their Wisconsin members his budget-repair bill sought 12 percent to 13 percent of their incomes for health insurance premiums.
Two years ago we had "the largest structural deficit ever in Wisconsin."
"We’re broke. We don’t have any more money."
"The things I said (during the prank call by a blogger posing as GOP contributor David Koch) are the things I’ve said publicly all along" about the Wisconsin budget debate.
When it comes to protesters in Madison, "almost all" are now from outside of Wisconsin.
"I campaigned on (the proposals in the budget repair bill for Wisconsin) all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years."
"The alternative" to higher state worker pension and health care payments "is to look at 1,500 layoffs of state employees or close to 200,000 children who would be bumped off Medicaid-related programs."
Wisconsin employers have repeatedly said in surveys that our anti-business litigation climate is one of the most important factors affecting their expansion decisions.
In Wisconsin, 98 percent of all small businesses will qualify for income-tax relief under my plan, freeing them to expand and create jobs.
"The Madison-Milwaukee (high-speed) train line is dead."
"Scientists have shown us (that) the greater possibilities, the real science movement, has been with adult stem cell research. It has not been with embryonic."
...parody alert...To: All staff.
Do not submit draft statements to me for our Labor Day statement containing the words "union," "organized labor," "collective bargaining", "labor history" and "brothers and sisters."
This is a firing offense. Labor Day is a chance for me to showcase me.
Do use "I" more than once, plus "250,000 new jobs," "my plan," and "our belief," per previous directives for all communications.And for the final Labor Day 2011 statement, attaboys all 'round.
The Cap Times editor notes that there is little room for Republican moderates in the party of Palin and Perry, Ron Paul and Paul Ryan.
Agreed.
And the first casualty in the 2011-12 US Senate election cycle will be Tommy Thompson, already blasted in a TV spot as a tax-and-spender by the Club for Growth even before an official announcement of a candidacy.
My take: Tommy will sacrifice what remains of his legacy should he veer rightward and away from his record in order to chase a retirement dream job
James T. Harris - - the third-string WTMJ-AM talker departing for Arizona not soon enough - - offered up on the Labor Day morning program his signature fun house laugh over what he said was the end of Labor's glory years.
He stoked his glee by playing a labor anthem by British rocker/activist Billy Bragg. Before and after the 9 a.m. news.
Harris yukked it up and enjoyed the studio producer's snotty handiwork.
E. J. Dionne Jr at The Washington Post notes that these historical figures and moral leaders were also friends of labor.
So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”And as someone whose first job at the Journal Sentinel was labor reporter, I winced when I read this Dionne paragraph:
That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens.” Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital."
Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat.Even more amazingly, labor in the early-to-mid-1980's was a Metro staff job, meaning labor and work was covered as mainstream news.
Never has one Wisconsin politician residing on the radical fringes so deservedly earned the enmity of everyday, working voters.
Labor Day is the perfect time to remind Walker that we intend to remove him from the Governor's office.
He's far outside the mainstream. Too radical, shallow, and flawed to lead this state or to hold power over others.
One caveat: We need to be smart about the gathering of signatures and tying a recall effort to the schedule best in our favor, not his.
Ryan tells the Journal Sentinel he's "open" to a 2012 Vice-Presidential nod.
He might have to fight Walker for it.
This will not help prepare Wisconsin kids for jobs, and a commitment to jobs was Scott Walker's number-one rhetorical priority. Then reality, politics and his budget took over...
You wonder when Gov. Walker's penchant for earning false or "Pants on Fire" ratings from PolitiFact will hit the tipping point and there will be a consequence for governing by lying?
The latest - - and Walker has had plenty - - is Walker's claim that an amended college tuition reciprocity agreement with neighboring Minnesota saves Wisconsin students money, when the complete opposite is true.
"Lying" too strong a word? The word is thrown around the Internet with too much ease, but in this case it's accurate and merited.
Look at the evidence Walker's spokesman Cullen Werwie offers for his boss's money-saving claim, when simple math shows that the new arrangement adds significant costs to the Wisconsin students' bills:
Werwie didn’t have any.Do Walker and his people simply not care? Do they think no one will notice? Do they think it's standard operating procedure for a CEO in their "Government-Should-Be-Run-Like-A-Business World."
I was traveling when this op-ed was published and want to help give it a ride.
One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross explained the importance of the State Senate recall elections to an national audience.
(Disclosure: I am a member of the board of OWN's 501-C-3 Institute, or policy arm, as opposed to its C-4 political advocacy component.)
Wisconsin officials travel to Minnesota Tuesday to see how our neighbors to the northwest handle iron mine permitting.
Open pit mining projects are on Wisconsin's radar, and Walkerites have been talking about fast-tracking them - - even embedding in the law a shortened and fixed-term review period, regardless of projects' complexity, consequences and public participation requirements.
I wonder if a month-old letter from the US Army Corps of Engineers will find its way into the Wisconsin officials' field trip reading material, as the federal agency warns Wisconsin not to cut corners when reviewing mine permit applications - - a responsibility shared among state and federal agencies - - under the Clean Water Act and related law.
Summed up, I'd say the letter says open for business should not mean closed to law and common sense.
A mix of environmental and political items made up last week's top five most-read posts, along with a note about the death of Wisconsin reporter Dennis Shook:
Sep 2, 2011
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Al has been at this for years, and his writing is authoritative.
Also note that federal authorities have warned Gov. Walker, DNR Secretary Stepp and others against fast-tracking permits for large-scale operations, like the mine about which Gedicks is writing.
The Walker administration and Republican legislators dancing to the tune of big business have been making noises about cutting back the time allotted for environmental reviews for some major land development projects, such as proposed mines, but a lead federal environmental and water management agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, has sent Walker's people a long letter basically warning them not to do it.
In the August 1 letter - - including several attached documents and maps - - the feds point out that such changes in state law, while designed to streamline permit reviews, might actually add costs, lengthen the entire, multi-agency environmental review process, cause the feds to revoke, re-examine and then re-issue some permitting authority, and essentially put the entire state/federal collaborative permitting relationship at risk.
The feds cite their authority under the Clean Water Act, and related law.
You don't have to read between the lines to grasp that the feds are warning the state to avoid a perilous regulatory streamlining.
Copied are Walker's office, DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp and several key legislators.
Here is a pdf link to the document.
