Friday, March 7, 2014

Nice Day, Bucky: Take It Easy Out There #Dirtyair

And like I said, TV and radio news/weather announcers should routinely disclose and explain these dirty air advisories:

Advisory for Particle Pollution (Orange)

Updated Friday afternoon also to Dane, Outagamie and Eau Claire Counties:

2 Active Air Quality Notices

Air Quality Advisory for Particle Pollution (Orange)

Issued: 4:21 pm CT Friday, March 7, 2014

Start Time: 4:00 pm CT Friday, March 7, 2014

End Time: 11:00 pm CT Friday, March 7, 2014

Counties: Dane, Eau Claire, Outagamie

Air Quality Advisory for Particle Pollution (Orange)

Issued: 11:59 am CT Friday, March 7, 2014

Start Time: 11:30 am CT Friday, March 7, 2014

End Time: 11:00 pm CT Friday, March 7, 2014

Counties: Grant, Kenosha, Milwaukee, and Racine

Start Time:	11:30AM CT Friday, March 7, 2014
End Time:	11:00PM CT Friday, March 7, 2014
Counties:	Grant, Kenosha, Milwaukee, and Racine

AIR QUALITY INDEX CHART

Air Quality Index (AQI) Values	Levels of Health Concern	Colors
When the AQI is in this range:	...air quality conditions are:	...as symbolized by this color:
0 to 50	Good	Green
51 to 100	Moderate	Yellow
101 to 150	Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	Orange
151 to 200	Unhealthy	Red
201 to 300	Very Unhealthy	Purple
301 to 500	Hazardous	Maroon

For More Information:

Ryan, Walker Mislead About Poor People In Same News Cycle

What a day for self-disclosure.

From their privileged perches, Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, our two leading Wisconsin Republican conservatives with Presidential ambition talk falsely and cruelly about the poor - - with media listening in.

The Working Poor Are Walker Pawns

Wash Post Rips Ryan For "Lazy Mendacity," Phony Speaking

The Working Poor Are Walker Pawns

Look at the mean-spirited, ignorant justification Walker offers when opposing a raise in the current minimum wage that keeps the working poor impoverished:

Scott Walker's focus on creating family-supporting jobs, not raising minimum wage

Here's what Walker disregards while reminiscing about his work as a teenager at a McDonald's in small-town Delavan when there was no lingering Great Recession:

Fast-food workers more often adults than teens, analysis shows

Wash Post Rips Ryan For "Lazy Mendacity," Phony Speaking

Read Greg Sargent's take down in The Washington Post of the supposedly bright and serious Paul Ryan after the Wisconsin Congressman and House Budget chair told a famously phony anecdote to the CPAC audience at the high-profile DC conference:

The Post’s Glenn Kessler has checked out the anecdote Paul Ryan offered at CPAC yesterday, which was the perfect distillation of what you might call theHammock Theory of Poverty. In case you missed it, Ryan opined that the left is offering people “a full stomach and an empty soul,” and referenced an anecdote supposedly passed along to him by a Wisconsin public official...

Now Kessler finds that the anecdote is fiction — the creation of a misstatement by the official who originally offered it.

...the failure to vet it before presenting it to a national audience seems like more of the “lazy mendacity” Jonathan Bernstein talks about. Lawmakers get so used to saying whatever they want unchallenged inside the Conservative Media Entertainment Complex that claims go increasingly un-vetted...

At the same time, Ryan has embarked on a campaign to prove the GOP cares deeply about poverty. The only way to make all of this work is to argue that slashing programs for the poor is the way to help them — hence anecdotes like the one above that are designed to give that notion a philosophical gloss.

...he is still basically functioning in a media environment where he is greeted great deference as a serious wonk, even as the truly draconian nature of his fiscal vision and its fundamentally absurd pretentions to caring about poverty — not to mention its violence to mathematical reality — escape serious press scrutiny.

While We Slept, Milwaukee...

Our new Clean Air attainment status slipped overnight:

Today at 3:47 AM

Current Air Quality for Milwaukee, WI
Friday, March 07
At 3 AM CST Particle Pollution (2.5 microns) reached 102 AQI - Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups

* Wisconsin DNR Air Quality Notices - http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/AirQuality/status.asp
* Daily Air Quality Hotline - 1-866-324-5924 (1-866-DAILY AIR)
* Real-Time Wisconsin Air Quality Monitoring - http://airquality.wi.gov/StateMapping.aspx
* Nationwide Air Quality Forecasts - http://airnow.gov/

Do not reply directly to this email. If you want more information on the air quality forecast, or other aspects of the local air quality program, please contact your local air quality agency using the information above. For more information on the U.S. EPA's AIRNow Program, visit http://www.airnow.gov.

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Thursday, March 6, 2014

WI Republicans Misunderstand 'Corrupt Practices,' Voting Laws

The idea is to prevent influence-peddling, not enable it:

Current law bars lobbyists from "furnishing" campaign contributions to elected officials until June 1 of election years. For years, state ethics officials have interpreted that to mean lobbyists cannot discuss campaign giving with elected officials before that date.

The bill before the Senate committee would allow lobbyists to provide contributions on behalf of others to elected officials at any time.

Also Voting Rights laws are supposed to guarantee ballot access, not obstruct it:

The first bill to limit absentee voting hours at clerks' office has infuriated Democrats, who see it as an attempt to limit voting in areas such as Milwaukee and Madison where their supporters live. Republicans respond that it levels the playing field between cities and rural areas where clerks don't have the resources needed to offer long absentee voting hours.

Under an amendment to the bill offered by Republicans on the committee, early voting in clerks' offices would be limited to weekdays between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Such a law change would prevent clerks from staying open on weeknights and weekends — times when many voters are not working and voter drives are most active.

Currently, early voting is allowed for the two full weeks before an election, ending on the Friday before an election.

Cheesehead Dictators

Wisconsin Republicans used to lambaste Democrats as The Big Government Party. It was the GOP's most reflexive talking point.

Trust the people and their local decision-makers, not Madison power-brokers.

How things have changed, as the power-grabbing GOP triumvirate of Scott Walker, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are moving towards, or have already restricted or pre-empted local ordinances, permissions or practices covering minimum wages, voting hours, same day voter registration, sand and iron mining operations, streetcar planning, regional transit plans, public employee residency, commuter train development, groundwater withdrawals, Ojibwe treaty rights, northern Wisconsin forest access, public employee labor contracts, and more.

They could continue this right-wing push to one-party, corporately-controlled rule through the 2021 redistricting.

The Wash Post Covers CPAC Conservative Weirdness

Senators Tom Coburn and Mitch McConnell at CPAC. (Getty)

Live from conservative forum

Common Core Rollback Has One Main Client: Walker 2016

Wisconsin educators and a suddenly-energized Reasonable Republican caucus in the Legislature seem to have enough support to shelve a wholly-unnecessary, Scott Walker-led rollback of national standards for Wisconsin school kids known as Common Core.

The consummate self-interested political game-player, Walker wanted to kill Common Core so he could appeal to Federal Government/Obama haters in this election year and into 2016.

Blocking Common Core - - and you know the Right just hates that word "common" - - would have allowed Walker to lay claim to more fake "courage"and "bold reforms," like his refusal of federal Obamacare funding to more widely expand health insurance coverage for low-income Wisconsinites.

Walker got away with making poor people his political pawns, but might be unable to turn school children into campaign sound bites.

Scott Walker Is Not Speaking At CPAC...

But Chris Christie is speaking, so Walker will let his New Jersey GOP colleague take all the 'embattled Governor' questions at the major DC conservatives' conference.

Also, the Richard Nixon/Rosemary Woods Trophy presentation has been postponed.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

WI Senate Committee Approves Sand Mining Sweetheart Bill

Word is that a GOP-controlled State Senate committee has approved an industry-friendly bill limiting local sand mine controls, so a floor vote could happen any day.

Update: Confirmation.

A companion bill could be pushed through the GOP-dominated Assembly, though opposition from the credible Towns association could keep this iteration on a back burner as this session winds down.

Some background, here.

Suburbanites Have No Right To High-Speed Commutes Through Milwaukee

The Journal Sentinel's editorial blog says it's "dreaming" to think commuters would slow down a bit on one short stretch of roadway to limit Interstate Highway widening costs and resulting damage to Milwaukee's west side tax base and residential appeal.

Too many motorists treat Milwaukee like an extended freeway [Sic] ramp to and from work, and this attitude is especially galling because many of these commuters who believe they have a right to tear through Milwaukee cheered the blockade of light rail development that would have eased the very congestion they help create twice-a-day.

History, here:

The railroad not taken

Had talk radio and suburban opposition not sunk a 1997 plan, we’d be riding sleek transit by now

A Word For Talk Radio About Winter Traffic Congestion

Note to Jeff Wagner: You wouldn't be complaining so loudly about what you called yesterday's surprise snowfall and the long commuting times for motorists in its wake if you hadn't helped kill light rail along I-94 from downtown Milwaukee to the Waukesha border.

To Protect Walker And Party, GOP Needs One More 'Reform'

Wisconsin Republican legislators have set in motion a slew of behaviors and measures to help Gov. Scott Walker and their party attain permanent rule, but I can see a gap among all their 'reforms' and self-serving activity.

First, their work to date:

* There's talk of restricting the use of John Doe probes by District Attorneys in Wisconsin. Enough said.

* Furious that voters exercised their right under the State Constitution to recall Walker and several legislators after the union-busting Act 10 bomb was suddenly dropped, the GOP-controlled Legislature has begun the process to narrow Wisconsin citizens' Constitutional right of recall.

* Similarly, Republicans are so intent on punishing long-time State Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson for her dissent on Act 10 that they have also begun a Constitutional amending process to make sure reliable right-wingers can replace her as Chief Justice.

The State Constitution now designates the high court's most most senior member as Chief Justice, so Abrahmson, continually winning statewide elections, remains Chief.

* Republicans carried out lopsided redistricting gerrymandering after the 2010 census so secretive that signed confidentially statements were required of legislators before they were allowed to see the public policy bill-and-district-map work being being done behind closed doors in private offices near the State Capitol.

* Democrats in cities turn out big majorities in Presidential and other elections in Wisconsin, so Republicans are pushing bills and passing laws that tamper with voting rights by mandating the display of certain Voter ID at the polls or limiting the days and hours for in local polling places for convenient absentee voting.

* And there are more schemes afoot in the pro-Walker/GOP-run Legislature to help shield the identities of some big-dollar donors who favor Republican campaigns, or to make it easier for legislators to take money from lobbyists - - again benefiting special-interest, corporatist Republicans now controlling all three branches of state government

But I'm thinking (tounge-in-cheek) that there's one 'reform' the GOP might want to bring back and extend as a favor to incumbent Governors. (Wink-wink.)

Legislators had gotten rid of a key element in the formerly-powerful veto given to Wisconsin Governors who had been allowed to change the intent of a bill by editing out individual letters through the so-called "Vanna White Veto."

But given the lengths Republican legislators are going to protect Walker and their incumbencies statewide - - and the trouble he has ahead on that big jobs promise - - why not bring back the Vanna White Veto and extend it just to an incumbent Governor's campaign promises.

With Vanna White Editing being extended to an incumbent's campaign promises, this sentence could be rewritten by Walker's political machinery - - and, as the email dump showed, he merges the political and public payrolls and agendas - - with one little change and help Walker exceed his jobs promise and enjoy the certainties of governance which he and his party take as their entitled right:

'I will create 250,000 new private sector jobs.'

Milwaukee Is A Happier Place These Days Because...

Milwaukee Brewers spring training baseball broadcasts are being delivered by Bob Uecker on 620 WTMJ replacing early afternoon right-wing talk radio programming on the region's largest AM station.

In Milwaukee, that's like discovering that frozen custard at Leon's is five cents a scoop until the end of March.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Add Mining Damage To DNR Trout Fishing Discussion

The Wisconsin DNR is soliciting public input on trout fishing issues.

Good, timely issue.
fall trout fishing
So tell the agency that 35 years of dynamiting, drilling, clear-cutting, hauling, dumping and milling for iron ore across miles of the Bad River watershed in Northwestern Wisconsin near Lake Superior will be bad for the trout streams there.

About those waters, experts say:

The Tyler Forks sub watershed contains 85.6 miles of designated trout streams and 40 miles of designated Outstanding/Exceptional Resource Waters (O/ERW). The Upper Bad River sub watershed contains 103.7 miles of trout streams and 53.9 miles of O/ERW. Combined, this is 31 percent of the trout waters and 25 percent of the outstanding and exceptional resource waters in the Bad River Watershed.

Outstanding/Exceptional Resource Waters are designated as the state’s highest quality waters. These waters provide outstanding recreational opportunities, support valuable fisheries and wildlife habitat, have good water quality, and are not significantly impacted by human activities. As such, these designations are intended to meet federal Clean Water Act obligations requiring Wisconsin to adopt an “anti-degradation” policy that is designed to prevent any lowering of water quality. Designated waterways potentially impacted by mining activity include Tyler Forks River, Bull Gus Creek, Ballou Creek and Devils Creek.

Exxon Valdez Spilled Oil Still On Alaskan Beaches After 25 Years

People telling us that technology cures all ills, and that more relatively dirty tar sand crude oil can be safely piped across the country, over groundwater, on the rails and even under the Great Lakes should consider this recent finding from Alaska:

The Exxon Valdez oil spill is not just an awful memory. Oil from one of the most devastating environmental disasters in U.S. history still clings to boulder-strewn beaches in the Gulf of Alaska—and could stick around for decades.Researchers presented evidence of a lingering, foamy, mousse-like emulsion this week at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Chemical analyses find that this 25-year-old oil is from the Exxon Valdez spill, when the tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound (map) in 1989. And to the surprise of the scientists, the oil still has most of the same chemical compounds as oil sampled 11 days after the initial spill. (See "Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains.")

The oil's presence in areas that were cleaned right after the spill 25 years ago points to the need to monitor certain environments long after the visible effects disappear, the researchers say.

GOP Churn In Waukesha: Bill Kramer On The Way Out...

But Kathy Nickolaus is on the comeback trail.

When Legislature Hits Local Controls, Look To Special Interest Strings

Town governments in Wisconsin are fighting against fast-tracked, GOP-backed legislation that will prevent or restrict local officials and the citizens who elect them from regulating sand mines that impose health, safety, transportation and budget risks literally - - in the ground, air and water - - at the grassroots.

That's because mining companies have gotten control of the legislative process, just as they did when a bill to benefit one out-of-state-open pit iron mining company was jammed through the Legislature at the expense of local governmental and even treaty-protected controls across the Bad River watershed in Northwest Wisconsin.

A fine summary by State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout:

This bill is far more dangerous than its earlier cousin. It will set precedence for every other mineral deposit in Wisconsin. Do we want sand mining next to Lake Delton?

Industrial mining has its place. But it is a place that must be determined by the people who live in that neighborhood. Taking away the community’s ability to say ‘no’ is taking away local control.

Nobody likes Big Brother, they say.

But he's been hitting Milwaukee with extra-special mandates for years, such as a special 60-year-old legislated growth-busting freeze on the city boundaries.

Other communities have annexation powers, and borders are negotiated.

Not at Milwaukee's edges, benefiting suburban growth, influencing housing, transportation and transit decisions, and development, too.

Milwaukee has also been drained of millions of dollars since the passage of a law with then-Gov. Tommy Thompson's support that forces Milwaukee taxpayers to pick up one-half of the salaries, plus some benefits, of two senior Milwaukee Police Association (union) officials at a cost of more than $200,000 a year.

That law saves the union money internally and lets it redirect dues revenues towards other things, like legal fees, or contract negotiations, or lobbying - - and the union has done well by the Walker administration which exempted its members from Act 10's public employee take-home pay reductions and further rewarded them by ending local residency requirements so their members could move to nearby suburbs.

Another example of the GOP's current wave of legislated local pre-emption: rolling back any local law establishing a higher minimum wage, thus cutting some workers' wages and local governments' ability to respond to what its constituencies want.

Where and when will this interference and arrogation from On High and Far Away run its course?

There was a time when Republicans put their purported philosophies into action by opposing Big Government mandates that told local taxpayers and their elected officials how to set priorities and spend money.

But with special interests calling the GOP's tune, and especially with a gerrymandered Legislature serving Scott Walker, those days are gone.

Monday, March 3, 2014

BizTimes Reports Big Hit To Wisconsin Jobs, Growth

This is not the path to 250,000 new jobs:

Tramont Corp. informed state and local officials today that it plans to go out of business effective May 5.

The company will cease operations and close its two Milwaukee facilities as part of a chapter 128 receivership process.

All of the company's 137 employees will lose their jobs.

WI Towns Association Still Opposing GOP's Sand Mining Deregulation Bill

This is a very big deal: Reversing fields, Wisconsin's towns are continuing to oppose the latest version of a mining-industry friendly bill that would remove local controls from sand mine siting and operations.

The new draft had somewhat softened the deregulation, but the towns still see the threats to local budgets, and health and safety considerations.

Recent background on the bill and the players, here:

The Legislature's leading mining industry insider is rushing another version of his bad sand mining bill to approval as legislators head for adjournment.

The original bill would have drastically limited local governmental ability to regulate the health, safety, environmental and fiscal implications of sand mine excavating, trucking and other operations.

State Sen. Tom Tiffany, (R- Hazelhurst), says his new bill will leave in place the current regulatory framework used by local governments to regulate existing sand mines - - now numbering more than 100 - - but bar the creation of altered rules that local governments might want to implement to keep new mines running safely...

* Tiffany is the last person in the Legislature to be taken as a good source of information on mining impacts and environmental law.

He had already agreed with the Governor's office and mining interests to be their Legislative Go-Fer - - records here - - and pushed a first version of the bad iron mining bill that was rewritten with token 'improvements.'

Also, as the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters has said:

Frac sand mining is already causing our hills to disappear and our communities to suffer in western Wisconsin. If anything, citizens need more tools to address the dramatically changing landscapes of their communities.

SB 632 & AB 816 would allow mining companies to lock-in a free-pass on avoiding any future mining-related ordinances that are adopted before the hypothetical mine even begins pursuing a permit.

In addition, SB 632 & AB 816 could invalidate existing ordinances in communities where current regulations address in a single ordinance all aspects of frac sand operations, from the actual mine site and processing facilities to loading operations.

It's True: Gov. Walker Earns Relatively Few PolitiFact "True" Ratings

He can't handle the truth.

PolitiFact said recently that Walker and three other Governors, all Republicans, were among its ten most-vetted politicians - - and of those four GOP Governors, including Walker, Perry, of Texas, Scott, of Florida and Christie, of New Jersey, Walker had the fewest - - nine - - statements rated "True," and the worst True-to-False ratio, at 1:3.

By comparison, Christie had 20 "True" statements and 14 "False" statements, a far better ratio.

Here is Walker's chart:

Walker's statements by ruling

Click on the ruling to see all of Walker's statements for that ruling.

True9 (10%)(9)
Mostly True13 (15%)(13)
Half True18 (20%)(18)
Mostly False15 (17%)(15)
False26 (30%)(26)
Pants on Fire7 (8%

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Issa, Walker Win Coveted Surprise Fox News Skewer

You wonder how long before Chris Wallace - - son of the legendary tough interviewer Mike Wallace - - ca keep his gig on Fox News?

On his Sunday morning show last week, Wallace made mincemeat out of Scott Walker and today Wallace had no use for GOP Cong. Darryl Issa's false speaking.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Reporting On Baraboo/DNR Open Space Plan Omits Context, History

There's a piece in The Baraboo News Republic about a meeting to discuss the redevelopment of the abandoned Badger Army Ammunition Works property - - and the report has a significant omission.

What's missing is any acknowledgment of the 13 years of planning already developed by stakeholders in favor of converting the land to low-impact public uses - - you can get a sense of it in this local government file, here - - and not for the louder options like ATV trails and target shooting that Scott Walker's special-interest-driven DNR began to push after his election to unwind the work already done.

As I wrote last year:

The public is learning what happens when the Wisconsin DNR, beholden to special interests, allowed certain lobbies to change an agreed-upon land use plan:
This blog has been following this for a while:

At the heart of the dispute: Should the new Sauk Prairie Recreation Area include a shooting range and space for all-terrain vehicles to rumble across the property?

Both are under consideration. So are other plans for hiking trails, wildlife watching and habitat restoration.

Another possible plan is to simply leave the land alone.

The possibility of the shooting range and ATV trails has come up relatively late in the planning process.

A 2001 plan that had the input of the DNR, local government, citizens and others made no such recommendations, but instead emphasized restoration of the land and uses such as hiking and bird watching.

Walker's DNR wants to unwind a 12-year-old, all-stakeholders' consensus agreement for so-called low-impact recreation activities on land making up the now-closed Badger Ammo complex near Baraboo.

WI Scandals Include Grabs For Water

Policy issues at the State Capitol are going to play second-fiddle in media to John Doe maneuvering, secret emails and offensive legislator behavior, but let's not lose sight of offensive, special interest legislation being packaged in committees and lobbying shops that also need greater sunlight.

Take the pending GOP-led scheme that will enable some of the biggest users of water - - a resource already threatened in one way or another by overt waste, over-pumping, drought, contamination and even calls for export - - to pump out as much groundwater as they want after intentionally hamstrung and 'reformed' permit reviews under the bill rule out accounting for the effects of big withdrawals on the overall supply.

Even the DNR under Scott Walker still says in large, bold-faced type online when explaining state law and the Wisconsin Constitution's embedded, public water protection:

Wisconsin's Waters Belong to Everyone

This outrageous giveaway of public water to big users - - and its accompanying eradication of legacy legal protections now keeping drinking water systems full, lakes deep and trout streams alive - - is known as Senate Bill 302, the text and scheduling of which are here.

Basically, SB 302 is close to a floor vote. It could have an easier approval in the Assembly, where corporate agricultural and mining interests have a bigger GOP majority to serve them.

Also note the fine posting on the bill and related outrages by Anne Sayers of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters:

Farmers in areas where frac sand mining is occurring are unable to water their fields. Trout streams in central Wisconsin are drying up, and high-capacity wells are drawing down nearby lakes. A new bill (SB 302) would allow frac sand mining companies, factory farms and other large water users to pull water from the same source without consideration of how much water each is using. Allowing for such a shortsighted approach means that our water supplies would be quickly drawn down...

Citizens rely on their local authorities to be the first line of defense in protecting their air and water. SB 349 strips local governments’ abilities to do that, paving the way for polluters to play by their own rules. The result would be more frac sand mining, more manure spraying, and more air and water contamination.

So take a few minutes off from shoveling snow today and tell your StateSenator to oppose SB 302. Hand-written letters are best.

Find your Senator and other legislative addresses, here.