Walker and his toxic touch

[Updated from 11:50 a.m. Monday] Wisconsin Governor and early 2015/16 presidential campaign dropout Scott Walker was busy over the weekend raising money for Maryland Republicans and banking IOU's for his inevitable 2020 - - and guaranteed-to-fail - - presidential run 2.0.

The Washington Post reported that when confronted by protestors similar to those he roused by the hundreds of thousands back home when he dropped his collective bargaining ban Act 10 bomb on the state shortly after his 2011 swearing-in, Walker "brushed off the demonstrators" with a rehearsed, tinny retort:

“You can see why they were part of my welcoming party here today,” he said. “Obviously, that means I haven’t lost my touch — our reforms are still working.”

Too bad that conned audience wasn't forewarned by media about Walker's toxic touch and how some his 'reforms' are duds: 

*  Cost-savings were cited as the justification for closing a youth offender facility and sending dozens of predominately minority and urban kids to a merged, out-of-sight, out-of-mind rural chamber of horrors in the northwoods continues to create negative media - - and 20 months of federal probing into a culture of assaults and other misconduct on state property.

*  He's in his 24th straight year of career politician salary and benefits agglomeration. That more like a death grip on the public trough, rather than a deft touch managing it.

*  Likewise when it comes to state highway programs, Walker has let Wisconsin roads and bridges decay to the fourth-worst nationally while also creating a billion-dollar transportation fund shortfall because of his politically-inspired over-commitment to road-building special interests and their major projects' fantasies.

After filling a big hole in the current budget with hundreds of millions of dollars in new borrowing, look to Walker to push the tough decisions on road repairs to local units of government - - and old, cynical Big Government trick - - and strip-mine what social service spending remains and move that money into more major project lanes, ramps  - - but not into repairing or replacing what is obsolete, rusting or crumbling.

City and county governments in Milwaukee are now tens of millions of dollars short, according to a new, non-partisan policy report issued Tuesday, and no doubt every local jurisdiction in Wisconsin is feeling the same pinch.

*  Despite GOP control of the Governor's office and state legislature, with new powers to craft policy rules and complete freedom to write budgets and tweak them further with a powerful, chief executive's line-item veto, Wisconsin and Walker have whiffed on his signature job-creating promise, remains in 33rd place nationally among the states in job creation - - a bottom-third ranking where Wisconsin has sat during Walker's time in office - - and the state ranks dead last for the second year running in business start-ups.

*  His penchant for breaking contracts, killing jobs and signing unconstitutional laws he promoted continues to cost the public big dough, because with Walker, ideology and insider favors are more important than decent stewardship and the public interest.

*  And his 'chamber of commerce mentality"-directed Department of Natural Resources continues to enable polluters and water hogging corporate users at the expense of the public's right to clean, accessible water that is theirs by virtue of the state constitution's Public Trust Doctrine.

Latest price of tainted WI lawmaking/lawbreaking: $1.6 million

That's the cost in public dollars - - dwarfed by the insult to Wisconsin women and social civility - - slapped on the public treasury by the GOP-led Wisconsin Legislature when it passed an obviously illegal barrier to legal reproductive services with Scott Walker's ideological encouragement and willfully unconstitutional signing.

That same gang of GOP thieves also blew $10 million of our cash, plus about $40 million in forfeited train equipment, along with lost jobs and a Milwaukee assembly plant with maintenance facilities when they willfully broke a contract with the train builder, the Spanish firm Talgo.

The train settlement was negotiated for Talgo by leading Madison Atty. Lester Pines; his firm, Cullen Weston Pines & Bach, LLP and the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation shared the legal cost settlement in the reproductive rights case.

And the ruling party has wasted public spending galore implementing an unneeded Voter ID scheme, and several other ballot box restrictions which federal courts have blocked despite appeals by GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel - - again in the name of right-wing ideology and the Republican gerrymandered legislative power linked to it.

Schimel is also diverting state funds to fight transgender bathroom use, block federal clean air initiatives and hiring known rightwing attorneys with payroll funds while bouncing the state's leading environmental lawyer who used to sue in the public interest to deter polluters.

With an office chief of staff from the world of corporate lobbying.

And these are fiscal conservatives? 

Not with our money.

Working for Scott Walker means your name is on &*^@ like this...

You can read Wisconsin Workforce Development Secretary Ray Allen's entire WisOpinion puff piece - - and, yes, I know that GOP Gov. Scott Walker's spinmeisters flyspeck these so-called op-eds to make sure they lavish enough praise on the boss - - but like the data cherry-picking Walker has used for years to camouflage broken job creation promises, bottom-tier, stalled employment growth and Wisconsin's last place ranking among the states for new business startups two years straight, I offer for your edification just the first paragraph and one cherry-picked, but also half-baked number:

Governor Scott Walker recently proclaimed September as Workforce Development Month and, along with the recent Labor Day Holiday, this gives us all a reason to celebrate the economic success Wisconsin has enjoyed in recent years under his leadership, with much of the success attributable to the talents and dedication of Wisconsin's best-in-class workforce.  

And note among the selective statistics that follow, this - - 

The state has added over 200,000 private sector jobs from December 2010 through July 2016. 

- - with no reference to Walker's failure to have met his signature 250,000 new private sector job creation pledge by January, 2015 - - or 18 months earlier.

Sorry, but I don't see "a reason to celebrate the economic success Wisconsin has enjoyed in recent years under [Walker's] leadership"?
 

On public dime since '93, Walker rips government dependency

[Updated on 9/8 from 9/4/2016, 10.29 a.m.] If you have been graced since January 2011 to soak up a Fortune 500 CEO's lifestyle in a generously-staffed 34-room, 20,000-square foot gardened and manicured lakefront Georgian Revival mansion in a tony suburb, and that residence is rated second most beautiful nationally in its class, and also ninth-largest, given its 13 bathrooms, seven fireplaces and two kitchens…
And you also enjoy gaudy perks including a super pension, Cadillac-level health insurance, unlimited time off, your pick of art for the mansion's walls to hang or reject, a free security detail along with the best downtown office suite nearby to which you are routinely chauffeured, where a brace of personal assistants and other staff totaling 37 - - not to mention hundreds of others you have hand-picked for big jobs in other agencies that will spend tends of billions of dollars annually to implement your plans - - plus you've got drivers, cars, pilots and airplanes ready to whisk you to wherever and whenever at your 24/7 beck and call, you no doubt would feel like you're living The American Dream.

Exclusively.

But suppose other people, like taxpayers in a low-wage, slow-growth state are picking up that tab, and you've only held government jobs for the last 23 straight years - - basically your entire adult life - - and you enforce austerity on everyday people while showering other perks on CEO's and high earners, the last thing you'd expect to hear from such an inveterate public trough freeloader is a high-profile speech bashing government dependency.

But that is exactly what the afore-mentioned mansion occupant and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was doing Saturday, inveighing at a Koch brothers American Dream event near Disney World in Florida against government dependency.

And bragging about the thousands of poor people he had cut off food aid and touting the extra humiliation of a mandatory drug test Walker inserted into state rules which some aid applicants including those seeking unemployment insurance must pass before receiving subsistence benefits from taxpayers that pale in comparison to the millionaire lifestyle which tax dollars provide to him.

All in a state, mind you, which still has the state-enforced, poverty-guaranteeing, American Dream-killing $7.25/hr. minimum wage already raised to a more humane $10 or $12 and even $15/hr. in many cities and states because Walker has said he does not even believe in the concept of a minimum wage, has called it "lame," defines $7.25/hr. as a livable wage and will not allow any increase. 

Period.

Now you those of you whom the state now suspects of drug or alcohol abuse can go pee in a cup if you want a shot at food stamps or bare-minimum unemployment benefits while Walker heads to his Mansion's kitchen for a chef-prepared meal, then orders up state patrol drivers and a state airplane at the cost of hundreds of dollars an hour to deliver him to a fund-raising dinner or one of those no-media, by-invitation-only, taxpayer-subsidized 'listening sessions' cum-2018 re-election boosting events.

All the while failing to keep his signature 2010 and 2012 job-creating promises, yet traveling widely in the US and overseas on the taxpayer's tab to further a personal agenda - - no drug-testing required.

Props to the blogger who provided the details of Walker's speech which also explained why we didn't see Walker parading around Lambeau Field in the red shirt from the University he never attended, but whose budget he slashed and public-service mission he sneakily and dishonestly tried to erase.

Further thanks to the Capital Times for featuring the Florida report today about Wisconsin's Hypocrite-in-Chief.

Weak WI job picture marred by broken GOP promises

[Updated] As has become routine during GOP WI Governor and presidential dreamer Scott Walker's desultory nearly six years in office, fresh, gold-standard data was released yesterday which showed Wisconsin ranking 33rd in job growth among the 50 states.

Yep, that's us: a long-time bottom-third tier state, and, for worse measure, 50th in new business start-ups for a second straight year.

Little surprise, given the Walker administration's absence of any coherent economic planning, and I don't mean trickle-down tax breaks, nifty PR billboards at the borders and far-flung trade missions at taxpayer expense which were principally to boost Walker's foreign policy experience for his momentary run for President last year and the next one in 2020 for which he's already gearing up.

And don't expect anything approaching a genuine turnaround, given the exodus of big-name, major employers from the state in recent months  - Oscar Mayer, Caterpillar, Manitowoc Crane - - and the supply chains and white-collar service and consulting positions that disappeared in ugly ripples along with the iconic firms' payrolls and deep community involvement.

Three questions for Walker and the media which cover him:

*  Would it be too much for media to press Walker for an explanation about his failure to create the 250,000 new private sector jobs which was the centerpiece promise of both his 2010 gubernatorial race and the 2012 recall election?

*  Likewise - - what about that Robin Vos promise that once the recall election was over, the Wisconsin economy would take off like a rocket. "A tremendous takeoff," Walker predicted.

In fact, Walker sold that story in Illinois, too:

Gov. Walker says business hiring will skyrocket after he wins recall election

*  Will media ever hold career politician Walker and his shills accountable for their broken promises, misleading boasts and inept performance which any Google search can document, or has the GOP so devalued politics in Wisconsin, where traditional media is also on the decline, that political incompetence is ignored and enabled as business as usual?

Ask and ye shall receive: Thursday 11:30 p.m. update, and props to Channel 3 WISC-TV's latest editorial:

Walker needs to respond to state lagging in job creation

On MSNBC program, Trump violates presidential briefing confidentiality

[Updated with the transcript] On the MSNBC military issues Town Hall tonight, Donald Trump said he had learned something that shocked and alarmed him in the confidential presidential briefings he has been given.

What had he learned, via the briefers' body language, he suggested?

That President Obama, and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry had failed to take intelligent experts' advice.

Trump is supposed to say nothing about what goes on in these briefings - - from the words used to his weird inferences from the briefers' body body language - - and hinting in dire tones about things so terrible undermines President Obama - - the incumbent Commander-in-Chief - - and smears his opponent, Hillary Clinton, too.

She doesn't know what Trump was referring to  - - except that he shouldn't be talking about the briefing - - and she wouldn't answer or debate it with Trump because that would be the wrong thing to do.

What disqualifying behavior from a loose cannon. Cut off the rest of Trump's  briefings. He can't be trusted with them, except to abuse the privilege.

Here is the transcript of this stunning episode:

LAUER: You recently -- you recently received two intelligence briefings.

TRUMP: Yes, I did.

LAUER: Did anything in that briefing, without going into specifics, shock or alarm you?

TRUMP: Yes. Very much so.

LAUER: Did you learn new things in that briefing?

TRUMP: First of all, I have great respect for the people that gave us the briefings. We -- they were terrific people. They were experts on Iraq and Iran and different parts of -- and Russia. But, yes, there was one thing that shocked me. And it just seems to me that what they said President Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who is another total disaster, did exactly the opposite.

LAUER: Did you learn anything in that briefing -- again, not going into specifics -- that makes you reconsider some of the things you say you can accomplish, like defeating ISIS quickly?

TRUMP: No, I didn't learn anything from that standpoint. What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts and our truly -- when they call it intelligence, it's there for a reason -- what our experts said to do. LAUER: Hallie?

TRUMP: And I was very, very surprised. In almost every instance. And I could tell you. I have pretty good with the body language. I could tell they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.

Unhappy with Trump? Cry me a river, Waukesha County GOP

[Updated] Having enjoyed all the partisan and personal benefits of a dominant State Republican Party energized by welcomed, rabid Tea Party foot soldiers dog whistling to power in unison - - from Reince Priebus to Scott Walker to Paul Ryan to their former local District Attorney Brad Schimel they helped promote to Attorney General where he sticks up, using taxpayer dollars, for everything the Wisconsin GOP stands for, including:

Brazen voting restrictions aimed at minorities, students and big-city folk, and dirty smokestack emissions, and public water giveaways, feedlot pollution and anything else big business wants for itself at the public and environment's expense, and mean-spirited, ideologically-driven discrimination against low-income workers and urban reality, or Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin women and their reproductive rights, GOP voters in deep red Waukesha County are crying the blues to a Journal Sentinel reporter over Donald Trump's rise to Republican dominance.

Now they don't like what their party is offering?

An intolerant, crude, selfish, arrogant, empathy-free, Putin-loving Trump - - endorsed by Waukesha's best friends Scott Walker

and Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy and Ron Johnson, et al  - - at the top of the GOP ticket...right where he belongs.

Cry me a river, Waukesha County Republicans.

He's all yours.

[Updated to make clear the reference is to Waukesha County and GOP voters there.]

WI GOP wolf hunt lawmakers hosting pro-wolf hunt summit

A federal judge banned the Wisconsin wolf hunt, but two GOP state legislators are sponsoring a conference in Cumberland, WI on September 15th to keep the hope for "the necessity for state-led" wolf-hunting alive, event planners say:

The Great Lakes Wolf Summit, hosted by Senator Tom Tiffany and Representative Adam Jarchow, is a meeting of public officials, scientists, and interested parties from Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota to discuss the necessity for state-led wolf management programs. 

 
Since the Great Lakes regional meeting with speakers is free, you gotta wonder who's picking up the tab? 

More from the Wolves of Wisconsin Douglas County blog.

And more here about the record death toll last month among Wisconsin bear hounds killed when their owners ran them in 'training sessions' through wolf activity areas.

UW budget in play, Robin Vos has another right-wing brainstorm

We've already heard from GOP Assembly Speaker, higher ed expert and popcorn magnate Robin Vos 

about those stupid sciency professors he wants gone from UW campuses, but now he's got another bright idea for campus life - -  now he's made it clear what kind of guest speakers he wants on those campuses, too.

More conservatives!

With the UW budget surely on the chopping block again, consider it another meddling message delivered with a warning shot from the right.

Walker to announce obvious re-election pander

Just what revenue-deprived Wisconsin needs: a smoke-and-mirrors PR move known as a "sales tax holiday" for buyers of school supplies - - but next year - - says all-but-certain candidate for re-election Scott Walker. 

As the Journal Sentinel story points out:

The holidays are popular with many consumers for offering at least the promise of some relief around one of the major seasons for family spending. But the measures are also panned by policy experts for doing little to boost the economy. 

The recent Tax Foundation report found that sales tax holidays do not promote jobs growth but instead merely shift the timing of consumer purchases and complicate the process of collecting taxes from stores. Some retailers may also raise prices during the holiday, reducing consumer savings, the report found.

MI sneaks through intent to OK mine on WI border

Regulators in Michigan thought few people would notice on the first day of the three-day Labor Day holiday weekend that the state began formally moving to approve an environmentally and culturally destructive open-pit mine at the water-rich Michigan-Wisconsin border on land sacred to the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin:

The State of Michigan on Friday announced its intention to approve, over tribal protests, an open pit mine near burial and other culturally important sites in the Upper Peninsula...

...within the broader footprint of the mining site are burial grounds and former raised garden beds from the Menominee tribe, who used to live in the region before an 1856 treaty forced them onto their current reservation, 60 miles southwest of the proposed mine site. The mouth of the Menominee River is the center of their creation story.

I had posted news about this possibility in January.

You can't help but notice the repetitive larger context: the defeated iron mine nearly blasted into the Bad River, WI tribal watershed (Mike Wiggins, Jr. photo)

and rice-growing estuaries (now threatened anew by a 26,000-hog farm and manure factory,) and the proposed Kohler golf course near Sheboygan on wooded wetlands and rare dunes strewn with Native American artifacts, and, of course, the ugly incursion on Native American land right now in North Dakota by pipeline builders and their literal attack-dogs.

Take four minutes and a few seconds to listen a summation of these atrocities by MSNBC's evening host Lawrence O'Donnell. 

Walker, GOP 'austerity' legislators trigger new local road fees

The fiscal phonies in Scott Walker's equally fake 'small government' GOP regime love to pose for holy pictures at budget signing time for purportedly saving taxpayer money, but all they are doing is playing is one of the oldest and most cynical budgeting games around - - slashing state spending on something basic, like street repairs, giving Wisconsin a horrible national pothole rating of fourth worst nationally...

thereby forcing city councils and county boards who to add local 'wheel taxes' to stem the flow of angry constituent calls by making up the intentional, state-mandated funding shortfall with new fees..

The locals have to take the wheel tax heat, while the fiscal phonies around the State Capitol party with the road-builders who are going to get fresh billions for new and wider roads in Milwaukee which Walker has lied about because they are unwanted by the people with the most land, clean air and peace of mind to lose.

Obama leads on climate change, WI in obstructionist hands

As his tenure winds down, props to President Barack Obama for continuing leadership on climate change while seemingly endless floods rampage across the US south.

A major piece in The New York Times piece puts it all into perspective.

In the US West, and elsewhere, the flip side of climate change extremes is heat, drought and fire.

Climate change isn't a theory or some-day-in-the-future daydream. It's here and now.

And let's hope Donald Trump never gets close enough to the White House where his ignorance and superficiality would make climate change denial the law and policy of the land.

Regrettably, in the state where once strode Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Earth Day founder and former Governor Gaylord Nelson, Trump has the backing of assorted key deniers and ignorami in the Wisconsin Party of Pollution, including Republicans Gov. Scott Walker, US House Speaker Paul Ryan, US Senator Ron Johnson, and US Rep. Sean Duffy.

And don't forget Cathy Stepp, the former developer and Trump cheerleader named by Walker to bring a "chamber of commerce mentality" to the state's clean air and water - - the once-proud and science-based Department of Natural Resources Secretary diminished, soured and handcuffed by Wisconsin Republicans. 

Teamed with the ideological environmental opponent GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel, Wisconsin's dirty air and tainted water enablers are turning Wisconsin's once green reputation deep, indelible red.

Trump's Discover Minorities Tour making America greater

First Mexico. Now Detroit!

In the same week!

The Party of Lincoln looking great today and America is getting greater.

Good news on pipeline front; MN-WI crude line shelved

Strong opposition in Minnesota and falling oil prices have led bad actor Enbridge to scrap a line known as Sandpiper that would have carried volatile crude from the North Dakota Bakken oil field across Minnesota and also to Superior.

But Wisconsin isn't free of pipeline expansion risk, as Enbridge has won the predictably easy approval from Scott Walker's "chamber oc commerce mentality"-led DNR to build a new pipeline - - known as Pipeline 61 - - from Superior in the north to Delavan in the south to carry thick, Canadian tar sand crude.

Republicans and lobbyist insiders also added an 11th-hour amendment to the most-recent state budget that blocked counties like Dane along the North-South Enbridge pipeline route from establishing their own insurance requirements for pipeline construction.

That Republican version of local control these days in Wisconsin merges nicely with Walker's pollution-enabling chamber of commerce leadership at the DNR and the GOP's pro-pollution/drain-the-groundwater/mine-and-fill the wetlands caucus.

US, Canadian officials want Waukesha's water diversion revisited

A word or two about a call from scores of US and Canadian officials across the Great Lakes region for a fresh review of the recently-approved and still-controversial decision by a regional body under a 2008 Great Lakes water management agreement to approve a diversion of Lake Michigan water to the City of Waukesha.

Lansing — A group of mayors is requesting a formal hearing with the organization of Great Lakes governors that approved in June a Wisconsin community’s polarizing bid to draw water from Lake Michigan. 

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative filed the hearing request this week. Its director, David Ulrich, said the organization may take legal action if the request is not granted, though it has not yet made that decision.

As with so many facets of the diversion application's drafting - - and redrafting and approval earlier this year - - the outcome of this new appeal is not immediately clear, but let's remember two things as this precedent-setting process continues to unfold:

*  These officials represent millions of constituents, and as an organization, have credibility, standing and access to the kind of money that could be raised for a serious challenge, if that is the goal.

*  This opposition is neither new or unexpected, as the officials made their feelings known about the diversion application and the review process by the eight Great Lakes states earlier this year; I noted what they said at the time:

The Cities Initiative, a group of 122 local government leaders from the United States and Canada representing over 17 million people, is opposed to the water diversion because it does not comply with the Compact in several ways... 

All of these add up to the bad precedent an approval would set when the Compact created a very strictly limited exception for cities and counties on the borders of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin. 

In fact, the officials have been raising these objections for years, as I'd written in 2013:

There has been an exchange of letters between Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Daniel Duchniak and Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada Mayor Keith Hobbs.

The subject: Waukesha's draft application (reviewers at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources have yet to get Waukesha's final, final, final draft, but that is another issue for another day) for a diversion of Lake Michigan water under the terms of a 2008 US-Canada Great Lakes water management Compact...

Thunder Bay's Hobbs, who is also the chair of a US-Canadian regional Mayor's group, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, is raising questions about Waukesha's application and specifically about Waukesha's intention to send water beyond its city limits.

Canadians have been raising these questions about Waukesha's application, as I noted six months ago:

So concerns expressed publicly by Canadian Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer about Waukesha's languishing application (Waukesha's Common Council approved it three years ago, though efforts to gain a diversion have floated around since 2006) should be taken seriously as the Wisconsin DNR continues to review the application...

During a visit to Milwaukee last week, Canadian ambassador Gary Doer said Canada generally opposes transferring water from one watershed to another, fearing it would hurt water quality, “and today's project may make sense, but 100 of them won't.”

While some of the officials' concerns about the reach of the diversion were resolved - - Waukesha is not supposed to send water to neighboring towns, and other Great Lakes states can play a role ensuring that Scott Walker's notoriously-lax Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in fact holds Waukesha to all of the diversion's conditions - - it's clear that local officials throughout the region, including in Racine, still have concerns about the diverted water's return flow route via the Root River, through Racine's harbor and back into Lake Michigan.

Again, this is not a new concern, as I noted in 2012:

Return-Flow Trouble May Be Root Of Waukesha Water Plan

So: stay tuned: Racine and other local officials are questioning the process, and the outcome and want to be heard. 

Which means Waukesha's diversion approval may not yet be a done deal.

WI DNR records show water quality problems at King Veterans Home

[Updated] The head of Veterans Affairs in Wisconsin says everything at its important King care facility is great. Someone should have been sending him bottled water.

Allegations of substandard care despite a surplus of state funding have rocked the state veterans home in the Waupaca County community of King.

A quick online check of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources drinking water system records in a statewide data bank shows lead violations discovered in King water samples in 2011, 2012 and 2015, and, separately noted, potential agricultural, sewer line and fuel storage water contamination sources.

There is some information published in the Cap Times today about lead in the water at King; the records indicate such problems are perhaps persistent and widespread.

More later.

Bear hound deaths, WI reimbursements part of bigger, bloodier picture

Wisconsin is the only state in America which allows in-state bear hunters and others from the other 49 states to come to the picturesque North Woods and let their packs of hounds run loose to chase bears in so-called training runs for a bear hunting season that does not start until next week, and could see 3,000 or more bears killed.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources records show that 28 bear hounds have died in this gruesome fashion this year, and a stunning 25 of these hounds have been killed just this month.

A five-year-old female Bluetick in Iron County, like the one pictured below, was the most recently-reported hound killed by wolves in Wisconsin.

The bear hounds are allowed to run through known territories of bigger, stronger wolves, even through areas where the wolves could be attracted by bear bait left behind legally by the hounders, and for years, Wisconsin has been paying hounders $2,500 for each dog which inevitably dies a gruesome death in confrontations with the bigger, stronger and very territorial wolves.

Let's look at the bigger picture.

GOP Gov. Scott Walker likes to say that Wisconsin is Open for Business, but a closer look shows that the state is Open for Animal Cruelty, too, as I wrote two years ago:

Wisconsin projects a tourist-brochure image to the outside world, and comforts itself with mythologized memories of its Great Founding Naturalists, like Aldo Leopold and John Muir, but the reality when it comes to certain legalized hunting and dog-training practices is sad, dark and downright ugly...

...because legislators and regulators are in thrall to aggressive, one-track gun and hunting lobbies which treat public wildlife as their disposable, personal property - - even enabling bear-poaching in excess of the thousands of bears shot here legally after being run up trees hounded literally to exhaustion. 

More disregard for Wisconsin wildlife begins July 1, when "hounders" - -  hunters using dogs - - will be allowed to let loose their GPS-equipped dog packs on bears for training purposes before the actual bear killing season begins in the fall. 

The hounders and their dogs-in-training will be permitted to race and romp down the roads and through the woods, panicking bears and animals of all sorts which are resting, or feeding, or simply existing in their natural habitat which belongs to all the people of the state...

Now here's the part of the wildlife cruelty story that is less well-known: 

Wisconsin hunters are also allowed to train their dogs against a variety of living, captive, caged wild animals.  

In some cases, small animals, like trapped raccoons, are allowed to be put into cages that roll - - so-called "roll cages" - - as part of the dogs' training....

And, yes, there are requirements in the state rules to protect the caged wild animals from injury or death during the dog training...but who is around to monitor and enforce those rules' effectiveness, given that DNR wardens are spread awfully thin statewide, and the training periods can legally run up to 18 hours a day? 

Who will actually make sure, for example, that a hunting dog is not allowed to get closer than one foot to a caged bear - - yes, that's the allowable practice - - or that if the cage is hoisted in the air for training purposes, it has to be 10 feet off the ground?  

And that throughout the hours and hours straight of such hoisting and dodging and other movements that the caged bears are given the food and water and rest they are supposed to have. 

And why, if the protections in the rules are effective, are there protocols in place to account for and dispose of wild, captive animals injured or killed during the training...as copied from the DNR's website...

28th hound killed in '16 WI bear hunt 'training' by wolves

The death toll among bear hunting hounds continues to rise: 

On Aug. 31 - - the last day of the state's legal, off-leash bear hound 'training' period - - the Department of Natural Resources said by email today that the year's 28th bear hound was killed by wolves in Wisconsin.

The dog, a five-year-old female Bluetick like the one below, was also the 25th bear hound killed just this month by wolves in Wisconsin. 
Bear hounders can collect up to $2,500 per killed dog from a DNR fund in a Wisconsin-only reimbursement program even if the dogs were released off-leash in known wolf activity areas where hounders can legally plant bear bait that can also attract wolves.

GOP 2016 road show - - Trump and The Pariahs

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof lists the pariahs who back Trump. 

I'll add one more:

As 'training' season ends, 27th bear hound killed in WI wolf country

Wisconsin's off-leash bear hound training season - - when hunting dogs are allowed to run right through wolf activity areas - - ended yesterday, and the DNR reported this morning that yesterday a 27th hound this year - - like the Plott hound pictured below - - was killed by wolves in Langlade County.

Dog-wolf conflicts are likely in wolf activity areas because bear hunters are allowed to leave food behind as bear bait, which also attracts very territorial wolves which are larger than dogs and operate in packs.

All of which is also known to the hounders.

As I have repeatedly written on this blog for several years, Wisconsin is the only state which allows this off-leash bear hound 'training' and state reimbursement of up to $2,500 per dog killed, regardless of past reimbursement collections, disregard for hunting laws, etc.