WI public officials tilt land, water conservation to corporate goals

A ruling on the validity of a wetland-fill permit the Wisconsin DNR has granted for controversial golf course development on a nature preserve and inside a popular Lake Michigan shoreline state park will be issued in several months, reports The Sheboygan Press.

It's worth noting that:

* Grassroots proponents of wetland preservation and clean water have won two recent such cases before state administrative law judges, and;
 

* These kinds of cases can be extended on appeal for years;

*  And at any stage can be abetted by the very coincidence-free, highly-partisan, ideologically-based 'chamber of commerce mentality' which Gov. Walker installed atop the DNR and which guides decision-making by other GOP-directed or influenced Wisconsin officials and agencies - - from the State Supreme Court to the state Department of Administration to Attorney General Brad Schimel to the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board - - ostensibly the DNR's 'public' oversight agency - - to obscure legislators to the more powerful Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

Here's some relevant history.

Just last month, another contested case hearing ended with a win for opponents of a Georgia-based sand mine facility in Monroe County after the judge ruled the DNR had improperly approved a wetland-fill permit. 

Administrative Law Judge Eric Defort ruled Friday that the DNR improperly granted the permits because the agency lacked enough information to determine the environmental impact, Meteor's mitigation plan wasn't adequate and the project would cause significant adverse impacts.

Separately, there was a win by Kewaunee County opponents of a DNR-awarded permit allowing an expansion of one of the state's largest dairy cattle feeding and milking operations. 

That ruling was affirmed by a circuit court and is under further appeal by the DNR after GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel maneuvered it to a presumably more pro-business outcome in conservative Waukesha County.

...Jeffrey Boldt, an administrative law judge hearing the case, said in 2014 that polluted wells in the region represented a "massive regulatory failure to protect groundwater..."

Boldt allowed the expansion to proceed, but with a limit on the number of cows and a requirement that wells be drilled to detect potential bacteria contamination...

But eight months later in 2015, then-DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp, an appointee of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, asked the Department of Justice whether her agency had the authority to impose such conditions.

One day later, Schimel's office replied that the DNR did not. 

Schimel's maneuver was among several he's undertaken to undermine grassroots proponents of clean water and tilt the scales of justice towards corporate interests. 

Including his issuance of a favorable opinion that granted large-scale groundwater withdrawals to big operators which they had openly demanded GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos deliver. 

While Wisconsin is abusing, over pumping and contaminating our groundwater, the Legislature's GOP Assembly Leader Robin Vos - - a leading Wisconsin corporate water-carrier - - is seeking an opinion from GOP Attorney General and fellow corporate water-carrier Brad Schimel that could turn over more groundwater to corporate control and away from public oversight:

Since taking over state government in 2011, Republicans have made significant changes to natural resources laws, but they have failed to remove obstacles for frac sand mines, farms and food processors that want to dig more wells able to draw 100,000 gallons of water a day.

And big business hasn't been shy about its demands, noted in October:

A pretty stunning memo was sent last week by multiple trade groups and corporate special interests to the State Legislature in advance of today's hearing about the fast-tracked Wisconsin water giveaway bill I wrote about yesterday that puts groundwater and downstream users' access in private hands.

Here is the full text of the Vos request.

AG opinions do not carry the force of law, but they can influence legislation and public opinion - - and elected officials usually do not ask for these kinds of opinions unless they are confident of the outcome.

Remember - - the State Constitution says the waters of Wisconsin belong to everyone and the DNR is obligated to put the public's rights first.

What's the bottom line here? 

Citizen groups, dedicated volunteers and committed public interest lawyers will continue to fight the very government we all fund through our taxes until more environmentally-respectful politicians are voted in and the corporate valets are voted out.  

Milwaukee shows off its streetcars

More than 20 years in the making, Milwaukee shows off streetcar equipment set to run in the fall.

Poverty rising in Walker's WI

WI GOP Gov. Scott Walker has reportedly said 'I love the poor so much,' and that's a good thing because now there are more of them to embrace, a new report indicates: 

Despite a robust job market, Wisconsin's poverty rate increased to 10.8% in 2016, compared to 9.7% in 2015, according to a report released Friday by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Walker has displayed his love for the poor by tying food and health care assistance to mandatory drug testing, keeping the state's minimum wage frozen at what he calls a livable, $7.25 hourly rate, and raising taxes on the poor while also taking away from them an across-the-board $20 a month - - or ten gallons of milk at $1.99 each most days at my local Metro Market.

Details, in this summary post, here: 

This isn't the first time Walker has used and abused the poor for political purposes - - remember that he is the one standing in the way of an increase in the minimum wage being raised elsewhere... 

And in his first budget, Walker kicked at the poor financially when they were already far, far down in the Great Recession - despite Walker foot-stamping spin to the contrary - - as noted several times on this blog, including this summary from two years ago:

Despite the denials, the same Scott Walker budget that... contained tax increases totaling $49 million on lower-income Wisconsinites - - plus a 'just-cuz-you're poor-$20-monthly dunning - - and also cut taxes on some capital gains and business income. 

The Walker machine spun on, claiming in statements and ads that the budget was balanced without raising taxes, even though the information about the tax increases came from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, as reported by PolitiFact.

Which all makes sense if you remember the classic song lyric, "you always hurt the one you love."
 

Trump sets WI visit. But to Harley? Doubtful.

Trump's coming for Foxconn, Republicans and a $100,000 premium-ticket GOP fundraiser. 

Think he'll motor on up to Milwaukee - - where there are Harley-Davidsons everywhere - - 

Milwaukee County Deputies and their Harleys, on the lakefront, 2017

- - given this story?

Hit them in the Harleys: EU fights Trump tariffs

You don't need to be a great military tactician to understand that when fighting a battle you need to hit your opponent where it hurts. 

With that in mind, the European Union warned last week that it would retaliate to President Trump's tariffs on European steel and aluminium with import levies of its own on some pretty iconic US products. 

Brussels said it planned to introduce retaliatory tariffs on items such as Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon whiskey.

Least surprising Walker headline repeats itself

In today's not breaking news:

Walker once again misses 250,000 new jobs goal

Also not breaking news: a lede that has written itself since 2011: 

In his first seven years in office, Gov. Scott Walker presided over an increase of 213,000 private-sector jobs in Wisconsin, short of the 250,000 new jobs the Republican promised in his first four years.

For the record, note that there was a time the 250,000 figure was a promise not a goal, a floor not a ceiling, and worthy of being tattooed on his Cabinet members' foreheads...

Promise of 250,000 jobs hasn't changed, Scott Walker says

...Walker presented the jobs number as an ironclad promise, not a goal. Walker joked about branding the figure on the foreheads of his cabinet secretaries and said 250,000 jobs was "my floor, not my ceiling." 

And remember the good old days, when both Walker and key rocket right-hand man Robin Vos both predicted skyrocketing jobs' takeoffs once those pesky recall protestors had been put in their place?

Failure, normalized.

But that was then, and he's already blamed his failure on Jim Doyle, Obamacare, a recall election, Barack Obama, Syrian rebels, State Capitol protesters, bad data, government in general - - but this is now, and... hey, look over here...Foxconn! 
 

Pruitt acknowledges drier climate

Global warming confirmed, confronted at the EPA.

Or as The Washington Post puts it: 

Pruitt enlisted security detail in picking up dry cleaning, moisturizing lotion

Photo, above, from NRDC website. 

About Foxconn, Walker goes oxymoronic

When he was Milwaukee's Mayor, John O. Norquist frequently gave a slide show about sprawl where new things were named after what bulldozers had taken.

"Brookfield - - no brook, no field," usually got a laugh.

I mentioned the phenomenon a few years ago in a blog post with pictures of houses on Dairy Avenue in a fresh Waukesha subdivision. 

Which brings me to this Wisconsin State Journal account of GOP Governor and King of Corporate Welfare Scott Walker's remarks about Foxconn Wednesday at an annual start-up business conference in Madison.

(A complete archive of blog posts about Foxconn is here.

I won't dwell on the way Walker used his campaign-season appearance there to again try and sell doubting people out-state that his routing of tax dollars, precious transportation funds, and special environmental exemptions worth billions of dollars isn't just a development plan for the SE corner of the state.

And I will simply mention that Walker also suggested there that Foxconn would resolve some of his more persistent and glaring gubernatorial shortcomings, like stagnant job creation and bottom level rankings among the states for entrepreneurial opportunities.

What caught my eye was the way Walker morphs the Foxconn development into an "ecosystem," and though it was not the first time Walker has pounded that square peg into his round rhetorical hole, these graphs from the State Journal article bear some comment: 

Both Gov. Scott Walker and Foxconn’s Alan Yeung spoke before hundreds of investors, CEOs and entrepreneurs at Union South on Wednesday for the conference’s keynote luncheon. They asserted that Foxconn’s plans to build a $10 billion manufacturing campus in Racine County would create a hub of tech and entrepreneurship activity in the region. 

“There's a whole ecosystem that will draw people in not only to work for Foxconn, not only to work for the suppliers there, but (there will be) larger groups of people here and in Wausau and in Green Bay who will say, ‘We want to be close to something like this,’” said Walker.

Now I don't know about you, but to me, with its green, organic and life-giving implications, "ecosystem" and three-thousand ripped up rural acres where landowners are in line to be kicked out of their homes and off their farms

Cabbage fields on the Foxconn site, 2017

is about the clumsiest, misleading mismatch of words since "jumbo shrimp."

Go back to John Norquist's remark about developers naming their handiwork after what they have destroyed and hold on to that word "ecosystem."

Now read what former Milwaukee Journal science writer and regional planning historian Paul G. Hayes said in a recent Facebook post about what adopted plans had in mind for the Foxconn site and the area's prime agricultural land:

Mount Pleasant and western Racine County was identified, along with northern Ozaukee County, virtually all of Walworth County, and much of Waukesha and Washington Counties as having the best remaining contiguous farmland remaining in southeastern Wisconsin, according to SEWRPC's regional plan. We have already lost Waukesha county's once great dairy farming industry to urban sprawl. Now you can kiss western Racine County's goodbye as well. 

And ask yourself which ecosystem is more likely to save these Mount Pleasant bur oaks which are 300-to-400 years old - - the one that is there or Walker and Foxconn's replacement.

We shouldn't let Walker get away with saying that what he and Foxconn are creating is an ecosystem, unless they want to admit they're destroying an ecosystem to save it.

Walker hails partial federal Foxconn roadwork bailout

Walker found some federal stimulus money he likes even if he only got about 60% of what he hoped Big Daddy would deliver: 

Wisconsin will receive $160 million in federal funds for a massive upgrade of I-94 south of Milwaukee that state officials see as a critical element in the planned development of Foxconn Technology Group in Racine County. 

The funding, however, falls substantially short of the state's request of $246.2 million. 

If Trump offers, fine. When Obama offered it - - for Amtrak, broadband expansion or Medicaid coverage - - no way. Because Federal funding's bad.
 

It's an election year, so Walker discovers WI dairy 'crisis'

Public officials create task forces to paper over inaction, minimize failure and avoid being taken to task by voters.

Remember the task force Walker ordered up in September, 2016 to fight opioid abuse - - an issue he relentlessly promotes along with his efforts, he says - -  but hopes you didn't see this March, 2018 story and hold him accountable:

Emergency room visits for suspected opioid overdoses increased 109 percent in Wisconsin from July 2016 to September 2017, the highest spike among 16 states closely tracked, federal health officials said... 

But this is an election year, and always-campaign Scott Walker just took Task Force 101 to the next level: 

Scott Walker says crisis team needed to help state's crippled dairy industry

Wait. He's not done, as his taxpayer-paid p.r. machinery layered on the buzzwords:

MADISON – Governor Scott Walker announced today that the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the University of Wisconsin System (UW System) will create Wisconsin Dairy Task Force 2.0 that will enable stakeholders to come together to make recommendations on actions needed to maintain a viable and profitable dairy industry in our state.

So while you are distracted by his attention to "crisis" and "Task Force 2.0," will he remind people that he wanted credit in 2012 for financing a 15% increase in state milk production that is now clogged by oversupply and damaged by lower prices? 


Also - -  have I just heard that same kind of Johnny-come-lately-language camouflaging years of inaction on something that is a long-standing crisis he'd ignored?

Oh, here it is in this election-year scramble:

MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker directed state agencies today to develop emergency regulations requiring captive deer farms to bolster fencing and restricting deer movement in an effort to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease, saying it's time to get more aggressive in the fight against the fatal deer brain ailment. 

State officials have been struggling to find an effective strategy against CWD since it was discovered in Wisconsin in 2002. Walker has been criticized by Democrats for adopting a largely hands-off strategy centered on monitoring spread and research.

One more thing about the Wisconsin dairy situation, which, by the way, will be made worse for state producers by Walker's buddy Trump's tariffs which are creating retaliatory measures aimed our way.

Many experts say a root problem is the oversupply of milk, so let's not forget what I pointed out 16 months ago: 

You have probably read about a sudden trade-related change in milk supply purchasing procedures that places many smaller Wisconsin dairy farms in serious jeopardy:

Dairy farms in Wisconsin and other states could be forced out of business as early as May because of a trade dispute that has halted the export of their milk to Canada.

About 75 farms in Wisconsin have already been told that, in less than 30 days, Grassland Dairy Products of Greenwood will no longer buy their milk – leaving the farms without a place to ship their product in an already oversupplied market.

I was struck by that phrase "in an already oversupplied market." 

Here's the thought again in this very personal, recent account on behalf of small farms:

It is insanity to continue full throttle with production. We need to develop common-sense oversupply management measures that will responsibly balance the milk supply and take some of the gamble out of farming – milk supply management should not be achieved by processors abruptly dropping existing  farmers. I believe that when milk goes down the road, farmers shouldn’t be losing money. I also believe farmers shouldn’t have to fear the walk down their driveway to the mailbox.

You probably also know by now that GOP servitude by right-wing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to donors, trade associations and lobbyists is approaching a big payoff: the privilege through de-regulation privatization to pump out large volumes of groundwater through permanent, big-volume permits at the expense of downstream and nearby users and a constitutionally-guaranteed clean and fully accessible statewide water table where groundwater and surfaces are inextricably linked...

So let's make some connections:

It's not surprising that the smaller farming operations are at the greater risk when the supply chain take a sudden hit, yet Wisconsin government in the Walker years of one-party, corporate-obeisant rule has been applying its official authority in a coordinated way to increase milk production to over-supply conditions while disregarding the consequences on small dairy farmers - - and the water supply, drinking water contamination and other issues.

Clearly there is a lot wrong with this picture; the common thread is that those with the least power are being ignored and abused by those with more power, or access to it. So consider that:

*  Walker in 2012 began financing a state plan to boost milk production in the state:

Walker hopes to grow Badger State milk production to 30 billion pounds annually by 2020. The effort to do that has been dubbed "30x20" and is part of the Grow Wisconsin Dairy program.

Walker unveiled his proposal in Madison on March 13. He chose the twentieth annual business conference of the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin (PDPW) for his announcement.

*  GOP Attorney General, at the request of GOP legislators, issued an opinion last year that would make it easier for the DNR to award high-volume ground water permits sought by Big Ag and Big Dairy.

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says the Department of Natural Resources can’t consider the collective impacts of high capacity wells in a given region when issuing new well withdrawal permits, according to an opinion released Tuesday.

That began with a request by GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who, in turn, was carrying water for major special interests which hand-delivered their demands to the Legislature.

When will Wisconsin GOP leaders step up and accept their share of the blame for the crisis Walker just discovered? 

To satisfy Foxconn and Team Walker, property seizures one step closer

In Racine County's Village of Mount Pleasant these days, you can't count on your home being your castle anymore.

Because if the government wants to take it for Foxconn and the bulldozers, the Village is closing in on saying it belongs to them - - and they can take it - - because it's blighted.

Does this look blighted to you?

Cabbage fields on the Foxconn site, 2017

The fancy term for what may come along now that "blight" has been officially invoked upon the heads and deeds of residents not interested in being booted out would be "eminent domain," but, in reality, it's property seizure.

To benefit, in this case, a private, foreign corporation.

And to which any evictees who stick around in Wisconsin will also send some of their taxes because the company will get public subsidies for another generation.

Talk about adding insult to injury, and putting a finer point on that 'right direction' in which Walker always says we're moving.

Moving? Or in the case of some Racine County residents, being moved on, and out. Right direction, or more of a forced march?

Because a private business wants your property?

Who put Walker in charge of telling people in Mount Pleasant they need to find a new address?

The proponents of eminent domain in this case are saying the people who are being forced out are going to get a bonus - - 140% of the grabbed property's value - - so, hey, don't be an ingrate.

Which is fine if you wanted to sell and move, but the bonus offer is of limited-to-no value if leaving wasn't in your plans.

Moving is a known, big-deal stressor, so add to that equation and pressure on your heart rate and peace-of-mind being forced out of your home to keep in step with the Walker-Foxconn involuntary shove.

Where do you go? What happens if you can't find something acceptable?

What of your relationships with neighbors, familiar surroundings, and your yard, the garden, or those trees you planted which were part of your favorite view from your favorite easy chair through your favorite window?

What's a fair price for that, bonus or no bonus?

Especially if you're not interested in selling.

Earlier today I'd written about how the current crop of Republicans running state government in Wisconsin cares not one bit about local control.

I wish I'd used the term "home rule," because Walker and his legislative allies and officials in Mount Pleasant - - where things have turned decidedly unpleasant - - are sending the message that what was your home is now under their rule. 

Another blow to local control, clean WI water

[Updated] Wisconsin Democracy Campaign got it right when it said local control in Wisconsin was "under assault."

Fresh evidence: the Wisconsin Supreme Court just took local control away from the Town of Saratoga to further boost a CAFO's grip on land and water there.

[Update - - the WDC just posted this item with the CAFO owners' political contribution history.]

As the DNR has repeatedly done in Kewaunee County.

Manure runoff in Kewaunee County

Now abetted by GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel.

And his brown water expertise.

Along with polluter-in-chief Scott Walker.

Republicans used to champion local controls because it fit the party's anti-big government posture.

Now it's the party of big government, and big handouts, too.

Michigan OK's open-pit mine along river & WI border

[Updated] Michigan's misnamed Department of Environmental Quality, (DEQ), has approved the final permit which Canadian operators need to begin open-pit metallic mining along the Menominee River

at the Michigan-Wisconsin border - - a move in favor of toxic, metals' mining that puts tribal land and waters at risk and is likely to speed along similar projects on our increasingly-polluted side of the border promoted by newly-strengthened lobbying and enabled by the business-friendly Wisconsin governor and legislature several months ago.

Brown County in Wisconsin opposes the project because downriver pollution ending up in Green Bay is but one if many threats facing anglers, homeowners, and tourist businesses.

The chamber of commerce mentality, GOP-led governments in Wisconsin and Michigan these days care nothing for fair play, environmental stewardship, native tradition or water purity (Google "Flint water or "Kewaunee County water" or "Foxconn first 26 acres of wetlands" for example).

Only the dollar, the special interests which hand them out and then demand favors from these Not So Great Anymore Great Lakes states' governments have any sway; look no farther than the hearing underway just this week in Sheboygan contesting decisions by the  Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - - the corporately-managed equivalent of Michigan's DEQ - - to approve a wetland fill permit for privately-owned golf course construction along the Lake Michigan shoreline that includes handing over land inside an adjoining state park for a road, vehicle and equipment storage and construction of a large privately-owned building.

Atty. Lester Pines explains Colorado baker's case ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court 

today issued its ruling in a case arising from a Colorado baker's refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Noted Madison attorney Lester Pines then posted on Facebook this explanation:
---------------------------

The decision just came down from the U.S. Supreme Court in the Masterpiece Cake case, in which a baker in Colorado refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission, enforcing a law that prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people (and many other protected classes), had sanctioned the baker. The Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Colorado Court of Appeals that upheld the sanction, but did so on procedural, rather than substantive grounds, and made this statement:

"Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. 

As this Court observed in Obergefell v. Hodges, . . .“[t]he First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law. See Newman v. Piggy Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400, 402, n. 5 (1968)"

Walker rips Evers' curse. Does Walker condemn Trump's more frequent obscenities?

Walker sniped at Tony Evers for using a curse word.

So I'm waiting for Walker, who endorsed Trump at the 2016 RNC convention, and continually excuses and enables him, to release the shaming letters or texts he sent to Trump for his public curses.

Which include introducing the notion of 'shithole' countries.

And using the 'c-word.'

And the 'f-word.'

Etc.

To his crowds' delight.

Or over the gear worn at Trump rallies.

And if there are no Walker complaints to Trump, I call b.s.

Hearing into golf course plan, wetland fill runs all week

Having followed the controversial, state-enabled plan by a major Walker donor to build an upscale golf course adjacent to 

and inside Kohler Andrae State Park, I pass along this timely update from the grassroots conservation group Friends of the Black River Forest:

FBRF hearing challenges scheduled June 4-8

The hearing on FBRF's legal challenges to the DNR's approval of the Kohler Wetland Fill Permit and the Final DNR Environmental Impact Statement will take place the week of June 4-8, Mead Public Library, Sheboygan.

The hearing will last from Monday through Friday. Times are not established but we can expect to begin at 9:00 and go to 4.p.m or longer.

On Friday morning, June 8th, the public will have an opportunity to speak to the issues in our challenges. Having lots of people attend throughout the week sends a message as to how seriously the residents take the issues of the planned environmental degradation of a rare Lake Michigan coastal ecosystem. Our rights to information, healthy land, air and water have been circumvented and ignored.

FBRF is being charged $2000 to pay for a recorded transcript of the proceedings. We will be paying for expert witnesses and our attorneys. This is why we have gone all out on our You Caring campaign. Please continue to share our story.

Trump's in-your-face inhumanity enabled by GOP colluders

Trump is right there, all over TV and Twitter in his un-American strongman glory, happily doing the kinds of things people said could never happen here.

And despite the evidence he releases daily, sometimes hourly, some fellow citizens are still telling themselves in full denial that America has laws and traditions that will forever guarantee our rights, check government authority and prevent Presidents from running amok.

Snoozing at the switch, or hoping against hope, they hang on to the myth that America would never follow other countries down the devastating, horrifying wrong roads they indeed took. 

Believing, at our unfolding, common peril, that America had also learned enough from others' mistakes to repeat them, and would reliably abide by irrefutable truths wrung from our own nightmarish experiences - - whether having enslaved Africans and separated them from their children through violence and sale, or separated Native American children from their parents and shipped them to English language-only only boarding schools, or forcibly interred Japanese-Americans for years in camps - - something of a precursor to the subsequent and updated construction and operation of the current US detention facilities network which is the world's largest and can hold 360,000 people, or three times the number of Japanese-Americans imprisoned during World War II.

Those are past realities we are forgetting, along with the Irish we expelled from the US by the thousands, and the victims of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I doubt if Trump knows or cares about this history.

After all, he has escalated his demands for broad immigration restrictions and his southern border wall, just as he's more broadly escalating a takeover and take down of fundamental-but-disappearing democratic rights and norms by:

*  Patting torch-bearing, night-riding, copycatting-neo-Nazis on the back;

*  Insulting African nations wholesale as 'sh*thole' countries;

*  Repeatedly ordering our borders closed to Muslim-majority countries.

*  Pardoning the convicted racist Arizona sheriff and current US GOP Senate candidate Joe Arpiao;

*  Demagogically-cursing, demeaning and endangering the livelihood of NFL players;

*  Callously tossing paper towels to a gravely-wounded-and-still-suffering Puerto Rico;  

*  And worst of all, ordering children at the southern border be torn from their legal-asylum-seeking Central American parents.

By and large, Trump's victims, and also those of the thugs he eggs on, have one thing in common with, say, the Mexicans he trashed as "murderers...and rapists" in his campaign kickoff speech or the reporters and protesters who were roughed for his amusement at Trump '16 campaign rallies.

And with the Central Park Five whom a consistently-unapologetic Trump wanted executed, despite their youth, and innocence.

And with the prospective, New York City tenants to whom he and his father would not rent apartments.

And to his White House predecessor whose American citizenship, college academic achievements and two terms in office Trump has systematically, relentlessly, enthusiastically demeaned.

Darker skin. 

As the man said, can't we let into the country fewer Haitans and more Norwegians?

And there are other targets, including the disabled, and families on food stamps, or women suing him for sexual assault, and women Trump is out to punish by crushing Planned Parenthood - - all of whom he believes have less power that does he, his cronies and enablers.

So we and they get only his repetitively harsh verbal and policy double-downs, because Trump and his party and his handlers and his valets and apologists are all about wielding and hanging on to power.

Leading to the shocking, embarrassing and dangerous silence-screaming-consent from the band of spineless, power-over-principle, No-More-Party-of-Lincoln Republicans now cowering in the once-co-equal-on-paper-only Congress they've surrendered in service to Trump, his endlessly-demanding ego and the cash-hungry private property empire he and his family manage from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, and north to 666 Fifth Avenue, 725 Fifth Avenue and addresses worldwide.

This cowards chorus includes GOP elected officials like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, and big-state Trump worshippers like Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, whose family Trump attacked and degraded.

And closer to home, Trump is excused and coddled by weaklings like Ron Johnson, Scott Walker, Jim Sensenbrenner, et al, ad nauseam, whose wasteful, self-serving squatting in public offices insults their earlier occupants - -  genuine giants with humane authenticity and selfless, public service compasses and consciences - - like Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson or US Rep. Robert Kastenmeier

Speaker-dropout Ryan, Kastenmeier's complete opposite, is now a congressional caricature who is spending his remaining taxpayer-paid days and fast-evaporating credibility raising partisan money instead of raising his voice for civility. And American democracy.

Walker, certainly no less craven, and sharing nothing in common with the environmental champion Nelson, says he'd welcome Trump here for fall campaigning - - as people run from Trump and their White House jobs by the dozens to save their souls and reputations.

Giving Walker another term would validate his noxious, self-aggrandizing governorship and consign Wisconsin to a further potholed, low-wage, stalled-growth, more-polluted, special interest-driven, red state miasma.

His helping reify Trump, his authoritarianism, and increasingly reckless reign resolutely disqualifies Walker from re-election. 










  

Trump to order more coal-burning, strengthen 'stupid party' brand

Goodbye to GOP bromides about embracing the free market, fiscal conservatism, avoiding being the stupid party and never using gov't to pick winners and losers:

Jennifer A. Dlouhy‏Verified account @jendlouhyhc

Breaking: Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that would represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.

10:10 PM - 31 May 2018

All made easier by his polluter-friendly EPA.

Scott Pruitt one-ups doppelgänger Brad Schimel

I'd noted the pro-pollution connections between US EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and his special-interest enabling twin, Wisconsin AG Brad Schimel, here.

And I'd written about these Republican leaders' troubling shared penchant for buying personalized, souvenir hand-out coins with taxpayer dollars.

Though from a collector's perspective, it probably makes more sense to chase after, say, a Schimel first-issue coin than the Inverted Jenny stamp or a Honus Wagner tobacco baseball card. 

But now Schimel has been now one-upped by Pruitt's purchase, again, with public funds, of a dozen custom silver pens at $1,560 each. And some other stuff which altogether took $3,000 away from actual swamp-draining work.

 EPA administrator and fancy fountain pen fancier Scott Pruitt

Schimel's coins carried his "Kicking Ass Every Day" motto, shortened to K.A.E.D., but is he going to let Pruitt just run away with the Tone-Deaf Spending Sweepstakes?

A solution: Schimel could spend another $10,000 on a second run of coins, but change K.A.E.D to "Kicking Taxpayers' Asses Every Day" - - K.T.A.E.D - - or add a third issue with "Kicking The Environment's Ass Every Day" - - K.T.E.A.E.D.

Could Schimel Scrabble be far behind?

Your move, E.P.A.A.S.P.