Vote tomorrow like it's Earth Day, or...

If you can't find enough in the Walker/GOP/Schimel Reward the Polluters record to motivate you, vote like...

It's the first day of school, and your kid gets the teacher you hoped for - - an actual teacher

who respects the profession and wouldn't drop a bomb on them.

Vote like it was that day you got the letter from your health insurer saying your child or spouse's pre-existing medical condition is and will always be covered.

Vote to make sure you never read the words "Leah Vukmir" and "US Senator" in the same sentence, because "Congressman" and "Glenn Grothman" is already nauseating enough.

Vote to have the kind of day you want after a hard commute home and found a notice in your mailbox that said your street would be repaired because the state decided to fix the roads we have before adding more lanes to the highways we can't afford.

Or that transit extensions are coming your way because the science-based officials you elected acknowledge the reality of climate change and understand that greenhouse gases need to be reduced to stem global warming. 

Vote so you don't have to keep reading that the Wisconsin Attorney General is spending your tax dollars propping up the Koch brothers in a case 2,500 miles away after having turned part of the Department of Justice into a right-wing Legal Aid Society office.

Or that the incumbent Governor was using state airplanes like a private, campaign taxi service, or was squandering for his career aggrandizement more than $4 public billion dollars to subsidize a Taiwan-based firm's construction of  a super-air-polluting mega-factory on top of flood-mitigating wetlands and rich farmland, but which now envisions a smaller factory, heavily-robotized. 

Or that the incumbent Governor supported for President a candidate who was on the record bragging about sexually-harassing women.

And has repeatedly invited him to the state for self-serving joint appearances.

And who has yet to say a word of condemnation about that President's grabbing and caging children away from their detained, refugee-seeking parents and who has ordered up regular US Army troops by the thousands to confront the next group of legal refugee-seekers. 

Vote so you don't have to read that Wisconsin counties are already the next toxified Flints, or that a rich donor is handed state parkland through sweetheart arrangements.

Or that you can stop reading that the chamber of commerce membership organizers who run the DNR won't block scientists from testifying at public hearings or turn a blind eye to polluting mining that will poison a sacred, state river, or add more hundreds of state waterways to the polluted rolls through intentionally-weakened public trust 'oversight.'

Vote tomorrow for public service and honest public servants, not for bellhops who always serve the penthouse, looking for big tips.

A collection of blog posts about Kewaunee, Central Sands CAFOs

This is for my friends - - best sources are the Facebook pages for Friends of the Central Sands and Kewaunee Cares - - fighting Scott Walker's buddies in Big Dairy, Big Ag, the Wisconsin legislature and the Attorney General, too:

I suspect the activity on my blog today about groundwater water contamination in the Central Sands area in rural Wisconsin was sparked by The New York Times piece Sunday, dateline Armenia, Wis.

Rural America’s Own Private Flint: Polluted Water Too Dangerous to Drink

I think what happens is that people Google the key words and get directed to some blog items, like these, below, for your files:

Beginning with this May 5 item:

Contaminated Central Sands waters echo Kewaunee County concerns

Also including this July 30 posting,

WI Central Sands the next Flint? Kewaunee County already soaks up that honor.

And this July 24 posting about CAFO contamination in the Central Sands area:

Central Sands residents: call legislators, agencies about the water. Now.

And this July 19 posting: 

Where you can't drink the WI water. Or step in it.

And this recent installment about CAFOs in a series just concluded about Walker's 8-year war on the Wisconsin environment. 

Foxconn, Walker's baby, facing obstacles ignored at their peril

Former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist used to say that big highway proposals had two stages. 

Stage one was, 'it's too soon to know' about which alternatives and options might be selected.

Stage two was - -  once the biggest and most expensive option had been selected regardless of public opinion - - 'it's too late to do anything about it.'

In other words, enjoy your years of orange barrels, dirty air, spending and borrowing, road congestion - - then fresh years of induced congestion, spending and borrowing for repairs, then widening, and so on.

But when it comes to the multi-billion-dollar Foxconn project - - an extensive archive of posts about Foxconn is here - - where everything has been fast-tracked straight to stage two, there are several major hurdles ahead that highlight what Walker, Wisconsin and the company are ignoring for political reasons.

And taking for granted, by betting on the come. 

I would remind people that while the DNR greenlit the Great Lakes diversion application to service the project after but a single hearing and mere weeks of review - - with an outcome that was never in doubt, given Walker's control of the agency and its 'chamber of control mentality' direction - - a formal complaint within the diversion process has been filed by Midwest Environmental Advocates and several more legal, ]public resource and civic organizations in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Washington DC.

Here is more information, and a list of the petitioners.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper 

League of Women Voters of Wisconsin

River Alliance of Wisconsin

Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy

League of Women Voters - Lake Michigan Region

       Natural Resources Defense Council 

I wrote about the filing in August.

A complaint could lead to a lawsuit. I don't know if that will happen, but the bulldozers are busy on the site excavating farmland and knocking down homes as if the company and the politicians and public officials involved didn't have a thing to worry about.

What I do know is that fundamental questions about the wisdom and propriety of the diversion have been raised and the answers are not yet in.

I would also remind people that there are now two federal lawsuits filed by Illinois officials and environmental groups over the air pollution rules from which Foxconn and Southeast Wisconsin have been awarded.

The legal challenges — one filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and another by two Chicago-based environmental groups — cite the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s own records and data in seeking to overturn the exemptions.

Also, four Illinois communities downstream from Racine County have expressed reservations about the project. Again, litigation could follow. We don't know if that will happen.

Here is one blog post with 15 items which relate to the air and water permits Wisconsin has granted Foxconn.

My point is that while the company has issued a series of assurances about real issues like diverted water usage, wastewater treatment and airborne emissions, I'd noted that heavy flooding 

off the site into the Pike River when heavy rains were in the forecast undercut Foxconn's pronouncements and the quality of the DNR's oversight.

Indifference is hardly a strategy when it comes to public land, air, water and billions, is it, though it could lead to a big project Stage 1-A, especially with major media shining a spotlight on Foxconn and other environmental-deficient actions by Walker, summarized here:

Hold on - - there are questions that need answers.

Major media tell WI's story. We can write the ending Nov. 6.

Daniel Kaufman, author of The Fall of Wisconsin, published a major report Saturday about the politics and implications of the Foxconn deal in The New Yorker.

Did Scott Walker and Donald Trump Deal Away the Governor’s Race to Foxconn?

At Walker’s request, Scott Pruitt, then the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, overruled the objections of his staff to grant most of southeastern Wisconsin an exemption from limits on smog pollution.

The New York Times also on Saturday posted separately another piece with a Wisconsin dateline about contaminated drinking water:

Rural America’s Own Private Flint: Polluted Water Too Dangerous to Drink

ARMENIA, Wis. — The groundwater that once ran cool and clean from taps in this Midwestern farming town is now laced with contaminants and fear. People refuse to drink it. They won’t brush their teeth with it. They dread taking showers. 

Rural communities call it their own, private Flint— a diffuse, creeping water crisis tied to industrial farms and slack regulations that for years has tainted thousands of residential wells across the Midwest and beyond.

We in Wisconsin have been living these stories, drowning in the coverage, whether about Foxconn, or polluted water in Kewaunee County, or in the Central Sands where The New York Times stopped by, or the donor-driven privatization of state parkland for a developer, or Walker's calculated, coordinated attack on the state's environment since his first day in office:

January 4, 2011:

Right on schedule, Walker wants certain wetlands protections eliminated

I had been calling Scott Walker's radical environmental approach the Cut It, Gut It, Pave it, Fill It plan.

[Update: Walker has signed a special wetland-filling bill for one of his donors after he'd already suspended the DNR's permit review which had held up the development.] 

No doubt your friends will call Sunday and say, 'Hey, what the heck happened to your state?'

And you will say, "Haven't you been listening to me all these years about Walker and the polluters he's put in charge?"

And don't you want to call them Tuesday night and  say, "Hey, we finally knocked the guy out. And replaced him with a teacher

who's got science degrees.'

This is doable. We don't have to be the subject of these kinds of grim stories  about livestock manure in the water or people being thrown off their land or from bulldozed houses for Foxconn at taxpayer expense anymore.

We don't have to be the right-wing's laboratory for dirty government.

Take back the state. Let a citizens' restoration begin.

Scientists say climate change heating waters. WI DNR deleted that, and more.

Scientists are publishing data documenting climate change contributions to warmer temperatures in the oceans, and also in the Great Lakes - - with consequences for fish species, evaporation, storm patterns 

and quality of life.

The Chicago Tribune recently took note of the Great Lakes impacts, Michigan scientists published a trove of troubling findings, and last year I noted that a warming climate threatened the state's walleye population and industry.

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

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

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

Nearly 100 lakes in Wisconsin are predicted to support naturally reproducing walleye populations even under extreme warming conditions

These lakes are resilient to climate change, and should be protected from other stressors such as habitat loss, invasive species, or overfishing to maximize the potential for continued walleye production.

Some lakes that are unlikely to support natural walleye reproduction will continue to be suitable for adult walleye, and fishable walleye populations could potentially be maintained in these lakes via stocking.

Quality fishing opportunities for largemouth bass and other warm water species will improve in many lakes that become unsuitable for walleye.

You know where some of that key information and climate change was easily accessible in Wisconsin, a state which borders two of the five Great Lakes?

The same place where the new material will not appear in text or as links until we get a new, science-centered state government which won't be at war with the environment.

On the webpages of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which deleted it in 2016 on the orders of climate-change denying DNR Cathy Stepp, an appointee of the anti-science GOP Gov. Scott Walker.

I'd discovered what they'd done, posted it and will below post again the information lost. The deleted information is in the lines struck through, and the remaining empty text in yellow now makes up page's remainder:

The Great Lakes and a changing world Earth´s climate As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is changinggoing through a change. Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth's long history are the main cause. Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 being debated and researched by academic entities outside the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Increasing temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could have severe The effects on of such a change are also being debated but whatever the Great Lakes causes and effects, the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them. While no one can predict exactly what climate change will mean for DNR's responsibility is to manage our Great Lakesstate's natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood, scientists agree that the following changes are likely if climate change patterns continue. Increased summer and winter temperatures will cause increased evaporationdrought, lower lake water levels and warmer watertornadoes, resulting in reduced habitat for cold water species and a loss of critical wetland areasice/snow or severe heat. Decreased winter ice cover will also contribute The DNR staff stands ready to increased evaporation and lower lake water levels which could have severe economic consequences for adapt our valuable shipping industrymanagement strategies in an effort to protect our lakes, lakeshore recreationwaterways, plants, wildlife and coastal businessespeople who depend on them. Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution. The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects. To find out For more about climate change and how we can all help, please visit the following links. Wisconsin DNR Climate Change information Global Climate Change Climate Change Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit [exit DNR] Climate change is mainly on the result research conducted by the University of rising CO 2 levels in Earth´s atmosphere. Check out the most current CO 2 level and what it means: Wisconsin-Madison CO 2 Now [exit DNR] General climate change information and actions we can all take to help (includes a special section for teachers and students): EPA Climate Change [exit DNR] Climate Change and the Great Lakes International Assn. for Great Lakes Research Climate Change The Nelson Institute [exit DNR] Union of Concerned Scientists [exit DNR] Water Sustainability and Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region [exit DNR] (Sea Grant materials) National Wildlife Federation – Great Lakes Report [PDF exit DNR] 

In a different post, I reprinted the original, with some commentary:

Climate Change and Wisconsin´s Great Lakes 

Earth's climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases are the main cause. Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. 

Increasing temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could have severe effects on the Great Lakes and the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them. 

While no one can predict exactly what climate change will mean for our Great Lakes, scientists agree that the following changes are likely if climate change patterns continue. 

• Increased summer and winter temperatures will cause increased evaporation, lower lake water levels and warmer water, resulting in reduced habitat for cold water species and a loss of critical wetland areas.

• Decreased winter ice cover will also contribute to increased evaporation and lower lake water levels which could have severe economic consequences for our valuable shipping industry, lakeshore recreation, and coastal businesses.

• Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution.

The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects.

That science and language about "Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases," and "Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998" that language, those facts, their impact are gone.

And the wording about "more frequent and severe storms" is gone, too - - as I disclosed in December, 2016 and have continuously updated.

In fact, Walker's DNR senior managers even took the phrase "climate change' out of the page's title, so this is how its few sentences are labeled now:

The Great Lakes and a changing world

Climate Change and Wisconsin´s Great Lakes 

Earth's climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases are the main cause. Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. 

Increasing temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could have severe effects on the Great Lakes and the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them. 

While no one can predict exactly what climate change will mean for our Great Lakes, scientists agree that the following changes are likely if climate change patterns continue. 

• Increased summer and winter temperatures will cause increased evaporation, lower lake water levels and warmer water, resulting in reduced habitat for cold water species and a loss of critical wetland areas.

• Decreased winter ice cover will also contribute to increased evaporation and lower lake water levels which could have severe economic consequences for our valuable shipping industry, lakeshore recreation, and coastal businesses.

• Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution.

The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects.

But did you notice I wrote that these experts said" - - past tense - - because the DNR hasn't said that since 2016.

That science and language about "Human activities that increase heat–trapping ("green house") gases," and "Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998" that language, those facts, their impact are gone.

And the wording about "more frequent and severe storms" is gone, too - - as I disclosed in December, 2016 and have continuously updated.

In fact, Walker's DNR senior managers even took the phrase "climate change' out of the page's title, so this is how its few sentences are labeled now:

The Great Lakes and a changing world

As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth's long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The effects of such a change are also being debated but whatever the causes and effects, the DNR's responsibility is to manage our state's natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood, drought, tornadoes, ice/snow or severe heat. The DNR staff stands ready to adapt our management strategies in an effort to protect our lakes, waterways, plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.

For more information on the research conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison

• The Nelson Institute [exit DNR]
• Water Sustainability and Climate [exit DNR]

Having helped suppress voting, Walker feigns 'action' against voting suppression

Well, if Trump can order 15,000 regular army troopers to stop mothers and children walking to Texas from Central America, the least his little buddy can do here is look tough and engaged and snag some free air time by ordering National Guard members to get ready to fend off threats to state polling places.

Of course, the known threats to participation at the polls come from Walker and his voting suppression allies who have scrubbed names off the rolls and put voter ID barriers in front of minorities and students. 

 

Spoiler alert: This guy.

All taxpayers, big government bail out Waukesha's costly diversion plan

The City of Waukesha has been awarded more than $116 million in federal loans to cover a big piece of its long-delayed Lake Michigan water diversion project

that has nearly quadrupled in projected costs, and also expects state financing to cover the balance, Waukesha officials report.

As I wrote in 2009 and reposted in 2013:

Waukesha estimated Monday that its water pipe from Milwaukee, and return flow pipe to Wauwatosa, [reprogrammed to Franklin, upriver from Racine] will cost $78 million. 

Put that up on your refrigerator and see...that number grow.

For record, Racine remains Waukesha's toilet, as Racine's current Mayor had put it a few years ago, and when the Root River floods as it does like this motorist learned just a few months ago, once the flushing begins, effected homeowners will have to absorb also the fact that their tax dollars helped put water in their basements

I also remember when the Waukesha Common Council overwhelmingly voted down a plan to put a referendum on the ballot about replacing or allocating between $12 and $22 million to repair its city hall.

But if other taxpayers can kick in, well...

I wonder if Waukesha-area officials, usually skewing deep red and begrudge low-income citizens taxpayer-supported food and shelter, can tamp down or correct their anti-government rhetoric?

Evers offers depth, inspires trust. Walker doesn't.

[Reposted from August 18, with this update about his insulting, feckless last-ditch 'promise [Sic] to guarantee coverage for pre-existing medical conditions. I call b.s.]
--------------------------------- Makes sense that it's time for a teacher in the Governor's office instead of a Governor who slashed school funding and damaged the teaching profession]:

After having posted about issues as Tuesday's primary balloting was underway, let me throw out a notion now that Tony Evers has won the Democratic gubernatorial primary - - that he something pivotal and important and appealing that Scott Walker does not.

In a word, depth. Which produces something else which Walker cannot. Trust.

Maybe there’s s better word. While I’m thinking about that, let me say that Evers is a Wisconsin born lifelong educator, dedicated to helping children.

As opposed to Walker, a career self-promoting politician, phony-slick, with that fake little wink and one-dimensional willingness to employ whatever prop or stunt meets his poll-driven, handler-provided, superficial approach at any given, ephemeral moment.

Voters statewide have repeatedly entrusted Evers with overseeing state educational policy for their kids. 

That's a trust relationship. Evers reminds people of a teacher they respected, or a teacher who's working with one of their children or grandchildren right now.

Most people like teachers. 

Walker dropped a bomb on them. 

Mostly to curry favor with anti-union donors far from Wisconsin classrooms whom Walker would connect with at the next fund-raiser and tap for the next campaign, and the next.

Which is why Walker wouldn't score very high on anyone's trust matrix. How would you feel if you walked into a classroom for parent-teacher conferences and saw Walker sitting behind the desk, giving you that little wink?

And now the same question, encountering Evers?

Right.

People know Walker let campaign staffers and gofers into his Milwaukee County Executive office suite to set up their secret Internet communication router to milk the people's resources for partisan and personal gain.

I don't see Evers doing anything like that. 

So Walker and his machine will roll out their TV ad offensive - - and I know big money can swing elections - - but I don't think they can make voters fear or hate Tony Evers.

I think people are ready for what Evers offers - - calm and competence - -  which is why they picked Earnell Lucas Tuesday for Milwaukee County Sheriff night to finish washing away David Clarke's stain on the public sphere, and why voters here and across the country are looking to launch alternatives to Donald Trump on a restorative blue wave where possible.

And speaking of waves, blue and otherwise, this:

When they employ their predictable, scripted, bought-and-paid-for cookie-cutter anti-Evers offensive, GOP operatives just might unleash a wave of Walker fatigue which has been building since the John Doe probes, his dark money-assisted recall campaign, then that dopey, arrogant run of his for the Presidency.

A wave of Walker fatigue which gets closer to flooding across the electorate as Walker goes all 30-second-phony-slicker-and-slicker defending the indefensible Foxconn money pit to taxpayers who know that their billions of dollars over 25 years could have been better spent fixing the roads and improving classrooms and helping small businesses far from the farm fields being bulldozed in what used to be correctly called Mount Pleasant.

I hope Evers talks about clean air, fresh water, cleaner government, better roads and greater schools. Discussed without a Walker wink and in sentences that can track because the speaker is engaged in actual problem-solving, not talking point recall and sound bite planning.

People are tired of the con and are ready to have policy delivered by a calm, competent figure they can trust. 

The word I was looking for is character.



  

Wisconsin's worst politician makes his most hollow gesture yet

Don't think Scott Walker has a molecule, a scintilla, an iota of interest in your health care; he's only  interested in a last-minute, Hail Mary breath of life for his disintegrating campaign.

No doubt Walker has polling data which shows him losing to Tony Evers, dragged down by a feckless, inhumane history opposing Obamacare, otherwise why toss out a last-ditch pre-existing condition coverage pledge that blows up years of his own positions, actions and GOP dogma?

If Walker really believed in public policies which guarantee pre-existing condition coverage he wouldn't on the day he was sworn in have ordered the Attorney General to join litigation to overturn Obamacare where pre-existing coverages are guaranteed, as I recently wrote:

I mean, if Walker can pretend to be The Education Governor, can The Obamacare Governor be far behind?

Sidebar: Apparently, yes! If you believe the hype. 

Even though just as Walker dropped out of the 2015 presidential race after bashing Obamacare for months he'd bragged that he was the Anti-Obamacare Governor from his first moments in office. "Literally."

Walker and other Republicans have been battling the Affordable Care Act since its inception. In Tuesday's speech, he said that "literally moments" after taking his oath of office when he became governor, he turned to Wisconsin's then-attorney general and authorized him to join a lawsuit challenging Obamacare. 

A suit from which he could have and should have ordered the AG to withdraw.

This late move is classic Walker: duplicitous, dishonest, devious, desperate, spineless, and unprincipled.

Who would take him at his word. He who broke his promise to create 250,000 jobs, and his pledge in 2014 to serve out a full second term by running for President in 2015.

His promise now to magically-create pre-existing insurance coverage is as unreliable and transparently useless as his list of Pants on Fire lies.

It's the final act of a slippery

one-dimensional fraudster who has consistently put his career ahead of anyone and anything else.

While enjoying great health insurance benefits supplied by taxpayers and joining his party in denying through state power that same quality of care and peace of mind to the less fortunate in the name of 'the free market,' and his b.s. about 'a hand up and not a hammock' and other harmful, hateful, insincere and insensitive slogans.

Talk about a sick joke at the expense of people are really, seriously sick.

Vote him out and vote in the trustworthy Tony Evers, the real deal.

Feedback on Walker's 8-year war on Wisconsin's environment series

Of the 21 parts in this blog's series about Walker's attach on the environment, readers made the installment covering 33 times that Walker disregarded science their number-one selection, blog data shows.

The Little Plover River, near large, groundwater-sucking farms, dries up in the summer. During Walker's tenure, the number of impaired waterways the DNR reported to the EPA has doubled.

The next two most-popular installments were about wetlands, then a summary item about citizens paying over and over again to fight the government they fund through their taxes.

The three least-read items were about Walker policies based on numbers pulled out of the air - - like wetlands for filling and DNR acres for sale - -  his failed effort to kill the DNR magazine and his record of blocking environmental, health and other public information.

All the installments are linked in its final part.

Thanks for the readership, downloads, comments and shares.

Schimel's Public Defenders-for-Billionaires are K.A.E.D.

The State Journal reports that our taxpayer-paid GOP-run Attorney General's office joined a court fight in California to help a Koch brothers-linked group resist a demand for campaign finance records.

Wisconsin filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation in a lawsuit to keep its donor list out of the hands of California regulators.

If the Koch's lead counsel prevails, somebody just might be getting one those coveted Schimel/taxpayer-paid special achievement coins!

And the initials on the coin - - K.A.E.D - - shorthand for Schimel's motto "Kicking Ass Every Day," could easily in this case stand for 'Koch Assets Evade Disclosure."

More of Schimel's 'represent our client' mantra, no doubt, but who knew that Koch brothers interests in California had become a Wisconsin client? 

So, Bucky - - add your contribution to this state-assisted Koch brothers defense fund to the kleptocratic legal services Walker and Schimel routinely render to big corporations while Wisconsin taxpayers - - having been stripped of the small Public Intervenor's unit that once-upon-a-fairer-time represented the commons resource cases - - dip into their own pockets to fend off state agencies that would take their water rights, park land and homes.

Though it's good to see that we're establishing some precedent for providing public assistance to able-bodied recipients without work requirements or drugs tests.