Walker, special interests, left Evers a massive science deficit to repair

Evers pledges a return to science-based problem-solving in Wisconsin. 

Tony Evers says Wisconsin has 'disrespected science as a way to solve problems'

Let's hope there's years of follow-through, because we really have a lot of catching up to do and fresh progress to make to get Wisconsin out of the backwater where Walker and his special-interest-driven legislative and donor allies have buried us.

Last fall I produced a 21-part series about Walker's eight year war on the environment; this was the title of the 18th installment:

The 33 times science was dissed, dismissed

Here's the list, and no about there were more:

*  Scrubbed climate science, information and relevant links off the DNR's key climate webpage, first disclosed by this blog in late 2016.

* Presaged by wholesale earlier deletions from DNR webpages of multiple links to climate change and global warming studies and outside materials.

*  Merged and downgraded the DNR's Science Bureau to better serve business. Then agency Secretary Cathy Stepp's own words in her memo.

Science Services – The Department’s highest priority business decisions must be informed by sound and up-to-date science. While we are proud of the efforts that the science branch of the organization has produced to date, the Leadership Team believes our Science Services program must be better positioned in the agency to ensure alignment of effort and funding to priorities. 

To accomplish this, effective immediately, the Bureau of Science Services will become a part of the Office of Business Support and Sustainability and report directly to the Office’s Director. 

* And those cuts, along with other downgrades, have led to shortages and gaps in scientific information, insiders say:

A former DNR staffer said: 

The most alarming issue to me is the great waste of decades of sound science, compiled overtime in on-going studies and data collection. WI had more information about our natural landscape than most states. Abolishing science services put an end to decades long studies vital to maintaining and recovering rare and endangered plants and animals as well as understanding natural communities as information on resilience for climate change. 

And a current employe on personal time echoed many of the lobbyists and former staffers' observations:

Under Walker and Stepp, science is not a priority. Scientific knowledge is ever-changing but in Wisconsin our staff are being left behind. We no longer have a statistician to help interpret data, a library to provide journals or books, or researchers that monitor fish counts, wildlife health, air quality, water quality and etc….employee scientific knowledge and data specific to WI is stagnant...we cannot do the best job possible for our state. 

The DNR is currently run by people who understand public relations spin but not the complexity of the natural resources they are responsible for...Communications staff, generally not trained specifically in resource communication, answer questions with talking points...usually developed by upper management - political appointees - and legal staff. The information provided is biased and superficial.

*  Made those cuts to the DNR science staff in part at the behest of the Legislature's lead mining ally who didn't like what DNR science DNR scientists might have been studying.

*  Promoted with the active support of DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp, and also with secret campaign financing, 35 years of mountain top/open-pit mining in the pristine Penokee Hills and Bad River watershed, despite evidence of asbestos-like fibers in waste rock, harm to wild rice estuaries, multiple private wells and community water systems, and regional air quality.

*  Dragged its feet despite known, measured and confirmed drinking water contamination in wide swaths of rural NE Wisconsin and the Central Sands area to the west

* Signed separate legislation into law ending a clean water enabling 30-year ban on toxifying sulfide mining in the state.

* Lowered the standards for what scientifically constitutes a waterway of special interest that should be protected from construction or intrusion.

* Failed to abide by its own follow-up rules after pollution inspections 94% of the time.

* Repeatedly ignored scientific approaches to the control of deer chronic wasting disease, now an epidemic effecting the herd in most Wisconsin counties. 

*  With no scientific underpinning, the Legislature passed and Walker signed bills to sell 10,000 acres of state land 'managed' by the DNR, and to remove state protections from 100,000 acres of flood-mitigating, surface-water cleansing wetlands.

* Granted through actions of the DNR and its oversight board preliminary approvals to a Walker donor the right to build a golf course in a nature preserve that DNR staff have said will damage dunes, wetlands, timber stands and wildlife habitat, and which will also require transfer to the project of state parkland acreage.

* Eliminated an existing early warning notification system which alerted the public to the known buildup of unhealthy air conditions.

* Discouraged recycling, a known contributor to cleaner land and water.

* Supported eased shoreline construction and dredging restrictions designed to protect water quality.

* Intentionally rolled back rules designed to lessen phosphorous discharges and thus contamination of Wisconsin waterways, leading directly to an increase in waterways reported to the US EPA as 'impaired.'

The Little Plover River runs dry with so many large ag operations drawing groundwater nearby. During Walker's tenure, impaired waterways in Wisconsin have doubled, according to DNR data routinely supplied to the US EPA.

* Eased or shelved inspections of an expanding number of large animal feeding operations (CAFOs), tolerated manure runoff that led to 'brown water events' and continually put water science on the back burner.

* Intend to move DNR CAFO inspectors and perhaps water quality experts away from the DNR to the more industry-friendly Department of Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection, which also coordinates and funds ag, dairy and other commercial development domestically and worldwide.

* Approved new fees and charges for solar power installations.

* Proposed ending funding for a UW biofuels program and more than a dozen other environmental and scientific activities throughout the UW system. Only legislative intervention prevented the implementation, but the UW system suffered tens of millions of dollars in broad budget cuts anyway.

*  Suspended an ongoing DNR review of a wetland-filling permit so a campaign donor could more quickly fill the wetland for a development.

* Obstructed wind power development to serve his real estate friends.

* Approved the expansion of a tar sands pipeline running the north-south length of the state with only cursory and minimal permitting reviews, despite the pipeline operator's calamitous in-state and regional environmental record.

* Legislatively urged Trump's EPA to move an air pollution monitor because it was recording too much pollution.

*  Granted the Foxconn project unique exemptions from standard, science-based environmental impact analyses, and gave the company the right to fill wetlands, build on lake beds and re-route streams, despite years of science and law to the contrary. More about Foxconn later in this series.

* Convinced Trump's EPA to apply weaker air quality standards over heavily populated portions of SE Wisconsin.

* Used the DNR to quickly approve huge dirty air emissions for the Foxconn project.

*  Used the DNR to quickly approve a controversial diversion of water from Lake Michigan for the Foxconn project without known what proprietary chemical compounds or residues would be in the wastewater that the project would return to the lake.

* Granted a permit for a sand mining operation to carry out a massive wetland filling which former DNR experts said should not be permitted.

* Though hybrid and electric vehicles reduce dirty air emissions, Walker's DOT proposed and he signed into law annual fee increases on those vehicles.

*  Ensured that Wisconsin's short-lived wolf hunting program which ignored science-based restrictions would continue with few limitations by removing wolf hunting opponents from the state's wolf advisory committee.

Update: Oct, 28th addendum. Walker and the state joined two separate lawsuits to block Obama administration's science-and-public health clean air initiatives, here and here. Even Trump's EPA, dedicated to nullifying the Obama era clean air plans, acknowledged they would save thousands of lives annually.

Why protecting the environment should not be partisan, or political

A little photo essay. Count your blessings, Milwaukee.

Tuesday is one of those crisp, dry winter days which puts a special glow on Lake Michigan - - some related posts, here, here, here and here - -  the City of Milwaukee and Lake Park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted more than 100 years when local leaders understood that government could preserve for the public the best that the land and water had provided.

Tuesday was one of those days which also reminded me of the direction UW-Madison environmental historian William Cronon gave us years ago and which I have quoted on this blog from time to time:

This is the perfect time to get to know his work; here is but one instructive book chapter, and, hoping I do not stumble into trivializing his effort, I'll copy out a few sentences that have helped point me to some everyday truths and a useful Earth Day perspective, too:

Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live, the landscape that for better or worse we call home...

That is why, when I think of the times I myself have come closest to experiencing what I might call the sacred in nature, I often find myself remembering wild places much closer to home...the wildness in our own backyards, of the nature that is all around us if only we have eyes to see it. 

And that's really the point, isn't it: "if only we have eyes to see it." 

Today I took a closer look with my iPhone and eyes wide open:

Disappearance of Great Lakes source ice linked to climate change

Occasionally you come across noteworthy journalism and feel obligated to highlight it, which is why I recommend this Chicago Tribune piece that puts a big, yet profoundly local focus, on climate change:

The massive glacier that formed the Great Lakes is disappearing — and greenhouse gases are to blame for its untimely demise

See what I mean?  You don't see that linkage made very often:

Today, the Barnes Ice Cap, a glacier about the size of Delaware on Baffin Island in Canada, is the last remnant of the mighty Laurentide Ice Sheet. But after 2,000 years of stability, the ice cap is expected to vanish in the next 300 years as an unparalleled rise in heat-trapping greenhouse gases has brought on an alarming rate of melting since the 1960s. 

Scientists say the warmth of the past century exceeds any in the last 115,000 years, and perhaps even longer, according to a study published last month.

“If the Barnes Ice Cap has almost never disappeared in 2.5 million years, and it’s disappearing now, then it’s giving us the context that it’s warm as it’s ever been in the last 2.5 million years,” said Gifford Miller, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a researcher who has extensively studied the ice cap on Baffin Island.

I'm glad to see more awareness of the Great Lakes' unique importance, as I noted here:

Milwaukee's Lake Michigan shoreline

Voters in Toledo, Ohio, just granted Lake Erie rights usually reserved for people, so will Erie's big sister lakes 

and the ecosystems which depend on them get the same status?

The [Toledo, Ohio] measure passed easily, which means citizens will be able to sue on behalf of the lake whenever its right to flourish is being contravened — that is, whenever it’s in danger of major environmental harm.

Think of it as any Toledo resident being able to act as a public intervenor to defend its great lake; after all, if corporations are people, then why not the natural world which sustains people and all living things?

Note also that:

Indiana has moved assertively to protect residents' rights to the Great Lakes shoreline.

While it has fallen to Wisconsin public interest organizations and attorneys to guarantee Great Lakes and other water rights which the Walker administration and Republican politics and politicos have repeatedly have given away to their private-sector donors and allies.

The Tribune story also makes the Walker administration's scrubbing of climate science and data science from the DNR's climate change page and the misleading substitute title The Great Lakes and a changing world on the truncated, successes page even more nefarious, and boosts the need for the Evers' DNR to redo the page, now.

WI GOP budget plan and goals? More one-note inertia.

Basically, Alberta Darling 

and her gang of gerrymandered GOP do-nothings want to pretend that Scott Walker is still Governor and also pretend that the status quo is desirable for Wisconsin - - despite our crumbling roads, underfunded schools, insufficient health care, heavily-polluted rivers and streams and poisoned groundwater:

On Sunday, a legislative leader of the GOP-controlled budget-writing committee said the panel plans to scrap the governor's budget and won't include tax increases as Evers has proposed. 

"We're not going to increase taxes," Sen. Alberta Darling, who co-chairs the Legislature's budget-writing committee, said in an appearance on WISN-TV's "UpFront." "And we're not going to increase spending."

'Just say no' was ridiculous when Nancy Reagan pretended it was a national drug reduction program, and it won't work as a strategy to steer Wisconsin in the right direction, either. 

Walker displays more defeat denial, relevancy deficit

Someone needs to tell Walker the taxpayers threw him out:

Verified account 2h2 hours ago

.@SpeakerVos & @SenFitzgerald WRITE YOUR OWN BUDGET! Signed, the hardworking taxpayers of Wisconsin.

And Walker's relentless trolling of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for attention and relevancy - - part of a national right-wing nervous breakdown - - is a pathetic insult that demeans Wisconsin.

Ohioans now have legal right to protect Lake Erie's legal rights

Voters in Toledo, Ohio, just granted Lake Erie rights usually reserved for people, so will Erie's big sister lakes
 
and the ecosystems which depend on them get the same status?

The [Toledo, Ohio] measure passed easily, which means citizens will be able to sue on behalf of the lake whenever its right to flourish is being contravened — that is, whenever it’s in danger of major environmental harm.

Think of it as any Toledo resident being able to act as a public intervenor to defend its great lake; after all, if corporations are people, then why not the natural world which sustains people and all living things?

Note also that:

Indiana has moved assertively to protect residents' rights to the Great Lakes shoreline.

While it has fallen to Wisconsin public interest organizations and attorneys to guarantee Great Lakes and other water rights which the Walker administration and Republican politics and politicos have repeatedly have given away to their private-sector donors and allies.

Scott Walker likes socialism when it doles benefits his way

[Updated from 3/2/19] If you follow the life and times of Scott Walker on Twitter, you will find attacks on socialism aimed at Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.

You will also see all the socialism Walker regularly touts and enjoys, from travels from his downtown Milwaukee digs enriched by government-funded TIF districts, parks and protective services, to travels on 100% publicly-financed roads to airports where public employees from sheriff deputies to TSA agents to air traffic controllers move Walker and the government-certified airplanes he boards from one vacation spot and speaking gig to another.

Then back to Milwaukee, where Walker takes in Bucks games close to the city-created RiverWalk near the heavily-subsidized new basketball arena and city-supported entertainment district.

All protected by city-paid police and fire personnel.

In a few weeks, Walker can use more 100% government-financed roads to get to the heavily publicly-supported baseball stadium, and ditto for fall travel to Lambeau Field which got a big boost from public funding.

The same kind of public funding that has paid his salaries and provided his benefits for the last quarter-century.

Update: And let's not forget the Walker donors and insiders to whom Walker moved public dollars or privileges.

Walker is against what he calls socialism and big government when it suits his political convenience, but socialism, government spending and every public perk within his are reach are just fine with Walker when his schedules and personal needs demand it.

Evers to add scientists, public health focus Walker, GOP had cut

I had recently catalogued at least 33 ways that Walker had spurned or outright trashed science when enforcing his 'chamber of commerce mentality' on people and the environment statewide.

The good news is that Tony Evers' repair-the-damage budget

would add ten science or specialist positions at the DNR where Walker had stripped away expertise and institutional memory while turning a conservation agency into a defacto Department of Commerce.

The bad news is that Walker had cut many more DNR positions, targeting scientists because GOP Senator and State Capitol corporate water-carrier Tom Tiffany told him to make the cuts.

State Sen. Tom Tiffany has owned up to asking for job cuts to DNR scientists, who he has said focus too much on climate change.

On Friday’s Devil’s Advocate radio show, the Hazelhurst Republican said he asked Gov. Scott Walker and his staff to include a provision in the state budget axing approximately 17 positions from the Department of Natural Resources’ Science Services Bureau...

The measure prompted layoff notices for 27 staffers in the science bureau, as well as 30 others in the DNR's communications and education section.

I would expect GOP Assembly Speaker and self-appointed shadow governor Robin Vos to excise Evers' proposed DNR science initiatives because Vos played a role in exploding the number of high-capacity wells which stress state ground water supplies and fuel the polluting expansion of large state dairy operations known as CAFOs:

...manure and its components, including bacteria, nitrate and harmful illness-causing pathogens, create a public health hazard for more than 100,000 families, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism found. Nitrate is a serious health hazard to babies and pregnant women, and people who consume water high in nitrate face increased risk of colon, kidney and stomach cancers. 

A role which Vos ran with after being told to do so by some of state's largest polluting agricultural lobbies, with an assist from the new-defeated GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Vos maneuver could give corporations more WI groundwater

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 hand

Here is the full text of the Vos request

----------------------------------------------------

And just to close that loop:

May 11, 2016:

Attorney General Brad Schimel Attorney General Brad Schimel A legal opinion by Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel that sharply restricts the state from regulating controversial high-capacity wells is being praised by powerful business and agricultural interests that spent more than $2.2 million to elect him in 2014. AG’s Ruling on Wells Praised by Special Interests that Spent $2.2M to Elect Him

Attorney General Brad Schimel

Schimel issued the opinion Tuesday at the request of Republican legislative leaders who claimed the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was exceeding its authority by considering the cumulative effect that existing high-capacity wells have on lakes, rivers and groundwater when it considered whether to approve applications for new wells.

Walker can still bring it: Gravity-free word salad seasoned with Trump suck-up

In a world where little seems to have staying power, Rolling Stone finds that the now-always-available Scott Walker can still deliver his special blend of logic-defying wordy salad with a heaping helping of Trump suck-up - - while contributing nothing new or memorable.

Few politicians would or could string this together, beginning with an opening remark devoid of anything tangible:

“Having worked in state government, I haven’t looked into any of the nuances out there,” Walker offers when asked if he believes the president has committed impeachable offenses. “When they were grumbling about some of his comments a year-plus ago — the press conference with the leader of Russia — it seemed to be more about semantics than anything else. You may not like what was said or agree with the general perception out there, but a lot of these things seem to be more politically driven than substantive.”

And we see you forgot Putin's name and title, dude. That world stage wasn't for you in 2015 and is still definitely not your platform.

But seriously, Rolling Stone: Scott Walker, really? 

And saying "He left office in January...," suggesting he departed voluntarily, or was term-limited. How about being direct: 'He was an incumbent, defeated in an upset...' 

As a long-time Rolling Stone print subscriber, call me disappointed.

Vos can re-engineer Foxconn ad blitz Evers wants sidetracked

Wisconsin Republicans have a chance to help make Illinois great again.

While it's good that the Evers budget strips out funding for those ridiculous 'come to Wisconsin' promotions for WEDC work pitched to Illinois train riders.


Money, by the way, which WEDC wanted to convert from a one-time appropriation into an annual, $5 million slush fund.

In its budget request, WEDC sought to turn the one-time appropriation from lawmakers into a $5 million annual spending plan.

Though Robin Vos and his inflated band of special-interest staffers can ladle the gravy back onto Foxconn's plate because the GOP controls the budget writing committee by a Foxconn-favoring 12-4 margin.

So expect the GOP to follow Foxconn's lead, as it is again saying it intends to shower its Wisconsin subsidies and various legal and environmental favors on out-of-state workers.

Foxconn looks out-fof-state to meet hiring needs

Here is this blog's nearly-two-year-long Foxconn archive.

Farms crises slam rural WI. GOP lawmakers oppose one lifeline.

Wisconsin is called the Dairy State, but Republican legislators want no part of Gov. Evers budget plan to ease smaller dairies' family, labor, family and financial problems.

Media, here, and this blog often have reported on the pressures that are driving some Wisconsin farms and small dairies 

out of business.

Dairy farming is dying. After 40 years, I’m done.

Their owners into bankruptcy.

Western Wisconsin Led Nation In Farm Bankruptcies In 2017

Even suicide.

Agriculture professionals seek ways to spot signs of suicidal thoughts in dairy farmers

Everyone knows that one dilemma facing dairy farmers is that local help for their operations' tough work is hard to find, and that the gap has been filled by immigrant labor, sometimes undocumented, to keep at-risk farms and their surrounding small businesses and communities in business:

...a majority of dairy farmers are very concerned about actions such as immigration raids or employee audits. Despite this, 80 percent of dairy farms surveyed continue to hire immigrants.

Which is why one Wisconsin expert wrote last year:

Immigrant workers and their families bring their skills and ambitions into Wisconsin, breathing new life into the state’s rural communities. Hired workers, regardless of origin, boost the strength of the state’s dairy industry and also enable dairy farmers to take vacations and have some time off during the day to attend their children’s sporting events or other community activities.

Although immigrant employees are a crucial component of the economic viability of dairy farms, the employer-employee relationship is fraught with legal and economic vulnerabilities. Some immigrant farm workers lack legal authorization to work and live in the U.S., which exposes both employers and employees to increased risk, threatening agricultural investment.

Wisconsin’s growing reliance on immigrant labor presents challenges, yet can also serve as a call to develop programs and policies that will improve conditions for immigrant employees and families, as well as maintain a dependable farm labor force.

So to make it easier for immigrant workers to get to work, drive the kids to school and get supplies for the farm or their tables, Gov. Evers is proposing a fee-and-exam-based drivers' licensing program for immigrant workers whose status may be questionable while their value to the farm and their communities is not.

We’re announcing tonight that undocumented folks will be eligible to receive driver’s licenses and ID cards," Evers is to say in his speech, according to excerpts released Thursday. "This makes our roads and our communities safer, and helps strengthen our economy and Wisconsin families."

Just watch GOP Wisconsin legislators stampede to the nearest microphone - - Republican Sen. Roger Roth is already calling it a "non-starter" - - to say "no" - - continuing their string of negative actions that hurt the state's smaller farms, like enabling bigger dairy operator/donors, cutting back on pollution inspections and helping drive up the big suppliers' output. 

In fact, GOP leaders say they will throw out Evers' budget and write their own.

Vos airs out what makes him happy

Because I have been noting the media-hungry GOP Assembly Speaker's robotic 'no. never,' remarks, I don't want to leave the impression that Robin Vos is never a happy yes man.

So kudos to Vos for publicly urging the Governor and DNR to allow Foxconn to spew as much two+ tons of daily air pollutants out of its Mt. Pleasant smokestacks.

Assembly speaker hopes Foxconn air permits aren't changed

Vos spoke about Foxconn during a WisPolitics.com luncheon Thursday. He says, "I want Foxconn to be here" and the state should send that message that it is "damn happy" to have the company. 

Here is more history about the generous pollution permits fast-tracked for Foxconn last year

Foxconn's 4 air emission permits go through DNR speed-dating

Remember, what goes up comes down, and Lake Michigan is right there.

...an independent analysis of the permits was headlined "Foxconn could increase Racine County's emissions by six percent, and said, in part:

The four facilities, to be built in phases over the next several years, could combine to emit 229 tons per year of nitrogen oxides, 240 tons of carbon monoxide, 52 tons of particulate matter, 4 tons of sulfur dioxide and 275 tons of volatile organic compounds.

There’s only one facility in the state – the Verso Corp. Wisconsin Rapids paper mill – that emits at or above the levels Foxconn is proposing across all five pollutants... 

Don't forget that Walker made the air pollution issue worse - - as he did throughout his administration - - by getting Trump's pro-pollution US EPA [Sic] to approve a weakening of clean air standards over a portion of SE WI to help Foxconn comply with the 'rules.'

And here is a complete archive of posts about Foxconn, from the beginning.