You know what they say: give some liars a sharpie, and...

Hurricanes zig when they're actually zagging, per the Washington Post's Philip Bump:
https://twitter.com/pbump

"I wrote about the Trump Sharpie-hurricane map and, more broadly, how it reinforces Trump's refusal to concede to reality."

As The Washington Post reports:

Trump kills Bush lighting rule; probably thought it was another Obama idea

Dim bulb alert.

We know that Trump has to undo anything tied to the always-more-competent/popular/handsome Barack Obama, but is there a staffer or a drone on Fox news who will tell the fool in the White House that the lighting efficiency rules he's killing were a George W. Bush initiative?


Also, can this baby-caging bad golfer turn on the weather channel for 30 seconds and grasp that greenhouse gases produced unnecessarily by inefficient machines and old-timey incandescent lighting help make the air less healthy, the oceans warmer, major storms more severe, flooding death tolls and damages more devastating, etc.

Career politician generously will hand Congressional seat to some Waukesha whippersnapper

Because every 40 years or so you give someone else a shot , and goodbye to the 70's.

“I think the time has come to basically turn over the page in the 5th District,” said ultra-careerist placeholder Jim Sensenbrenner 

 

Did Dale Kooyenga's bad judgement ruin his chances?

Dem. Gov. Evers substantially out-polls WI GOP's gerrymandered twins

While safely-gerrymandered GOP leaders including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos 

threw 11th-hour laws, more taxpayer-paid staff and extra lawyers atthe duly-elected Democratic Governor, to monjey-wrench his tenure, Tony Evers is now crushing them in the latest Marquette University Law School poll, the Journal Sentinel reports.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers ['] job approval rating stood at 54% compared to 34% disapproval...Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald was viewed favorably by 19% and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had a 20% favorable rating. 

I suspect voters have figured out where the problem is, and would rebel if these little dictators tried an end-run sneak around the Governor and his legitimate veto authority to give themselves another decade of corrupted gerrymandering.

NC joins PA in winning fights for fair legislative maps.

I have no hope that Wisconsin's blatantly pro-GOP 5-2 State Supreme Court majority would rule against the legislature's current gerrymander, or approve any modification opposed by the legislature's twin gerrymander champion beneficiaries Vos and Fitzgerald - - but it's great to see North Carolina state courts join Pennsylvania's push towards constitutionally-fair redistricting:

The North Carolina court in Wake County said the Republican maps violated the State Constitution’s clauses guaranteeing free elections, equal protection under the law and freedom of speech and assembly. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court cited provisions of its Constitution in striking down the state’s congressional map in January 2018.

Those two states may soon be sending more deserving Democrats to Congress, and that's a good thing, given Trump's devastatingly reckless maneuvers which imperil clean air fresh water and world peace.

In Wisconsin, we can only do what we can do, which means defeating Scott Walker appointee Justice Daniel Kelly in next April's State Supreme Court race, because a court tilted to the GOP right by a thinner 4-3 margin puts an eventual win for redistricting and other fair measures in the ballpark.

I don't want to relitigate the blown opportunity in April of the year which saw the ultra-partisan former Walker staffer Brian Hagedorn derail early favorite Lisa Neubauer. 

Let's stay focused on a long view and remember that this is all about handing younger Wisconsinites a better future.

Justice Daniel Kelly

In year three, Walkercon blight in sharper focus

They say might makes right. It makes blight, too.

It seems like ancient history - - Governor Walker, desperate after more than seven years to erase the stain of his failed signature pledge to create 250,000 new jobs in four years, jetted off to Japan in early June, 2017 to 'negotiate' with Foxconn officials the biggest public dollar giveaway, campaign Hail Mary and import of state-sponsored blight in Wisconsin history.

In my blog series "Foxconn Fever Primer," Walker's Asian air miles became the first item:

Desperate Walker's 48-hour jobs mission - - to Japan

 

Unless he comes back with a Toyota factory, his weekend junket to Japan will look like a very expensive stunt. 

He did come back with hyperbole that would make a time-share pitchman envious:

"Just think about it," Walker said shortly before sitting down with Gou to sign the contract. "We’re talking about things we talked about for years (but) we only dreamed of: 13,000 good-paying, family-supporting jobs. That’s just the start. "We're going to take the world over when it comes to high-tech technology like we're going to build ... right here in the state of Wisconsin," he said.

From NBC Nightly News, 7/21/19

We've been through all the subsequent b.s., and more, ever since:

* The official arrogance that exempted the project from routine environmental reviews and appellate legal procedures:


* The blanket permissions to fill state-protected wetlands, stream routes and lake beds.

The exemptions could mean the destruction of state-regulated wetlands, allowing construction activity in the bed of a stream and changing the course of a stream without obtaining a state permit.

* The politically-tainted approval to divert Lake Michigan water to the site, and the politically-tainted favor to Foxconn to weaken air pollution standards in the area which already had high levels of hazardous contamination, as I noted in May:

Today's subject is blight. And who uses it to spoil the natural and political environment. And why.

Remember the phony "blight" assigned Mount Pleasant properties in the Foxconn zone so they could be quickly acquired and torn down?

We're learning anew that real blight took root in government actions which included unscientific and unjustifiable air pollution exemptions 

* The fantasies about special interstate lanes for futuristic, no-driver Foxconn 18-wheelers, and the real-life, real-time road hazards being shoved across SE Wisconsin for Foxconn workers and work which always seems to be shrinking.

* And the endless shape-shifting about employment, jobs descriptions, workforce scale, amenities, muddied not only by site runoff after a 2018 rain - - 

Oops

- - but through carefully-honed 'the pace is picking up' photo-ops in which a willing media was too often willing to play its part.

* But the biggest con of all - - setting aside the downsizing of the factory's scale and product-line, and Walker's insistence that the project area be known as "WisConn Valley" - - a stupid ripoff of Silicon Valley - - was that perfectly-fine homes and valuable farmland - - 

Thousands of acres like this cabbage field shown here in 2017 are now in an area designed 'blighted,' available to be seized by local government for Foxconn uses and 'developed' with public funds.

- - was taken through threats of government seizure because the properties could be labeled blighted.

When the real blight against the truth, public budgets, and transportation planning was being imported by Walker and a host of local, state, partisan, public and private sector enablers with the efficiency of an invasive species turned loose in an otherwise undisturbed trout stream.

In the last day, two more proofs of what the real blight is and where it has landed:

* One of the project's taxpayer-paid overbuilt road 'improvements' which needed acre-after-acre will be downsized by a third:

State Transportation Department scales back one of the project's road projects

That land of yours we said we needed where your blighted homes and farms had been sitting? Never mind.

* And speaking of those homes, some owners continue to speak out though the burden of time and litigation has taken its toll:

Owners near Foxconn say they were misled; now their homes are gone

Foxconn might begin making something at its Mt. Pleasant site in 2020. No doubt Trump and his Wisconsin re-election chairman Walker will show up there to cut a ribbon and hand-polish a flat-screen LCD panel or two, but nothing will remove the blight they introduced for their own political purposes that cost property owners their homes, taxpayers billions, a village its identity and a state its credibility with national media:.

Wisconsin's $4.1 billion Foxconn boondoggle

When Walker signed the Foxconn deal in November 2017, the details matched those jotted on the napkin: the state promised a $3 billion state subsidy if the company invested $10 billion in a plant that created 13,000 jobs... 

With other small costs added, the total Foxconn subsidy hit $4.1 billion — a stunning $1,774 per household in Wisconsin. 

Labor Day 2019 news: WI finally has a pro-worker Governor

The good news is that worker-hating Walker is gone, and while he's still peddling his reactionary, anti-union poison, the Democrat who beat him is restoring the state's image and integrity.

From Twitter, today:

Today we reflect on the contributions workers have made to our state and our country. But we also renew our commitment to fighting for equal pay, livable wages, and safe and inclusive workplaces knowing that we have much more work to do to ensure our economy works for everyone.

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In Texas, more guns, more victims, fewer controls

To catch you up after the second August mass shooting in Texas this Saturday, begin with this noteworthy report on bad, actually dangerous timing:

8 new Texas laws that loosen gun restrictions, starting Sept. 1

Firearm access expands at churches, schools, rental properties and in disasters

* Also, police confirmed that the shooter used an AR-15-type weapon, so perhaps looking like this:

----------------------------------
* And this 2015 tweet and link from Texas Gov. Abbott are making the rounds:

· Oct 28, 2015

I'm EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA http://blog.chron.com/narcoconfidential/2015/10/texas-request-to-buy-guns-tops-1-million-for-year/

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* To be fair, WI GOP officials are resisting calls for stronger, commonsense gun laws, some of which Walker had earlier weakened in 2015 with his own unlucky bout of bad timing: 

After signing two bills that loosen Wisconsin's gun laws, Gov. Scott Walker defended the timing of his public event Wednesday, saying it had been scheduled before nine people were shot and killed last week in a South Carolina church. 

With his signature, the all-but-certain Republican presidential candidate eliminated the state's 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases and allowed off-duty, retired and out-of-state police officers to carry firearms on school grounds. Both measures passed earlier this month in the GOP-majority Legislature with bipartisan support.