Scott Walker: Too Failed To Be Big

The message about Scott Walker that needs to be hammered home is that he cannot come close to meeting his signature 250,000 new private sector jobs promise.

After three years in office, there should be something on the order of 187,000 such jobs on the rolls, but the data show on Walker's watch only 103,000, along with fewer jobs added last year than first officially estimated and none created in January, according to early estimates, the Journal Sentinel reported last week.

The notion that he should get another term and use it as a springboard to Presidential consideration is preposterous. He's too failed to be big.

Walker Campaign Continues Inane Union-Bashing

A fund-raising appeal keyed to Scott Walker's allegedly "amazing" budgetary skills dropped into my Internet inbox today - - those folks do know how to use email, don't they - -  but the message ignores the state's 35th-and stalled job-creating ranking, or his failing 250,000 new jobs promise.

And the actual pitch for money is keyed to fighting "the big government union bosses."

Every time the right talks about unions, it's always about bosses. Big bosses. I always imagine someone on the order of Shaquille O'Neil or Andrew Bogut, barking orders.

What right-wing, Pavlovian palaver

What's big these days in politics, thanks to the Supreme Court, is money, and Walker is aligned with the Koch brothers and other right-wing financiers who are truly "big."

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March Madness On And Off The Court

While we celebrate UW-Madison's comeback win against Oregon Saturday night and give props to UW-M for its earlier valiant but losing effort against higher-seeded Villanova, it's been hard to miss other madness afoot in our state this week:

Like seeing Marquette's basketball coach Buzz Williams bolt without warning from a city that embraced him for a long-term, big dollar deal in Virginia.

Then learning that a real book publishing company reportedly paid Scott Walker at least $340,000 to 'write' a book that has sold something like 16,000 copies despite a book tour and gobs of free media from adoring conservatives and fawning talk show hosts.

And watching a seamy GOP-led, lobbyist-compliant Legislature debate late last week exactly how many pennies it could squeeze from cancer patients who only wanted to access a new class of easier-to-take oral chemotherapy drugs.

The final version of the bill isn't done yet because lobbyists haven't handed key legislators their last-minute language.

Scott Walker added to the shameful scene by allowing, after seeing which way the winds were blowing that, yes, he'd sign the measure after having said a bit earlier he didn't know enough about all this chemotherapy business to have a position on it.

Maybe he'd been too busy word-smithing his book to jump start paperback sales.

Or maybe he was adding fresh spin to his stump speech since last week's job growth data showed Wisconsin mired in 35th place among the states, guaranteeing that a jobs comeback for Walker as the 2014 election approaches is as doomed as was Oregon's failed fourth-quarter at the Bradley Center.

Too bad Walker didn't take the Buzz Williams approach - - just grab the money and head out of town.

Walworth School Dispute With WisDOT Was Blog's #1 Item Last Week

Interesting, and just fyi, that despite all the Scott Walker/state legislative/Paul Ryan news last week, a posting about one village's dispute with WisDOT registered the most hits last week. My take? Local stories that tell a bigger story resonate far and wide. Here are last week's five most-read items:

WisDOT Wants To Re-Route State Highway Through Sch...Mar 17, 2014 

WI GOP Senate Leader Runs A Death Panel Mar 16, 2014 

Paul Ryan Goes From Smartest To Meanest Guy In Roo...Mar 17, 2014 

Walker, Doe Silence And Upcoming State Job Pick Mar 19, 2014  

As GOP Legislature Pulls All-Nighter, And Walker H...Mar 20, 2014

Pipeline Break Releases North Dakota Oil, Corporate Spin

The latest crude oil pipeline break in energy-booming North Dakota produces a mess and some not-so-assuring spin from the company:

"...the flow of crude oil was substantially controlled…"

Watershed Pollution Isn't Just A Somewhere Else Story

You have no doubt seen and read about toxic coal ash spills into a West Virginia river.

Or followed the massive tar sand pipeline break in Michigan and its billion-dollar+ cleanup.

Yet there are other ongoing spills with toxic consequences that have not produced dramatic images, but which are having impacts and raise questions about what kinds of business practices and levels of regulation are tolerated on our collective watches.

Note in this most recent story about the ongoing cleanup beneath the Madison-Kipp metals plant in a residential neighborhood on Madison's east side - - and when I lived a few blocks away during a ten-year period I thought the only environmental issue there was the occasional acrid taint in the air - - that Kipp had been routinely flushing chemical-laden water into the ground.

Right under its plant off busy Atwood Ave., near homes and small businesses, churches and an elementary school, and a few blocks from Lake Monona.

In a city that takes its drinking water from wells, not its lakes.

And one of those wells is not too far from where the plant's toxic underground contaminated water "plume" needs to be drained and pulled back, retrieved and properly processed.

So, yes, there has been regulatory enforcement, and a cleanup plan is about to finally begin, but I am asking myself how and why Kipp could have carried out this polluting discharge, and how I, as a nearby resident, local investigative journalist and chief Mayoral assistant for all those years could have been unaware of the practice.

Makes me wonder also what else I miss(ed)?

Glenn Grothman Adds Voting Fairness To Denial Resume

West Bend Republican state senator, caulking expert and cultural critic Glenn Grothman has convinced the Wisconsin Legislature with a straight face that a big city like Milwaukee can manage its in-person absentee voting during the same number of hours as can a smaller community.

West Bend has about 30,000 people, while Milwaukee is 20 times larger, with roughly 600,000 residents - - and Milwaukee's 15 aldermanic districts on average have more residents than does all of West Bend - - but Grothman is now the Legislature's election fairness expert and his already-approved Senate bill flew through the Assembly on a party-line vote at the end of the session and is headed to Gov. Scott Walker's desk.

The bill mandates that in-person absentee voting in all Wisconsin municipalities will be trimmed uniformly from three weeks to two weeks before election days, and will be further limited to a maximum of 45 weekday-only hours - - parent-and-worker-friendly weekend hours are now banned - - during those two weeks.

All municipalities, regardless of size, will be allowed to offer early in-person absentee voting at a single location only - - so the time frames for in-person absentee voting have been compressed but the current limitation on voting sites is not expanded - - therefore where do you think the longer lines and greater inconvenience will be?

West Bend, or Milwaukee?

And why?

These restrictions and the barriers to voting inherent in the Wisconsin GOP's high-priority and partisan Voter ID law should be investigated by federal voting rights officials, I have argued.

Federal Voting Rights Oversight Needed To Protect Wisconsin Balloting

Scott Walker and his right-wing Wisconsin GOP legislative lieutenants - - for the second time since their ascendancy in 2011- - have passed legislation to cut the hours of in-person absentee voting.

The desired outcome - - abetted by the GOP-initiated Voter ID statute - - is to tilt elections and embed GOP power by obstructing ballot-box access in cities with large populations of minority, transit-dependent, Democratic-leaning voters.

This coordinated, one-party manipulation of state power for partisan and constituencies' advantage should be slapped down hard and overturned without equivocation by state courts to ensure unobstructed voting in Wisconsin.

But that guarantee of basic citizen voting rights in Wisconsin will now require the intervention of federal officials.

That is because right-wing advocacy groups aligned with Walker and key GOP legislators have helped elect some members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court members with campaign advertising buys.

The conflict-of-interest is obvious and dangerous.

Voters here need Federal protection from Jom Crow-style ballot-box barriers because The Vote in Wisconsin has been willfully compromised.

Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin. 

WI Assembly Takes NRA Agenda To Ridiculous Height

And also further kills - - and "kills" is not too strong a word - - local control.

This time by giving shooting ranges carte blanche:

The bill would allow any shooting range in operation as of July 16, 2013 to continue at its location regardless of any local ordinances. 

The bill also makes the owners, board and employees of shooting ranges immune from lawsuits based on the negligence of a shooter at the range.

Local controls, in Wisconsin? 

Gone. 

In Wisconsin, The Right Gives Itself More Rights

Scott Walker and his right-wing Wisconsin GOP legislative lieutenants - - for the second time since their 2011 ascendancy to total state control - - have passed legislation cutting the hours of in-person absentee voting. Their desired outcome is embedding GOP power by obstructing voting in cities with larger numbers of Democrats, minorities, and transit-dependent voters.

Chemo Bill Pits Sen. Darling Vs. Rep. Vos

It will be interesting to see if GOP Senator Alberta Darling - - a cancer survivor - - wants to try and convince her colleagues in last-minute negotiations to oppose the $100 monthly patient deductible that insurance-industry servant Robin Vos, the GOP Assembly Speaker, inserted to weaken and perhaps kill a chemotherapy access bill.

And the real question is: What does Walker want and how does this impact his re-election campaign?

As GOP Legislature Pulls All-Nighter, And Walker Hides Out...

Please remember his ironic, iconic bluster given to the friendly folks at The Lakeland Times newspaper during the 2010 gubernatorial election, including these keepers:

Transparency

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said…

Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state's online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.

"In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue... If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."

What's more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn't be any nonfiscal items in it.

" And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight…" 

Sloppy Sleaze Supporting Mine

The Wisconsin State Journal sheds light on heavy-handed political work by Americans for Prosperity - - a Koch Brothers-funded right-wing advocacy organization - - aimed at defeating grassroots candidates who oppose the proposed controversial open-pit iron ore mine in Iron County.

Heavy-handed and ham-handed, too, as the group's big-dollar, door-to-door literature misidentified one well-known mine supporter as an opponent, and mistakenly published his neighbor's phone number, to boot.

The flyer listed phone numbers for each of the seven candidates challenging county board members.  

"Call these anti-mine radicals and tell them to stand up for you and your local jobs, not radical environmental policies," the mailer urges in bold red lettering.

An out-of-state organization claiming others are influencing local issues is pure projection propaganda, given its underlying hypocrisy.

Similar efforts by the group have been noted in local Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio elections. 

The northern Wisconsin leaflet is not the first indication the outside right-wing advocacy group has ties to the controversial mine plan.

In November, I'd noted the mining company - - GTac, owned by Floridian Chris Cline - - and Americans for Prosperity had hired the same lobbyist for Wisconsin activities.

Robin Vos Blocking The Oncologist's Door

Thursday update:

GOP Assembly Speaker Rep. Robin Vos is apparently engineering in a closed-caucus process some face-saving, industry-friendly amendments to win his' support' for the oral chemotherapy drug access bill.

The Legislature adjourns in a matter of hours, and any changes to the bill would require the agreement of the Senate, where a 30-2 vote suggests little interest in Vos' one-man obeisance to lobbyists' agendas..

So one legislator dancing to the special interests' tune still stands between cancer patients and more affordable, less-invasive therapy.

Walker Showed Zero Leadership On Chemo Access Bill

Scott Walker's saying at virtually the very end of the debate that he would sign the chemo bill is not the same thing as backing the bill early and forcefully against cruel industry lobbying that still may kill it with poison pill amendments which Walker could stop with a simple phone call or email.

Walker, Doe Silence And Upcoming State Job Pick

Walker has not taken John Doe email questions for weeks, but if he picks a former Milwaukee County personal staffer or campaign - related figure to fill a new UW communications job six months before the 2014 election then you have received your answers to all those questions, and about John Doe II.

'Progress' On Chemotherapy Bill Reveals WI GOP Priorities

The moral miasma that drifts out of Republican Party closed-door State Capitol caucuses has cleared enough Wednesday morning to reveal some key truths about The Grand Old Petty Mean Party, circa 2014.

For one thing, we may soon - - and I emphasize "may," as Assembly poison pills may get written into the prescription - - have an answer to the question oft-asked since Scott Walker was elected Governor, and the Brothers Scott and Jeff Fitzgerald took the reins in the Senate and Legislature:

"What will it take to make them abandon a special interest?"

The answer seems to be cancer.

Cancer, and reasonable access to modern-day, life-saving oral chemotherapy, may trump the inside political power of corporate, conservative money.

We'll know for sure by the end of this disgraceful Legislative session Thursday if all you have to have is metastasizing melanomas to break past a know-nothing Governor, a flip-flopping Senate Majority Leader, and a soulless Assembly Speaker who hinted as late as yesterday that he still had some procedural tricks up his sleeve to outmaneuver cancer patients and hand a victory to former GOP Assembly Speaker-turned-lobbyist Jeff Fitzgerald on behalf of the insurance industry.

As for Walker, why it was only yesterday that he offered up the preposterous notion that he didn't have a position on the chemotherapy access bill because he hadn't studied it.

Right: the guy whose County and political teams' emails showed him online in the daily 8:00 a.m. briefings, the take-charge guy firing off instructions, cobbling together strategies, and dictating memos and news releases didn't know enough about the bill to take a position.

That's changed, too, as Walker now says he'd sign the bill.

Because he'd seen the headlines statewide and got briefed - - about internal polling or talking-point development that was sending one message:

Running for re-election against cancer politics is a losing proposition.

Show Of Hands If Liking 35th Jobs Ranking…Yes, Gov. Walker?

Though GOP leaders said Wisconsin's economy would take off "like a rocket" after the recall elections went away, private-sector job growth in Wisconsin has only inched upward, from 37th to 35th place among the states during a recent 12-month period.

As the AP, through WKOW-TV, reports:,

The figures released Wednesday are a key benchmark, picked by Gov. Scott Walker, to measure how well he is meeting his 2010 campaign promise to add 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of next year.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for the 12-month period between September 2012 and September 2013, Wisconsin added just over 28,300 private sector jobs. The percentage increase of 1.2 percent puts Wisconsin 35th compared with all 50 states.

So the state is facing both an economic and political shortfall, as Wisconsin is far off the pace required mathematically to create the 250,000 new private-sector jobs that gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker promised repeatedly in 2010 and 2012 to achieve in a first term.

In percentage terms, our private-sector job growth during that 12-month period lags all neighboring states, except Illinois, the official data show.

So "Still Better Than Illinois" is available to Walker as a re-election bumper-sticker, though some might say that is over-stating the obvious.

1:30 p.m. update:

In fact, the data show Wisconsin lost manufacturing jobs during the period while gaining workers in the food service sector, the Journal Sentinel reports.

Meaning there was an increase in wait-staff minimum wage jobs over family-supporting blue-collar work.

Hardly a prescription for success.

The Legislature As Wellness Metaphor

We will soon know, as a vote of some sort looms in the State Assembly over a chemotherapy access bill, whether the Legislature and body politic in Wisconsin is well or malignant.

Some background.

DNR Tribal "Success Stories" Measured In Nickels And Dimes

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources during its Chamber-of-Commerce/Cathy Stepp Secretaryship on behalf of Scott Walker has had its share of difficulties with some of Wisconsin's Native American tribes over serious matters like wolf hunting, walleye fishing, iron mining and treaty rights, just to name a few.

So DNR staff were instructed to formally file internally all interactions with, or on behalf of the tribes according to memos I cited last year, and which, one could argue, could help the agency document itself out of its self-inflicted PR purgatory.

And in January, after sorting all the records submitted internally, the Department put together a two-page master list of "Selected Success Stories" for an agency-wide memo which I will reproduce below.

Now you can decide how much of all this record-keeping merely catalogued public-employees-just-doing-their-jobs, like "Attended 2013 State of the Tribes Address," or "Increased overall outreach and sharing of information to engage tribes and build partnerships," or "joined together with Lac du Flambeau warden forces over the busy 4th of July weekend to work boating safety on the lakes within the reservation," or "Regularly attend Voigt Intertribal Task Force meetings to provide information and updates upon request."

Or how much was worth bragging about.

But I found that the memo broke some new bureaucratic ground, because you don't always see government funding touted as successes right down to the penny.

That some record-keeping!

Here's the memo, with italics added:

State of Wisconsin

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES 101 S. Webster Street
Box 7921
Madison WI 53707-7921
Selected Success Stories
Secretary’s Office/Agency-Wide

Scott Walker, Governor Cathy Stepp

•   Attended 2013 State of the Tribes Address. 
•   New Tribal Liaison and Regional Directors met individually with each of the eleven tribes in the spring.
  
•   Developed several new communication tools to enhance employee awareness and engagement
  
•   Created the Tribal Summer Youth Program, a new grant program to enhance relations and provide an opportunity for tribal youth to learn about and experience conservation of natural resources.
  
•   Increased overall outreach and sharing of information to engage tribes and build partnerships.
  
• 
  
• Fisheries & Water Program
  

•   Implemented the Wisconsin Walleye Initiative; grant funds are available to tribal entities with fish hatcheries to enhance their fish hatchery operations and increase the capacity to raise walleye for stocking in Wisconsin waters.
  
•   Donated 150,000 walleye fry to Red Cliff due to a shortage at their hatchery.
  
•   Continuing our commitment with the Menominee Nation (MOU) to transfer sturgeon from the lower Wolf River to Keshena Falls area of the Wolf River in Menominee County each year for the next ten years; continue to provide 15 sturgeon each year for the Menominee’s spring Sturgeon festival.
  
•   Worked jointly with Menominee, Oneida, Ho-Chunk and Stockbridge-Munsee on a federal grant to provide technical advice and help restore wetland and stream area.
  
• 
  
• Law Enforcement
  

•   Partnered with GLIFWC Chief Warden to create tribal training sessions; two-full day sessions created specifically for DNR law enforcement with goal of educating staff on tribal cultures and history.
  
•   DNR joined together with Lac du Flambeau warden forces over the busy 4th of July weekend to work boating safety on the lakes within the reservation.
  
•   Partner with tribal law enforcement to conduct joint firearms training, hunter’s safety courses; invite tribal members to DNR Warden Recruit Academy; regularly invite tribal members to attend DNR warden meetings to enhance working partnerships, build cultural understanding and to learn from each other.
  
•   For the second year, DNR Wardens worked with Menominee Tribal Wardens to assist with setting up a volunteer Sturgeon Guard program within the reservation.
  
• Grants/Loans
  

•   $159,669.95 in grant funds provided to our 11 tribes through the Basic Recycling Grants to Responsible Units program.
  
•   $5,000 Urban Forestry Grant to Sokaogon Mole Lake for a start-up grant for tree inventory, hazardous tree pruning, removal and other tree management.
  
•   $3,260.65 Forest Fire Protection Grant to Lac Courte Oreilles to expand the use of local fire departments to augment and strengthen the DNR’s overall initial fire suppression capabilities on forest fires.
  
•   Since 2010 awarded over $592,000 in recycling and forestry grants, all 11 tribes received funds.
  
• 
  
• Wildlife Management
  

 Partnership with Oneida Nation/UW-Extension/UW-Green Bay planting biofuel warm-season plants on tribal lands in Outagamie County.

  The Bad River and Red Cliff Bands Food Distribution Programs provide volunteers to deliver ground venison that has been processed as part of DNR’s Wildlife Damage Abatement and Claims Program to families in need in Ashland County.  

  Working with Ho-Chunk Nation on the development of a MOU for their contribution and management/monitoring efforts for elk reintroduction into the Black River Falls area.   

  Continue working with the Ho-Chunk on a deer transport Memorandum of Understanding, which will clarify what tribal members can do when transporting deer. 

• Forestry
  

•   Created First Downs for Trees program with Oneida; a unique partnership between Green Bay Packers, WI Public Service Corp, WI DNR, US Forest Service, Oneida Nation and communities within Brown County to plant trees to offset the Packer’s carbon footprint when they travel to away games. For every first down at least one tree is planted within Brown County; to date over 2,000 trees have been planted.
  
•   Partner with Lac du Flambeau on timber sale planning and bid packages; identify white birch collection areas for balsam fir bough collection.
  
•   Forestry tribal liaisons provide regular information and updates to tribal counterparts.
  
•   Invite tribes to provide input on Interim Forest Management Planning.
  
• 
  
• Air, Waste, Remediation & Redevelopment
  

•   DNR Air Monitoring section provides on-going technical assistance to Bad River and Forest County Potawatomi under existing MOU, including set-up and maintenance of monitoring sites, annual performance audits, and assistance with multifunctioning equipment.
  
•   Continue to work with FCPC on technical review of Class I air quality related values and thresholds that support protection of natural resources on tribal lands.
  
•   Worked with FCPC on Biodigester project, Potawatomi hotel expansion and a parking structure for the hotel expansion in Milwaukee.
  
•   Working with the Bad River Band to provide information and full awareness of all DNR regulated activity associated with the proposed Gogebic Mine site. Regular meetings being held to discuss technical issues; other partners invited to these meetings, such as US EPA and GLIFWC.
  
• 
  
• Voigt Intertribal Task Force
  

 Regularly attend Voigt Intertribal Task Force meetings to provide information and updates upon request. 

Regions

•   Lac Du Flambeau, Lac Courte Oreilles, and Red Cliff Bands have worked in partnership with the DNR for the past five years to offer a Summer Youth Training Program. High school aged tribal students are employed to work on various natural resource-related projects on state and tribal lands; provides them an opportunity to mentor and learn first-hand about resource management activities.
  
•   Improving aquatic plant management consultation process; working with GLIFWC to develop protocol well in advance of permitting issuance. With partnership of GLIFWC, sponsored several workshops for tribal natural resources staff and tribal members.
  
•   Continue working with Oneida Nation & Brown County on removal of a series of dams on Duck Creek.
  
•   DNR continues to work with the Ho-Chunk Nation on the Badger Army Plan, including land transfers and master planning.