Doe files disclose more iron mine hidden donations

[Updated from 9/15] A team of reporters at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has further mined the John Doe files published Wednesday by The Guardian, a British newspaper, and details today for readers several important disclosures.

Among the most disturbing new highlights - - and the entire piece is a solid read:

The already-disclosed $700,000 donation from an out-of-state iron ore mining firm routed secretly for the benefit of the Walker recall campaign effort through a third party group which did not have to publish a list of donations wasn't the whole story.

Update: There is video confirming that the mining company was allowed to write the bill which eased iron mining siting in Wisconsin. Though the mine project fell through, the law is still on the books.

Another half-million dollars+ from the mining company was also massaged into pro-Walker campaign efforts - - and while the massive open-pit mine envisioned in the pristine Penokee Hills near Lake Superior by the company fell to environmental realities, pressure from north woods activism and opposition from the Bad River tribe armed with the moral high ground and treaty protections, the sweetheart mining bill which GOP legislators and lobbyists together delivered for Walker's signature - - with its deepening political taint and many rollbacks of land and water preservation - - remains on the books and cries out for immediate repeal.

As The Journal Sentinel team explains.

* The mining firm Gogebic Taconite secretly donated more than $1.2 million to two conservative political groups in 2011 and 2012.

The Journal Sentinel had previously reported that Gogebic Taconite had given $700,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a pro-Walker group then-headed by one of his campaign advisers. After that contribution, the GOP-controlled Legislature and Walker approved legislation aimed at streamlining regulations for an iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin.

But the figure actually turns out to be higher. According to one of the John Doe records, the mining firm gave at least $930,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth and another $300,000 to the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce - Issues Mobilization Inc. -- another conservative dark money group -- during 2011-'12.

Walker's Weird, Not-Believable Denial About Mining Donation

[Updated, 10:45 p.m.] If you are asked if you knew about a scandalous $700,000 donation funneled to your campaign by a company you've helped with a special, one-company bill, and your answer is "not to my knowledge," you added unnecessary verbiage and too many words to "no."

Asked if he was aware that Gogebic Taconite secretly donated $700,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth — a pro-business advocacy group directed by the governor's campaign adviser — Walker said, "Not to my knowledge."

"Not to my knowledge?" 

What on earth does that mean, except you cannot answer simply and directly.

Update - - Actually, I now think it's an answer with deliberate distraction, confusion and wiggle room crafted by one of his attorneys.

Perhaps it's an answer to the question's query about "secretly."

Or to "donated?"

Parsed? One or the other? Both? What?

Does Walker need to ask Walker for clarification?

These days, you do not get the benefit of the doubt.

If Walker shuts down EvolutionGate, media could change the subject

OK, national media. Live and learn. Walker makes up his mind, never changes it, so when he says he has nothing more to say about evolution - - (subliminal clause, 'because Iowa tea parties told me to zip it') - - he'll just stonewall until you give up or get interested in other things.

So here's an idea: pro-actively change the subject and ask a different question laden with relevancy - - but unlike the evolution questions - - there's a record to cite and explore.

Ask Walker:

Why did you solicit a $700,000 donation from an iron mining company - - a company that had been allowed to help write a iron mining sweetheart enabling bill which you supported, campaigned for and signed into law - - that was routing to a third-party, pro-Walker group advised by one of your key campaign advisers during your 2012 recall election?

Here is one link to the story and prosecutorial documents about that donation, and others.

Or just Google "Walker $700,000" for many postings, like this one.

Here's a very accessible legal analysis of the bill's impacts.

And if that one topic is too narrow, here's a wider range of possibilities.

Bill Kaplan's Solid Column On Walker, The Mine And $700,000

That formerly-secret $700,000 mining company donation mysteriously steered to Scott Walker's recall campaign, about which he said he knew nothing, is a scandal that brings Watergate's (Walkergate) dirty money to mind.

It's the subject of a strong piece by Washington, DC-based columnist Bill Kaplan, so note to the Walkerites - - the issue isn't going away even if Walker says he knew nothing about it - - to the best of his knowledge.

And thanks to Kaplan for the shout-out:

Wisconsin icons for clean government and protecting the environment such as Democratic Gov./U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson and writer/raconteur George Vukelich would have been outraged and repulsed by Walker's shenanigans. 

Fortunately, longtime distinguished journalist Jim Rowen has covered Gogebic's proposal for a massive iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin.  

Rowen, on his blog, "Political Environment", has been dogged, relentless and scrupulously factual in outlining why the mine will be disastrous: Gogebic and Walker worked together to successfully eviscerate longstanding bipartisan environmental protections.

Scott Walker dismisses, toys with nosy media

[Updated] Memo to Wisconsin reporters: GOP Wisconsin Gov. and potential 2020 presidential hopeful (or potential President Trump Secretary of Labor) Scott Walker took this position earlier Thursday when asked whether he was raising money for the third-party group which collected millions in dark money to benefit his 2012 recall election: 

Walker won't talk about fundraising for group

It's a pretty logical question, since that fund-raising is at the heart of the massive dump of John Doe records published in The Guardian yesterday and is spread across major Wisconsin media for the second straight day in Milwaukee.

And in Madison. 

And smaller cities, like La Crosse.

But in fairness, Walker later today did offer up one of his patented, non-responsive, non-denial denial 'answers' when a pesky question, alas, was asked again by some reporter who hadn't seen the 'don't ask' memo and wanted to know if Walker was still helping the third-party group raise money.

"I don't right now," Walker said.

Let me be the first to say, "well played, sir." I see what you did there.

And by the very late afternoon, Walker had refined his bobbing-and-weaving, with an added dash of distracting word salad finger-pointing, according to an AP story in the Eau Claire Herald-Telegram:

Walker didn't acknowledge working with the Club for Growth or even mention its name. Asked why he wouldn't acknowledge having worked closely with it, he said only that he and his supporters were "under attack" in early 2011 after the union restrictions had passed and they thought it was important to get the message out about how the restrictions would help the state. 

"We thought it was appropriate to get the message out about the facts, not talking about advocating for or against, expressly advocating for or against candidates, but getting the message out that the reforms would work and indeed they have and that's what we focused in on," Walker said.

Yeah, diagram that last sentence.

And let me remind folks that Walker has a long history of evasive language, and we've seen his dodge-in-a-one-liner before - - on the very same subject.

Remember when Doe documents, accidentally posted briefly by a federal court, disclosed a $700,000 dark money check donation through the third-party group from the iron mining company whose plan for an open-pit operation was being assisted by Walker and his legislative allies?

(Thanks to The Guardian, we now know the mining company actually put another half-million+ dollars into play).

Anyway, when the mining company's $700,000 donation hit the fan, Walker was asked if he'd played a role in the donation.

Brace yourself for his non-responsive, non-denial denial, as reported by The Journal Sentinel.

"Not to my knowledge."

Maybe this will jog your memory, if not Walker's:

Walker, 'Not To My Knowledge,' 1988-2014

[Updated] His habitual default to slippery denials, absurd evasions of responsibility and flat-out factual falsehoods spans a quarter-century:

* 1988: Caught breaking Marquette student election rules:

Walker dismissed this, saying he had no knowledge of what his supporters did, according to a Tribune article from February 25, 1988.

* 2011:  Headline on John Doe I story and interview:

Walker says he knows nothing of investigation

* 2102: I collected and posted several more:

Walker's Habitual Forgetfulness 

Here's one example. After a patient starved to death at the Mental Health Complex, the gubernatorial campaign was underway and a report about it was being withheld:

Walker defends withholding Mental Health Complex report 

"I don't know what's in it, so it's hard for me to say" if it should be released, Walker said. His administration had nothing to do with the report being withheld, Walker said

* 2014:  Secret $700,000 funding steered to recall election campaign and disclosed last week by the Journal Sentinel: 

Gov. Scott Walker said Saturday that he played no role in soliciting cash from a mining company for the Wisconsin Club for Growth during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections, adding that no one should be surprised that the pro-business governor backed legislation helpful to the firm.

Asked whether he was aware that Gogebic Taconite secretly donated $700,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth — a pro-business advocacy group directed by the governor's campaign adviser — Walker said, "Not to my knowledge."

Wisconsin proves Sen. Warren's "game is rigged" message

[updated, 10:45 p.m.] Massachusetts progressive Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's "the game is rigged and the Republicans rigged it" message certainly resonates nationally, and describes the reality we confront here moment-by-moment.

You can see and feel Warren's description of right-wing, corporate control across Wisconsin, from the domination of big money and influence atop all three branches of government...

...to big business being allowed by the State Supreme Court's far-right majority to write the Court's code of conduct that protects big money's judicial clout...

...to a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources turned into a corporate tool of deregulation by Wrong-Way Walker, Wisconsin's pollution enabler-in-chief...

...to the oh-so-illustrative formerly-secret $700,000 donation routed to Walker's campaign committee from a mining company through a far-right corporatist third-party group that is currently fighting tooth-and-nail further investigation into its once-clandestine activity on behalf of the Walker campaign and those of some GOP legislators.

Two more points proving the Warren thesis here - - and we'd have even more evidence to cite if not for the 11th-hour blocking of the manipulative voter ID law to disenfranchise minorities and students which Walker and his allies nearly put in place:

The mining company which gave the $700,000 donation - - and let that figure sink in, because it's really big and very unusual - - had also been allowed to help write and steer a controversial bill pushed to approval by Walker so the company can dig the continent's largest open-pit mine in pristine Northern Wisconsin woods and wetlands.

And should a stalled, bi-partisan prosecutors' investigation into these formerly-secret machinations by and for the benefit of Walker and allied legislators campaigns' be allowed to proceed - - despite the efforts by a Federal judge whose favoritism towards Walker and allied right-wing groups has reached clumsily outrageous levels - - and should that investigation result in criminal charges, the final arbiters of those charges would be...wait for it...a State Supreme Court majority freed from conflict-of-interest territory and recusals by a code of conduct written by some of the same groups which donated millions of dollars to Walker and the court's majority.

As Sen. Warren says, "the game is rigged."

Mary Burke's defeat of Scott Walker on November, and the election of Susan Happ as Attorney General as the unabashed Walker tool J. B Van Hollen departs that office, can slow down the right's rigged winning in Wisconsin.

If not, the slogan becomes "the game is rigged, and in Wisconsin, they have won."

"Not To My Knowledge" Paves Way For 'Oh, THAT Donation!'

Still reverberating on the front page:

The baffling, believe-me-not response of "Not to my knowledge" by our top-down micro-managing Governor Walker when asked if he knew the mining company being enabled by a sweetheart law to dig a controversial NW Wisconsin open-pit mine measured in miles had routed $700,000 to help his recall campaign.

On Walker's preferred donation route around disclosure laws he wanted potential donors to follow, court records reportedly indicated.

I now speculate that the odd construction in the response instead of a simple "No" was lawyer-dictated to provide wiggle room for restored memory should another smoking gun go off, say in the form of a statement to the contrary in a deposition, or an email in a hard drive found at a garage sale or in a post-it note found in the suit pocket at a certain Wauwatosa dry cleaner that says:

Drop off suit. Get milk, eggs, send thank you note for $700,000 donation. 

Does Walker Say This Stuff With A Straight Face?

In an interview with Yahoo News, Walker predicts he will be outspent in the recall campaign, then extends this fiction by claiming "a money gap" that does not exist:

Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor, braces for recall election, proclaims controversial law is working

By David Chalian | The Ticket – 4 hrs ago

Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin who is battling an effort to recall him from office, told Yahoo News that his controversial law that ended many collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees and sparked protests from labor unions and their allies one year ago is accomplishing his goal...

His campaign and allied groups have already spent more than $7 million on his effort to keep his job, but Walker expects to spend less than his opponents.

"I think I'll be woefully outspent," Walker said in explaining why he believes the recall election will be tougher to win than his 2010 race. "So, in terms of being confident, I'm cautiously optimistic. The reason for caution is if we're able to break through the money gap and get our message out to compete with all this money from out of state interests, then I think we can win."

Outspent? With the Kochs and other right-wing deep pockets in your corner?

Please.

David Koch, the conservative financial angel, recently told the Palm Beach Post newspaper that one of his advocacy groups had already sent Walker's anti-recall effort $700,000, and he'd do more to help:

Asked about his efforts to sway public opinion, Koch acknowledges his group is hard at work in places such as Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is facing off with public unions and grappling with a likely recall vote.

"We're helping him, as we should. We've gotten pretty good at this over the years," he says. "We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We're going to spend more."

By "we" he says he means Americans for Prosperity, which is spending about $700,000 on an "It's working" television ad buy in the state. It credits Walker's public pension and union overhaul with giving school districts the first surpluses they've seen in years. The unions and the left see things differently.

A year ago, a blogger posing as David Koch famously prank-called Walker and goaded the governor to say it would be "outstanding" if Koch would fly him to "Cali" as a reward for crushing the public unions. The Koch brothers' conglomerate, Koch Industries, holds regular political meetings in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and the events have attracted the likes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

At the time of the prank call, Koch told The New York Times, he didn't even know the Wisconsin governor's name. He knows it now.

"What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He's an impressive guy and he's very courageous," Koch says after a benefit dinner of salmon and white wine. "If the unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power."

Walker, Wisconsin's GOP, serving donors, escalate war on science

[Updated, 2:05 p.m., from Wednesday, 7:46 p.m.] Led by Scott Walker, Wisconsin Republicans running the state and its state economy into the ground are ramping up a politically self-serving attack on public-interest science.

Nothing good will come of this, unless you like dirty air, polluted water and doors shut in your face when you try and raise your voice to demand that things be changed.

The right's core goal is the permanent eradication of the environmental protection legacy left behind by former Democratic Governor and Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, as well as minimizing or ending altogether the practical implications of public interest resource oversight that conflict with special-interest, conservative political plans, corporate agendas and shareholder dividends:

*  The Republican State Treasurer, with the support of the Republican Attorney General, has banned references to "climate change" by a state forest lands board on which they sits - - and which is staffed by Tia Nelson, Gaylord Nelson's daughter whom these Republican politicians are trying to ostracize.

A warming climate affects the health of trees and forests as well as nearby wildlife and water supplies which provide adequate drinking water and agricultural irrigation supplies.

Separating science from forest management and thus environmental protections is like telling doctors to leave out their medical school training when they are advising you about your longevity.

National media have taken note of this ridiculous, Florida-style outburst of Flat Earthism, though not to the extent that Florida's early anti-climate science policies had created. Florida is still a bigger and more politically-important state than is Wisconsin, though Scott Walker should rate more play now than Rick Scott.

And we're only a few days from Earth Day's 45th anniversary on April 22nd, sure to be downplayed and ignored, as it has before during Walker's years in office.

* In the same vein, virtually all references to climate change have been scrubbed from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources web site. I have checked the site repeatedly, and all that's left there since the deletions ended in June, 2012 is a link to a single, University of Wisconsin web page. Nothing of the agency's prior, in-house work or references to outside sources remains.

* To bring the "chamber-of-commerce mentality" he said he wanted running the DNR, Walker appointed a developer as agency Secretary and gave her a team of top business and trade association executives to replace the public interest with private, GOP donor interests.

Pollution investigations and enforcement actions predictably dropped: little wonder there has been a greatly expanded dead zone in the waters of Green Bay from manure runoff released at the kind of industrial-scale dairy operations which Walker wants expanded with little regulation - - and that Walker's new budget proposes a 16% cut in state pollution prevention funding.

While the agency pretends to be focused on environmental protection and appreciation, its more substantive and pro-corporate signals and intentions are everywhere.

In the early days of the Walker-run DNR, his political appointees running the agency admitted they'd interceded to minimize the legal consequences for a septic tank hauler who had spread excess human waste on farm fields near residential wells; last year the DNR 'hit' another polluter with a $464 dollar fine for releasing one million gallons of cattle manure into a stream.

Veteran DNR-watcher Ron Seely revealed yesterday something even more mind-boggling - - that the DNR under Walker's direction is moving towards wiping out its science bureau, where independent, trained civil service experts provide policy guidance and long-term studies to guide and protect the general public's waters, air quality, wildlife management and a host of other functions.

This dovetails with the Walker budget's plan to remake the DNR's oversight board where citizens have some direct policy input into a purely advisory body, thus giving his political, chamber-of-commerce mentality appointees even more unchecked power.

Of course that move is supported by the developer-lackey Walker put in charge of the DNR. Her obeisance to Walker mirrors his servitude to his state and national corporate funders. It's all out in the open and the Walkerites operate with unprecedented impunity and arrogance.

Seely is the reporter who first reported on the "chamber of commerce mentality" which Walker was overtly putting in charge of an agency formerly known for independent science and citizen policy-making participation.

He also disclosed in his recent bombshell that the probable DNR science bureau wipe out has the backing of key Republican State Sen. Tom Tiffany, (Hazelhurst), a climate change denier (he calls the science "theoretical") and the prime mover in both frac sand mining deregulation statewide and in the failed effort to dig a massive open pit iron ore mine in a wetlands-rich forested area near lake Superior.

Documents have shown that Tiffany agreed to be the lead legislative contact fans media point man or the mining law strategy being run out of Governor Walker's office.

The mining company was later revealed to have routed a secret donation of $700,000 through a purportedly independent third party group - - the Koch brothers-connected Club for Growth - - to spend on behalf of Walker's 2012 recall campaign, and Walker has just appointed the mining company's lobbyist to a top position at the state Public Service Commission after considering appointing the lobbyist to the power DNR Deputy Secretary position.

Here is the definitive report on Walker's dark money connections, including the mining company's $700,000.

Instead, Walker gave the lobbyist, Bob Seitz, the position of chief of staff to the chair of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

The PSC and its political staff have influence in the development of state energy policy, set water, gas and electricity customer rates and utilities' rates of return. For example, the PSC recently laid down new heavy fees on solar installations and nearly doubled all utility customers' fixed, monthly charges - - all gravy at the publics expense to GOP-friendly utilities and their fossil fuel suppliers.

The agency is working side-by-side with the DNR to oppose President Obama's clean air initiatives to reduce smokestack pollution. as is the Republican Attorney General, too - - the same Brad Schimel that just voted to ban that state forte land commission from uttering the words "climate change."

The coordination and intention are obvious.

And despite the state's ballooning debt, Walker's budgets and transportation department spending is principally aimed to widen the state's major highways; transit support continues to be cut and Amtrak rail construction and train assembly providing well-paying jobs entirely blocked, even defunded by Walker himself.

In a different political environment, these blatantly close and mutually-self interested conflicts and connections that continue to put the public interest somewhere between second place and last would sink a politician, but Walker is completely protected by a gerrymandered majority in the State Legislature, a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and pipelines to a King's ransom in special-interest financing to organize and propagandize.

Yes, propagandize. Look at the shallow and misleading excuses offered by the mining company and its backers when they had to end a plan that was never going to work in the first place.

It's important to understand that Wisconsin Republicans and their big-money backers have a detailed and long-range strategy to hold power here.

It began in 2007 when Walker, a senior Koch brothers-founded Americans for Prosperity official and about a dozen others as yet-unnamed in part because local media will not lift a finger to flesh out the story already broken by Salon.com met "along the shores of Lake Michigan" to plan the political capture of Wisconsin for conservative interests.

It is hardly a coincidence that Walker has since been elevated to Wisconsin Governor, has been saved from a recall election defeat as well as John Doe prosecutorial investigations by tens of millions of dollars in conservative donations, and is being pushed forward in the pre-2016 presidential politicking by that same combination of right-wing organizations and their funding.

Imagine the US Forest Service, the National Parks, the US EPA, the Interior Department and the Justice Department under Walker's control.

For WI Gov. Walker, Earth Day is just another Saturday

[Updated] I'm not expecting much if anything from right-wing GOP Wisconsin Gov. and climate change denier Scott Walker on Earth Day tomorrow, or as it's also know in the Governor's Office - - Saturday.

I noted on Earth Day 2016 that Walker's office issued no statement.

And Walker used Earth Day 2015 in the run-up to the presidential primaries to send layoff notices to 57 scientists and others at the same state Department of Natural Resources that he had redefined from his first day in office through the next six years+ using corporate appointments and pro-polluter agendas with "a chamber of commerce mentality.

As US News & World Report put it at the time:

As the planet warms, candidates embrace oil, the economy and doubt, while Scott Walker takes the cake.

But if there were a special Conservative Anti-Earth Day Award, Scott Walker would be hard to beat this year. Just in time for the annual pseudo-holiday, the Wisconsin governor, presidential aspirant and Koch brothers fanboy executed a stunning display of timing, bravado and GOP principles with news of potential layoffs this week at the state Department of Natural Resources. Maybe going HAM on the DNR is strictly a budget thing: Books have to be balanced, so pink slips will begin to flutter over that low-priority workforce – especially the DNR’s science division, which researches environmental problems. 

After all, those tax cuts don’t pay for themselves (at least not like they’re supposed to). And Wisconsin’s mining industry needs love, too – something that can’t happen with all those pesky regulators looking over their shoulders. 

This is the same Governor whose awareness of a role in environmental protection seems to have stopped with Boy Scout training to put out his campfire (see video), but as Governor:

*  Set in motion right after his January, 2011 swearing-in a plan to weaken wetlands protections, then also blocked the appeal of a wetlands filing permit sought by a campaign donor/developer, then introduced and quickly signed a special Legislative bill to grant the permit. 

Which established his hostile-to-the-environement pattern: follow the money.

*  Benefited from a secret, $700,000 campaign donation routed through a third-party 'independent' advocacy group from a mining company which Walker wanted, through a sweetheart, insider-crafted bill, to be allowed to dig, for starters, a four-mile-long, half-mile wide open pit mine in a wooded, wetland-rich river shed in Northwestern Wisconsin.

*  Has blocked through legislation and administrative actions real progress on solar and wind power installations though wind and solar are the fast-growing energy sectors in the US and are creating hundreds of thousands of new, high-paying jobs - - mostly not in Wisconsin, where Walker pledged in 2010 and has still failed to create 250,000 new private-sector jobs.

*  Forced the closing at great expense to taxpayers through losing litigation of a passenger train assembly factory in Milwaukee, and cost the cities of Milwaukee and Madison an energy-efficient passenger train link and the jobs it could have provided through construction, operation and rail-station/spin off businesses.

*  Systematically evaded his obligations under the US Clean Water Act and piled up 75 deficiencies he delayed fixing, records show.

*  Has done nothing environmentally with his seat on the Council of Great Lakes Governors where he could have pushed for sound regional water-management.

And particularly for an end to the St. Lawrence Seaway's known gateway to invasive species that have already destroyed Great Lakes fisheries, cost utilities and other property owners millions in losses, and which are likely yo leak through Lake Michigan westward with further grave national implications.

Walker says he is a pro-business Governor, but his wasted time on the Great Lakes Council reveals the label as nothing more than a bumper sticker.

By the way, there's a great new book by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan on that very risk - - The Death and Life of the Great Lakes - - that delivers a lot of important information about the invasive species crisis and other Great Lakes issues. 

I just finished the book; Walker would do well to read it.

* Tolerated drinking water pollution in-older cities' lead pipes, looked the other way for years as large animal feeding operations he's encouraged to expand are known to be contaminating nearby wells - - while also draining the water table with more wells which the state may soon turn over without regulation in perpetuity to the owners.

And has signed pro-polluter legislation unleashing fresh loads of harmful phosphorous into rivers and streams that have freshly impaired hundreds of Wisconsin waterways and contributed to a huge dead zone in Lake Michigan.

Walker disdains Earth Day, as he also disregards the environment, also because Earth Day focuses attention on former Wisconsin Governor and its founder Gaylord Nelson.

Acknowledging Nelson's contribution would require Walker to validate Nelson's stature and legacy, which Walker has gone out of his way to systematically trash through numerous actions.

Including cuts to and an effort to suspend for the long-term the bi-partisan Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund that provides important buffers against filling, cutting and paving, as well as open space statewide for people who do not own their own lakefront property or wooded sanctuary.

Like the state's recycling program Walker sought to defund, or the transit systems he ignores in favor of more costly major highways he now can't fund and complete, or the climate science and education programs his hand-picked 'chamber of commerce mentality' DNR Secretary/former developer Cathy Stepp deleted from the agency's web pages, Walker has no use for anything that Earth Day would reinforce.

And, likewise, has no use for any program or Wisconsin resource he cannot monetize for his  career perpetuation, as he did with Act 10 (which led to national fund-raising, and a mailing list he used to retire his presidential campaign debt), or his connections to the school choice movement and those issues ties to far-right ideologues.

The best ways for Wisconsin people to acknowledge Earth Day are to do something good for the environment, support the many groups and causes statewide that promote real stewardship of the land, clean air, and fresh water, and make election day 2018 Earth Day 2.0.  

Trump's gun-toting 'guards' to WI? Others served GOP allies here before

Imitating his favorite despots, Trump has dispatched unaccountable armed troops to beat and snatch protesters on Portland streets.

And Team Trump has threatened to send Trump's taxpayer-paid personal army to Milwaukee during the Democratic National Convention where they could provoke violence and stage manage GOP election propaganda.

If armed outsiders do show up in Milwaukee it would be thesecond time in recent years that big-caliber guns carried by outsiders with sketchy credentials were coordinated in Wisconsin for GOP partisan interests during a campaign.

Do you remember when, without warning, armed guards in forest-blending camouflage uniforms appeared in the North woods ostensibly to secure the perimeter on state-subsidized land which Walker and the GOP had been ram-rodding?

Photos of three guards in masks and camouflage carrying semi-automatic rifles made a splash in local news and went viral on the Internet, stoking a heated debate over the proposed Gogebic Taconite mine. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker pushed controversial legislation that fast-tracked the mine by weakening environmental regulations and superseding local government control. The armed guards personified local citizens' sense that outside forces were seizing control of the land in Wisconsin where the GTac mine would go.

"We are calling on you to immediately remove the heavily armed masked commando security forces currently hired to protect your company's property in the Penokee Hills," wrote Wisconsin state senator Bob Jauch (D) and Rep. Janet Bewley (D) in a July 8 letter. "The images are horrifying. ... These kinds of security forces are common in Third World countries but they don't belong in Northern Wisconsin.

The mining company's owner also quietly sent Walker's 2012 recall campaign $700,000 through a third-party conduit designated by Walker to receive the money, records showed.

Further, do you remember that two key WI GOP state legislators at the time but who are now serving in Congress - Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany - tried unsuccessfully to assist the armed guards' mission with a special state law - 

Bill would bar public from forest around mine site

A heavily armed, camouflaged security detail guarding the site was pulled out in July for lack of proper licensing from the state, but was approved to resume work in early August. 

- even though the forest land had received substantial state tax breaks in exchange for public access to the acreage?

Mike Wiggins, the region's Bad River tribal chairman, succinctly summed up the guards' presence at the time, and his words fit Trump's troopers if they roll into Milwaukee:

“I’ve got two words: unjustified and unnecessary, Wiggins said.” 

Walker Spokeswoman Moves Him Closer To Nixon

Obviously intimidated and hiding behind a campaign spokeswoman - - and probably planning a new round of staged events in warehouses touting job numbers in conflict with official tallies - -  Governor and campaign money manager Scott Walker wraps himself in legalisms to evade responsibility for the John Doe mess he's brought down on himself:

"As previously reported, the prosecutor's attorney stated that Governor Walker is not a target, two separate judges have dismissed the allegations, and the Friends of Scott Walker campaign is not a party to the lawsuit in the 7th Circuit," Walker spokeswoman Alleigh Marré said in a statement Friday.

"Not a target"..."not a party..." and even citing prosecutors whom Walker has been fighting for years echo Tricky Dick Nixon's famous self-absolution from crookery that didn't stand up to political pressures, voter assessments and history.

John Dean has told the Capital Times that Scott Walker is more Nixonian than Nixon, and with Walker back in the shadows as damaging disclosures rain down, the analogy sure looks accurate today.

Appropriate that Walker's got his own Watergate.

Complete with corporate money flowing into a campaign behind the scenes.

As Deep Throat told Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the film version of "All The President's Men," follow the money,

Which is exactly what the prosecutors whom Walker said were giving him a pass were doing when tracking an undisclosed $700,000 campaign donation from the Gogebic, the company which helped write and lobbied for a controversial, sweetheart mining bill approved by the Legislature at Walker's urging, according to the Journal Sentinel:

Because Wisconsin Club for Growth's fundraising and expenditures were being coordinated with Scott Walker's agents at the time of Gogebic's donation, there is certainly an appearance of corruption in light of the resulting legislation from which it benefited," investigator Dean Nickel said in documents unsealed Friday.

The $1.5 billion mine would plunge as deep as 1,000 feet into hillsides in Ashland and Iron counties. Officials with the company have outlined plans for two pits covering about 4 miles. Gogebic also would operate a processing plant, turning the low-grade ore in taconite pellets for the steel industry...

The company had an early hand in writing a mining bill and continued to play a key role throughout the legislative process. The bill, one of GOP's signature pieces of legislation since Walker's election, was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Walker in early 2013.

The mine, the sweetheart bill - - so obviously tilted towards the company's wishes at the expense of common sense and the US Clean Water Act that federal warned against it for years - - and the environmental damage it would cause have been principal subjects on this blog for several years, and dozens of posts are available about it through the search box on the blog's upper left corner.

It is also a major focus of a summary, continually updated post about Walker's broad manipulation and disrespect for the electorate.

An excerpt: 

His disregard for the environment and Ojibwe culture was the subject of a major feature piece in The New York Times, though his own Department of Tourism in something of a telling mixed message has been touting the unspoiled area's hiking and camping opportunities.  

Walker has rhetorically crafted the mine into a big potential job creator to appeal to Up North residents in economically depressed counties - - while knowing full well that most of the better jobs if the mine ever opens will go to out-of-state speciality workers already on call or working for the mining company in other states. 

Walker also knows that any mine permits and approvals are problematic, at best - -  in part because the mining law he pushed through the Legislature is incompatible with current Federal water review requirements, not to mention Federal treaties with the Bad River Band. So years of delay and even outright veto and defeat for the mine are quite likely - - by which time Walker would have already extracted the political capital he needed from the issue.

WI DNR default on water oversight prompting strong citizen responses

[Updated, 2:45 p.m.] 

From the Wisconsin Groundwater Council's 2013 report to the State Legislature:

The foundation of Wisconsin's groundwater law is the belief that all groundwater in Wisconsin must be protected equally to assure that it can be used for people to drink today and in the future. 

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You know that residents in rural, relatively-conservative Wisconsin are unhappy with the state DNR's pro-industry groundwater 'oversight' when the Kewaunee County Board of Supervisors votes 20-0 for tougher local regulation.  

All 20 Kewaunee County Board members on Tuesday approved a public health and groundwater protection ordinance limiting winter and early spring waste spreading on thin soils over karst bedrock.

The measure passed despite opposition from the Dairy Business Association and other major Wisconsin agricultural groups that called it illegal... 

the ordinance [is] intended to keep waste — including manure, plus industrial and human waste — from contaminating groundwater in particularly vulnerable areas.

More, here.

The Kewaunee County Board actions echoes action in Jefferson County over the DNR's capitulation to tar sand oil pipeline expansion across Wisconsin greenlit by the DNR.

Media have noted that Wrong-Way Walker is polling more weakly in small-town Wisconsin than in previous elections, and I would wager that's a direct consequence of his direction to the DNR to ease pollution enforcement and the agency's recent - - but under-reported move - - to remove citizen input from regulatory reviews at the very time large ground water users, like big dairies and sand mines, are expanding rapidly.

Also expanding: controversial airborne manure spreading:

Wisconsin DNR photo

There is strong grassroots activity in Kewaunee County over the expansion of industrial-sized dairies that are wreaking havoc with local water and air quality - - here is a principal citizens' web site - - and a recent judicial decision cutting back a big Central Wisconsin dairy's ground water allotment attracted statewide attention.

As did the dairy's huge donations to Scott Walker's campaign while the news has been filled with stories about big donors allegedly funneling millions of dollars illegally to Walker's 2012 recall campaign.

It's not coincidental that so much of the recent attention focused on the disclosure of a $700,000 contribution from the out-of-state mining company allowed to write legislation that will open a swath of NW Wisconsin to open-pit iron mining - - at the expense of the water-rich Penokee range and a watershed that supports unique wild-rice harvesting.

Under this Governor, water that is in the public domain has become a major political commodity: people across the state do not like it and have strengthened their resolve to fight back.

Case in point: Bad River Ojibwe resistance to save their watershed - - which is also a fight in the public interest, broadly-defined, against private-sector water expropriation enabled by politicians obeisant to big, often far-away corporations.

And while you are digesting this information, check out this fascinating article about the differences between Minnesota and Wisconsin when it comes to sand mine oversight and the importance in Minnesota that is attached to ground water protection and citizen health:   

Wisconsin has handled the growth in the industry much differently than Minnesota, 

According to the report, the number of frac sand facilities in Wisconsin grew from seven in 2010 to 145 this year. In contrast, Minnesota has 19 active sand mines and 20 proposed facilities. 

Monitoring by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources —less than 10 percent of the state’s 140 frac sand facilities are required to monitor their air emissions — has prompted Midwest Environmental Advocates to circulate a petition that asks the state’s Natural Resources Board to conduct a health and environmental study of the state’s fastest growing industry. 

Kimberlee Wright, the group’s executive director, said citizens living near the sand mines have had their lives impacted by mining lights on 24-7, the noise from blasting, trucks and trains and people whose houses’ foundations are beginning to crumble from the repeated blasting nearby. 

“Special interests have pretty much crippled the ability of DNR staff to do their jobs,” Wright said. “Sound science is being overruled … leaving citizens very much at risk.”

Walker The Failure

This is why we call him Wrong-Way Walker:

*  The Wisconsin economy is stagnant and lags the country's modest post-recession recovery.

*  His 250,000 new-jobs' promise has failed.

*  WEDC, his ideologically-based jobs 'corporation' replacing the Department of Commerce, is in free fall. Again.

*  His budget, as was his bogus-bottom-line pattern when Milwaukee County Executive, is producing a deficit.

*  He's not out of the prosecutorial woods over secret campaigning and fund-raising that began even before he was elected Governor.

*  He has systematically disrespected and manipulated a host of groups and constituencies, including everyday people who simply expect the Governor to tell the plain truth more than 10% of the time.

*  His wounds, from bad policy to bad behavior, are ambition-fed, hubris-driven and self-inflicted.

Ask yourself: Who has spoken up for him lately, other than Chris Christie?

Oh, I forgot.Robin Vos, who explained that the $700,000 GTac mining money routed to Walker behind the scenes and exposed by the US Court of Appeals three weeks ago - - and two years after the money was secretly raised and spent in a gubernatorial election  - - was in no way pay-to-play, so okey-dokey by him.

C'mon, people. 

Walker The Failure. 

We've seen this movie before. We know how it began and how it's playing and how it ends. 

It's a re-run series, in a loop, our own unhappy, forced binge showing of Walker's  Wisconsin's "Ground Hog Day."
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Walker's Fail/Deny/Move Up Plan In High Gear

Scott Walker left behind a mess at Milwaukee County - - budget overruns, a death at the Mental Health Complex, a death at O'Donnell Park's garage and pension problems not solved and political operatives working on his staff illegally on politics just outside his office door using surreptitious equipment- - as he set his sights on the Governor's office beginning with an abortive run in 2006, then winning in 2010.

Now he's repeating that pattern: Despite a failing pledge to create 250,000 new private sector jobs after one term, Walker is testing the 2016 presidential waters with an appearance a stone's throw from early caucus state Iowa, and believes he's in a position to lecture Congress on federal fiscal issues.