Even for our one-note, smarts'-challenged RoJo, this is hitting bottom:
Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says that the right to own high-capacity ammunitions magazines like the 100-round drum that was used to kill at least a dozen people in Colorado last week is a “basic freedom” that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
He says he's a busy guy, but absentee voting is set up for busy people. The first prerequisite is: you gotta give a hoot.
New Hovde bumper-sticker opportunity: Voting is for little people.
I've worked as the chief staffer, separately, to the elected Mayors of Madison and Milwaukee, and I cannot imagine Madison Mayor Paul Soglin or Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist responding favorably to the letter about water sale policy and government procedures sent to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by Dan Duchniak, the non-elected general manager of Waukesha's Water Utility.
Remember that the vote on the Milwaukee Common Council to enunciate a city water sales policy was 14-0, with one absent.
Here's a link to the pdf of the letter.
Resource professor Al Gedicks lays out the facts:
So far, the industry has not been able to find a single example where they have mined without polluting water, including the recently closed (1997) Flambeau copper sulfide mine in Ladysmith. This mine is the subject of a Clean Water Act lawsuit for discharging pollutants into the Flambeau River far in excess of applicable water quality standards.
Wisconsin would do well to recognize that the existing level of protection for our precious water, wildlife and community health was made possible by an engaged citizen and tribal base that has insisted on high quality laws and their implementation.
Leaving decisions about mining regulation in the hands of mining industry experts, as [Gov. Scott] Walker has proposed, can only lead to the contamination and cleanup costs that the [National Wildlife Federation] study warns us may occur if we allow our laws to be weakened.
Don't expect Wisconsin citizens and tribes to allow this to happen without a fight.
Gov. Walker came into office so hell-bent on tackling the state's deficit that he wrapped a budget-repair [Sic] bill around more consequential cuts to collective bargaining.
All in the name of setting the state on course to eliminate red ink and turn loose the job-creators, or so he said.
But within a few days earlier month, we've seen two developments that give the lie to all the deficit-reduction/job-creation rhetoric.
1. We learn that Walker's new, private sector-focused Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., (the so-called state-created corporation that replace the former Department of Commerce) has run up a $14 million deficit. After running through a huge gob of a two-year, $200 million public budget that was supposed to bring development and jobs to a state open for business.
Remember the hoopla over the Walker's new WEDC - - hoopla created by the WEDC itself?
[WEDC CEO Paul] Jadin added that budget’s bold action to address its structural deficit and embark on a pro-growth future has gotten the attention of employers.2. And speaking of job creation, how's that going, Governor Scott ("250,000-new-private sector jobs") Walker?
“Surveys of Wisconsin employers and CEOs nationwide prove that job creators are taking notice of Governor Walker’s call that Wisconsin is open for business,” Jadin said. “Thanks to the Governor and the legislators who supported the budget, the WEDC stands prepared to assist businesses looking to create high quality jobs for Wisconsin workers.”
Based on the monthly estimates for 2012 and more accurate data from 2011, Wisconsin has added 45,315 jobs since Walker took office. With that pace, 120,804 jobs will be created by 2015, less than half what Walker promised.And this isn't the first time numbers have been produced showing Walker's promise likely landing somewhere in the 50% range.
I'll post this British analysis over at my Purple Wisconsin blog, where the anonymous commenters are saying more laws will not deter gun violence in the US, where open access to firearms is our right:
Over 9,000 Murders by Gun in US; 39 in UK...
Number of Murders, United States, 2009: 15,241
Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2009: 9,146
Number of Murders, Britain, 2008*: 648
(Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,240 US murders)
Number of Murders by[pdf] firearms, Britain, 2008* 39
(equivalent to 195 US murders)
*The Home office reported murder statistics in the UK for the 12 months to March 2009, but these are 12-month figures).
For more on murder by firearms in Britain, see the BBC.
Every American student who's taken a civic class has heard US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s admonition that free speech under the US Constitution doesn't give you the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater.
So the right to bear arms under the 2nd amendment - - written at a time when citizen militias might be needed to fend off the British or a foreign power intent on undermining the new Republic - - shouldn't mean someone has the right to barge into a crowded theater, open fire and slaughter people with powerful guns and ammunition obtained legally.
Yet we have allowed the NRA and allied wealthy conservative organizations with political and electoral agendas to distort legitimate gun ownership for hunting purposes into gun ownership without effective controls that jeopardizes public safety.
Bill Moyers has an eloquent essay about this, here.
The proof is the disproportionate share of the industrialized world's gun violence that afflicts the US, year-in and year-out.
These massacres bring concern for victims, but no remedial controls: the Aurora shootings come but five years after a higher death toll in a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and Colorado did not toughen its gun laws after the Columbine school killings not far from Aurora.
Few political figures in either party will take on the NRA. We've got bi-partisan political cowardice, and the result is gun access for lunatics.
We need a mass movement along the lines of Occupy Wall Street to get things started towards reasonable controls on gun ownership, or we're only closing in on the next Aurora, let alone the less-publicized daily gun mayhem happening across the country.
Data released for June showed Wisconsin losing another 11,700 private sector jobs, along with more than a thousand public sector jobs, too.
So how far behind is Walker on that infamous 250,000-new-private-sector-jobs-pledge that he threw out repeatedly during the 2010 campaign - - his website's posting, here - - and repeated in his recall bid?
Here's how CBS News calculates it:
Based on the monthly estimates for 2012 and more accurate data from 2011, Wisconsin has added 45,315 jobs since Walker took office. With that pace, 120,804 jobs will be created by 2015, less than half what Walker promised.And this is not the first time number-crunchers found Walker would fall short of his promise.
The Department of Revenue report released Friday predicts that by 2014, the state will have added only 136,000 jobs in the private sector compared with 2010. The job growth estimate was down 43,000 from the department's previous report released in June.
Hat's off to a fearless commentator with the guts to take on the NRA after the Aurora massacre:
Bill Moyers: NRA has turned the 2nd Amendment ‘into a cruel and deadly hoax’
I found this New York Times piece worth a read:
So far 2012 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. But does this mean that we’ve reached a threshold — a tipping point that signals a climate disaster?Saturday evening update:
For those warning of global warming, it would be tempting to say so. The problem is, no one knows if there is a point at which a climate system shifts abruptly. But some scientists are now bringing mathematical rigor to the tipping-point argument. Their findings give us fresh cause to worry that sudden changes are in our future.
It's possible that this summer is just a fluke; that the heat waves and drought that are wreaking havoc for farmers and others are an anomaly, and that the weather will return to "normal" next summer or maybe the summer after that. That it's just summer and it's hot, and that this really isn't part of a trend that climate scientists have been predicting.
But that's not the way to bet.
The science says climate change is happening now, not just in computer models or overactive imaginations but in the real world. From rising sea levels to droughts to tornadoes and wildfires, there is a growing list of anomalous events that indicate climate change is already upon us. And the safe bet is to start acting now to mitigate the human effect on climate change at the international, national and local levels.
Is the DNR suggesting along with its announced, arbitrary 30-day deadline that the Town of Waukesha must affirm its inclusion in the City of Waukesha's diversion application - - without a hearing?
Is this the way a Great Lakes diversion application gets produced: one city can add other smaller municipalities without their approval as the application is being written, and without demonstrating a need for diverted water according to the Compact's needs' standards - - but then have the smaller municipalities slide into the application?
Is there one ranking person in the Walker administration, is there one administrator in his DNR who, at the end of the day goes home, and in the privacy of a surveillance-free sealed room will think and write and lead on the devastating spring and summer decimating Wisconsin agriculture from a perspective free of the Americans for Prosperity, and ask:
* What if the 99% of experts are right, and climate change is real, predictable and underway?
* What if this year portends the new normal?
* What are my colleagues and I doing to educate the public?
* Are we place-holders or are we planners?
* Will I speak out?
The right and Mitt Romney's attacks on the authority of the EPA to regulate pollution in the public interest are not being bought by the courts.
Thank goodness.
How many times do we have to go through this crazy cycle?
The DNR gives the Town 30 days to decide if it is in or out of the City of Waukesha's Lake Michigan diversion plan under the rules of the Great Lakes Compact.
This raises a lot of questions about the DNR, its procedures, and what the Great Lakes Council of Governors will think if and when it gets this application which needs its unanimous consent to move forward.
And I wonder if the City will pick up the Town' legal, financial, conservation implementation and infrastructure obligations for Great Lakes Compact and state law compliance, or a pro-rata share of a water and policy deal with Milwaukee, should it arise.
The town and city have a history of border and water disagreements: an olive branch from the city could be a regional precedent-setter.
Milwaukee has asked the DNR to resolve a dispute with Waukesha over whether diverted Lake Michigan water can be distributed beyond Waukesha's city boundaries.
Two points:
Because the DNR needs to validate with public procedures Waukesha's application for water before sending it to the seven other Great Lakes states for review - - and before the completion and vetting of an Environmental Impact Statement with public comment phases, too - - such a purely administrative determination now by the DNR before it completes its own review could signal, fatally, to the other states, that Waukesha's application is being given cart-before-the-horse, make-it-up-as-you-go-along treatment by Wisconsin regulators.
Also: the DNR, Waukesha, Milwaukee, the four smaller municipalities included in the application by Waukesha without their prior approval would not be in this bizarre position if the DNR had written and completed, as mandated by state law, all the administrative rules that were supposed to have been in place to guide the diversion application in Wisconsin.
Basically, all parties are in choppy, uncharted waters, thanks to timid political management of the DNR by two administrations - - Doyle and Walker's.
#bipartisan, four-year fail.
All of which suggest weakness here to the other states as this precedent-setting application chugs along.
Little wonder that our most successful cities offer the widest array of transportation options.
Keep in mind that our current legislature killed regional transit authorities, and that Waukesha politicians and their talk radio spokespersons eliminated Milwaukee-based light rail, a choice popular with young users.
Leadership vacuum in the state now open to "extreme" drought.
Where is the coordinated response bringing together state agencies, farmers, business and academics to deal with drought's long and short-term issues?
I recently wrote that the right loved its entitlements, regardless of its hypocrisy and political-correctness double standards.
Well, here's more delicious self-parody:
Madison - U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde said he'll
drop tobacco subsidies paid by federal taxpayers to his real-estate firm
after being contacted about them by reporters.
Hovde, a multimillionaire with real-estate and investment holdings,
has sharply attacked farm subsidies going to big businesses as part of a
self-funded U.S. Senate bid built around cutting government spending
and deficit.
But meanwhile, Hovde's Madison real-estate firm has been
collecting about $2,700 a year in subsidies meant for tobacco farmers.
That's not the only area where Hovde Realty Inc. has sought to gain
subsidies or tax benefits normally going to farmers. In 2006, the Hovde
family's real estate and development firm settled for $22,500 a lawsuit
by the city of Madison that charged Hovde Realty with improperly
classifying some of its holdings as farmland to lower its property
taxes.
More bad economic news on the jobs front:
...an overall decrease of 13,200 total non-farm jobs last month in Wisconsin...Walker's 250,000 new jobs pledge looks absurd.
