Myths busted: data show transit safer than driving

In more ways than one, this Twin Cities light rail line is good for you

Though light rail and a streetcar revival have been barred, blocked, and banned in Milwaukee for nearly 20 years by GOP conservatives - - and their newest mantra is that transit is a "social service" - -  there's fresh data about transit's health-and-safety benefits to go along with economic and environmental/social advantages, too.

Read this fascinating study reported by the always-edifying Streetsblog.net:

Looking at traffic fatalities per mile traveled in the U.S., analyst Todd Litman found that riding commuter or intercity rail is about 20 times safer than driving; riding metro or light rail is about 30 times safer; and riding the bus is about 60 times safer. Factoring in pedestrians and cyclists killed in crashes with vehicles, the effect is smaller but still dramatic: the fatality rate associated with car travel is more than twice as high as the rate associate with transit. Litman’s study was recently published in the Journal of Public Transportation [PDF].

Litman notes that most transit travel involves some walking or biking, which carry a relatively high risk of traffic injury. But those risks are mostly offset by the health benefits of physical activity. Living in a place with good transit has safety benefits as well: Litman cites research showing that cities with higher transit ridership rates tend to have lower per-capita traffic fatality rates.

Using FBI data, Litman also busts the myth that transit is linked to high levels of crime...Litman shows that on balance, people riding transit are less likely to be victimized than car drivers, passengers, and owners.

H/T Angie Schmitt.

Just three pre-Kwanzaa/Grothman interviewing days left

I'm sure Congressman-elect (letting that sink in) Glenn Grothman, never short of words, will make sure Kwanzaa is "slapped down" again. Are are state reporters and national scribes on the Bachmann beat prepped, too?

WI State Sen. Tiffany wrong on wolf program defunding

Just because the feds have told Wisconsin the state cannot authorize and supervise a wolf hunt doesn't mean Wisconsin should defund its wolf programs and waive off its responsibilities, as State Sen. Tom Tiffany, (R-Hazelhurst) suggests.

That's a cop-out and a signal to potential poachers that the state will look the other way at so-called 'shoot, solve and shut up' illegal hunting.

There's more to wolf management than licensing killing their killing.

The Legislature still needs to fund wolf science as part of Wisconsin's wildlife management mission and the DNR needs to protect wolves from poaching, since the DNR regularly collects wolf-tracking data and knows a lot about wolf location.

As do experienced hunters and trappers.

The DNR needs to assertively use its wardens and statewide educational tools to discourage poaching and encourage citizen reporting of illegal wolf killing.

Step one: reconstitute an authentic advisory committee, not a one-sided pro-gun and hunter group that was most interested in big hunting quotes.

There's more to wolf management than licensing their killing.

More on Sen. Tiffany, here.

Attention science-hater Robin Vos: UW Science attracts GOP investor

Somebody tell Assembly Speaker and William Jennings Bryan Fan Club secretary-treasurer Robin Vos: to sound the pointy-head alert: a famous GOP millionaire pol is investing in UW science.

Vacationing Fox host makes NY tragedy about himself

I sure did pick the wrong time to go on vacation, thought Bill O'Reilly, so he scored some rating points by calling into his own show, telling the New York City Mayor to resign, and making himself the story.

The GOP says Obama ruined everything...

[Updated 12:03 a.m. Tuesday] And they're right: look at all the work confronting Paul Ryan, Louie Gohmert, Donald ("Big Birther") Trump, Scott Walker, Glenn Grothman and the rest of Talk Radio Nation as they take on the impossible: fixing the damage done to the country and its finances by the Kenyan Socialist-President-For-Life Barack Obama. 

Here's what's facing the righty bench as it starts to take back the country:

* A surging economy, reports The Washington Post today.

The U.S. economy grew at its fastest rate in more than a decade between the months of July through September, according to government data released Tuesday morning, marking the latest sign that a once-sluggish recovery is now running at full speed.

Note, however, that under Tea Party/GOP Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin's job growth rate lags the country's by about a third and the state ranks only 32nd nationally, the Journal Sentinel reports. So good start, Bucky: Molotov!

* Plummeting gasoline prices: 

Gas prices continue to drop on a daily basis. In fact, the price of gas has fallen for 89 consecutive days.

* Double-trouble: Low interest rates and rates of inflation:

(Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices rose marginally in September, painting a weak inflation picture that should give the Federal Reserve ample room to keep interest rates low for a while.

* Expanding demand for transit, and worse for railophobes - -  development along new urban train lines - - including just to our northwest in Minnesota, says CNN - - but thank goodness Walker and his legislative allies are already blocking Amtrak, light rail and streetcar plans, and all the resulting benefits, in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin. That's so proactive, it's retro!

* Millions more Americans now have health insurance. Moochers.

To all of which the GOP will work on by saying, 'Benghazi!'

For your climate change files; Hawaii blizzard warning

White Christmas in Hawaii? Snow falls on Big Island peaks, Blizzard Warning issued

4:00 p.m. update: The National Weather Service forecast office in Honolulu has upgraded the Blizzard Watch for the Big Island mountain peaks to a Blizzard Warning – with the potential for up to a foot of wind-driven snow at altitudes above 11,500 feet. 

Update: Milwaukee snow forecast cancelled Wednesday afternoon. On the other hand, three inches forecast for Milwaukee Wednesday.
 

WI DNR corrects its wolf status posting

I'd noted the last few days that the WI DNR had not updated the gray wolf's protected status as ordered Friday by a Federal Court.

The DNR has now updated the page. 

Attention: A Federal court decision has relisted the gray wolf as an endangered species in the western Great Lakes region, including Wisconsin.

Next step: Remake that advisory committee with fair, diverse representation. 

In Milwaukee, the eagle has landed

Friends walking their dogs yesterday on Bradford Beach managed to take this photo of a bald eagle pair dining by the water. The wilderness coming right into the city, my friends reported. "A very special holiday gift."

One-person train crews a bad idea, Wisconsin record shows

Given the upsurge in volatile oil shipping by rail, and subsequent derailments - - and that such trains routinely run through Wisconsin - - removing a set of eyes and ears from train operations as sought by trade groups is a bad idea.

Remember Weyauwega? We do.

Or Montreal?

Look no further than these fiery crashes with Wisconsin connections for a reminder about one-person crew safety concerns.

MONTREAL — Ed Burkhardt, the rail boss under fire after a fatal train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, was ordered in 1997 to comply with “strict remedial measures” to improve safety at the publicly traded Wisconsin Central Railroad he ran for more than a decade.

The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration ordered Wisconsin Central, then headed by Burkhardt, to improve its safety practices after multiple train derailments. Audit results showed the company’s accident rate for 1996 was “72-per-cent greater than all other railroads in its category,” a July 1997 news release by the U.S. authority states.

The safety compliance agreement — generally ordered by the U.S. railroad authority after a pattern of safety violations — applied to the railroad’s 4,828-kilometre network across four states. Wisconsin Central would have faced penalties ranging anywhere from fines to the closing of the railroad’s operations if it failed to honour the agreement, which called for improving employee training, submitting a track maintenance plan, and suspending the use of one-person train crews.

Burkhardt also dismissed reaction to the 1997 derailment of a handful of tanker cars carrying propane in the Wisconsin town of Appleton, as a “tempest in a teapot,” the Toronto Star reported.

“This was a very minor incident,” he told reporters. “There was never any potential danger...”

In 1996, the fiery derailment of a Wisconsin Central train in Weyauwega bolstered public support for state legislation passed in 1997 obliging rail companies to use two-person crews on trains.

WI DNR wolf website still carrying outdated information

I'd noted over the weekend that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had rushed out a news release saying it was "disappointed" that a Federal judge had halted the state's wolf hunt, but had yet to accurately reflect that new reality on its wolf hunt information webpages.

I said in my posting I'd check back Monday and see if the agency had posted the wolf hunt's correct, newly-restored protected status.

Nope. 

The gray wolf was removed from the state endangered species list in 2004 and was federally delisted on January 27, 2012.

So I will add the agency's state of denial to this posting about the ugly history of the origins of the Wisconsin wolf hunt.

The Right's opinion of DA John Chisholm is certainly situational

Righty radio today loves the Milwaukee County DA for not charging a former City of Milwaukee police officer who rousted, then killed a man after a fight - - a man with mental illness.

Talker and former federal prosecutor Jeff Wagner's take on AM 620 WTMJ? Chisholm got it right.

For years, the conservative talkers like Wagner and some of their political allies have demonized, excoriated and otherwise condemned Chisholm's view of the law, character and motives.

Additionally, like the case from beginning to end, it has been depressing but not unexpected that callers to right-wing radio programs speak in conservative talking-point rhetoric about Dontre Hamilton "making bad choices" and "not taking responsibility for his actions" as if he were not a person with mental illness rousted from a sleep and patted down. 

I'd like to see those rhetorical standards applied to the officer who chose to confront Hamilton and not, for example, call for an ambulance.

PolitiFact rates Walker lobbying disclosure promise "broken"

PolitiFact tracks Walker's broken promise to require more lobbying disclosure - - a promise that could be further from being honored in our lifetimes if Walker water-carrier and GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos follows through and downgrades the state oversight board known as the GAB - - now responsible for enforcing the state's obviously-weak lobbying laws - - into a partisan sham.

This FUBAR joins another Walker Broken Promise.

In other news, WEDC reinvents the wheel

More of our money money thrown away - - this time

on ineffective corporate recruiting by the WEDC - - the failed job-creation agency Walker created to create the impression that he was a job-creator.

Add the new findings to the earlier lost loans, continuing serial resignations and other Walker-created chaos.

State Sen. Tiffany discovers another "principle"

GOP State Sen. Tom Tiffany, (R-Hazelhurst), the chief water carrier for sweetheart iron and frac sand mine bill-writing, and also for closing forest lands with a public subsidy near the potential iron mine site - - has discovered another "principle" - - his word:

Using the law as a partisan cudgel to remove or weaken the sitting, duly-elected Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

In the middle of her term.

For spite, not cause

Tiffany's role in the GOP tag team attacking the liberal, nationally-recognized Abrahamson: undoing Wisconsin's long-standing practice that designates the long-sitting Justice as Chief Justice - - something the current group of ultra-rightist Republicans already in control of all three branches of state government cannot abide.

The once-respited Wisconsin Supreme Court has been so degraded willingly by its new conservative majority that it solicited and then accepted a draft code of ethics written by some of the same corporate interests which had supported the conservatives' campaign committees.

True story.

The worst thing about these blatant partisan and ideological power plays hidden in the language of "principle" is that GOP legislators engineering them - - with the support of their leaders and Gov. Walker - - is that none will fess up to their self-interested, shallow motives.

Glad to see more media focusing on the ageist, partisan attack on Abramahsom. I've been pushing it for weeks.

No light in Walker's Wisconsin right now

The deepest darkness settles in, and I think we all know why.

Oh, and it's the Winter Solstice, too.

WI DNR website carrying outdated wolf status

Though a Federal judge on Friday ordered gray wolves in Wisconsin returned immediately to protected status on the endangered list. the DNR's webpage describing the wolves status still says this:

"The gray wolf was removed from the state endangered species list in 2004 and was federally delisted on January 27, 2012." 

Nothing about the ruling and the ban through multiple tabs on wolf hunting informational pages put up by the DNR, either.

Please don't tell me someone at the DNR can't work on this during a weekend. It is not a 9-5 M-F operation. What do you think I'm doing right now?

And also don't tell me no one at the DNR moves that quickly. The agency went into emergency rule-making mode to implement the hunt as this history shows, and rushed out Friday with a news release that expressed its "disappointment" with the court ruling.

We'll check Monday to see what the site looks like.

UW campus in Superior agrees to end those stupid majors

Because the one thing you want at a small institution of taxpayer-supported higher learning in the Scott Walker/Robin Vos era is as much small thinking as possible.

Like dumb education, math and language programs for which the GOP's controllers at Job Creators, Inc. disdain.

The ugly history surrounding Wisconsin's now-banned wolf hunt

[Updated, Sunday, Dec. 21, 12:02 p.m., from Saturday, Dec. 20, 3:42 p.m.] A few more words about the merciful and unexpected end to the grey wolf hunt in the Upper Midwest, including Wisconsin, ordered by a Federal judge Friday.

A summary post about it, with several links, here, and an update, as the Wisconsin DNR is dragging its feet communicating the new reality to Internet readers.

How the Wisconsin wolf hunt came into being three years ago speaks volumes about the victory of politics over science over public-interest conservation policy-making.

It's an ugly history about a reality that is at odds with the state's strong environmental traditions - - a partisan, politically-prescribed failure visible elsewhere in deliberately-weakened enforcement, fresh pollution and other abuses now routine across the state's waters, land and air since Republicans and their corporate sponsors took control of the Legislature and the rest of state government in the Walker era.

Update: Add to that the DNR's disinterest in moving quickly to post fresh information about the hunt's new Federal prohibition.

Remember that the wolf-hunt was implemented by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources quickly at the Legislature's behest, and in part by the agency through its "emergency" rule-making authority that shortcut obviously important assessment of all the issues - - a ploy that allowed the controversial use of dogs against wolves in the hunt and in pre-hunt, disruptive hunting dog training sought by special hunting-and-gun interests.

Dogs in wolf-hunting - - which puts both animals in fighting positions - - is a Wisconsin-only practice among the states.

Except there was no emergency facing the DNR, as noted at the time - - except if that's how you define it to please the conservative, pro-Walker special interests that pushed for the hunt with defined by little science and few restrictions.

In fact, Cathy Stepp, the conservative, ex-GOP state senator and developer Scott Walker installed atop the DNR to implement the "chamber-of-commerce mentality" he wanted running an agency previously known for science-based policy-making, had mocked, condemned and harangued against what she claimed on a conservative blog had been the routine unfairness and "hypocrisy" underlying rule-making during the Doyle administration.

Her words:

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. Without bogging everyone down with some really boring procedure talk, suffice it to say that many of these great ideas (sarcasm) come from deep inside the agencies and tend to be reflections of that agency's culture.

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

Remember also that to move the process along, compliant legislators were found to do what Big Hunting wanted.

Chief among the willing: State Rep. Joel Kleefisch, (R-Oconomowoc), a prominent, all-season hunter and husband of Tea Party activist and GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

Joel Kleefisch was so eager for a wolf hunt that, as he was also promoting (unsuccessfully) a sandhill - -"ribeye-in-the-sky" - - crane season, he;d said he could smell the wolf meat "marinating."

His words. From the legislator who'd earlier been a journalist at WISN-TV 12 in Milwaukee.

Amazingly, or perhaps not, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel swiftly got on board, editorially, buying the DNR's line and suggesting to readers that any problems created by the quick processes could be fixed later.

Among the consequences that rewarded the wolf hunt advocates at the expense of genuine, smart, science-based wildlife conservation and policy-making:

*  Wolf killing in all three seasons which was allowed to exceed by eleven the quotas set by the DNR and its supervising body, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board.

*  The DNR's intentional scrubbing of internal opposition by remaking its wolf-advisory committee, dismissing the opponents and giving nearly all seats to hunting proponents.

Also looking back at the editorial we find a companion op-ed by attorney and wolf hunt opponent Jodi Habush Sinykin, no doubt feeling her stance validated by the Federal ruling:

For years, we have worked together to safeguard the natural resources we hold dear, striving to ensure that the state - as the guardian of the public trust - adheres to science-based, ecologically sound management principles with respect to our shared waters and lands. This ethic must be applied equally to the management of our state's wildlife species because, without it, environmental stewardship falls prey to politics, a scenario that places all of our shared resources and natural places in jeopardy of mismanagement.

Case in point is the recently enacted wolf hunting and trapping law. Rushed through the legislative process with no notice to Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife experts, no input from the state's Wolf Science Advisory Committee and no tribal consultation, the law prescribes a first hunting season for wolves. The law is drawing significant opposition from scientists, mainstream hunters and conservationists alike, owing to an excessively long, 4½-month season that allows hunting of breeding females and to the array of hunting and trapping methods viewed as out of line with traditional values of fair pursuit and public safety considerations.

I'll give the final word about all this to WI DNR Secretary Stepp, using her own words with which she ended an infamous screed before Walker put her atop the agency, against what she said had been the unwise, politically-inspired misuse of rule-making by the DNR she despised before she got her chance to run it:

It's always the fine print in these things that have the heaviest hit. 

Just another example of the democrats game plan: Change the Rules to Fit the Players.

Shout it with me, now: HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT.

Strong call to support the GAB

A very strong essay on the Journal Sentinel Sunday op-ed page by Andrea Kaminski of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin in support of retaining the non-partisan structure  of the Wisconsin Government Accountability is definitely worth a read.

Kaminski, the Executive Director of a mainstream group dedicated to honest government and fair elections, knows the history of the GAB and can spot a power play against the public interest when she sees it:

One of the best innovations in Wisconsin government was the creation of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board. Launched it 2008, it was formed by a virtually unanimous, bipartisan vote in the Legislature. The GAB was crafted in response to the caucus scandal which sent legislative leaders from both political parties to jail for campaigning on the taxpayers' dime...

We suspect the current calls for deform of the GAB are simply a partisan power grab at a time when one party has the majority needed to defang the agency's watchdog function and craft an elections agency that can be easily manipulated for partisan gain. In times of one-party rule, regardless of which party is in the majority, we need the GAB more than ever.

The campaign against the GAB - - basically a campaign despite the facts to return to the bad old days of slipperier campaigning and legislating - - is the brain child of a current partisan leader,  GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

It would be like a prominent doctor coming forward to urge cigarette smokers who'd quit to light up again.

As a younger man, Vos had worked in the office of former GOP State Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, one of the legislators who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation in the caucus scandal referenced by Kaminski that led to the creation of the GAB.

Ladwig was forced to resign from the Assembly; Vos was elected to fill, and still holds that seat.

If any legislator should understand why the GAB was founded and needs to be protected, not defanged, it's Vos.