Another swine CAFO makes WI permit bid

Large-scale animal feeding operators, (CAFOs), their pollution records and related demands for eased regulation and Wisconsin groundwater are repeatedly in the news.

One-third of these industrial-scale operators are running on expired permits, and the Department of Natural Resources, (DNR), has ignored its own pollution enforcement rules 94% of the time, state auditors found.

And that flow of news continues: DNR records indicate that a Minnesota business has filed an application to open a CAFO housing swine equal to about 8,000 animal "units" in Grant County in southwestern Wisconsin by a Minnesota-based business:

Timberwolf RE, LLC plans to construct a farrowing barn, gestation barn, gilt development unit (GDU) barn, and a composting building. The farm will have about 2848 mixed animal units consisting of 15 boars at 350 lbs., 5660 sows at 275 lbs., 640 nursery pigs at 25 lbs., and 1280 pigs at 150 lbs. All swine are 100% confined and no bedding is used. 

There will be two under barn concrete manure storage basins below the gestation and GDU barn. The farrowing barn manure will be collected in a concrete tank beneath the barn and transferred and stored in the storage basin beneath the gestation barn. The gestation barn manure storage basin will have capacity of about 6.38 million gallons and the GDU manure storage basin will have a 986,000 gallon capacity. 

The application by an Iowa swine producer for a larger capacity swine CAFO in Bayfield County in northwestern Wisconsin is still pending.

CAFO's, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, house at least 700 animals, or fewer if certain discharge standards are met, according to the DNR.

There are more than 200 CAFOs in Wisconsin; most feed dairy cattle, DNR records show.

Trump should build that wall at Mar-a-Lago

Because his resort in southern Florida

might be subject to climate change-induced floods, no?'

Climate change could lead to sea level rises that are larger, and happen more rapidly, than previously thought, according to a trio of new studies that reflect mounting concerns about the stability of polar ice.

In one case, the research suggests that previous high end projections for sea level rise by the year 2100 — a little over three feet — could be too low, substituting numbers as high as six feet at the extreme if the world continues to burn large volumes of fossil fuels throughout the century.

Foxconn's banker WEDC subject to Open Records. Or not

Some government records in Wisconsin are more open than others, so let's acknowledge that there are limitations in the Wisconsin Open Records Statute that can leave the public in the dark.

By now you've probably heard that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation which Scott Walker proposed on his third day in office - - but was bounced as its chairman in 2015 after negative audits and a blizzard of embarrassing revelations - -  is withholding from the public and legislators the details of a record-breaking contract being 'negotiated' with Foxconn:

Now that we're into week two of the cover-up, the perpetually-chaotic, process-deficient and audit-failing and out-sourcing subsidizing and scandal-burdened Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation...has announced it will not release the final contract document until after it is signed...

This is a dangerous advancement of Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' governance which he's used to block any increase in the rock-bottom minimum wage, install GOP gerrymandering, weaken environmental protections, undermine public and private-sector unions and give the ideological right ballot-box advantages through Voter ID and other intrusions of state power...

I say the contract is being 'negotiated' not because Walker raised his offer of public funding to $3 billion in a hand-written one-page scribble, but because apparently the contract was pulled off the WEDC board's agenda for signing after a flaw in the language described as a "nuclear bomb" for taxpayers was unearthed.

In case you're wondering, a majority of the WEDC is made up of private sector representatives whose expertise Walker hoped would help him create the 250,000 new jobs in four years which he's failed to attain in nearly eight, but despite it's so-called quasi-public status, the WED is still subject to Wisconsin's sunlight-promoting Open Records Statute.

In fact the WEDC lauds the statute on its website:

WISCONSIN’S PUBLIC RECORDS LAW

Wisconsin has a long, proud tradition of open government. This tradition is embodied in our State’s public records law, Wisconsin Statutes §§ 19.31-39, which states that “it is declared to be the public policy of this state that all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.” 

The purpose of the law is to provide broad, practical access to the State government. To that end, the public has a right to inspect or receive a copy of certain records maintained by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC).

The catch is that little phrase, "certain records," which creates loopholes through which billions of dollars and years of historic subsidies can escape.


After bragging on the state's "long, proud tradition of open government" on one of its web pages, another WEDC web page then devotes considerable space to all the exceptions that make it easy to withhold the Foxconn contract: 

WHAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO WISCONSIN’S OPEN RECORDS LAW?

There are numerous federal and state laws that exempt particular records from disclosure. Common exemptions include:

• Drafts, notes, preliminary documents and similar materials
• Purely personal property with no relation to the office
• Material with access limited due to copyright, patent or bequest
• Trade secrets
• Social security numbers
• Plans or specifications for state buildings
• Information obtained for law enforcement purposes, when required by federal law or regulation as a condition to receipt of state aids
• Computer programs (but the material input and the material produced as the product of a computer program is subject to the right of inspection and copying)
• Certain employee information
• Identities of certain applicants for public positions
• Identifies of law enforcement informants
• Attorney-client privilege
• Published material available for sale or at the library

DC swamp seeps to second Trump property

It's unsettling enough that our authoritarian President and Attorney General are promoting a boom in private prisons and detention centers, but it's unconscionable that he's figured out a way to personally profit from it.

Add Trump's Doral golf resort to his big DC hotel as money drop sites where donors and businesses can grab Trump's attention and boost Trump's bottom line, The Washington Post reports 

In recent years, the private prison company GEO Group has held its annual leadership conference at venues near its Boca Raton headquarters. But this year, the company moved its gathering to a Miami-area golf resort owned by President Trump. 

The event last week, during which executives and wardens gathered for four days of meetings, dinner receptions and golf outings at the luxurious 800-acre Trump National Doral, followed an intense effort by GEO Group to align itself with the president and his administration.

During last year’s election, a company subsidiary gave $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC. GEO gave an additional $250,000 to the president’s inaugural committee.... 

The company secured the administration’s first contract for an immigration detention center, a deal worth tens of millions a year. And its stock price has tripled since hitting a low last year when the Obama administration sought to phase out the use of private prisons...

WI pol will do anything for re-election publicity

Scott Walker will use anyone and anything while believing in nothing to advance his re-election campaigns and future positioning:

Walker initially didn’t tell NFL players what they should do, but he did note the right to protest.

Less than a month later, he said: "It is time for players in the NFL to stop their protests during the anthem," and he asked the players to stand during the pre-game playing of the anthem. 

Then Walker went further, saying: "For the NFL, it’s simple. Stand up, put your hand over your heart." Finally, his campaign launched an online petition and digital ad campaign to pressure the players to stop their protests.

The WI GOP right takes care of its own

Credit where

credit is due: 

"We are pleased to announce that Reince Priebus is joining Michael Best & Friedrich LLP as president and chief strategist in the firm's Washington, D.C., office. After serving the American people under the Trump administration as chief of staff, Reince will bring his wealth of knowledge and unique understanding of federal, state, and local issues to advise and counsel the firm and its clients," David Krutz, Michael Best's managing partner, said in a statement on the firm's website. 

Michael Best & Friedrich has also been Scott Walker and the GOP's legislature's go-to firm, with billions in excess of $1.3 million.

Walker's 2018 Clean Up Tour heads to court

I'd noted that Scott Walker was cleaning things up before he formally launches a bid to oversee another four years of fiscal, political, environmental and moral damage to Wisconsin.

Now there's more proof that the big announcement is imminent, as the same scandal-plagued WEDC which Walker has tasked to give away $3 billion of the people's money to Foxconn is finally, belatedly moving to recover money it squandered with Walker's encouragement on the preposterously absurd premise that an out-of-state entrepreneur would build one of the riskiest of high-end items imaginable - - private airplanes - - in Northern Wisconsin.

Why the litigation now? Because you can't run statewide with this kind of unfinished business, given the baggage he's he's already carrying.

Though is it a good strategy to call attention to what Walker and WEDC so badly botched when they are trying to convince everyone that they're the right team to risk the most taxpayer money, ever, on the Foxconn project?

I'd been writing about the Walker/WEDC/airplane fiasco for years, but credit goes to former Cap Times reporter Mike Ivey for having owned the story.
 

In GOP WI, no McCain, Flake, Corker. Just Walkerites.

Wisconsin's motto used to be "We like it here." For state GOP leaders who put power and autocracy first, the slogan is, 'we like him here.'

WI's water grabbers are at it. Again.

[Updated from 10/23/17] Wisconsin's water privateers are at it again with the Scott Walker playbook in hand.

First, some context:

*  A few weeks ago, there were the state groundwater hogs - - including donors to Gov. Walker's campaign committee - - who were reined in by a Circuit Court judge after having been enabled by GOP allies on behalf of special interests in the Legislature, Attorney General's office and atop the DNR.

*  That's the same collection of power brokers inside the government which handed Foxconn unique rights and exemptions to build the state's biggest private-sector complex without a routine environmental review and fill some wetlands without permits issued after analysis by the DNR.

*  More recently, Republican legislators proposed a sweeping removal of regulatory protections that would reduce air quality and put a million acres of state wetlands at risk for filling.

*  And they'll have a new front group to lend a hand, notes the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:

A new group that says it supports policies to protect the state’s waters appears to be a front group with ties to powerful business, agriculture and manufacturing interests. 

The Wisconsin Water Alliance, which describes itself as a diverse group of state businesses and landowners, announced its formation on Tuesday. 

The alliance says water is a “vital natural resource” that must be protected for “current and future generations of families, cities, businesses, and others.”

*  Plus - - Big Dairy won a settlement on favorable terms from the DNR, where the DNR caved on pollution oversight in exchange for doing its assigned work:

The DNR has settled a power play lawsuit on terms favorable to the special interest that brought it - - Big Dairy - - which means there will be more muck flowing from big CAFOs already running amok.

The dairy interests claimed that the DNR was over-regulating them even though state auditors had found multiple problems with DNR enforcement actions, and the term "nitrate nightmare" has shown up in recent new reporting in La Crosse.

In case you don't think the settlement was on Big Dairy's terms, read no further than the headline on the industry's reaction:

Dairy Business Association wins victory in settlement of lawsuit with state regulators 

*  This time, it's Senate Bill 387, as amended by GOP State Sen. Tom Tiffany, (R-Hazelhurst). 

He's the Wisconsin legislature's leading special-interest-water carrier-on-water - - then, on behalf of a failed open-pit iron mine that would have blown apart the Bad River watershed, for example, and more recently to bring back more mining which discharges acidic waste.

Are you surprised that the mining efforts also have the aid of a new business front group? 

The Natural Resource Development Association said in a statement that changes in current mining laws "can create a new generation of mining jobs that will help employ thousands of people across Wisconsin through not only mining, but other industries that contribute to mining operations, like construction."

Nathan Conrad, executive director of the group, is a former spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin. He declined, for now, to say who is behind the effort or providing financial support.

Which bring us to SB 387, and Tiffany's new attack for special interests on the state constitution's Public Trust ('the water belongs to everyone') Doctrine.

Here is the key text from SB 387, which also takes away important local control and decision-making and repeats a persistent piece of the Walker, top-down 'chamber-of-commerce' method of governing:

This substitute amendment exempts certain small, private ponds from the permitting requirements for removing material from the bed of a navigable body of water and from shoreland zoning laws.

Current law generally prohibits a person from removing material from the bed of a navigable body of water unless the Department of Natural Resources has issued an individual permit or a general permit authorizing the removal. 

This substitute amendment adds an exception to these permitting requirements for the removal of material from the bed of a self-contained pond that is five acres or less in size, has no public access, and is located on and entirely surrounded by land privately owned by the same person. 

Current law requires each county to zone by ordinance all shorelands in its unincorporated area. Shorelands are defined under current law as the area within certain distances from the ordinary high-water mark of navigable waters. Navigable waters are defined under current law as Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, all natural inland lakes and all streams, ponds, sloughs, flowages, and other waters, including the Wisconsin portion of boundary waters, that are navigable. 

This substitute amendment excludes from the definition of navigable waters a pond that is not hydrologically connected to a natural navigable waterway, does not discharge into a natural navigable waterway except as a result of storm events, is five acres or less in size, has no public access, and is entirely surrounded by land privately owned by the same person.  

Redefining "navigable waters." 

Throwing out "shorelines" definitions. 

Expanding dredging without oversight in the public interest. 

Weakening the law. To what end? 

This year, ponds of five acres or less. Next year, how about fifty? A little due process for the bigger lakes, eh?

Remember the State Supreme Court's warning that is out on this blog's front page about fillings here and there...

"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.

Why Vos' losing hit on fellow Republicans is so irrational

It's not that the GOP Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly

can't win a fight against the GOP Governor and holder-of-all cards Scott Walker. 

It isn't another obvious fact - - that Assembly Democrats won't stand with Vos, given that the Assembly under Vos's control voted down every amendment proposed by Democrats to the 2017-'19 state budget.

The craziest thing about Vos's meltdown into a second day isn't that his behavior and language are so ridiculously and exceptionally inflammatory.

The stupidest, most self-defeating thing about the limb on which Vos is both sitting and sawing through is that the Speaker is complaining about the process by which his own party adopted the budget when that same document's text awards and then subsidizes his Racine-area district with the unprecedentedly-huge, multi-billion-dollar Foxconn project.

With first dibs on the deal's promised hiring, payroll, business spinoff, educational and housing dividends.

And an extra bonus - -  a quarter of a billion dollars of state transportation money in obvious short supply statewide to widen and otherwise rebuild I-94 North and South, plus bigger interchanges and modernized frontage roads across Vos's own district.

This taxpayer-provided bonanza chipped into by the good people from Chippewa Falls to River Falls to Madison to Manitowoc is the Wisconsin moon and stars, the Badgerland whole nine yards, the whole ball of Bucky's wax and it will be shipped for years and years to Vos's own backyard less than 30 miles from the Illinois state line - - far, far away from the fiscally-strapped, high-unemployment counties north of Highway 29 where Republicans pitch small government and austerity, but ignore the rest of the time other than mining for donations and votes.

I said in this post's headline that Vos's hit on his fellow Republicans was irrational and a loser. That's because he's positioned himself against two tenets of Politics 101:

You're losing if you're explaining, and you're losing if you're arguing process against substance. Basically, no one wants to hear any of it.

Vos has worked as a legislative aide, held an Assembly seat for twelve years, and served ten years before that on the Racine County Board of Supervisors.

He's also been state ALEC chairman.

So he's no rookie.

How  much deeper into a hole of his own making can one obtuse, unaware,  ungrateful but veteran state legislator and leader keep digging?

Walker's '18 campaign baggage getting heavier

[Updated from 10/21/17] Watching WI GOP Gov. and faithful Trump servant Scott Walker withhold his formal re-election campaign announcement reminds me of a harried Dad at the airport baggage carousel.

Has anyone seen Ned's suitcase? Who has Molly's backpack? Can grandpa's van carry everything?

Scott Walker, campaigner-and-baggage-handler-in-chief.

*  Sunday update: My goodness: GOP Assembly Speaker suffering from a bad breakup Robin Vos has escalated his fight with Walker over the already-signed budget, calling other GOP legislators "terrorists" who made last-minute deals with Walker.

Walker's beloved Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment about not speaking ill of other Republicans has just expired in Wisconsin.

*  Are you aware Ron Johnson & friends just voted to kill the deductibility of state and local taxes - - including property taxes - - from taxable federal income? You bet Walker and his consultants are trying to figure out how to spin it. More precisely, away from it.

Those are hugely important deductions for people in high-tax states like Wisconsin, but Trump needs to gather additional revenues to pay for bigger, long-sought giant tax cuts for the rich, leaving politicians like Walker holding the bag.

Walker may bob, weave and brag his way around this campaign land mine with word salad about the standard deduction - - which people who itemize don't take anyway.

And he'll remind people that he has modestly cut taxes for average filers (will he also feature his tax cuts that favored high-earners and businesses?) to the tune of a cup of coffee a week or a Happy Meal every month, but I don't think that's going to make people forget they won't be able to deduct their property and state tax payments if Trump and fellow WI GOP right-winger Sen. Ron Johnson prevail on behalf of the Koch & Friends who are making the demands.   

*  And it will be interesting to see how Walker explains to voters, especially seniors and working families who are pitching in for their elderly relatives' care that his pals Trump, Johnson and leading Congressional fiscal ideologue Paul Ryan want to slash billions from the Medicare and Medicaid programs which Trump pledged during the presidential campaign not to cut - - a campaign and candidacy which Walker supported:

Scott Walker Throws Support Behind Donald Trump in Convention Speech

But let's not suggest that all of Walker's campaign trail burdens are Trump's doing. 

Walker is the one whose administration has failed to stem the spread of chronic wasting disease in the state deer herd, and whose corporate servitude has led to an ever-expanding number of bills, laws, one-sided settlements and special favors to businesses that are filling wetlands and giving polluters a green light.

I don't think Walker can campaign in rural Wisconsin this fall on the strength of his ritual deer-stand photo and, then come springtime, his fishing season opener appearance as state natural resources are constantly on his chopping block.

Wisconsin deer stands and favorite streams these days are accessed on the second-worst roads in the nation which have deteriorated on Walker's watch. 

Including:

In Small Wisconsin Towns, paved roads return to gravel

While it’s unclear how many towns have turned old blacktop back to gravel, Wisconsin’s worsening road conditions are well-documented. A recent state audit found about 14 percent of local paved roads in Jackson County — home to Northfield and Garfield — were in poor or very poor condition. In Douglas County — where Lakeside is located — that figure jumped to about 23 percent.

Conditions on state highways have also been getting worse in just the past five years, according to the audit, and the proportion of Wisconsin highways in good condition is considerably lower than in other Midwestern states. 

*  Walker also has to sell taxpayers statewide on the notion that the Foxconn deal isn't just a $3.74 billion public subsidy to a foreign-based company pledging to build and hire in the southeast corner of the state.

And to make voters forget that he's failed after nearly eight years in office to create the 250,000 new jobs he'd said would be a snap after just one, four-year term, as was reported earlier this year: 

The total number of jobs created since Walker took office is 185,208, or 64,792 short of Walker's goal of 250,000.

And that last year, Wisconsin showed little growth and had a net loss in manufacturing jobs, according to data released in May: 

Wisconsin lost manufacturing jobs in 2016, the first year that's happened since the Great Recession.

Detailed job numbers released Friday afternoon by the state Department of Workforce Development show Wisconsin lost 3,776 manufacturing jobs.

The job losses came at a time when Wisconsin was spending nearly $300 million a year to cut manufacturers’ income and corporate taxes in an effort to grow the state’s economy.

The same set of job numbers also showed overall hiring slowed in 2016 as the state added just 11,590 private sector jobs.

* Business startups haven't been going well, either. Actually, the Walker record is horrible:

...you won't find him tweeting about this data-driven, 50-state comparative business ranking showing Wisconsin frozen in the 50th spot - - again - - in the always-significant business category: entrepreneurial, start-up activity. 

WISCONSIN ONCE AGAIN RANKS LAST IN KAUFFMAN STARTUP ACTIVITY INDEX

Update - - Now last in the Kauffman survey for the third year in a row.

And we're approaching day five six of a cover-up by Walker and his always-troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation of just what was discovered at the 11th hour in the proposed giveaway agreement with Foxconn - - a summary post about the deal with dozens of links is here - - that is holding up contract signatures.

*  While Foxconn is supposed to be built in GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' SE Wisconsin district, and he won again in the budget when his beloved quarter-billion I-94 North-South expansion project shoved other ongoing highway projects to the shoulder when it was rolled into the Foxconn bill, too, it might take a while for the Speaker to get out on the hustings and sell Walker to the GOP base:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos vented frustration to Gov. Scott Walker in text messages this month over a budget deal Walker cut with Senate conservatives.

“I won’t forget this,” the Rochester Republican texted the GOP governor after he announced his veto plans...

The messages underscore the depth of animosity between two of the state’s leading Republicans and come after protracted budget negotiations.

Add party disunity to Walker's expanding campaign-trail load, even though last year he was said to be a party unifier.

Ironies abound: Remember that Walker likes to say that Wisconsin is open for business, but maybe his rush to bring in Foxconn with a one-page super-maximum hand-written offer was a little too open.

Now, where's that baggage cart? Get an extra, as I don't think Vos is available to help. 

 

Popcorn King Vos having personal snap, crackle, pop

[10/23/17 update: It's a learning Monday, as Wisconsin GOP leaders showed us how to a) set a political career on fire and undermine GOP one-party advantages, b) create greater havoc with a smarmy non-apology apology, and c) trigger repeated volleys from a GOP circular firing squad. 

We learned this and more when Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told 620 WTMJ-AM Monday morning that, yes, he did on Sunday very publicly call three Wisconsin State Senators of his own party "terrorists" because they held the budget process hostage against his definition of tradition and procedure, and while he could have used a more "artful" term than "terrorists," he didn't mean to imply the Senators were violent. Vos's targets are unhappy.

GOP Senate leaders favorite term of art today is "beyond," calling Vos's language "beyond inappropriate" and "beyond outrageous."]

----------------
Breakfast with Robin Vos has taken a true-to-life Snap, Crackle and Pop turn.

And Walker is telling voters the state is going in the right direction?

Vos is having the snap, the party the crackle, and the Walker/Vos partnership goes pop.

I'd noted WI GOP Assembly Speaker and Burlington popcorn maker Robin Vos's continued sulk 

after not getting 100% of his way in the budget and home-court Foxconn siting, and had suggested that his tiff with over budget process with Walker would be a drag on the GOP ticket, but, holy moly - -  Vos's disproportionate weirdness is really troubling.

Robin Vos: GOP senators who struck budget deal with Scott Walker are "terrorists"

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is still smarting from last month’s rocky resolution to the state budget debate, calling three Republican senators who struck a deal with Gov. Scott Walker to support the budget “terrorists.”

“That’s what they are,” Vos said in a WISN-TV interview that aired Sunday. “You don’t hold somebody hostage for your own personal needs.”

Yipes.

With Zoo Interchange unfinished & I-94 E/W widening dead...

Consider that today's I-94 congestion west of Milwaukee has been made worse because a passenger rail option like this - - 
 
with construction funding in hand could have opened in 2006, but was killed by the suburban and and anti-urban GOP right, as this 2008 article explains: 

A starter light rail system was recommended for Milwaukee County in a major state-funded regional transportation study in the 1990s that had considerable public and private sector support.

But conservative AM talk radio and opposition in Waukesha County blocked further study of light rail for Milwaukee, even though $241 million in federal funds was set aside specifically for transit improvements in Milwaukee County.

Had plans unfolded on schedule, the starter light rail, with an estimated 21,000 riders on weekdays, would have opened in 2006 and run about 10 miles from the Third Ward to Summerfest, downtown, Miller Park, the Milwaukee County Zoo and the County Grounds.

Talk about a missed opportunity.

Scott Walker, clean-up on aisle '18

That the GOP/Walker-led WI government is maneuvering, spinning or burying some major public policy problems suggests that Walker's 2018 re-election announcement is imminent.

Call it the pre-campaign de-cluttering. Might work. Might not, but what's partisan and self-preserving will take precedence over the public interest when Walker and his allies are involved.

*  The DNR has settled a power play lawsuit on terms favorable to the special interest that brought it - - Big Dairy - - which means there will be more muck flowing from big CAFOs already running amok.

The dairy interests claimed that the DNR was over-regulating them even though state auditors had found multiple problems with DNR enforcement actions, and the term "nitrate nightmare" has shown up in recent new reporting in La Crosse.

In case you don't think the settlement was on Big Dairy's terms, read no further than the headline on the industry's reaction:

Dairy Business Association wins victory in settlement of lawsuit with state regulators

Though environmental organizations had petitioned to intervene in the litigation, so this may not be the end of the story.

*  Work continues behind the scenes to fix the multi-billion tax dollar and water rights giveaway contract the WEDC has delayed signing with Foxconn, and to date, WEDC has managed the story by a) keeping secret what has been FUBAR, and b) not using, so far as I can see, words which can never again be associated with Walker: "drafting error."

Though "cover up" does cover it.

*  And while the state touts awarding municipalities some federal funds for lead removal, I do not see any new state dollars to supplement already-insufficient state appropriations to address this critical public health activity in Walker's 2017-'19 state budget.

Final thought.

These issues are still rolls of the dice for Team Walker.

A pollution event at a big Wisconsin dairy operation or fresh findings of lead contamination in drinking water systems, given what is already known from Flint and other cities' experiences, won't make for great campaign optics.

And if the Foxconn contract 'fix' ever surfaces, a drafting error due to simple human or computing incompetencies would actually look better than someone in the Walker machine having inserted an unspeakably sour concession at public expense in what was already the sweetest deal for a business in state history.

Stay tuned.

More media focus on voter suppression WI knows too well

Props to Mother Jones for informing a national audience that Scott Walker's Voter ID law suppressed the 2016 election day turnout in Wisconsin and helped tip the outcome to Donald Trump. 

The state, which ranked second in the nation in voter participation in 2008 and 2012, saw its lowest turnout since 2000. More than half the state’s decline in turnout occurred in Milwaukee, which Clinton carried by a 77-18 margin, but where almost 41,000 fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012...This is where Clinton lost the state and, with it, the larger narrative about the election.  

Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee’s election director, believes that the voter ID law and other changes passed by the Republican Legislature contributed significantly to lower turnout...

“I would estimate that 25 to 35 percent of the 41,000 decrease in voters, or somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 voters, likely did not vote due to the photo ID requirement,” he said later. “It is very probable that between the photo ID law and the changes to voter registration, enough people were prevented from voting to have changed the outcome of the presidential election in Wisconsin.”

But it is frustrating and galling to point out that this is not a new story.

It is frustrating and galling to point out that Wisconsin has known all too well the consequences of Walker and his allies contorted into law were predictable.

So frustrating and galling because the motives behind the voter suppressionistic tactics referenced by Mother Jones and Milwaukee election director Albrecht referenced were obvious to anyone who was paying attention when Republicans took control of the state after the November, 2010 elections.

I wrote at the time: 

Scott Fitzgerald wants voter photo ID because he knows there has been phantom voting by people using multiple ballots.

How does he know this?

The fortune teller who brings his weekly delivery of magic beans heard it from a unicorn - - and that's how legislation will be written in the new Legislature.

The newspaper finds his claim false.

Will this dissuade Fitzgerald from codifying voter photo ID, banning same-day registration and other voting suppression schemes designed to tamp down turnout in Democratic student and low-income wards?

Not a chance. Like the Amtrak like from Milwaukee to Madison that Scott Walker killed purportedly over the annual operating costs, voter photo ID and the related legislation is not about facts.

It's all about partisan advantage and power politics.

Opponents of Walker's Voter ID and the partisan mythology on which it was purportedly based tried over the years to frame the law as voter suppression; I find the phrase showing up 98 times on my blog, as this 2016 example again notes: 

National media reports show Wisconsin GOP led voting suppression 

[Updated from 3:26 p.m., 10/26] State officials ordered by federal judge to find ID-seekers improperly turned away at DMV offices; federal election oversight sought. 

[Updated from 5:30 p.m., 10/25] Our intentionally-corrupted state with Scott Walker at the helm is leading the news today. 

From The New York Times: 

And today, separately from a story spreading across the Internet originating with discoveries made by One Wisconsin Institute and published in The Nation: 

Walker policies and allies are throughout these stories.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Updated with past articles: 

*  Behind closed doors, Republicans were giddy over voter ID's partisan opportunities. 

*  In a separate interview, Glenn Grothman, a former Wisconsin GOP state senator promoted to the US Congress said the voter ID law would help a Republican presidential candidate win Wisconsin this November. 

And Wisconsin Republicans and their allies have acknowledged using suppressionist laws and tactics for partisan benefit: 

Deep in a trove of leaked documents made public this week was the latest example of Republican candor over voter ID laws — this time in Wisconsin. 

There, as a tight race for election to the state’s Supreme Court came to a close in April 2011, conservative leaders wondered aloud how to respond should Justice David Prosser Jr. — a reliable opponent of legal challenges to the agenda of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican — go down in defeat. 

A senior vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, Steve Baas, had a thought. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote in an email on April 6 to conservative strategists. “I obviously think we should.”

MADISON, Wis. — It seemed a clear victory for voting rights advocates in July when a federal court invalidated much of Wisconsin’s restrictive elections law, concluding that it discriminated against minorities by requiring voters to produce photo ID cards that blacks and Latinos too often lack. The remedy was straightforward: Henceforth, the state was to “promptly issue a credential valid as a voting ID to any person” who applied for one. 

But this month when Treasure Collins visited one of the Wisconsin motor vehicle offices that issue IDs, she found something entirely different.

A City Clerk Opposed an Early-Voting Site at UW–Green Bay Because ‘Students Lean More Toward the Democrats’