Lag noted in USDA dairy failure data reporting

An industry publication points to an inherent disparity in federal government dairy data:

Licensed U.S. Dairy Farms Dropped 8.8% Last Year

Keep in mind that these are annual averages. For example, the average number of dairy farms listed by USDA for Wisconsin is 7,720 in 2019. Wisconsin actually reached that level in about June of last year. By January, 2020, there were just 7,292 farms licensed to sell milk in Wisconsin, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service and another 34 left the business by February 1.

A separate data set shows the Wisconsin had 12,467 dairy farms at the end of 2010 - - 


- - which was Democrat Jim Doyle's last year in office before Walker and his pro-CAFO-expansionist/do-nothing party launched an eight-year consolidation of power. 

Wisconsin's do-little GOP-run legislature to take rest of the year off

Vacation excitation!

With the exception of a few more Senate floor days in March, and maybe some veto override voting in the spring, the GOP-led Wisconsin legislature is about to turn away from floor periods to its first love - - itself - - and spend the rest of 2020 running for re-election.

Not the toughest duty, given the self-preserving gerrymandering they codified in 2012, along with a suppressionist voter ID law also aimed at further embedding the majorities they cooked up..

Among the issues which Republicans are OK leaving principally or totally on the sidelines: assistance for the homeless and guarantees that rape kits will be quickly tested for evidence.

GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald looks for a promotion  to the Congress in November.

In 2020 balloting, take every opportunity to cast a Trump protest vote

Given Trump's even more blatant bulldozing of the Constitution, common sense and the law, it's important for Wisconsinites in 2020 to cast protest votes where possible that reject Trumpism while also backing high-quality progressive alternatives on the ballot.

Some examples, with context.

* It's important to remember that far-right incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly only has that seat and the power that comes with it because Scott Walker - - Trump's 2020 re-election co-chair - - put Kelly there in 2016:

Gov. Scott Walker appointed conservative attorney Dan Kelly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday, choosing a lawyer who has helped defend some of the governor’s most contentious proposals and believes same-sex marriage robs the institution of meaning and affirmative action is akin to slavery....

Kelly also successfully defended Wisconsin Republicans’ 2011 legislative redistricting plan in a federal lawsuit alleging the new maps denied voters their rights. 

And while he had no judicial experience when Walker handed Kelly the seat, Karofsky is a sitting judge and is a sitting judge who is eminently qualified for the high court:

Karofsky, supported by liberals, won a seat on the Dane County Circuit Court in 2017 and has also served as assistant and deputy district attorney in the Dane County District Attorney’s Office from 1992 to 2001. She has also held two posts in the state Department of Justice, as violence against women prosecutor and as head of the Office of Crime Victim Services.

Karofsky cites a number of factors she said make her an ideal Supreme Court candidate, including her energy and experience as a trial court judge, which she said puts her in a position to see the impact of the law on real people.

“You see how the law isn’t some esoteric exercise when you’ve been the victim of a crime, or it’s your property that’s being distributed through a divorce, or if you’re the person who is being evicted,” Karofsky said.

* Ditto for WI State GOP Senator Tom Tiffany and his service as Trump water-carrier, in a May special election in Northern Wisconsin:

Sen. Tom Tiffany introduces state resolution urging lawmakers to oppose articles of impeachment against Trump

And as just as Supreme Court candidate Karofsky offers a meritorious alternative to a right-wing opponent, voters in the congressional special election have a high-quality choice for whom to cast a ballot:

Democratic nominee Tricia Zunker, a Ho-Chunk Supreme Court justice who is also president of the Wausau School Board, won easily over Lawrence Dale, who did little to campaign for the nomination.... 

If elected, she would be Wisconsin's first Native American representative, and only the third Native American congresswoman in the nation's history.  

Zunker said she will advocate for rural Wisconsin, and said a message of standing up for farmers, advocating for affordable health care and lowering prescription drug costs are messages that can resonate across party lines.

*  The same dynamic will present itself up and down 2020 ballots, whether it's the bid by GOP Senate Majority and toadying Trump apologist Scott Fitzgerald to become outgoing Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner's replacement, or incumbent, on-the-ballot GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, seen here - - 

- - ready to welcome Trump to Milwaukee for another cult rally. 

Vos has been an enthusiastic and influential Wisconsin cog in the Trump machine prior to the 2016 general election:

Vos 'Proud' To Back Trump, Says He'll Help Assembly Republican

Vos, who oversees the Assembly campaigns of Republicans throughout Wisconsin, said Trump is benefiting candidates in competitive races.

"We see that he is bringing out an awful lot of folks who in the past either hadn't been involved in politics or perhaps didn't think that they had a home in the Republican Party," Vos said. 

The more that Trump's Wisconsin acolytes line up with their lawless, self-enriching leader, the more reason voters have to make them own that allegiance.

And to replace them with Democrats fully dedicated to democracy and the public interest.

Another day, another dose of WI GOP mental murkiness

Let's memorialize these comments by the Wisconsin Senate's GOP Majority Leader just posted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Scott Fitzgerald OK with Trump's clemency for Rob Blagojevich:

"It’s pretty clear that the president has these powers and I trust that the president is using them in a way that he sees fit," Fitzgerald told reporters.

Few thinking people since Trump was sworn in would dare string together the words 'president...powers...trust.'  

And, 'in a way that he sees fit.'

Seriously, what does that mean?

The Wisconsin GOP Senate Majority Leader's more extensive and thoughtless easy pass for Trump didn't exactly make a dim bulb shine brightly:

"It didn’t make much sense to me," Fitzgerald said. "I heard the president’s explanation and then it kind of made more sense. It’s more about the length of sentencing and who’s involved in that sentence, which kind of dovetailed from the whole discussion on others that have had greater sentences assigned after they’re convicted."

This loopiness could have been condensed into a shorter I am running to serve Trump completely - - which, as they say, kind of dovetails into the whole discussion about who's involved and how it makes more sense.

Remember, this is a candidate for Congress talking.

WI GOP Legislature to pass its 'shoot-the-taxpayer-in-the-foot' plan

Since it's our money, the common air we breathe and constitutionally protected waters that we can by right access and enjoy, you can say that Wisconsin's GOP legislators main aim as floor sessions are rushed to a close is to shoot the taxpayer in the foot.

Shorter lede: It's more of the New Wisconsin Idea [Sic].

So watch as GOP leaders approve through their gerrymandered imperiousness a vast expansion of incarceration without appropriating a dime to pay for it while simultaneously allocating surplus funds in ways that will fuel their party's re-election campaigns' talking points.

And these same eager captives of big corporate agriculture - - with no real input except from those special interests - - are scurrying to allow industrial-scale ag operations which already hog the groundwater and are allowed to let their contaminants pollute what water remains to oversee their own weakened de-regulation.

Which Walker gift-wrapped for them over the last decade.

These are among the fresh tenets of Life in Bizarro Wisconsin which are in bills like this one fast-tracked by powerful GOP caucus leaders - - 

Assembly Bill 805 would require the Department of Corrections to recommend revoking extended supervision, probation and parole for those who are charged with committing felonies or violent misdemeanors while on court supervision. That would lead to judges sending more of those offenders back to prison while their new cases moved through the courts. That bill is expected to drive up prison costs by hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming years....any spike in the prison population could force the state to build a new correctional institution at a cost of about $350 million, a figure that does not include staffing or operational costs.

- - whose over-arching power play scheme



since their purportedly untouchable Governor Walker was bounced by voters 15 months ago was neutralizing Democrat Tony Evers because he beat Walker fair and square.

Karofsky vs. Kelly for WI Sup. Ct. has added importance

There are several reasons why the April 7th runoff election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is more than just a battle between Tuesday's first-place finisher Daniel Kelly - - the conservative incumbent backed by Republicans - - and runner-up Dane County District Court Judge Jill Karofsky, favored by Democrats.

1. Kelly was appointed to fill a vacant seat by then-Governor Walker in 2016, so will carry Walker baggage through election day. Democrats and others who had their fill of Walker, his policies and ideological donors can further dismantle his legacy by turning out a justice who owes his incumbency to the defeated GOP Governor.

2. The Tuesday voting in what is technically a non-partisan contest was split evenly between the conservative, GOP-aligned Kelly and the two more liberal, Democratic-aligned candidates - - Karofsky and Ed Fallone, a Marquette University Law School Professor and the primary's third-place finisher.

That said, Karofsky has a possible advantage, if she can exploit it: the April general election also includes the Democratic presidential primary ballot, which means that extremely competitive contest should balloon Democratic turnout - - and Karofsky's potential total, too. 

No wonder the Walkerites tried - - unsuccessfully - - to change the election calendar.

3. All of which means Republicans and conservatives will counter with massive fund-raising and ad buys to back Kelly and demonize Karofsky, just like the heavy, right-wing spending in the 2019 Supreme Court race which helped Justice Brian Hagedorn, another Scott Walker appointee, secure a close win.

Ads by and for Kelly will certainly be tougher than his soft, let-me-define-myself family-friendly TV spots commercials which served to introduce him to voters in what is his first campaign.

4. So the April, Karofsky-Kelly contest becomes a test of both Democratic Party organizing, impact and turnout statewide, as well as GOP/conservative commitments in dollars and energy for Kelly - - and for rescuing Walker's reputation from absorbing another hit.

Bottom line - - a Karofsky win could bode well for Democrats retaking the state from Republicans, and Trump, in November.

That context is not of her making; it's a matter of calendars and history.

Annexation to serve high-end golf course gets WI Supreme Court blessing

Attention, Wisconsin town boards and homeowners wedded to the quaint notion of local and literal hometown control:

Apparently all you need to grab hundreds of acres of primo real estate for high-end private development inside another municipality is a business-compliant State Department of Administration that rubber-stamps annexation applications and 650 feet of shared border, says the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

That's the distance Tiger Woods could hit a tee-shot one-handed. Some connection.

I'd written about how the Kohler Company and the tax-base eager-beavers in City of Sheboygan government went after a chunk of the smaller, neighboring Town of Wisconsin through an annexation to help advance the conversion of a Lake Michigan shoreline nature preserve, rare dunes, wildlife habitat, and wetlands

and into an 18-hole, traffic-inducing, herbicide-dispensing golfing complex.

The proposed project, however, remains stalled because a state administrative law judge ruled the DNR improperly awarded the development its crucial wetland-fill permit. That decision is in the appeals process.

Note for the record that about five acres - - 

Some of the very land inside Kohler Andrae State Park the company is seeking to complete a privately-owned planned golf course facility.

of adjacent state park land would also be awarded to the development. That's a lot more than 650 feet of land, by the way, and it already belongs to the people.

Who knows if the larger number will sway the Justices?

WI GOP legislators giving you a weekly coffee - - next year

Faced with the choice of upgrading classroom spending statewide which they and Walker had drastically short-changed, Wisconsin's GOP legislative small-thinking leaders chose instead to use surplus state dollars to return - - next year - - an average of $106 per tax filer.

The average income tax reduction would be $106. It would cost state government about $247.7 million in the next fiscal year.

I don't think $2 a week buys a basic burger anymore, but it might get you at least a coffee.

But something along the lines of a thoughtful, long-term investment, like better schools for the kids, which Governor Evers had in mind?

Evers said earlier this month he wanted to use about $250 million of that funding on public schools, with an emphasis on school-based mental health initiatives, special education and property tax relief. The governor's plan would also return the state to the days when it funded two-thirds of the cost of public education, a benchmark Evers noted that GOP lawmakers had previously said on multiple occasions that they support....

Or more potholes filled? Or all sorts of other policy deficits addressed, from better transit to rural home health aides? 

Can Republicans ever get creative? Big-hearted? Beyond their self-imposed starve-the-public sector bumper-sticker talking point?

Heck no.

Actually, Republicans are less interested in their having their tax cut implemented; they hope Evers vetoes the coffee-a-week plan so they can scream in the 2020 elections about Evers denying people a tax cut.

As I've said, VosGerald are all about playing the game and not actually getting anything of substance done.

Mercury is a known health danger. Trump wants you exposed to more of it.

Trump the Unbalanced Destroyer wants what used to be the Environmental Protection Agency - - now run by a former coal industry lobbyist - - to allow larger mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Even though even electrical power generators are among the rule change's widespread opponents.

The EPA is about to change a rule cutting mercury pollution. The industry doesn’t want it.

Despite a chorus of opposition from unions, business groups and electric utilities, the EPA is on the verge of finalizing its proposal as part of a broader effort to overhaul how the government calculates the health benefits of cleaner air. Coal executives have lobbied for it, arguing it represented one of the worst excesses of what President Trump calls “the war on coal.” 

The agency plans to declare that it is not “appropriate and necessary” for the government to limit harmful pollutants from power plants, even though every utility in America has complied with standards put in place in 2011 under President Barack Obama.

I've been reporting on the extent of known mercury contamination in Wisconsin, so check out the data and ask yourselves if more of this known hazard fits your diet, your kids' health and your definition of environmental protection?

The Trump administration is expected to roll back an Obama-era regulation to limit dangerous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury from coal-fired power plants, according to two people familiar with the plans. 

With a series of new rules expected in November, the Environmental Protection Agency will move to weaken the 2015 regulation by relaxing some of the requirements on power generators and also exempting a significant number of power plants from even those requirements.

I have been tracking here this intentionally-damaging assault on water, the environmental and public health, and call attention to the known Wisconsin data:

Earlier [in 2018], I posted information which is still on a US EPA website about the extent of waterway impairment in Wisconsin as of 2016, including impairment caused by mercury, and I noted this at the time.

I was struck by the persistent presence of mercury and the growth of phosphorous contamination in the few categories I pulled out - - the latter not surprising because under Walker the state relaxed the time frame in which phosphorous discharges were to be addressed.

Here are some of the key data about known mercury contamination in Wisconsin - - and since we know what goes out of smokestacks comes down - - so you have to ask yourself in light of Trump's support for making it more likely that these and other numbers nationally will go up: Isn't this enough?

Cause of Impairment Group Name	Number of Causes of Impairment Reported
Mercury	282

Miles of Impairment, Rivers and streams, Mercury. 888.2

Great Lakes Shorelines, miles, 259.4.

Lakes, reservoirs and ponds acres, 284,275.

Bays and estuaries, Square miles, 6,067.
------------------------------------------------
Also: There will be more dangerous contaminates released if/when metallic mining is unleashed in the nightmarish proposal along the Michigan side of the Menominee River (which flows into Wisconsin waterways downstream), and under Walker and Tom Tiffany's legislation.

Scott Fitzgerald connects his pro-gun dots

Remember when Wisconsin GOP Majority Leader/Congressional candidate Scott Fitzgerald gaveled down in mere seconds without debate a special legislative session to consider gun safety measures?

That was then and this was less than an hour ago:

Scott Fitzgerald

@FitzgeraldForWI

It’s been another busy weekend in #wi05! Had a great time at the Friends of

@NRA

Banquet in Beaver Dam! #2A #SecondAmendment

12:57 PM · Feb 16, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

In another last-minute ploy, WI GOP 'lawmakers' go all-in for CAFOs

Wisconsin's corporately-obeisant GOP-run legislature which can't find the time to debate gun safety or implement other Tony Evers' initiatives is suddenly reviving one of defeated Gov. Walker's unfulfilled sops to the state's drinking-water polluting, groundwater-hugging mega-dairies:

Walker figures out new way to serve business, weaken WI DNR 

[Updated from 10/28/17] Right-wing WI GOP Gov. and corporate bellhop Scott Walker now wants to give foxes the run of the farm.

Handing, without any real discussion, Big Ag's already marginal 'regulation' to even-more friendly interests over at the state ag department.

Wisconsin Republicans are trying to speed a bill through the Legislature in the final days of the session that would transfer the power to regulate factory farm siting and expansion from state officials to a new board controlled by agricultural groups....

The bill would create a new nine-member review board attached to the agriculture department. Five members would be selected from agricultural groups. The board would advise the department on regulations and the department would be prohibited from drafting any siting or expansion rules without approval from two-thirds of the board. 

Ag is a department the GOP further politicized last year by firing Brad Pfaff, Evers' ag secretary nominee, for basically declining to lick GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald's boots:

The Republican leader also warned other Evers cabinet secretaries awaiting confirmation – including those running Health and Transportation departments – that Senate Republicans would “hold them in check.

And in case Evers didn't get the message that GOP legislators would continue to chip away at the Governor's authority after having protected or expanded former GOP Governor Scott Walker's powers:

The Senate also voted 19-14, along party lines with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against, to move forward with a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit Wisconsin governors' veto powers. 

Vos and Fitzgerald's submission to the industrial-scale dairies known as CAFOs has been unapologetically out in the open, so it's not surprising that the GOP 'leaders' would come up with fresh, pro-CAFO sweetheart legislation that comes with a partisan bonus:

Again - - and without warning - - stripping from Evers executive powers which Walker routinely enjoyed before the public said on election day 2018 that they'd had enough of Walker's ultra-partisan politicking.

Still playing the last-minute, corporately-subservient and partisan power-grabbing game which accelerated in late 2018. Why? Because they can. And their special interest constituents expect nothing less.

The GOP legislators' gerrymander crafted in secret and installed after the 2010 census still gives them the power to run the government for favored special interests - - a mutually-self-serving arrangement which gets donors what they need and rewards GOP legislators with safe stays in status-and-perk-drenched (and part-time!) nicely-compensated seats.

Somehow these legislators tolerate a self-produced moral stench they trail into the Capitol while their rural constituents are forced to deal with brown tap water and big-city residents' drinking water remains laced with lead - - an intolerable situation perpetuated knowingly by legislators which lacks a normal level of empathy and commitment to public service:

Vos, Fitzgerald go to bat for 'existing and expanding CAFO operations'

The legislative session is drawing to a close, which guarantees that common sense measures from safer state water supplies to vital assistance for homeless kids, adults and veterans - - during the winter - - will remain delayed, ignored and buried.