With Walker, Sprawl Industry Has Wind At Its Back

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When it comes to wind energy, realtors would rather fight for the real estate necessary to build new developments. After all, who wants to buy a new home built in the flicker of wind turbines?

Madison.com Excerpt:
Campaign contributions may also have played a role. Records compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign show Walker received $750,833 from the construction industry and $427,629 from Realtors through Oct. 18, 2010. "The two special interests who like the anti-windmill bill gave him nearly $1.2 million during his run for governor," notes WDC research director Mike Buelow.

But I have to give Walker a bit of credit here because he played it as good as he could for his contributors. Walker offered his favored construction sprawl builders the 1,800 ft. setback (about 1/3 mile) under the pretense of protecting personal and property rights for returning authority to local jurisdictions to over-ride the state setback rule. What I don't get is why Walker wants to snuff out 11 wind projects already on the books when they could have been grandfathered in to lower industry resistance against his proposal.

Personally, I hate it when the personal and property rights I support coincides with the position of pro-sprawl builders. It's a lose-lose situation either way for the quality of life. This is one of those rare instances where the enemy of my enemies is still not my friend.

Walker Inflates State Deficit To $3.6 Billion In First Month

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According to this article posted in Statehouse News, the Walker Administration added $400 million more to the previous deficit projection of $3.2 billion by simply dropping an accounting maneuver for transferring revenue into the general fund. The new state deficit has now been recalculated to $3.6 billion.

This is beginning to look a little worrisome simply because Walker seems to be deliberately boosting the deficit on paper with the purpose of adding a greater sense of urgency to the situation. Walker also appears to be testing the public reaction to his cutting Medicaid, K12 and other state services instead of considering fund transfers from surplus accounts to help balance the budget on.

Interesting Note: It turns out that Jim Doyle merely passed the $3.2 billion Thompson/McCallum deficit right into the hands of Scott Walker. Granted, Doyle was unable to fix the problem, but he did no harm either despite being accused of using accounting tricks. It can be said that Doyle's time in office was nearly deficit neutral.

Hope Walker can say the same when his time is up.

Republicans Reward Companies Outsourcing Jobs

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Last week, the GOP-majority House once again showed who mattered to them the most, and it certainly isn’t American workers.

Pioneer Excerpt:
GOP Budget Cuts: Members voted, 256-165, to set the stage for votes on a GOP plan to cut federal spending by $60 billion or more in the closing months of fiscal 2011. A yes vote empowered the Budget Committee to define the cuts in a spending bill soon to be debated. (H Res 38)

Sending U.S. Jobs Abroad: Members defeated, 184-242, a Democratic bid to use H Res 38 (above) as a vehicle to curb the practice of U.S. firms sending jobs overseas. A yes vote was to deny federal contracts to any company that the Department of Labor finds to be outsourcing jobs.

The motion to recommit the plan to cut federal spending by $60 billion and use it as a tool to discourage U.S. firms from shipping jobs overseas by withholding federal contracts was defeated along party lines, except for four democrats who sided with the GOP's domestic jobs killing scheme. One of the four democrats was Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin. What was he thinking? Doesn't he know that the Tea Party opposes jobs outsourcing members of congress, but only if they're democrats?

The following Wisconsin congressional representatives voted to continue awarding federal contracts to companies that ship jobs overseas.

They are...

Ryan (R, WI-01)
Kind (D, WI-03)
Sensenbrenner (R, WI-05)
Petri (R, WI-06)
Duffy (R, WI-07)
Ribble (R, WI-08)

Vote Source

With State GOP, Odds Against Defending Resources Just Grew Larger

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I think this was a powerful message of bold-faced "pay-for-play" lawmaking sent by the republican-led Wisconsin state legislature and Gov. Walker when they passed and signed a wetlands bill exempting a single parcel of land controlled by a well connected campaign contributor and real estate developer from DNR rules or the due process of court challenges.

For me, this puts defending our natural resources or the quality of life in our state and our community from the scourges of reckless development into a whole new perspective. Particularly now for the group here in Rock County who are trying to stave off a 5,000 cow factory farm from setting up shop on fertile prairie land near the eastern edge of the county.

All the diary owner has to do is contribute a grand or two to the Walker campaign fund or to a few "open for business" legislators and he'll have it all locked up. Who's to say a pay-off did not already happen?

Tea Party Legislator Delivers Vote For Local Cartel

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In this press release, State Assembly Rep. Joe Knilans explains how he fought through the recent blizzard to deliver his vote at the state capitol for the special interest group "Rock County 5.0."

The legislative bills, AB6 and AB8, are expected to transform the state's Department of Commerce into a shadowy public/private nexus of government leeches and campaign contributors under the guise of job creation and would give the governor vast executive power to unilaterally approve of administrative rules without legislative challenge.

"During a snow storm when public agencies are closed and many major roads remain impassible, Republican legislators passed bills that eliminate transparency," -- State Rep. Kelda Helen Roys

Just for the record, the following is the membership of the local business cartel Knilans referenced in his press release.

ROCK COUNTY 5.0 Membership

Diane Hendricks, ABC Supply Co., co-chair
Mary Willmer-Sheedy, M&I Bank, co-chair
David Cullen, J.P. Cullen & Sons
Diane Ramsey, Alliant Energy
Gerry Behan, Kerry Americas
Henry Knueppel, Regal-Beloit Corp.
Jane Blain-Gilbertson, Blain Supply
Jim Fisher, Fairbanks Morse, retired
Jim Fitzgerald, The Fitzgerald Group
Joe Pregont, Prent Corp.
Paul Palmby, Seneca Foods Corp.
Richard Gruber, Mercy Health System
Rob Gerbitz, Hendricks Development Group
Ron Ochs, Janesville Foundation
Steve Eldred, First National Bank & Trust Co.
Tim McKevett, Beloit Memorial Hospital
Tobin Ryan
Tom Ptacin, Klobucar Construction Co.

Related: Assembly Republicans’ “Pay to Play” Day Undeterred by Blizzard Republican leaders: "No problem if the public can’t come, there's nothing to see here."

Paul Ryan Plotting With Billionaire Supporters At Corporatocracy Meeting

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Last October, ThinkProgress helped break the story about secret political strategy meetings, convened by polluter billionaires Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, to coordinate the funding and direction of the conservative movement.

Think Progress Excerpt:
ThinkProgress has now learned of another attendee addressing the Koch meeting: House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan’s office confirmed his attendance this afternoon to ThinkProgress. Ryan, who has a long record of flying off to junkets for groups of bankers like the Club for Growth, is pushing forward with radical cuts to Medicare and Social Security in his “Roadmap for America’s Future.” In line with Koch’s peculiar supply-side side ideology of soaking the the poor, Ryan’s budget idea also calls for increasing taxes on the middle class, while cutting them for the rich. Other Republican legislators were at the event, including Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).

ThinkProgress revealed a partial list of the attendees, including GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, Americans for Prosperity officials like Alan Cobb, political consultant Michael Goldfarb, longtime lobbyist Nancy Pfotenhauer, and a number of donors, including Home Depot founder Ken Langone and Rock County billionaire heiress Diane Hendricks. Read more here.

"Tell us something, Mr Ryan. As a public servant, how does attending this meeting serve the public at large? You are not a private citizen, free to attend whatever peaceable assemblies you wish. You are a public servant, and you must act in the best interests of the public, not of your ideologically like-minded friends." -- Wayne A. Schneider, comment at TP

The Nation Excerpt:
Greenpeace’s Davies, though cautious, felt buoyed by the momentum on the left’s side: “I think it’s possible to keep drawing scrutiny to the Tea Party Congress by teaching voters to look for the corporate billionaire-backed tentacles behind the scenes. We can also put pressure on those congressmen by finding ways to ask them, very publicly, what they owe the Kochs.

As Tea Party Koch brothers made an extra $11 billion in recent years, they laid off thousands.

This should put it in clear perspective who Ryan was speaking for in his SOTU rebuttal.

Teachers Finally Earn Respect From Newspaper - But Little Else

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In Sunday's editorial titled "Local teachers deserve more respect," the low-wage conservatives at the Janesville Gazette attempted to reframe and fine tune their decade old political and economic opposition against our public school teachers. Possibly feeling some guilt (but I personally doubt that) after hearing President Obama offer an uplifting shout-out for the teaching professional in the SOTU speech, the Gazette offers this rather tepid endorsement.

JG Editorial Excerpt: (Editorial not available online)
But don't blame teachers individually. They fill one of our community's greatest roles. Most are highly dedicated, and many pour their own money into classroom supplies.

On the local scale, nobody has ever blamed individual school teachers specifically, but to blame them for what? Well, the assignment of blame here was the Gazette's way to flatter the teachers and address the problem the newspaper perceives about their recent pay and benefit's compensation package. They believe the Janesville's school district new four-contract ratified last year was too generous.

JG Editorial Excerpt:
If you want to assign blame, direct it at the school board for agreeing to the contract and the teachers union that pushed it.

Oh yeah, that's who you blame. The evil socialist bargaining union and the hapless school board. So, don't bash the teachers for getting the wages and benefits they deserve, point the blame at the bargaining union for negotiating the agreement and the school board for giving it to them. Just remember to point the blame.

Over the years, the Gazette has been no friend of public school teachers as a bargaining group or worker unions of any kind. They would criticize local teachers directly saying teachers need a dose of reality and then follow-up their deliberately provocative headlines and editorials against them with anonymous rants from aroused taxpaying readers for weeks on end. Or when the newspaper compared teachers compensation to the declining and often demerited wages of workers in the private sector. Or the time the editor admitted that the newspaper gives special treatment to GM workers, teachers and law officers, particularly how they are disciplined and how they are compensated. Yep, that's the Janesville Gazette. Completely objective and with no agenda.

But at least the Gazette acknowledged that public school teachers have gotten very little respect from the local public. The problem is the newspaper blames everyone for that but themselves.

When "Made In U.S.A" Spells Trouble

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NY Daily News Excerpt:
Tear gas being used by the country's police on protesters in Cairo was made in the U.S., according to multiple reports. Several canisters were recovered from a downtown square in the country's capital with labels reading "Made in U.S.A."

It wasn't long after those discoveries that Pro-Mubarak forces (according to reports) began attacking American news media reporters and workers. That's all America needs from both sides. That pro-democracy demonstrators might think we're complicit with the oppressive dictatorial regime while the dictatorial establishment works to oppress American reporters.

Egyptions finally get it, democracy that is. But will they really get it?