Uppity Wisconsin

it is once again Earth Day, a day with deep ties to Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, and the Wisconsin Idea. Sadly the last few years have seen massive retrenchment in our commitment to the environment as a country. Our state, under Governor Walker's leadership, seems to have left no stone unturned while looking for ways to lessen our protection of the environment.  

Though it is often said that everything old is new again, I have to say I was surprised to see that an old childhood friend of mine is once again relevant. Old feelings I have not had since the Cuban Missile Crisis have raised their ugly heads again, but I am pretty sure that Kennedy could tell the differrence between ships heading to Cuba and ships heading away - somehow the fact that the current administration cannot tell where our own ships are heading is disconcerrting. In that spirit - I bring you the re-awakening of my childhood fears in the body of Bert the Turtle.

Okay, so most of you who read this blog don't need reminding - but on the other hand clearly lots of people do. So ---

VOTE TOMORROW - and if you've already early voted, good on you.

The big state-wide election on which you can really express an opinion is for Superintendent of Schools. Tony Evers has long been the last firewall against total take-over of our school system  by private interests. His opponent? Not so much.  So you have a clear choice between  supporting public schools and standing back and letting the Betsy DeVos/Trump/Koch unholy alliance take over even more of our school system.  Your choice but please go express your opinion on this, whatever it might be. Let's not see everything go south just because nobody could get up the energy to vote.

A hearing was held today about the re-issuance of the WPDES permit for Cranberry Creek Farm. Cranberry Creek is asking to expand from approximately 2000 cows to over 7000. May testified at the hearing today, raising various issues with the state of the permit application, while also questioning the wisdom of a farm fo that scale in an area that is already suffering from groundwater degradation.

This is the second application that has been filed for the farm. The first was contentious because it seemed in many areas to be incomplete or inaccurate, including listing other properties for manure spreading for which no agreement had been made.

In the new age of Trump politics, you can count on a lot of alternate truth. Much of it comes from the "Wisconsin Miracle" wrought by our governor and the likes of Paul Ryan. We are about to find out if we are going to take the somewhat flawed Obamacare and replace it with the totally nonfunctional Trumpcare. If this happens we by and large have Paul Ryan to blame. 

I was very sad to hear this morning that Ed Garvey passed away. Ed had been in a nursing home for the past two weeks, and died this morning after a long battle with health issues including Parkinson's disease. He had a long career in labor, notably working with the NFL teams through two strikes, and had run for public office both as Senator and as Governor of Wisconsin (though he lost both races). For many years he ran the Fighting Bobfest event in Baraboo and Madison, and the fightingbobfest.org web site. His ill health in the past few years demanded that he retire from those endeavors that he loved, and the festival is now carried on by The Progressive.

Yes, I know - it's a small, primary election. And it's incredibly important. It's your chance to make sure that our schools are supervised by someone who has shown himself to be a responsible adult who actually cares about our schools.  Your choice is between someone who clearly cares about public education in the state, or one of two people who strongly support charters and private education, the policies of Betsy DeVos, and who have been busy calling each other liars for some time now. Your choice, but I am voting for Tony Evers, and I suggest you do the same.