Wisconsin Koch Brothers’ Petri Dish

Eau Claire Falls South of Antigo Wisconsin

Wisconsin has a tremendous history.  Wisconsin became a birthplace of the great environmental movement during a time when Americans were just becoming aware that nature’s resources were imperiled by industrialization.  Three days before Wisconsin became a territory in 1836, Increase Lapman moved to Wisconsin and began keeping careful records on the environment that would serve as models for environmentalists coming after him.

The great environmentalist John Muir, whose family migrated to the United States from Scotland hales from Wisconsin.  Muir worked the family farm in Portage, Wisconsin until he entered the University of Wisconsin in 1861 and later became famous for his environmentalism.  A fun fact from The Wisconsin Historical Society:

Muir was also an inventor, creating an alarm clock that would tip up his bed and dump him on the floor at the appointed time. He showed this "early-rising machine" at the 1860 Wisconsin State Fair. Muir later wrote that his strenuous years in Wisconsin's outdoors prepared him for his later wilderness ramblings.

At the turn of the century, progressive Robert LaFollette influenced the rise of conservationism in Wisconsin fighting to protect our natural resources from economic exploitation. 

Wisconsin Dells

Wisconsin is also the birthplace of the labor movement enacting workman’s compensation and unemployment insurance laws that served as models for other states. 

As talk of reducing daily work to eight hours intensified across the nation in the 1880s, workers in Milwaukee formed the Milwaukee Labor Reform Association (later the Eight-Hour League) to agitate for the eight-hour day that we now take for granted.

As the nineteenth century ended, Wisconsin labor found its political outlet in a new socialist movement built by Milwaukee's Victor Berger and, during the first decade of the 20th century, in the support of Robert La Follette's Progressive movement. Factories were dangerous places for workers, and accidents killed or maimed thousands of Wisconsin citizens every year.

 In 1911, the legislature passed one of the nation's first Workmens' Compensation laws, requiring employers to provide medical attention and compensation for loss of life and limb. After World War I, labor unions began to agitate for unemployment compensation, which finally passed in 1932, and in 1937, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Act added critical state support to the right of workers to organize.

In the 2010 elections Democrats were so demoralized by the corruption in the 2008 Democratic Primary and the continuation of the policies of George W. Bush by Barack Obama and the new Democratic Party, they stayed home.  The result was seven more Republican Governors and control of 26 state legislatures by the GOP.

In an article by Mary Bottari in PR Watch called “ALEC Bills in Wisconsin”:

….“an odd thing happened. A steady stream of almost identical bills -- bills to defund unions, require Photo ID's make it harder for democratic constituencies to vote, bills to privatize schools and public assets, bills to enshrine corporate tax loopholes while crippling the government's ability to raise revenue, bills to round up immigrants -- were introduced and passed. An almost identical set of corporations benefited from these measures.

Funny thing indeed. 

Where is the bottom in ALEC's race to the bottom? The "Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act" would repeal any local "living wage" ordinance like the ones in Madison and Milwaukee, and prohibit political subdivisions from enacting them in the future.

The ALEC "Prevailing Wage Repeal Act" would get rid of all state prevailing wage laws that give workers engaged in public works for highways, street bridges, buildings and the like a higher salary. The ALEC "Starting (Minimum) Wage Repeal Act" would preempt the ability of states and localities to pay a minimum wage higher than the federal level.

So on Friday January 17^th on Wisconsin Public Television’s program “Here and Now” with Frederica Freyberg, her guests were Republican Senator Glenn Grothman of West Bend and Democratic Rep. Cory Mason of Racine. 

Glenn Grothman who introduced 7 day work week bill for WMC

Grothman along with Republican Mark Born of Beaver Dam have introduced an ALEC “inspired” bill to allow manufacturing and retail workers to work 7 days in a row without a day off.  They said the bill was introduced on behalf of Wisconsin’s largest business group WMC. 

Click here to watch the whole, revolting 8 minute WPTV clip.   

Current Wisconsin law requires employers who own or operate factories or retail stores to give their workers at least 24 consecutive hours off every seven days. Under Grothman and Born's proposal, workers could volunteer to work seven straight days without a rest day.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business organization, brought the idea to them, the two Republicans said. In an email to lawmakers seeking support for the bill, Born and Grothman said they had heard from businesses with employees who want to work the additional time. But when asked for names Born said the only people he met with to discuss the bill were from WMC.

But opponents warned the only choice employees will have is work the extra hours or lose their jobs. The measure also would give workers who can work the extra day an advantage over workers who want to spend a day with their family, they said.

"Workers fought long and hard for a 40-hour work week and the weekend," Mason said. "People deserve at least a day off a week. It's a legal protection for a reason."

In 2005 Koch Industries acquired a Green Bay paper company, Fort James a division of James River Corporation.  Fort Howard Paper Company was founded in 1919 by Austin E. Cofrin.  Fort Howard operated as an independent business that expanded it operations until 1997 when it was acquired by James River Corporation and renamed Fort James. 

Georgia Pacific Corp Green Bay

When Koch Industries acquired Fort James, all employees were required to read the Koch Brothers’ book and write a book report.  This practice was not “mandatory” but if you wanted to keep your job or ever get promoted, you read the book and wrote the book report.

Now, Grothman is saying that the 7 day work week would be voluntary, well it depends on what you mean by “voluntary”. 

But workers’ rights are not the only Wisconsin staple being attacked and destroyed by ALEC groomed Republicans.

Frac Sand Mining throughout Wisconsin & Minnesota

According to a December 2011 article in the Journal Sentinel (which is still pertinent today): Legislators worked with Gogebic Taconite on mining bill, Five Republicans, and staff were authors of legislation

Who wrote the Assembly's mining bill?

That's what many people wanted to know after a public hearing last Wednesday at State Fair Park when Republicans declined to provide details on who authored the legislation and whom they relied on for help.

Now, details are emerging:

The bill was largely written by five Republicans and their staffs who huddled for months with different parties, including the business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) and representatives of iron ore mining company Gogebic Taconite, which wants to construct a mine in northern Wisconsin.

Hmmm, The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), where have I heard that before?   Oh yes, they requested the 7 day work week bill, or the Wisconsin Slavery Bill.

Anatomy of the bill

Based on interviews, here is how major pieces were developed:

Regulator deadlines: There was agreement among Gogebic, WMC and legislators that the DNR needed to be given a timeline to finish its work. The bill would require the DNR to approve a mining permit in 360 days. The current review period by the DNR takes at least 2 1/2 years.

Yeah approve that in less than a year.  No need for a long environmental impact studies or public comment, just OK the permit. 

The hearing process: WMC pushed for removing contested case hearings - a process that requires an adjudicated hearing before challengers have the option to file a lawsuit in court

And, you don’t want all those members of the general public suffering from your pollution and loss of property value to have any say do you?

Protests Central Wisconsin Frac Mine

Taxes: Vos, co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee, asked for language that takes tax revenue from a mine and splits it evenly between the local community and the State of Wisconsin. In current law, the locality gets all the proceeds, but Vos wanted to see half the funds go to the general fund.

Yes, so when all those people in Hayward and surrounding communities that are some of the poorest in Wisconsin get ill and their property is polluted and worthless, they don’t even get the benefit of the taxes.  Half will go into the general fund to be given back to Gogebic Mine in the form of tax breaks.  Sweet deal.

Wetlands: Neither Honadel, Suder nor Vos said they could recall who was responsible for language that would make it easier to develop a mine on or near wetlands - something environmentalists worry will harm the local watershed.

Trout Fishing in Wisconsin

Hey, anybody know who stuck in deregulation of wetlands for mining profits?

AB 426 would relax numerous environmental standards involving wetlands, groundwater, rock disposal, and would reduce the level of public participation in the review process.

Horicon Marsh

Hey, Ducks Unlimited, there goes the wetlands. 

So I guess it’s pretty easy to see why the Koch Brothers chose Wisconsin for their Petri Dish for the United States.  Pristine lakes, forests, streams, hunting, fishing an environmental paradise and a state that HAD strong worker and union protections. 

National Forest

How much more longer will the people of Wisconsin stand by and allow these Republicans to destroy Wisconsin? 

By Patricia Baeten

The Democrats’ War On Marijuana Legalization

You may equate the staunch opposition to marijuana legalization with the Republican Party, but lately the largest assault on the legalization of marijuana has come from corporately funded Democrats like Maryland Governor Martin OMalley.

Recently there was a segment on C-Span’s Washington Journal on recreational marijuana sales.  On the side arguing for legalization, taxation and regulation was Dan Riffle from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).  Mr. Riffle was a prosecuting attorney prior to joining the MPP. On the side, against legalization was Kevin Sabet of the group Smart Approaches to Pot, an anti-marijuana group started by Sabet and ex-congressman Patrick Kennedy.

While Mr. Riffle’s arguments were cogent and based in fact, Mr. Sabet’s arguments were based on supposition disguised as medical studies.  Among the arguments Sabet proffered were that the American Medical Association (AMA) supports Sabet and Kennedy’s opposition to marijuana legalization and the AMA is “admired” by most Americans.

Most Americans don’t know that the AMA is hardly an august institution.  It is a for profit institution much like the US Chamber of Commerce interested in lining its own pockets. 

The AMA was founded in 1901 and began “organized medicine” in the United States.  By the 1920’s the middle class saw dramatically higher cost for medical care.  While the depression of the 1930’s brought about Social Security, medical security wasn’t addressed due to politics.  By the 1940’s wage and price controls were placed on American employers so employers began offering health benefits to compete for workers.

President Roosevelt had called for an “economic bill of rights” with a right to adequate medical care and later President Truman offered a national health program single payer system for all American’s.  But the single payer system was denounced by the AMA.

The evils of the AMA were recognized by economist Milton Friedman and more recently by Forbes Magazine.  In a August 2009 Forbes article by Shikha Dalmia entitled “The Evil Mongering of the American Medical Association” Dalmia calls the AMA a “doctors cartel” that has controlled the medical labor force in the US like it’s personal fiefdom.

But back to Kevin Sabet’s arguments against the legalization of marijuana. 

During the C-Span segment, Sabet said, studies have proven that one in six, 16-year olds who try marijuana even one time, become addicted to marijuana.  He also cited that smoking marijuana doubles the risk of car crashes, costs millions in healthcare due to lung problems and lowers the I.Q. of children.

Where these studies Sabet cited took place are a mystery because marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug and research of the efficacy of marijuana has been severely limited due to its Schedule I status.

Schedule I drugs have "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" and "a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision" -- a classification that holds marijuana more dangerous than cocaine, morphine, or methamphetamine, all listed in Schedule II with accepted medical uses.  

According to an article in Huffington Post by Sunil Kumar Aggarwal and Amanda Reiman:

After a 40-year battle over the placement of marijuana in Schedule I, the U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, ruled in January on the most recent petition to reschedule marijuana in the case of AMERICANS FOR SAFE ACCESS (ASA) v. DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION (DEA). The court ruled that the DEA had not acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it denied ASA's petition filed 9 years earlier to remove marijuana from Schedule I. 

The court ruled that the research needed to move marijuana out of Schedule I does not exist.

 US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is that there are no "adequate and well-controlled studies" proving marijuana's efficacy.

In the U.S., federal agencies have set-up onerous roadblocks that limit researchers' abilities to access marijuana -- the very impetus for private marijuana research to get started overseas, licensed by friendlier governments.

It’s interesting that former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, son of Senator Edward Kennedy was arrested for DUI, but because of his wealth and status was able to cut a deal. 

Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, who lost control of his car near the Capitol last month in what he says was a drug-induced stupor, pleaded guilty yesterday to driving under the influence of prescription medication and could face 10 days in jail if he fails to comply with a long list of court-imposed conditions…

Kennedy, 38, who has admitted abusing pain pills and alcohol as an adult, has said that he took prescription medication to calm stomach inflammation and to help him sleep the night of the crash. He has said that he does not recall getting out of bed and has no memory of the May 4 accident in the 100 block of C Street SE, outside the Cannon House Office Building.

U.S. Capitol Police officers suspected that Kennedy was intoxicated when he staggered out of his Ford Mustang shortly before 3 a.m. after he nearly hit a police car and then crashed into a security barrier. But the six-term congressman -- who said he was trying to reach the Capitol for a vote -- was not given a sobriety test. Instead, Capitol Police commanders ordered that Kennedy be driven to his nearby home, touching off complaints that the son of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) received special treatment.

Other Democrats are circling around the AMA to fight the legalization of marijuana such as Steny Hoyer.  Hoyer, who had fought against Nancy Pelosi for Speakership when the Democrats took over the House in 2006, is an AMA loyalist.

So, why are prominent Democrats joining forces to fight against the legalization of marijuana?  Follow the money.

By Patricia Baeten

From War on Poverty to War on Poor

File - President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, center left, leave home of Tom Fletcher, a father of eight who told Johnson he'd been out of work for nearly two years, Inez, Kentucky, April 24, 1964.

January 8^th is the 50^th Anniversary of the War on Poverty introduced by President Lyndon Johnson.  When President Johnson announced the war on poverty January 8^th, 1964, 22 percent of Americans were living in poverty in the richest country in the world.  When President Johnson left office 5 years later, there were only 12 percent living in poverty. 

Lyndon Johnson grew up in impoverished Texas and when he became President he sent many from his Whitehouse staff to experience what it was like to live with the homeless.  He sent staffers into schools where the education was inferior and children were unable to compete and would drop out before they even started.

Voice of America News interviewed James Jones who was chief of staff to President Johnson on the 50^th Anniversary of the War on Poverty.

"Things such as Medicare, which [then-President] Harry Truman first proposed in around 1946-47, and nothing had been done on that," said Jones. "Things such as fair housing, which, again, went back to the Truman Administration, and nothing had happened in 20 years."

Critics in Congress say spending on poverty reduction programs is out of control, and the Republican-led House of Representatives recently voted to cut funding for the Food Stamp assistance program by about $4 billion a year.

Still, Johnson's initiatives, despite their flaws, have lifted millions out of poverty, says Ron Haskins, a former White House and congressional advisor on welfare issues and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based non-profit research organization.

The Republican Party has launched a war on the poor in the United States.  They have slashed food programs for the poor, unemployment benefits, and tied subsidized housing, food stamps and unemployment benefits to drug testing for the poor at the expense of the poor. 

The GOP has a financial interest in requiring the poor pay the $30-$35 per test to qualify for benefits.

The company that received the lucrative contract to drug test welfare recipients in Florida was none other than Governor Rick Scott’s own company Solantic.  All those tests, all that profit and who had to pay?  The poor.  This is from the Reid Report:

Scott’s newest scheme, which will help him turn a profit from his $70 million investment in becoming a one-term Florida governor, would be genius if it weren’t so darned evil. Fresh off his plan to drug test welfare recipients in the state, compounding what for many people is an embarrassing experience, having to take public assistance, Scott now plans to visit the same humiliation on state workers. You know, the ones who haven’t had a raise in four years and who are about the have their unions shredded and their pensions hollowed out by the right wing legislature.

Critics say that idea is too expensive and impractical, but on Tuesday, a Senate committee moved forward a drug testing bill applying to welfare recipients.

Scott, in a statement praising the Senate committee and announcing his executive order defended both actions.

“Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free workplace,” Scott said in a statement.

And how will Floridians get that information? Who has the wherewithal to carry out the drug testing of state employees on a random basis, or when any are crazy enough to apply for a job working for Gollum’s kingdom?

Solantic. Beauuuutiful Solantic.

Remember when Jeb Bush’s Republican legislature voted for drug testing for public housing?  Remember when grandma in public housing raising her grandchildren was to be turned out on the street if one of her grandchildren was caught with drugs?  That triggered a great deal of parody which would have been funny if it weren’t so horrible.

by Corinne Carey

NEWS RELEASE

Late Tuesday, following the arrest of Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, for possession of crack cocaine, the Orlando District Attorney’s Narcotics Evictions office forwarded information about her arrest to The People of the State of Florida, demanding that The People serve the Bush family with an eviction notice to vacate their residence in government-subsidized housing.

A spokesperson for the Orlando DA stated that under federal public housing regulations that were upheld by the Supreme Court this past Spring in Rucker v. Davis, eviction of Bush and his entire family is the appropriate sanction.

But of course the Bush family was not evicted from their plush public housing.  It was considered a “family matter”.

Recently, according to the New York Times, a judge in Florida struck down a Florida Law requiring drug testing on the poor to receive welfare.

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down as unconstitutional a Florida law that required welfare applicants to undergo mandatory drug testing, setting the stage for a legal battle that could affect similar efforts nationwide.

 “The court finds there is no set of circumstances under which the warrantless, suspicionless drug testing at issue in this case could be constitutionally applied,” she wrote. The ruling made permanent an earlier, temporary ban by the judge.

Mr. Scott, who had argued that the drug testing was necessary to protect children and ensure that tax money was not going to illegal drugs, said that the state would appeal the ruling.

State data in Florida also showed that the measure produced few results. Only 108 out of 4,086 people tested — 2.6 percent — were found to have been using narcotics. State records showed that the requirement cost more money to carry out than it saved.

So while the GOP declares the war on poverty a failure and cuts food stamps, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment, Medical Assistance, School Lunches, Pell Grants, Student Loans, Veteran’s Pensions, Teacher’s Pensions, Housing Allowances and continues cutting taxes for the billionaires and increases corporate welfare, Happy New Year America.

By Patricia Baeten