Central Wisconsin Clean Water Group Endorses Rebecca Dallet for Supreme Court

Proposed Golden Sands factory farm in central
Wisconsin could turn rural paradise into an
industrial wasteland. Don Ystad of Adams County
Wisconsin who has been promoting tourism
and recreation for years writes:
"Take a step back from the politics of this
situation and ask yourself, 'what is best
for the state of Wisconsin? Another CAFO sited, or the
preservation and growth of an existing, vibrant area,
poised to be the 'golf mecca of the Midwest?'
Unfortunately, the Wysocki CAFO has the
political support of local State Rep. Scott Krug,
(R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin) and State Sen.
Patrick Testin, (R-Stevens Point). These pols
have already chosen Big Ag over everything else,
including a new Sand Valley Golf Resort,
multi-generational families and entire communities.

Rebecca Dallet is our Supreme Court candidate, says Saratoga Concerned in Republican-dominated central Wisconsin

"Rural America once had strong communities. It would have been very difficult for anyone who built a CAFO facotry farm in a rural area in earlier times. It wasn’t socially or morally acceptable for one person in the community to benefit at the expense of others."
 —John Ikerd, Rural Communities of Necessity
 --
The communities of Saratoga and Rome, in central Wisconsin say the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is personal.

The April 3 race featuring candidates Rebecca Dallet, (a mainstream rule-of-law Milwaukee County judge), and Michael Screnock, (extremist rightwing Sauk County judge) will determine if rightwingers control the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the next nine years.

The stakes are high, but even more so for central Wisconsin where Republican interests and Big Ag are trying to use a local case awaiting decision from the Supreme Court to obliterate local control and codify corporate property rights in a radical and novel interpretation that is dreaded by families.

In Golden Sands Dairy, (Wysocki corporation),  LLC v. Town of Saratoga case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether some 1.7 million Wisconsin citizen, some 30 percent of the state living in towns, can act locally to protect local conditions, property values, families, drinking water quality, and local character.  [For legal updates on the case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, enter 15ap1258 in the Appeal Number field.]

The case was argued Jan 11, 2018.

It's personal because 1,000s of families in Wood, Adams and Juneau counties who have spent generations building lives, security and opportunity for future generations will see dreams shattered and security gone if the Wysocki corporation's badly polluting factory farm begins operations.

The proposed massive factory farm, a CAFO or Confined Animal Feeding Operation, would leave the region an economic moonscape.

That's fine with Wisconsin Republicans, and Supreme Court candidate Michael Screnock whose campaign runs for and is funded by Republican special interests. Screnock in fact is a former attorney for Big Ag against virtually everyone else in Wisconsin.

A major group fighting for entire communities and central Wisconsin families just came out for Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet, and against Screnock.

The group, Saratoga Concerned, is awaiting word from the Supreme Court on Golden Sands Dairy. They are nervous and frightened. Who came blame them?

Today, according to an email, Saratoga Concerned endorsed Rebecca Dallet over Michael Screnock.

From Saratoga Concerned:

As we are all aware, politics are dirty. It doesn't matter the party or the platform, each side spins false innuendos and statements at the other in the hopes of having you simply dislike the other candidate more. The race for Supreme Court is no different even though it is supposed to be a nonpartisan position.

We encourage everyone to vote on Tuesday, April 3rd but instead of voting by your political party leaning, we encourage you to vote the issues. Let's face it, the Wisconsin Republican and the Democratic party are not what they used to be years ago. Voting the issues is the only way to get folks in office who are going to truly represent your interests. We all need to be willing to put our political partisanship aside and vote on the things that are important to our fight.

Saratoga Concerned leadership team has identified our issues  1) Clean water  2) Protection of our Natural Resources and 3) Protecting local control. When looking solely at these three topics we feel strongly Rebecca Dallet is our candidate. Her challenger, Michael Screnock, has repeatedly represented CAFO owners in court against the average citizen and denies their civil right to clean and plentiful water. Not to mention his work with the Michael Best and Friedrich law office that is retained by Wysocki. We cringe just thinking about what may happen if he earns a seat on the bench.

We encourage you to vote the issues on April 3rd.

Our Saratoga fights need a Justice like Rebecca Dallet on the bench.

Wisconsin Towns Fight Big Ag, Republicans and a Few Dems

Town of Saratoga, Wisconsin fights proposed massive
factory farm or CAFO, (Saratoga, Wisconsin, established 1857)

Saratoga, Wisconsin — In decades past, tourism and recreational enterprise in partnership with multi-generational Wisconsin families and communities working for economic prosperity would draw many Republicans to the project team.

Restaurants, parks, hotels, inns, boutiques, vineyards, the limits are the imagination.

No more.

Wisconsin Republicans are now an anti-social racket, cultivating a parasitic relationship with the very communities whose interests the people pay them to represent in the capitol.

Republicans protect corporate Bi Ag polluters destroying rustic Wisconsin communities and regional economies.

Corporate officers and members live 10s of miles away from the damage they inflict by the 'modern' model of agriculture: The CAFO, or Confined Agricultural (Animal) Feeding Operation, (Yelle).

Corporate polluters pay Republicans to stave off anti-pollution laws and local-control ordinances, funding the Republican Party's work against public-interest electoral candidates campaigning on clean water policy.

School privatization and rightwing dark-money groups funded by billionaires pump in $100,000s in each campaign cycle for Republicans, helped by rural state legislative districts heavily gerrymandered and drawn by Republicans to fend off electoral threats.

Dim Dems

A few Democrats feed at the corporate polluters' trough such as Wisconsin State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa (D-Milwaukee), (Dairy Business Association, (DBA)), though Zamarripa lives in one of the safest blue districts in the state, frequently running unopposed and winning the 2016 cycle with 98 percent of the vote in the near-south side of Milwaukee, (Milwaukee County 2016 Unofficial Results).

Consider as well former Wisconsin Gov. James Doyle, (2003-2011). As noted in these pages, Doyle carried out Big Ag's poisoned-water agenda leading to his seven-point reelection in 2006.

Doyle took in a hefty sum from Big Ag, even a contribution from the infamous polluter James Wysocki now wreaking havoc in central Wisconsin. Wysocki, also a financier of the National Potato Council has been upping his contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee the last few years as the GOP may attempt to legislatively kill the federal EPA under president-elect Donald Trump, as Scott Walker has done to the Wisconsin DNR.

The Wisconsin Livestock Facility Siting law that CAFOs sometimes use in litigation is pure political payoff to the Dairy Business Association, (DBA), signed into law by Doyle, which became effective in May 2006.

Wonder what Doyle has to say about getting the monstrous CAFO-industry juggernaut moving and polluting Wisconsin waters. Heck of a job, Jim.

Central Wisconsin

In the town of Saratoga, Wisconsin, (population some 5,100), in southern Wood County an entire municipal government is mobilized for survival, as a proposed 5,300-cow factory or CAFO in Saratoga would "likely contaminate residents’ drinking wells and pump out more groundwater than some cities," (Anderson, USA Today Network-Wisconsin).

Big Ag is betting the 5,300 cows, or "units" in the lexicon of Big Ag, are more important than the some 5,100 human beings in Saratoga, and 1,000s more people just south in the town of Rome in Adams County.

Town mothers and fathers fear an economic moonscape in this central Wisconsin region bouncing back from the decline of the paper industry.

Clean water advocates who double as economic protectors of their communities look to what they have: A beautiful region, the central sands, and abundant waters brimming with a nucleus of natural attractions.

The world-class Sand Valley golf resort, under construction in northern Adams County, is sited just south of the proposed Wysocki CAFO and already has spawned spin-off development.

Yet for reasons surpassing understanding Sand Valley officers remain publicly silent about the threat the Wysocki CAFO present to its own investors.

If Sand Valley is launched as scheduled for 2017, and the Wysocki CAFO subsequently begins operations, golfers, if not the investors, will understand why a north wind laden with tons of liquid cow manure is not fit for golf enthusiasts relaxing at a resort. But Sand Valley remains silent on the proposed Wysocki CAFO.

The proposed CAFO in Saratoga is owned by self-conscious polluters at the Wysocki Family of Companies, that proposes to vector millions of gallons of untreated cow waste—with nitrates, phosphorous and pathogens—into the environment every year.

Consider the pathology of people like the Wysocki corporate officers who would also poison children, a predictable consequence of directing this scale of pollution into communities.

Last week at Saratoga townhall, some 300 residents met to hear updates on the legal and regulatory states of affairs in their four-year effort to stop the operation of the Wysocki's proposed Golden Sands CAFO, a comprehensive project to save the town from the nitrates, phosphorous and pathogens, as well as the surrounding region, including the Tri-Lakes community in northern Adams County, (Wisconsin DNR), .

As Jonathan Anderson, who is covering the Wysocki CAFO controversy, reports this week with respect to nitrates:

An excessive amount of nitrates in water can restrict the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream, which is especially dangerous to infants who can develop a condition called blue baby syndrome, [notes Saratoga attorney, environmental law expert [Paul Kent]

Monitoring wells at Wysocki’s 3,800-cow Central Sands Dairy, in the town of Armenia in [neighboring] Juneau County, showed nitrate levels substantially higher than state drinking water standards last year. Tests in one well showed nitrate levels at 77 parts per million in July 2015. The state considers nitrate levels above 10 parts per million unsafe, [Hribar, CDC]. 

What does Wysocki have to say? No comment.

The situation in central Wisconsin sees entire communities and scientists screaming warnings and the polluters' response is to give money to corrupt politicians, attorneys, and refuse comment to the press.

Said Dr. John Ikerd, professor emeritus in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri, who spoke on CAFOs in Wisconsin: "What can be more important to our right to life than our right to clean water, clean air, and safe food? More than fifty years of research and real world experience clearly link factory farms to major public health risks associated with polluted water, polluted air, and chemically and biologically contaminated food. It’s time to hold our government accountable for failing in its most fundamental responsibility: to secure our God-given, unalienable, constitutional rights to clean water, clean air, and safe food."

If you are a Big Ag polluter, what is more important than communities, families and children is money.

Saratoga Fights

Last week, a scientist and an environmental attorney spoke at the Saratoga townhall to set the record straight on where the region stands in the fight against the Wysocki CAFO.

Stay tuned this week for an extended update on the legal and regulatory states of affairs in this four-year effort to stop the operation of the proposed Wysocki Golden Sands CAFO.

The Future

If central Wisconsin does not halt the Wysocki poisoners, northeastern Wisconsin offers a cautionary tale for what in store, specifically Kewaunee and Door counties.

Ever been to Door County? It's stunning, some call it the Martha's Vineyard of the Midwest.

So who would possible want to pollute this region?

Big Ag and Republicans.

From an email sent after the election by clean water advocates from northeastern Wisconsin:
---

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, we dreaded what could surpass the newly permitted "spray irrigation of manure"--shit aerosolized into our ambient air-- permit language stating that drift would be assessed as "droplets felt on skin" or as "seen on the windshield of your car." Both Door and Kewaunee County currently receive "F"'s for air quality from the American Lung Association.

Well, here's the latest push from the industrial agricultural agency--a biogas plant for Kewaunee County!  This is falsely being touted as the 'help' we need to clean up our water--many of the mega farms already have digesters, and it has not stemmed the amount of ongoing contamination occurring in Kewaunee!

Remember that digesters and a biogas plant would use literal tons of "industrial wastes" to 'stoke' their systems--resulting in EVEN MORE INDUSTRIAL WASTES INFILTRATING our community! Wastes from meatpacking, rendering, cheese factories, mink ranches, and other industries which are already taken here-- farms/landowners receive a "tipping fee" for the taking of these wastes--which are ultimately land spread.

This is about big business, $$$ profits for the few, and further externalization of the costs of this bloated, polluting entity--a continued poisoning of the land, air, water and people where we live-- and the resulting health threats, plunging property values, and considerable diminished quality of life in our already greatly compromised county.

WE DO NOT WANT A BIOGAS PLANT IN KEWAUNEE!!! We are NOT a sacrifice zone!ENOUGH!!!

Republican Pols' Words Should Point to Halting Wysocki CAFO in Central Sands

Sites of High Capacity Wells in Central Wisconsin
Map by D.J. Mechenich

Big Ag Propaganda Supported by Tax Payers

Last week Wisconsin agricultural groups were given $10,000s to pretend these heavy polluters are really conservationists concerned about the health of their respective regions' watersheds, (Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection). They are not so concerned, it's about public relations and probing how gullible the public is to Big Ag and Wisconsin Republicans.

Also last week Wisconsin Republican politicians met with Scott Walker to discuss the diminished groundwater protection by the Walker administration, (Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

The meeting agenda is not public. But judging from the Walker administration's devastation of Wisconsin's generations-long commitment to protecting water, it's fair to assume Scott Walker and Republican pols are not joining the John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club, though the famed environmental group notes "70 percent of Wisconsinites depend on groundwater for drinking water."

The meeting reportedly included State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) both of whom will face strong Democratic Party challengers this November in their gerrymandered assembly districts, (Mal Contends).

Reports Karen Ebert Yancey:

Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, met with Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday and said that they had agreed that different DNR rules governing agriculture were needed for 'unique geological areas of the state.'

'He understands that one size fits all doesn't work,' Kitchen(s) said, referring to DNR regulations that govern statewide agricultural practices, particularly for manure spreading. ... Rep. Scott Krug, who represents the Central Sands areas of the state, also participated in the meeting with the Governor because of that region's unique geology, Kitchens said. Krug recently spoke in Kewaunee County and said that issues due to runoff polluting rivers and lakes was one of the biggest concerns of residents in the state.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Scott Walker understands and cares different DNR rules governing agriculture are needed for different geological areas of the state.

Consider the Central Sands of Wisconsin, (Central Sands Hydrology Working Group).

Adams and Wood county residents have been arguing the Central Sands region is uniquely unsuited for industrialized agriculture operations. The Central Sands already has over 3,000 high-capacity, industrial water pumps drawing over 100,000 gallons of water per day, (Prengaman, WisconsinWatch).

Residents point to research in support of their conclusion the geology and composition of the Central Sands make the region unsuitable for industrialized agriculture operations, (United States Department of Agriculture - Natural Resources Conservation Service) (Water Resources Committee, Town of Saratoga).

Will Walker and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) now demand the Wysocki corporate interests withdraw its proposal for a massive factory farm in Saratoga in light of this unique geological area of the state?

No.

Wisconsin's industrialized agriculture and the politicians bought have to shape up their public image, an enterprise now underway nationally as well, (Eller, Des Moines Register).


Politicians Lie

Walker and the two politically endangered Big Ag frontmen, Kitchens and Krug, have been hostile to clean water advocates to the point of supporting the decimation of the Department of Natural Resources and facilitating the depletion of aquifers and surface waters by statute.

The meeting was about keeping Republicans in power and allowing polluters and poisoners to keep their operations going irrespective of citizen concerns over the depletion and pollution of aquifers and surface waters.

Last week Walker tried to shore up Joel Kitchens' non-existent environmental bona fides by appointing him to Wisconsin Coastal Management Council, (Kowols, Door County Daily News).

Walker, Krug and Kitchens will say or do anything to hang onto political power, and selling out their constituents' safe and clean drinking and recreational waters is high on the list.

Krug and Kitchens will disingenuously acclaim they are really champions of clean water, and Gannett Co. newspapers and other outlets will dutifully and uncritically pass on the news.

Scott Walker, GOP Reps Probe Public's Gullibility on Clean Water

Protect our water, say Wisconsin residents. No, says Big Ag
and its Republican protectors in Wisconsin.

Clean water is necessary for life, and is good business. Wisconsin Republican politicians won't listen.

Don Ystad, a retired business consultant living in Adams County Wisconsin, has penned 10,000s of words to Wisconsin policymakers and officials charged with protecting the water.

Ystad has met with success in forming alliances with local citizens across the political spectrum in central Wisconsin, but Scott Walker and the Republican Party remain in unified opposition to clean water advocates as 1,000s in central Wisconsin fight a proposed massive factory farm sited in the town of Saratoga in Wood County and the vile practice of dumping millions of tons of cow manure into the environment.

Wisconsin State Reps. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) and Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) represent districts in which aquifers and surface waters are being depleted and toxified by industrialized agriculture.

Both legislators are notorious yes men to Big Ag polluters in northeastern and central Wisconsin respectively. Both run political interference for industrialized agriculture operations as children are literally being sent to the emergency room after bathing or drinking water contaminated by the massive amount of cow manure and associated pathogens vectored into the environment.

"When Doug Jones and his wife, Sherryl,
bought their home in Spring Green
15 years ago, they had a vision of a place
where their family could gather,
enjoy the beauty of a restored prairie,
and where their grandchildren could
experience fresh air and a peaceful, rural life.
Their land included an 11-acre oxbow lake
and sloughs connected to the
Lower Wisconsin Riverway."
(Midwest Environmental Advocates)

Clean water advocates and other citizen groups—Kewaunee Cares, Saratoga Concerned and Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs, for example—have worked for years with municipal, county and state policymakers only to find themselves blacklisted by the Department of Natural Resources and besmirched by Republican legislators such as we-don't-need-the-EPA Joel Kitchens and Krug, and some have become the victims of threats and vandalism in their very homes.

Now, water advocates, (aka Wisconsin families), are fed-up and frustrated as children are poisoned, well water continually contaminated and property valuations plummeting.

"We have played nice with our County Board of Supervisors long enough, it is time to start calling them out publicly on their lack of leadership and accountability to citizen concerns," notes Saratoga Concerned Friday night on their Facebook page.

In a letter to the Wisconsin Rapids City Times, Criste Greening of Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors rips the Wood County Board (central Wisconsin) pointing to outright hostility from Scott Walker ally, Wood County Board Supervisor and Chairman Lance Pliml and other Board members politically allied with Big Ag in Wisconsin.

Citizen groups across the state are aligning, a phenomenon assisted by social media such as Facebook. Look for a change in tone this election cycle.

Following a report from northeastern Wisconsin that two schools in embattered Kewaunee County received letters warning of well contamination last week, (Karen Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin), Scott Walker, Kitchens and Krug were featured in a piece yesterday morning reporting:

In response to continued groundwater problems in Kewaunee County, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) expects to issue new administrative regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and other farmers in karst areas, state Rep. Joel Kitchens said Thursday.

Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, met with Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday and said that they had agreed that different DNR rules governing agriculture were needed for 'unique geological areas of the state.'

'He understands that one size fits all doesn't work,' Kitchen said, referring to DNR regulations that govern statewide agricultural practices, particularly for manure spreading, (Karen Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

No activist reached expects anything to come from the latest lip service from Scott Walker and Republican representatives who have decimated the DNR, and who use the hyper-partisan Republican attorney general to further the aims of polluters, money donors and anybody willing to pay to play.

Will Republicans stop the proposed Wysocki factory farm? Will Republicans restore scientists and the autonomy of the DNR? Will Republicans restore the autonomy of administrative law judges?

One thing is certain: 'No' to all questions.

Said one clean water advocate from Door County, (aka 'Wisconsin's Martha Vineyard'): "I won't hold my breath on anything actually happening, but the heat is apparently on."

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel fetes Big Ag's candidate for state
senate, Patrick Testin, on Feb. 14, 2016, (Twitter)

Polluters' Toady for State Senate in Central Wisconsin, Patrick Testin

"We need to protect our natural resources
without limiting their use in Central
Wisconsin's agricultural economy," writes
Big Ag toady, Patrick Testin, in typical
polluters and poisoners' twaddle.
.

Patrick Testin has a mandate for his campaign for Wisconsin's state senate, district 24.

Do whatever the polluters, in particular the Wysocki corporate interests, want. Testin is well-paid for his efforts.

One problem facing Testin is he has no idea what the issues are as central Wisconsin's natural resources—aquifers, streams, lakes, (and to be candid property valuations)—are under assault by polluting factory farms.

Testin's incoherence on these critical issues is on display.

Have a look above-right at Testin's recent thoughts on the proposed massive factory farm by the Wysocki polluters in Saratoga, Wood County Wisconsin.

"We need to protect our natural resources without limiting their use in Central Wisconsin's agricultural economy," opines Testin.

What?

This is apparently Testin-talk for central Wisconsin should be a repository for millions of tons of liquid cow manure.
---
Golf resort designer Mike Keiser wants to build an environmentally friendly golf resort, Sand Valley Resort, sited along the bottom of the ancient Glacial Lake Wisconsin, a can't-miss recreational and tourism project.

Unfortunately for Keiser and Adams and Wood counties, the resort, now under construction, is adjacent to, and just south of a massive proposed Wysocki factory farm, halted for now.

If residents can't stop this polluting operation, it won't be just the residents of Wood, Adams and surrounding counties being poisoned, an enterprise protected by Testin and Wisconsin Republicans including Wisconsin's Republican attorney general and governor.

A stiff north wind carrying the stench of millions of tons of liquid cow manure would quickly educate golf enthusiasts on some the unsavory aspects of a Wysocki factory farm. If they breathe deeply, golfers will understand with a precision central Wisconsin residents are working to avoid.

Drink the area's well water, and it is advisable golfers are aware of the area's hospitals as well as tourist destinations.

As for Patrick Testin, he's looking for more money for his campaign and pushing hard for a tax-payer-funded gig in the Wisconsin State Senate.

China Says 80% of Tested Wells Had Water Too Polluted to Drink

As Scott Walker and state Republicans abandon safeguarding Wisconsin's waters for polluters, a piece in the New York Times shows where we are heading: "Grim pollution in underground water."

Report Chris Buckley and Vanessa Piaoapril:
 

BEIJING — Although the Chinese have become used to hazy skies as a measure of environmental blight, statistics that received wide attention on Monday pointed to grim pollution below citizens’ feet, in underground water that is heavily used by farms, factories and households.

More than 80 percent of 2,103 wells for underground water tested across heavily populated plains of China were so badly contaminated by industrial and agricultural runoff that their water was unfit for drinking and home use, according to the numbers cited in a recent survey by the Ministry of Water Resources.

“From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China,” said Dabo Guan, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain who has been studying water pollution and scarcity in China.

“People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don’t see how bad the water pollution is,” Professor Guan said. “They don’t have the same sense.”

The latest statistics are far from the first about the damage done to China’s underground water reservoirs and basins by runoff from farming and industry ...

This is where Wisconsin is heading unless we stop the Republicans.

Big Ag Targets Wisconsin State Senator Julie Lassa

Manure and pathogens vectored into Wisconsin's environment by Big Ag to
tragic consequences, as state Republicans take the polluters' side

As she has done countless times, State Senator Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point), listened to her constituents' concerns last week about the depletion and poisoning of water by the vile industrialized agriculture, (WSAW-TV), (Anderson, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

As Scott Walker plays the outside, and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) plays the inside, Wisconsin Republicans protect the polluters, Big Ag.

Krug's role is particularly odious as his mendacity apparently knows no bounds, and his own constituents' health, and economic well-being are suffering grievously.

Now, Big Ag is targeting Sen. Lassa.

Lassa grew up on a small dairy farm in Portage County where "her parents taught her the important of hard work, the value of a dollar, and that honesty and integrity are everything," as she notes in her biography.

Here's a report from Wood County:

By Rhonda Cain-Carrell

While Senator Lassa participated in a Groundwater Listening Session in Saratoga, the Wysocki's were busy at the Stevens Point Country Club plotting her demise as our Senator. In one night, HOSTING and contributing $1,000 per plate as PLATINUM DONORS to the man they are running against one of very few legislators brave enough to stick their neck out for Wisconsin's water.

Please support Senator Lassa in the upcoming election.

Wysockis are working to get Patrick Testin in Lassa's seat.

$17,000 in donations from their family and very close business contacts JUST at last night's event:

Bob & Mary Berard ($2,000) - Paramount Farms recently purchased by Wysocki Companies, massive polluter
Paul & Dawn Roberts ($2,000) - Roberts Irrigation (reportedly the company that would sell irrigation systems for proposed CAFO/cropland in Saratoga)
Jeff & Kathy Sommers ($2,000) - Runs Central Sands Dairy, massive polluter
Nick & Diane (Wysocki) Somers ($2,000)
Kirk & Jackie (Wysocki) Wille ($2,000)
Bill & Marla Wysocki ($2,000)
Francis & Harriet Wysocki ($2,000)
Jim & Sharon Wysocki ($2,000)
Louis Wysocki ($1,000)

SO, the long and short of this is: NO TO TESTIN! He is sponsored by the Wysocki CAFO Family. A vote for Testin is a vote against Saratoga (Wood County), Rome (Adams County) and all of Wisconsin's water.

Wisconsin Legislators Hear Residents' Concerns over Poisoners

"I don't think it's too much to ask of them, (industrialized agriculture), not to poison our water or dry up our wells," Nekoosa, Wisconsin resident Rick Potter told Wisconsin legislators yesterday.

It may very well be too much to ask of Big Ag and the psychology of the poisoner.

Rebecca Cardenas of WSAU-TV (Wausau, Wisconsin) has the story.

Patt Pisellini of central Wisconsin writes:

"Last night was an exercise in futility. The legislators were there to hear our concerns, and to act on them; but all we got out of the evening was that our voices are being heard - and ignored, but a Republican-led legislature that votes along party lines, and spouts the same tired rhetoric fed to them by the DBA and the veg growers lobbyists. It infuriates me that we have to keep going to Madison to grovel before legislators, begging for something that should be our natural right - the right to clean safe water."

Amen. 

Wisconsin Sends SOS Re Safe Water

Mary Dougherty of Bayfield, Wisconsin works with a group,
Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs,
fighting the siting of a massive industrialized factory farm
in far-northern Wisconsin.

Clean water activists in Wisconsin continue asking the EPA for help as they face a hostile Republican state government helping polluters pollute.

Drinking water in the country's 160,000 public drinking water systems to the private water wells serving rural regions are under assault.

Wisconsin citizens are working to protect Wisconsin's abundant fresh waters, (U.S. DHS, Mal Contends, Orlando, In These Times, Water Watch Wisconsin, Kewaunee Cares, Tri-Lakes Management District, Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors, Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs, Farms Not Factories).

The many other citizen groups are too numerous to list.

Appeals to the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources fall on deaf ears.

Last year the DNR's "eliminated ... the agency's crucial water division," a fact known but not acknowledged at a March 31 event in northeastern Wisconsin attended by two Republican state representatives pretending to a concern about clean water for their political survival—State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) and State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay).

"Krug and Kitchens refused to acknowledge that there is no will at the DNR to do anything to protect clean water now that Scott Walker has eviscerated the scientific staff and refused to allow the DNR to do its job. The general consensus at the (March 31) Friends of Crescent Beach event was that Krug and Kitchens have no regard for surface water or aquifers just like the rest of Wisconsin Republicans and were just putting on a PR show," said an event attendee living in Door County.

Facing a hostile DNR, clean water activists representing citizens in Kewaunee County in northeastern Wisconsin—where some one-third of residents have private water wells unsuitable to use as drinking water, tests revealed—have made several appeals to the EPA:

"After a year of talks, Kewaunee County residents are still waiting for local solutions to this continued drinking water crisis," said Lynn Utesch, member of Kewaunee CARES and EPA petitioner. "We need the EPA to know that local residents are still facing unreasonable delays in drinking water contamination test results. The DNR or EPA did not provide safe drinking water in the fall of 2014, however citizen efforts and donations supported a clean drinking water kiosk for residents with contaminated wells. Now that the kiosk has been vandalized and shut down, residents are again out of options."

A clean water kiosk is a place where residents can obtain jugs of clean water, (Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

Where is the EPA?

Laura Orlando at In These Times magazine has a piece out asking the same question:

Where is the EPA in all of this? Eviscerated. It started when Reagan took office in 1981 and appointed Anne Gorsuch, a Colorado state representative who vocally opposed federal regulation of energy and the environment, as administrator. She cut the budget by 22 percent, hired people representing industry while firing long-time EPA staff, relaxed existing regulations and resisted new ones. She was cited for contempt of Congress in her involvement in the misuse of over a billion dollars in Superfund money. Her deputy, Rita Lavelle, went to jail over the scandal. The agency has been under assault by industry-friendly Democrats and Republicans ever since.

Current drinking water regulation has little to do with the realities of what is actually in our drinking water. Like all chemical regulation in the United States, regulatory responses happen—if at all—decades after health threats are documented. Regulators turn a blind eye to problems that can only be remedied through radical changes in how we do things (for example, where we source our drinking water or how we grow our food). As a result, drinking water regulations are inadequate, and those on the books are not being competently monitored or properly enforced. 

Knowing Republican candidates for the presidency are actually calling for the elimination of the EPA: To Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Wisconsin's clean water citizen activists are sending a SOS from their homes, Save Our Water.

Water Not Everywhere, Too Toxic to Drink—Big Ag Is Perpetrator

Wisconsin citizens fight back against politicians cowed by Big Ag in America's Dairyland as the authoritarians appear desperate

"Please contact all of your neighbors, friends and relatives who own property in our town and ask them to help get the word out about the meeting on January 16th at the Rome (Adams County, Wisconsin) town hall. We need to stand together as a community to understand the issue and decide what we can do individually to protect our own interests and our community [against the proposed Golden Sands Dairy CAFO in the town of Saratoga next door in Wood County]. And please, in addition to contacting others, attend this meeting yourselves."

So reads a typical message by citizens against industrialized agriculture, the CAFO (Concentrated (Confined Agricultural Feeding Operations), sited or proposed across Wisconsin.

There's a new gang of perpetrators in town. They're called Big Agriculture and citizens are fighting back as the lifeblood of humanity and the biosphere—fresh, safe water—faces a grave threat.

Corporate polluters are not just DuPont, Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto Co., (putting aside energy extraction sectors for this discussion), they're the worst offenders in polluting water, even as too many in the state of Iowa and Wisconsin look to become a corporate subsidiary, ((Eller and Doering, Des Monies Register).

When industrialized conglomerates operate, most Americans realize the corporations want—exist for—profits and market share.

Toxic waste produced ... , well, it's not like corporate officers live and work in the factories, the camps of industrialized agriculture and liquid manure lagoons.

Health and environmental poisons, aka toxic wastes, emitting from industrialized agriculture and vectored into American society are acceptable costs of doing business, acceptable to the corporation (Masar, Socially Responsible Agricultural Project) (Hansen, NASA; Fabien, Jacob, Harvard University).

Poisoning our water though is a crime too far.

Sustainable Agriculture

Among the last major sectors of our economy to become industrialized is agriculture, (Yelle, Western Illinois University).

Abolitionists and assorted progressives had destroyed slavery, (and later drove up migrant labor (loved by Big Ag) costs (troublemakers)), and for a considerable historical period, agriculture was a pillar of rural America and progressive politics.

Small farmers were often politically progressive, working intimately with land grant public universities in the American heartland, (University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Idea for example), roughly from the later 19th through the late 20th century.

Politically, in Wisconsin for example, a force of state history in the early 20th century was the Sewer Socialists of Milwaukee and myriad progressives making common cause with rural, small farmers.

Likewise the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and Minnesota Democratic Party "provided the organic connection between labor and the party," as noted by Graeme Anfinson, (Anfinson, CounterPunch; Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) .

Industrialized Agriculture 

The rise of industrialized agriculture (Big Agriculture) has greatly assisted in weakening this political farm-labor coalition, and the results have been catastrophic: Politically, economically, environmentally, medically, and morally.

No cause for despair, citizens are fighting back and to use Wisconsin as an anthology the new business model of Big Ag embodied in the CAFO, (Concentrated (Confined Agricultural Feeding Operations) is generating popular opposition and citizen activism increasing seemingly by the week.

To be precise, the CAFO is poisoning Wisconsin's water, air and land, (chemically and biologically), is driving down small home property valuations, as Gov. Scott Walker (Sociopathic Party-Wisc) has usurped the historical and mythical ethos of the vanishing small farmer and existing hyper-segregation, creating a veritable axis Party of racism and corporatism.

Any nihilist is welcome to join the "Koch Industries Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin," as Charles P. Pierce nails it in his Esquire dispatches.

Wisconsin Citizens and the Counterattack

As Prof. John Ikerd, an ally of citizens protecting water, writes:

[Aldo] Leopold’s Land Ethic mostly simply stated is: 'A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.' I propose the following maxim for an ethic of sustainability: A thing is right when it tends to enhance the quality and integrity of all life on earth by means that honor the unique responsibilities and rewards of humans as members and caretakers of the earth’s integral community. A thing is wrong when it tends otherwise." I believe it is important that we begin to guide the sustainability movements by questioning what is right and wrong. (Partridge, The Philosophical Foundations of Aldo Leopold’s 'Land Ethic' cited in The Online Gadfly)

It's a presidential election year, folks, stay tuned, poisoning the peoples' lifeblood just does not play well politically.

Just a matter of time before a people "stand together as a community to understand the issue and decide what we can do individually to protect our own interests," as a central Wisconsin citizen writes.

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, time to call for vastly expanding the EPA, as people living in states under Republican rule suffer, a project national Republicans wish to expand.

Water wars are coming

Republicans and Big Ag want to dismantle the
EPA protecting the 160,000 public drinking
water systems, and 100,000s of private wells in the
rural U.S. Costs of drinking water pollution
is borne by consumers, and subsidized by
the taxpayers.

 

"[D]emand is driven by [industrialized] agriculture, which accounts for more than 90 percent of freshwater use each year ... placing unsustainable pressure on water supplies," writes Vikram Mansharamani at the PBS Newshour, citing the September 2015 U.S. National Intelligence Strategy.

This should scare the hell out of everyone concerned for future generations and presently residing anywhere near an industrialized factory farm or CAFOs.

Factory farms are subsidized and pollute the water, air and land, demanding of the politicians they own that surrounding communities pay for the health and environmental destruction.

Recent press series

• Failure at the Faucet - Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting   
• Ryan Schuessler' Something’s in the water in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin
• Big Ag Is Poisoning the Dairy State

Citizen groups

• Kewaunee CARES (Facebook) 
• Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors 
• Midwest Environmental Advocates
• Farms not Factories
  
• Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs  
• Clean Wisconsin
• Rome and Saratoga Friendly
• River Alliance of Wisconsin
• Friends of the Central Sands
• Sierra Club - John Muir Chapter 
• Aldo Leopold Foundation

Academic pieces

• CAFOs - The Promise of Prosperity Versus the Ugly Truth (Joshua Yelle, (Research Fellow, Western Illinois University))
• Food Sovereignty: A Revolution in US Farm Policy, Dr. John Ikerd
• The Inevitable Economic, Ecological, and Social Consequences of CAFOs. University of Missouri-Columbia. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. Ikerd, Dr. John. [See also Past and Recent Papers of Dr. John E. Ikerd.]
• Factory Farming: Unintended Consequences. Factory-Farming. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2014.
• How Do CAFOs Impact the Environment. EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.
• Research Clarifies Health Costs of Air Pollution from Agriculture, Hansen, Kathryn.. NASA. NASA, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014. 
• How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture, Horrigan, Leo, Lawrence, Robert S., Walker, Polly, Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future, July 9, 1999, n.d. web 24 Sept. 2014
• Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (n.d.): n. pag. National Association of Local Boards of Health. Centers for Disease Control. Web, Hribar, Carrie.

Scott Walker Appointed Atty to Judge During Case Banning DNR from Monitoring Polluters

Sauk County Directory, p. 37

Scott Walker, Big Ag and Judicial Corruption

When Michael P. Screnock filed a petition for judicial review on October 17, 2014, Screnock represented a massive industrialized factory farm and heavily polluting corporation, MS Real Estate Holdings LLC (formerly MilkSource Holdings LLC and Tidy View Dairy) headquartered in Kaukauna, Wisconsin in Outagamie County.

Screnock was awarded by Gov. Scott Walker with a judicial appointment some seven months later on April 10, 2015, approximately a month before Screnock withdrew from the case.

The Screnock appointment demonstrates again the massive work accomplished by the Scott Walker administration on behalf of polluters known in politics and the public culture as graft and corruption.

Screnock is also one of the attorneys who represented Scott Walker during the 2011-12 Recall campaign, (WisPolitics, PDF, p.4).

Screnock is a former attorney of Michael Best and Friedrich LLP, aka in-house counsel for Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin) (Elbow, The Capital Times)).

In New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC v. Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources, Outagamie Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis ruled the state Department of Natural Resources doesn't have the authority to monitor high-capacity wells at this factory farm in central Wisconsin, (Wisconsin Public Radio).

This ruling, for the time being, insulates New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC and other factory farms from state efforts to protect the region from the toxins and pathogens vectored from the New Chester Dairy LLC CAFO sited in Adams County in central Wisconsin.

Protecting polluters remains a high priority of the Walker administration, (Isikoff, Yahoo News), (Pierce, Esquire).

Screnock filed the petition for judicial review on behalf of MS Real Estate Holdings LLC on October 17, 2014, according to court records.

Screnock officially withdrew from the New Chester case on May 18, 2015 a month after Scott Walker appointed Screnock to a circuit court judgeship in Sauk County on April 10, 2015.

Walker and the Republican Party special interest groups fund judges who will rule in their favor, and Walker appoints judges who do him political favors such as helping polluters in Screnock's case.

The New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC case is likely to reach the Wisconsin Supreme Court where its future is uncertain.

Michael P. Screnock awarded with judgeship by Scott Walker for representing Big Ag polluter

Judge Mark McGinnis Defies Science, Constitution

"Groundwater in the humid Midwest, here in Wisconsin, almost always discharges to nearby surface water," said Dr. Madeline Gotkowitz of the Wisconsin Geological Survey," (Chase, Ashland Daily Press)

Dr. Gotkowitz presented her findings to the Bayfield County Large-Scale Livestock Committee on Nov. 12.

Gotkowitz' truism eludes Outagamie (Wisconsin) Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis who defying precedent, law and the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine is carrying out the Republican Party's effort to block state protection of surface and ground water from polluters.

To understand how groundwater, streams, and lakes are connected, examine images below from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

U.S. Geological Survey image shows flow of groundwater, streams, and lakes
Image: U.S. Geological Survey; January 14, 2008

Figure showing potential sources of groundwater contamination
Image provided by USGS; January 14, 2008

Only a child or somewhat willfully ignorant or corrupt does not understand groundwater and surface water interact. What you put into the groundwater is vectored into surface water, and when you drain groundwater, you drain lakes and streams.

Judge Gives Big Ag License to Pollute, Ignores Wisconsin Constitution

Rightwinger Judge Mark J. McGinnis Does Job for Political Allies—Big Ag, WMC, Scott Walker and GOP

The Republican Party's attack on the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine protecting the peoples' water received a boost from the rightwing jurist, Outagamie Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis.

McGinnis is an ethically challenged judge who does the bidding of Republicans and rightwing interest groups, (Wisconsin Watch).

Mcginnis ruled "the state Department of Natural Resources doesn't have the authority to monitor high-capacity wells at a large dairy in central Wisconsin. The New Chester Dairy [an industrialized, polluting factory farm] plans to install two [more] high-capacity wells that will each pump 500 gallons a minute to provide water for more than 8,600 cows), (Wisconsin Public Radio) (WPR).

The mission of the DNR and the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine say differently, no deterrent for McGinnis, just another corrupt Republican judge.

The New Chester Dairy is in Adams county in central Wisconsin.

Outagamie County where McGinnis serves as circuit court judge is located in northeastern Wisconsin. The New Chester Dairy is owned by MS Real Estate Holdings LLC (formerly MilkSource Holdings LLC and Tidy View Dairy) located in Kaukauna, Wisconsin in Outagamie County, hence the court filing in Outagamie County.

McGinnis has been promoted by rightwingers as a judge who will rule for the GOP special interests for years, (Mark Rahmlow, WisOpinion;) (Rahmlow is a rightwinger currently working as Vice President of Public Policy for the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce and former aide to the anti-environmentalist, current U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wisconsin)).

The case is New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC v. Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources (Outagamie County Case Number 2014CV001055).

Elizabeth Wheeler, of Clean Wisconsin, said the ruling prevents the DNR from adequately protecting groundwater resources, notes WPR.

James Ostrom

James Ostrom, the registered agent of MR Real Estate Holding LLC, has been calling for more industrialized factory farming for over a decade, (Glauber, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Ostrom and Big Ag own Gov. Scott Walker who has worked diligently to gut the Dept. of Natural Resources and stop the DNR from protecting Wisconsin's waters from polluters like Ostrom's operations.

Big Ag and Judicial Corruption

Walker and the Republican Party special interest groups fund judges who will rule in their favor.

In New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC v. Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources, one of the attorneys representing the co-plaintiffs is Michael P. Screnock (formerly of Michael Best and Friedrich LLP aka In-house counsel for Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin) (Elbow, The Capital Times).

Screnock officially withdrew from the case on May 18, 2015 a month after receiving his payoff from Scott Walker who appointed Screnock to a circuit court judgeship in Sauk County on April 10, 2015. Screnock made the petition for judicial review on October 17, 2014, according to court records.

The case is likely to reach the Wisconsin Supreme Court where its future is uncertain.

Big Ag Orders GOP Lawmakers and Court: We Want All Water and Right to Pollute

Bi Ag wants all the water, the right to pollute, and the
immediate halting of state appeals to the
Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine
protecting our water, the public's water
Source: October 5, 2015 press release

Update: See also DNR to factory farms: How can we help?, "The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, charged with protecting the state’s environment, is creating a website portal to help large-scale developers and the operators of factory farms." (Lueders, Isthmus)
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Wisconsin wetlands, streams, ponds, lakes and (underground) aquifers—from which most of rural Wisconsin gets its drinking water—are now corporate resources by Big Agriculture demanding full control of water through new state laws to be enacted by Republicans, an October 5 press release reads, and orders.

The brazen nature of the October 5 press release reflects the mentality of Big Agriculture in Wisconsin.

They demand "certainty" from the Republican legislators they finance, and they want their right to aquifers enshrined in law, while Big Ag plays the victim and gets its way in the DNR now in a pretension Big Ag does not already own Republican legislators, the DNR and Scott Walker.

As for the Wisconsin families who live here, (not in gated communities far from the industrialized, polluting operations like CAFO owner James Wysocki), most would be happy if Big Ag would just leave Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, Big Ag is protected by the Republican Party, and the DNR which jettisoned its scientists and imploded the DNR into a Big Ag and other polluters-protection operation.

Big Ag wants more money, period.

As for tourism and recreation, including Mike Keiser's golf resort in central Wisconsin, Keiser and his investors are going to find out the hard way what liquid cow manure sprayed into the air does to the surrounding region. Keiser better hope visitors to his resort like flies.

Industrialized agriculture is predatory, heartless, and does not care how many children are poisoned, how many streams are destroyed, lakes dried-up and how many water water wells are contaminated by the 1,000s of millions of liquid manure sprayed into the environment for which Big Ag proposes entitlement by state law.

Though Big Ag pretends to want to "feed the world;" this is a lie. State Rep. Scott Klug (R-Nekoosa) is the worst liar fronting for the polluters.

It's about the money, and the hell with Wisconsin families.
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The October 5 press release by Big Ag industry groups is reproduced below:

An urgent communication to all Wisconsin legislatorsWe are at a crossroads. It is imperative that the legislature assert its authority and bring certainty and sanity to the regulation of new and existing high capacity wells in Wisconsin.

The Problem

The State of Wisconsin, Agriculture, and Industry all need certainty and clarity in the permitting of new and existing wells. The arbitrary and subjective nature of the process has led to a cycle of stagnation, litigation, and businesses uncertainty. No reasonable business that needs water from such wells will invest millions of dollars to locate or expand here given such uncertainty.

Because the Department of Natural Resources has created a backlog for those who need to drill new wells and those looking to repair or transfer ownership of existing ones, the legislature must ACT before the end of this session.

The unelected bureaucrats at the DNR are seizing on the vague nature of the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine in such a way that it is doing real harm to your constituents. This backlog of permits, which does nothing to protect the environment, is costing more than just jobs, it threatens our standing as a state friendly to agriculture and business. Moreover, the backlog doesn't reflect the unknown potential projects that were never submitted, having been abandoned in reaction to the current regulatory climate here.

The Solution

We need the legislature to provide:
•Specificity in statutory procedures and science-based standards that provide for timely and certain new well permitting
•Protection for code compliant private wells if it is proven that a high capacity well caused damage to the well
•A clear, science-based, statutory process to ensure that we uncover any problems caused by high capacity wells, such as any harm to surface waters, and a well-defined framework for the Legislature to take further steps to correct any such problems
•Clarification of the public trust doctrine with the Supreme Court's Rock-Koshkonong decision [meaning Big Ag's orders apply to the Wisconsin Supreme Court judicial policymaking as well: Kill the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine]
•Certainty in the repair, replacement, reconstruction, and transfer of existing high cap wells

(-over-October 5, 2015 - HAND DELIVERED)

Wisconsinites deserve to have our water protected by scientifically-sound, responsible, common sense legislation that allows our great farmers to responsibly use this life-giving, renewable resource to feed the world’s families.

Wisconsin is fortunate to enjoy an abundant water supply for drinking water. So, when someone claims our beautiful lakes, rivers and streams are drying up because the state's regulations of high capacity wells are not onerous enough —as some so-called environmental groups have done— we take notice. We not only set the record straight (see the attached column) but we roll up our sleeves and get to work to fix the problem.

We represent thousands of families who work on their land. They live on their land and they raise families on their land. They know full well that depleting the aquifer would threaten their livelihoods, their families’ future and Wisconsin.

If this sounds like an urgent plea, that is because this is. We cannot wait any longer for the legislation described above.

However, we cannot accept any legislation that would create new, stifling regulations or establish regulatory uncertainty as to how DNR and the state will approach new well applications moving forward.

There are some in this state who want to ensure no piece of land is ever tilled and no drop of water is ever extracted. They view us as exploiters of the environment. While we are not environmental activists, we are active environmentalists. Please do not think the status quo stalemate protects the environment—it does not. However, the standstill does indeed jeopardize our future.

We are steadfast in our commitment to fixing these problems. We are counting on the legislators who we elected and represent us in the State Capitol to defend us against this emerging war on Wisconsin Agriculture and the businesses that are the backbone of the state's economy.