DNR Story Shows Wisconsin State Journal at Deceitful Worst

Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp is featured in a propaganda piece this morning on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal.

The writer is Steven Verburg; the writing (and presumably the editing) highlights a major reason our household no longer subscribes to Wisconsin's second largest daily.

The 2,500-word piece is the worst type of trash the State Journal puts out, illustrating how badly the Republican propaganda sheet misleads readers and shills for their favored political interests.


Online the headline reads: As DNR woes grow, former critic says she's its best protector.

That's a misleading headline.

The headline cites "woes" (caused by what or whom?) as though the DNR has passively experienced some unknown malady caused by unknown agents. In reality, Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans have worked to change the mission and operation of the DNR with Stepp on the front lines.

The headline shields Stepp in the cloak of DNR "critic" and "protector."

In the lede paragraph Verburg recites a story explaining Stepp's reluctant steps before being appointed by Scott Walker to the DNR secretary position in 2011.

The fact-based world is something different.

Scott Walker, Attorney General Bard Schimel, legislative Republicans and Stepp have devastated the resource protection and planning objectives of the agency, (most of what the DNR does is planning and soliciting input from stakeholders), and rebuilt the DNR as a tool for polluters.

Here's Verberg on Stepp:

She fought to streamline environmental regulations, earned a 'zero' rating from conservationists, gathered testimony about overzealous DNR employees, and authored a bill to criminalize state worker 'retaliation' against companies seeking pollution permits.

Frustrated by the slow pace of change, Stepp left the Senate when her four-year term ended. She worked for Republican causes until 2011 when the party took control of state government, and Gov. Scott Walker appointed her as the DNR’s top administrator.

Here I was thinking Republicans like Stepp were fronting for polluters like Menard's and other heavy donors to Walker and other Republicans.

No, Verburg assures, Stepp fought for streamlining, against the overzealous and the retaliatory.

Wow, Stepp is good.

Elsewhere, Verburg presents the DNR's Stepp as merely a passive regulator working to find common ground against Republican legislators:

'We have made terrific inroads with some the toughest critics in the Legislature against this agency who have a very skewed perception of who makes up this agency,' Stepp said.

The agency must be apolitical publicly, deferring to elected officials, Stepp said. As DNR secretary she said she has no opinion on whether environmental regulations are excessive or inadequate. The DNR’s job is to put the law into practice, she said.

Stepp is just an objective good-heated public servant; she said so herself.

Of course Stepp's opinions are easy to find. Notes Kewaunee Cares (Facebook):

She doesn't have an opinion? Stepp offered her commentary on our health and water crisis in the [heavily polluted] Kewaunee [County] through an Op-Ed piece in the Green Bay Gazette, marginalizing our problems.

Stepp writes, "The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been working for more than a year with multiple stakeholder groups to address water quality issues in and around Kewaunee County. That work is not over but based on our discussions so far, we have been able to take action on several fronts."

"The department believes in making decisions and finding solutions based on sound science and so we commissioned scientific research to gather data about the quality of wells in Kewaunee County."

That's a lot of rhetoric to begin a piece on an issue about which Stepp has no opinion.

Of course, pointing this out would require the State Journal's Verburg to dig all the way back to ... May 2016. That kind of in-depth journalism apparently is beyond the means of the WSJ.

Wisconsin Candidates Run for Clean Water Against Historic Attacks by Republicans

Wisconsin Faces a Crisis Unprecedented in Its History by Republicans Ruining the State

At least three Wisconsin state assembly candidates are making fighting Republicans and corporate agriculture's unprecedented attack on clean and safe water the central basis of seeking office to knock off sitting Republican state representatives.

Two of the most troubled regions in Wisconsin are the central sands and northeastern peninsula regions. Much of those regions are part of the 72nd and First assembly districts respectively.

Both districts have drawn challenges from Democratic Party activists facing Republican-drawn gerrymandereding and incumbent Republicans who are political allies of industrialized agricultural polluters.

"Are we going to stand by and watch as our precious resources and our environment are being destroyed for the benefit of a few corporate elite? If we choose to be helpless and invisible, then perhaps we deserve the tragedy that looms up before us," wrote Jack Stewart of Washburn, Wisconsin in a Facebook posting. Stewart belongs to a citizens' group, Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs, fighting the siting of a proposed massive swine CAFO from an operation run out of Iowa.

Citizens Concerned with the assistance of the networking capacity of social media such as Facebook, (and academics, citizen media, and legal groups), is linked with similar-minded citizen groups in central and northeastern Wisconsin.

Central Wisconsin

In central Wisconsin, two candidates are challenging the anti-clean water and polluting factory farm champion, State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin) in assembly district 72. In 2010. Krug ran on the promise he would only serve four years if elected, and would never accept one cent of per diem money. Both promises were broken, as Krug continues to run political interference for the Wysocki corporation that wants to build a massive factory farm in the town of Saratoga in Wood County.

The two challenging candidates are: Dave Gorski, (D-Grand Rapids), and Russ Brown (D-Richford), (a small farmer and former community banker). Both candidates gain plaudits from pro-clean water advocates in Wood and Adams counties.

Krug is now almost universally regarded by clean water workers as bought-and-paid-for by polluters.

Northeastern Wisconsin

In northeastern Wisconsin, first-term incumbent and pollution-friendly State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), faces a challenge from small farmer, veteran and clean water activist, Lynn Utesch, (Lunstrom, Door County Pulse), (Mal Contends).

The Republican Kitchens is a close political ally of Scott Walker and Scott Krug, and is similarly regarded with disdain by clean water activists.

Republicans

Part of the incredible political strategy of Walker, Krug and Kitchens is to transform Wisconsin into a polluted, corrupt and anti-education colony of corporations, so repellent the effort will drive non-Republican Wisconsinites out of the state, and minimize educated and socially conscious out-of-state citizens from locating in Wisconsin.

The leading Wisconsin progressive daily newspaper, (Paul Fanlund, The Capital Times) has adopted a defensive stop-hurting-us posture warning citizens, academics and progressive organs not to antagonize Scott Walker and other Republicans, lest Republicans retaliate against the University of Wisconsin System, for example. Fanlund should be rallying citizens, not asking for silence.

As Walker, with all Republicans following with no dissent, work to inflict catastrophe on the environment, the University system, public education, local control, state budget, voting, and cities (to list just a few sectors), at least three political candidates advocate fighting back.

The scope of the Wisconsin Republicans' inflict-disaster approach to public policy cannot be overstated.

This site will keep readers abreast of other candidates working for Wisconsin against baleful assaults, incursions, encroachments and befouling unprecedented in Wisconsin history.

DNR Ups Rhetoric Blasting Judge's Ruling of 'Massive Regulatory Failure'

Update: See also Judge: Contaminated wells part of 'massive regulatory failure' (Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

"The DNR operates all of its permit programs to meet all requirements of current laws and rules," writes Michael Bruhn, Director of Policy and External Relations for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in an November 3 email.

Bruhn writes his comment in an email exchange with Wisconsin clean water activists and Greg Farnham of Juneau, Wisconsin following an administrative law ruling by Judge Jeffrey Boldt in October reading that "massive regulatory failure" at the DNR led to groundwater contamination in northeastern Wisconsin and that the DNR should in effect do its job to prevent continued water contamination by liquid cow manure. (Seely, WisconsinWatch)

Farnham and citizens around the state would like to see more such rulings as well as federal intervention by the EPA, as Wisconsin waters are becoming increasingly toxified by a new form of Big Agriculture and Dairy farming: Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operations or CAFOs.

The DNR has been trying to deflect political and legal blame for the massive regulatory failure, exemplified by DNR's spokesman William Cosh who tried to absolve the DNR even after the ad law opinion was published.

Writes Farnham to the DNR's spokesman William Cosh in a Nov. 2 email: "In my opinion your statements are beyond the pale and further evidence of the mutation of the department [Wisconsin DNR] from a protector of natural resources for the benefit of all citizens of the state to a cabal of the rich, powerful and well-connected agricultural lobbies."

Meanwhile, DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp has taken to talk radio and blogging criticizing the October ruling as "editorializing." (Rowen, The Political Environment)

Writes Farnham to the DNR's Bruhn: "Bill Cosh's attempt to pin the tail of responsibility for regulatory failure on his targeted donkey - the county health department - strikes me as egregiously irresponsible."

Rather it is misguided and dangerous state policy that has resulted in massive regulatory failure -- a failure which is turning our rural landscape into giant septic tanks for livestock manure, polluting our groundwater and adversely affecting the lives of rural residents and the well being of their communities."

The truth is the clean and safe water activists' effect on the November general election—despite widespread popularity of their position—was nil, to the puzzlement of many around Wisconsin.

Writes Don Ystad of Rome, Wisconsin: "(DNR bureaucrats) spin [the Boldt decision] just like the Ag lobbyists. These are supposed to be the people protecting our environment from those who would abuse it. DNR enforcement is down 67 percent in the past four years, 2013 set records for pollution of waterways in our state, and 2014 is on pace to exceed even that."

No source contacted for this piece is considering giving up.