Scott Walker's Bombs Include Obliterating Community Control

Christopher Cline's Mega Mansion in North Palm Beach
Mining mogul Cline has his eyes set on northern Wisconsin's iron ore,
but Cline will not appear in person before community boards
concerned about environmental disasters and massive pollution.
The trip to Wisconsin from Palm Beach might interfere with Cline's life.
Cline is an avid mega yacht enthusiast - northern Wisconsin is not his place.
Cline famously sold his $27-million yacht, the 161-foot Mine Games,
because Cline had a larger boat on order, so don't expect Cline to
come up before some County Board and community panels to justify
his company coming in and destroying a near-pristine environment.
The man's too busy for Wisconsin.

Scott Walker never campaigned on taking away the liberty of workers to organise.

Walker never campaigned on taking away local control of communities to set policies protecting citizens, protecting its schools, and local environments.

Walker never campaigned on taking away a women's right to choose, or closing Planned Parenthood centers serving women's health care.

But only two years into Walker's administration, these rights and many others lie in ruin, as if hit by a depleted uranium shell air strike from a corrupt administration literally targeting its own citizens in service to huge-moneyed interests.

It would be nice to hear to voices of opposition on every medium, every street corner. But the guns of opposition have gone virtually silent. For now. Citizen action is gathering and war plans are being made.

Walker won't back down—because he's so brave (ask him)—from taking away the power of communities enacting residency requirements for their local employees.

Walker and the GOP are sneaking the anti-residency provision into the state budget, against almost unanimous opposition from community mayors, village presidents, town managers and other elected municipal representatives.

As more extreme, severe-weather events occur, Walker's usurpation could have another unforeseen effect, at least an uncared-about effect.

Said Larry Arft, City Manager in Beloit, Wisconsin: "Don’t forget, public works employees are also first responders. Winter storm events, summer rain storms, wind storms, we have people on call for our utilities. 24/7 somebody has to be on call and they need to be there in a few minutes."

Not Walker's concern.

If communities start passing laws protecting their land in any capacity, how can out-of-state billionaires strip the land? What would be next, stopping fracking?

Walker is getting set to cash in on his work for billionaires and out-of-state interests who could not care less if Wisconsin tips over and falls into Lake Michigan, as long as the Christopher Clines (a pure bastard of a man hooked up with the Carlyle Group) and the Koch brothers get their hands on our resources, the Wisconsin people and our public land and waters be damned.

New Film Says, Stop the Disaster Inflicted by the GOP and Mining Goon, Christopher Cline

The Iron Current

One would believe that self-consciously polluting water and watersheds is an act of mass poisoning perpetrated by sociopaths like the kind of crazies hunted by the FBI.

They should be.

What the Republicans and Christoper Cline's minions are doing is unforgivable.

A new documentary film coming out chronicles the crime before it happens—The Iron Current.

The documentary examines the issue of iron ore mining in northern Wisconsin and its impact on local citizens and the environment. The Iron Current: The goal of this documentary is to show how the communities and citizens of Northern Wisconsin are reacting to a proposed iron ore mine near Lake Superior. If permitted, this mine would be the largest open pit iron ore mine in the world, up to four and a half miles long and reaching depths of one thousand feet during phase one. With the unemployment rate near twelve percent in the area, many residents are aware of the need for good paying jobs. Other residents however, aren’t willing to gamble the environment for the jobs, especially the people of the Bad River Indian Reservation, which is located at the mouth of the Bad River on Lake Superior. The proposed mine would be placed at the headwaters of the Bad River, six miles upstream from the Indian Reservation.

The documentary will examine many complex topics surrounding this issue. The proposed mine site lies upon the oldest mountain range in the world called the Penokee Hills, which contains one half of the remaining Iron Ore left in the continental United States. It is an environmentally rich area consisting of many rivers and streams which make up the Bad River Watershed and the Kokaggun sloughs, nicknamed the Everglades of Lake Superior. The Bad River Watershed is considered the most pristine estuary left throughout the Great Lakes by many biologists and also serves as an important spiritual center for the Lake Superior Ojibwe people.

(Directed by Dean Vogtman; produced by Dean Vogtman and Dan Fitzpatrick).

Scott Walker Trying to Provoke Those Opposed to Massive Open Pit Mine

Stand against Scott Walker and Christopher Cline

Update: Meanwhile, back in Madison Scott Walker's Department of Administration "plans to implement emergency rules for citing protesters, which would bypass the need for public input," and allow the police to successfully target anyone protesting Walker's policies, even to the point of closing the state capitol because of the declared emergency.
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"I think (mining-related companies) would like to get going as quickly as possible," Scott Walker said. "Even with the threat of legal action, I don't think you'll see a slowdown of the process."

Scott Walker knows exactly how his words are received, and now Walker is attempting to again play the part of agent provocateur.

Just days after Walker signed the mining bill gutting environmental laws, in typical Walker fashion, Walker is directing his rare public comments with words intended to offend, insult and inflame those who oppose the huge mine.

Opposition to the Gogebic Taconite's [of Cline Resource and Development Group] open-pit iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin is growing; and Native Americans have made clear they will not stand down as their land is raped and the waters are polluted.

Walker acts like the operation and legality of the open pit mine is a fait accompli.


Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters

Walker gives no measure of respect whatsoever to the widespread opposition and the many legal and constitutional problems with the mining bill and the proposed mine.

He doesn't even attempt to address any concern, no matter how widespread, no matter how obviously valid, no matter the grave nature of what an open pit mine can do to an ecological system

"I think (mining-related companies) would like to get going as quickly as possible," Walker said last week. "Even with the threat of legal action, I don't think you'll see a slowdown of the process."

Walker wants conflict; that's why he shows open contempt by pretending to believe opposition does not exist, and that no serious issues are in play.

Walker has his hand on the National Guard trigger, and would love to call for federal law enforcement to block Native American resistance, all in service to the mining industry and Walker's political career.

As Al Gedicks notes, Gogebic Taconite's open-pit mine is "not only a major rollback of environmentally protective mining laws, it is also a well-funded mining industry assault on the grass-roots environmental, sport fishing and tribal movement."

Governor as troll: One who makes inflammatory commentary intended to offend.

A corrupt governor and a con artist, Cline Resource and Development Group's Scott Walker may one day look back and discover that the open-pit iron ore mine was a bribe and callow insult too far.

Opposing the Common Good and the F-word—Fascism

An extremist, and if we're honest (and we should be), neo-fascist wing of the Republican Party now holds sway in many states, and in the U.S. House of Representatives.

And this network (often underground of course) is literally targeting everything community-minded, the formal structures of representative democracy such as voting (a tactical mistake for American fascism) and ... women.

This explains why the Catholic Church hierarchy has consolidated its alliance with the Republican Party: Misogyny, and convenience. Power is needed, and an alliance with religious misogyny is part of the fascist coalition with grandiose aims.

Public resources, sell them out to private interests, as is now on stark display in Wisconsin as mining interests seek $billions as they ravage pristine land. Writes Wisconsin resident, Jimmy Fawcett, commenting on a piece in Esquire entitled, Wisconsin Inc:  "I live in Ashland, WI and even the very notion of this mine being put in is an abomination. I've never seen a darker, more volatile time period in Wisconsin than the one I've lived in since Walker took office. There is a war going on, and it's only going to get worse. I wish I could say that was an exaggeration, but it truly feels this way." Native Americans have already made clear that  militant, violent opposition is an option.

As for public education, destroy it.

This neo-fascist movement has a ready array of instruments to rush into law to codify its objectives—for example, ALEC, the American Legislative  Exchange Council.

Fascist is the right word for the Kochs, Clines, and so on and their tools: Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, the Tea Party, the GOP, and the religious right; so many more as bystanders in America rush home to their televisions to view whatever reality shows are on TV now-a-days.

And we ought not be frightened of the word, fascist, for fear it is too harsh to describe people whom when we meet personally often turn out to be kind in person, not monsters.

This is the face of fascism: Normal people complicit in destruction.

Nativist, bigoted, superstitious, ignorant, rapacious, racist, misogynistic and narcissistic. Sure.

But we won't see the SS here; just a prison-industrial complex and militarized, local police forces (see for example, ACLU report; March 2013) that few question, but even this armed display won't touch most of us. If you're male and black (urban): Different story.

A passing thought, a lot more war coming out of view, if the fascists get their way.

If I had one book to suggest to America's youth, to anyone, it is Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (University of Chicago Press. ©1955).

Mayer, an American Jewish writer who had gone to Germany in the 1930s, made friends with some 10 people, all of whom were members of the NAZI Party. He found them courteous, funny, genuine human beings whom he called "friends." They were also fools and certainly were guilty.

Today's destruction of the planet's eco-systems, oppression of minorities, program of defunding of public education, attack on women's health and very dignity, the disregard for the common good, these features and more already define the American neo-fascist movement that declares itself the defender of liberty and family values against an array of external and internal enemies.

No, the neo-fascist, American movement is not the German NAZI Party, though its racism and militarism, its anti-human rhetoric on the worth of individuals ('takers') ought to remind anyone with a sense of history of what trends are accelerating.

Fascism is wreaking destruction upon the United States, and the world.

And right now, many merely 'sense' it; though most readers here will remain comfortable in our lifetimes; and if we choose removed from human, politicized concerns. Fascism never was inflicted uniformly upon populations, by definition.

Noam Chomsky has a piece out today on this critical moment in the history of the United States, though of course the domination of economic royalists of many types has been an ongoing concern since the birth of the United States.

Here's a paragraph:

For those whom Adam Smith called the "Masters of Mankind,” it is important that we must become the stupid nation in the interests of their short-term gain, damn the consequences. These are essential properties of contemporary market fundamentalist doctrines. ALEC and its corporate sponsors understand the importance of ensuring that public education train children to belong to the stupid nation, and not be misled by science and rationality.

Dark and volatile times, indeed.