To the Foxconn primer I've been expanding over the last few weeks, let's add a fresh question:
If the Walker administration sends spokespeople to the State Assembly's hearing on the Foxconn enabling bill today who will do more than spin - - senior officials and experts with credibility - - who can attest that the state indeed has the water, air, and recycling capacity to coordinate with and regulate (yes) the massive Foxconn manufacturing plant and its high-tech exotic materials and outputs, it can't be DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp.
Yet it is that agency where many of the those responsibilities lie, and how foolish has it been for Walker to repeatedly diminish and weaken the DNR.
It's not just the transportation infrastructure which Walker and his administration have mismanaged - - from the modern Amtrak line he killed that could have connected the potential Foxconn's SE WI main plant to a rumored Dane County facility, and the rutted and incomplete interstate highway segments that are tied up in the Legislature because there isn't enough money or political will to finish them.
It's the scientific and intellectual infrastructure which Walker has cut from the DNR, and from his favorite Madison target, the UW system and faculty, that leaves the state without useful resources and advantages it could be putting into play right now if Walker's far-right ideology hadn't the new Wisconsin Idea.
If the Walker administration sends spokespeople to the State Assembly's hearing on the Foxconn enabling bill today who will do more than spin - - senior officials and experts with credibility - - who can attest that the state indeed has the water, air, and recycling capacity to coordinate with and regulate (yes) the massive Foxconn manufacturing plant and its high-tech exotic materials and outputs, it can't be DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp.
Yet it is that agency where many of the those responsibilities lie, and how foolish has it been for Walker to repeatedly diminish and weaken the DNR.
It's not just the transportation infrastructure which Walker and his administration have mismanaged - - from the modern Amtrak line he killed that could have connected the potential Foxconn's SE WI main plant to a rumored Dane County facility, and the rutted and incomplete interstate highway segments that are tied up in the Legislature because there isn't enough money or political will to finish them.
It's the scientific and intellectual infrastructure which Walker has cut from the DNR, and from his favorite Madison target, the UW system and faculty, that leaves the state without useful resources and advantages it could be putting into play right now if Walker's far-right ideology hadn't the new Wisconsin Idea.