Uppity Wisconsin

I warned against Pabst Farms back in February 2008. Another retail wonderland is the last thing Wisconsin needs to be publicly-funding at this - or for that matter, any other - time. Such subsidization merely realigns spending away from existing shopping destinations toward the newer, shinier destination. A colossal waste of public (and private) resources if there ever was one.

But wait a minute, things aren't going as planned.

I thought this was a slam-dunk economic development initiative?

One of those unstoppable catalysts that was necessary, creates jobs, and spurs further development.

So why can't the developers even sign tenants?

Maybe it has to do something with the duplicative, sprawling, inefficient, environmentally unsound, and bribery-laden path of our urban planning & economic development. Sites compete for capital, subsidizing businesses to locate in less

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Last Thursday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison published this story:

An electric snowmobile built by student members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering Clean Snowmobile Team is now in Greenland, on loan to the National Science Foundation . . . at the Greenland Environmental Observatory (GEO Summit Camp).

Dubbed the Bucky EV, the snowmobile won the zero-emissions category of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) in Houghton, Michigan, earlier this spring. The goal of this event is to promote the development of clean vehicles that can be used in environmentally sensitive areas where a gas-powered vehicle would contaminate air or snow samples . . .

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Attorney and City of Monona alderman Peter McKeever has written eloquently about how Wisconsin's open lands are disappearing when powerful building and consulting interests overwhelm less well-armed town boards and decision-making commissions.

You might want to download and save McKeever's commentary from that WisOpinion link highlighted above, because WisOpinion postings vanish after a few days and are not archived on the site.

Here's a portion of the argument that McKeever, a long-time organizer in statewide land conservation efforts, presents in his Friday, March 30th essay:

Some of you may have heard about the sand mine that Proppant is trying to build in Dunn County. Although, as always, some of the resistance to this is the normal NIMBY sort of complaining, there are also a lot of legitimate concerns being raised about spoiling the Hoffman Hills area (which is quite stunning and unusual, and brings in 1.5 million bucks a year in tourism) as well as unanswered questions about traffic caused by the mine.

Okay, I need to ask the question ---

Glenn Grothman seems to:

• Question why the heck science should be used in making decisions on - oh - safety, conservation, species preservation, etc. Why talk to scientists? Why look into the facts? Why let the DNR do what it's legally charged with?? So much better to count on how Glenn feels about things.
• He thinks that we should delist the Butler's garter snake as endangered because he "feels" there are lots of them. Man, there's a cogent argument.

Greg Palast on Iraq and Oil - From Fighting Bob Fest - Thanks to borges at Kick Time for the audio files.

Opening with an opening is the way to go for my first blog, I guess.

I have lived in the Chippewa Valley for over 10 years.I was raised in the Bay Area, also known as "The land of the Phantom Freeway." Yes! That's the one! In Santa Clara, California. It goes nowhere. It ends in the air, occasionally with a car sitting on the edge like an over told joke. On the 21st of this fine month another nowhere was opened, and most don't even realize it. Now, I have driven 53 on a bad day and I understand the frustration all of the drivers out there that could give a rat's tail about anything but getting home after working hard here in the valley, but this multi million dollar project overshadows our greater need.

Locations

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