Frac Sand Mine Proposed Near School Sparks Battle In Small Wisconsin Town

Tags

air pollution, cancer, Crystalline Silica, dirty politics, environment, Frac Sand, Frac Sand Mining, fracking, Glenwood City, greed, Health, health hazards, Health Problems, Jim Tittle, lobbyists, Mining, money, opposition, politicians, residents, Sand Fracking, Sand mining, Silica or Sand Fracking, silica sand, Silicosis, tourism, U.S, United States, Vista Sand, water pollution, Wisconsin

More than 100 frac sand mines and processing facilities, like this one outside of Bloomer, Wis., have cropped up across the state over the last few years. (photo – Jim Tittle)

After winning just one game the previous year, the Glenwood City Hilltoppers football team reveled in taking home the Wisconsin Division 7 state championship last season.

And in typical small-town fashion, the whole community rallied behind them, recalled Chris Schone, whose son quarterbacked the junior varsity squad.

But now, Schone said, something is “tearing the community apart.” A nearly 400-acre open-pit frac sand mine has been proposed for a site less than half a mile from the school, and now those residents who welcome the mine’s promises of wealth and prosperity have squared off against those who fear its consequences to their health, way of life and property values.

“Our home is also about a half-mile from the mine,” added Schone, who grew up in Glenwood City and owns a nearby gas station and restaurant. “Our four children would be exposed 24 hours a day.”

Read more important information on this here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/01/frac-sand-mining-wisconsin-glenwood-city_n_3364963.html?utm_hp_ref=green

Greed is the motivating factor for residents and farmers who are willing to sell or lease their land to Sand Fracking companies, and the consequences are deadly Silicosis and cancer caused by Frac Sand Mining!  That and the destruction of a beautiful and unique environment here in Wisconsin in towns that count on tourism for their livelihoods! – John Loeffler, Fountain City, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

 

Walmart’s Low Wages Costing Taxpayers

Tags

activists, Badgercare, California, Democrats, Food Stamps, Health Care, Labor, Medicaid, minimum wage, OUR Walmart, public assistance, taxpayer-funded, taxpayers, U.S, U.S. Government, unions, United States, wages, Walmart, Wisconsin

Walmart wages are so low that many of its workers rely on food stamps and other government aid programs to fulfill their basic needs, a reality that could cost taxpayers as much as $900,000 at just one Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin, according to a study released by Congressional Democrats on Thursday.

Though the study assumes that most workers who qualify for the public assistance programs do take advantage of them, it injects a potent data point into a national debate about the minimum wage at a time when many Walmart and fast food workers are mounting strikes in pursuit of higher wages.

The study uses Medicaid data released in Wisconsin to piece together the annual cost to taxpayers for providing a host of social safety net programs, including food stamps and publicly subsidized health care, to workers at one Supercenter in the state.

According to the report, Walmart had more workers enrolled in the state’s public health care program in the last quarter of last year than any other employer, with 3,216 people enrolled. When the dependents of those workers were factored in, the number of enrollees came to 9,207.

“When low wages leave Walmart workers unable to afford the necessities of life, taxpayers pick up the tab,” the report says.

After accounting for the total number of Walmart stores and employees across the state and the per-person costs of BadgerCare, as the state’s health care program is known, the report’s authors estimated that the cost of publicly funded health care comes to $251,706 per year for a 300-employee Supercenter.

The authors then added up the projected costs of other public-assistance programs available to families on BadgerCare, such as reduced-price school meals, Section 8 housing assistance, the earned income tax credit and energy assistance. Assuming all those workers avail themselves of those additional programs — granted, an unlikely scenario — the report extrapolates that the final tab would top $900,000.

In response to the report, Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said the company was proud of the opportunities it provides for employees.

“Unfortunately there are some people who base their opinions on misconceptions rather than the facts, and that is why we recently launched a campaign to show people the unlimited opportunities that exist at Walmart,” Buchanan said, noting that 75 percent of Walmart managers started as hourly employees. “Every month more than 60 percent of Americans shop at Walmart and we are proud to help them save money on what they want and need to build better lives for themselves and their families. We provide a range of jobs — from people starting out stocking shelves to Ph.D.’s in engineering and finance. We provide education assistance and skill training and, most of all, a chance to move up in the ranks.”

The report, entitled “The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy,” was produced by Democrats with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The committee says it chose Wisconsin because the state’s data “appears to be the most recent and comprehensive.” The paper is an updated version of an earlier report by the same committee in 2004, which at the time estimated that a 200-employee Walmart store could account for $400,000 in public assistance for workers.

“The labor policies of Walmart, and those of companies that emulate its low-road approach, end up leaving taxpayers holding the bag,” Miller said in a statement.

Critics have long denounced Walmart for paying such low wages that many workers are forced to take advantage of public-assistance programs like food stamps or Medicaid. (Notably, many Democrats who lament this scenario are strong backers of such programs.)

In fact, many workers throughout the retail industry take advantage of these programs, though a 2004 study of Walmart workers in California estimated the chain’s workers availed themselves of 38 percent more non-health, public-assistance money than workers at competing stores. (That report, by the University of California, Berkeley, had findings similar to the committee’s 2004 study.)

The Congressional report’s timing is no accident. Miller, along with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), has sponsored legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10, a boost that would presumably benefit many Walmart store employees. (The federal minimum wage, which prevails in the 31 states that do not mandate a higher one, is currently $7.25, where it’s been since 2009.) Democrats have argued that boosting the minimum wage would help pull some workers off of these programs.

Following sparse but high-profile walkouts by Walmart employees late last year, the union-backed worker group OUR Walmart announced “prolonged strikes” by employees this week. As of Thursday, organizers said 80 workers had joined the walkouts — a tiny fraction, for sure, of the estimated 1.4 million Walmart workers across the country, though labor activists are hopeful the strikes will inspire other workers.

Aubretia Edick, a Massachusetts woman who earns $11.70 an hour and receives public assistance, food stamps, Section 8 housing, and state-funded health care, said her reliance on the safety net is one reason she plans to join the strikes. “Walmart doesn’t pay my salary,” she said. “You pay my salary.”

When she started working for Walmart, she said, she had expectations that have since proved unattainable. “I thought I could make it on my own,” she said. “That didn’t happen.”

Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/walmart-taxpayers-house-report_n_3365814.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

 

Where I Live

Tags

Activities, Fountain City Wisconsin, Great Lakes, Minnesota, Mississippi River, Mississippi River Valley, outdoors, photos, summer, United States, Upper Midwest

The Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River in the Mississippi River Valley on the border with Minnesota looking due south towards my hometown of La Crosse, WI. There’s a narrow stretch here where the river splits in two, but it opens up wide to the north and south of Fountain City. There are a lot of backwaters in the area where you can have privacy, go camping, swimming, fishing, water skiiing and more! I’ve lived in the valley all but four years of my life, and I love it!
: ) – John Loeffler, Fountain City, Wisconsin

 

My Buster Dog! (photo)

Tags

dogs, Fountain City Wisconsin, Labrador Retriever, Mississippi River, Pets, Yellow Labrador

My very white Purebred Yellow Labrador Retriever, Buster, after a swim in the Mississippi River! : )

He has big, brown puppy dog eyes, and he’s 12 1/2 years old now. – John Loeffler, Fountain City, Wisconsin

 

Taxpayer-Funded Scam By GOP Education Group Uncovered in Wisconsin

Tags

AFC, ALEC, American Federation for Children, American Legislative Exchange Council, Amway, Billionaires, Citizens United, corruption, dark money, deception, DeVos family, Education, elections, felony, fraud, GOP, Hoax, issue ad, Jim Bopp, legislators, loopholes, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, recall elections, Republicans, right-wing, scams, school privatization, Scott Jensen, Scott Walker, senators, Super-PACS, taxpayer-funded, taxpayers, Voters, vouchers, Wisconsin

American Federation for Children deceived public about how much they were spending to sway elections.

Dark money nonprofits spent hundreds of millions in the 2012 elections, but reported only a fraction of that thanks to an “issue advocacy” loophole that requires only limited disclosure for ads that don’t explicitly urge viewers to vote for or against a candidate. Federal and state elections officials have rarely probed whether a group’s so-called “issue ads” are really intended to influence elections — but in Wisconsin, a politically-active nonprofit exposed its issue ad charade on its own.

Group Gave Contradictory Messages to Elections Board and Funders

The American Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that supports school privatization through “vouchers” and other programs, told Wisconsin’s elections board it spent only $345,000 on state legislative races in 2012. Like many nonprofit groups active in the 2012 elections, the actual total spent around the elections was much higher, but it was never disclosed publicly because AFC claimed the spending was about “issues” rather than supporting or opposing a particular candidate.

AFC sang a different tune for funders.

In a document titled “2012 Election Impact Report” obtained by Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, AFC boasted that it spent $2.4 million in Wisconsin helping elect nine pro-privatization legislators to office. The disparity between what was reported and actually spent is likely attributable to the “issue advocacy” loophole. And most importantly, voters never knew who actually provided the funding for the ads.

“This episode exposes what a hoax this ‘issue ad’ charade really is,” said Mike McCabe, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which filed a complaint with Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board about the undisclosed spending.

“They told their funders one thing and state election authorities a totally different story about what all this spending was for,” McCabe said.

Will Elections Board Investigate “Issue Ad” Scam?

Under Wisconsin law, which tracks federal election rules, reporting and disclosure requirements are only triggered when an ad explicitly calls for the defeat or election of a candidate, or when it is “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” Many organizations in Wisconsin and nationally have skirted disclosure requirements by running “issue ads” that don’t fall under this rubric, and claiming with a wink-and-a-nod that their ads are not intended to influence elections — and the state elections board has not questioned these often dubious assertions.

Nationally, as the Center for Media and Democracy and U.S. PIRG Education Fund documented in the report Elections Confidential, dark money nonprofits that do not disclose their donors reported spending around $300 million on the 2012 elections, but the actual total was certainly much higher because of the “issue ad” loophole; there has been limited scrutiny of this secret spending by federal authorities.

But AFC might come under closer scrutiny from Wisconsin’s elections board since it admitted that all of its spending, including its “issue ads,” was intended to influence Wisconsin elections.

It appears AFC is planning to put up a fight. The group is represented by election lawyer Jim Bopp, an activist attorney who has worked for years to strike down clean election laws and who was the chief architect behind the controversial 2010 Citizens United case. Bopp also represented Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in 2008 when he was facing ethics charges before the state Judicial Commission over deceptive ads run against his opponent, which Bopp framed as an issue of “free speech.”

“The American Federation of Children Got Exactly What They Wanted”

AFC has long been promoting school privatization in Wisconsin, and this year stands to make significant gains: Governor Scott Walker has added a variety of non-fiscal items to the budget, including an expansion of the voucher program that sends taxpayer dollars to private schools, and provides taxpayer-funded vouchers for all students with disabilities, and creates a state commission to authorize charter schools over the objections of local school districts. The proposals track American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation.

As part of the $2.4 million spent electing Wisconsin legislators, AFC’s “2012 Election Impact Report” shows the group spent more than $325,000 to help elect freshman Republican Rick Gudex to the state Senate, who won by less than 600 votes. But the group told the elections board it spent only $145,000 on the Gudex race.

AFC got what it paid for: Sen. Gudex is one of three state Senators who have pledged to vote against any budget bill that does not expand the state’s “voucher” program that uses taxpayer dollars to send kids to private schools.

“The American Federation of Children got exactly what they wanted,” McCabe said. “They want legislators who will go to the mat and make expanding the voucher program the bottom line.”

The group was organized and is funded by the billionaire DeVos family — heirs to the Amway fortune — and its chief lobbyist is disgraced former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, who was convicted of three felonies for misuse of his office for political purposes and banned from the state Capitol for five years (though the charges were later reduced on appeal). Jensen represents the organization on the ALEC Education Task Force and has brought AFC bills to ALEC for adoption as “model” legislation. The group also employs two other former Wisconsin Assembly Speakers as lobbyists, John Gard and Jeff Fitzgerald, both of whom were also ALEC members.

In the 2012 gubernatorial recall race, American Federation for Children was one of Governor Scott Walker’s top PAC supporters, reporting $1.1 million in expenditures on his behalf. They also reported spending $1.3 million helping GOP Senators facing recall in 2011. It is not known whether additional spending was not disclosed.

Source:  http://www.alternet.org/issue-ad-scam-right-wing-education-group-uncovered-wisconsin?akid=10411.212171.1qpQis&rd=1&src=newsletter837165&t=14&paging=off

Koch-Puppet Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Jobs Problem!

Tags

Jobs, Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, Scott Walker, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Once again, it hasn’t been a good week for Scott Walker, the twice-elected goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwestern subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. As you know, Walker’s great promise in both elections was that he would turn the state around and make it a friendlier place to despoil the wildernes…er…do business. He’s certainly done any plutocrat could have asked on that score; I’m surprised they aren’t digging for iron ore under the dome of the state capitol by now. The problem — and anyone who’s thinking about him as a presidential candidate in 2016, as I certainly am, should recognize it — is that Scott Walker is really rather bad at this.

Those are the numbers provided by the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, which is basically a trade organization for oligarchs. And they show that Walker has managed to place Wisconsin dead freaking last in short-term job growth and 44th out of 50 states in its overall ranking. It is very hard to get nominated for president as a Republican if the U.S. Chamber is throwing tomatoes at your resume just for laughs. Luckily, though, Walker established a special agency to monitor job growth in the state, so he’s right on top of this problem.

Except, well, no. They’re pretty much screwing up, but they’re having a grand old time doing it.

Auditors also said employees of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a quasi-private entity, made a number of questionable and unexplained purchases, including season tickets to UW-Madison football games and iTunes gift cards, and contracted for services without conducting open and competitive selection processes.

Read more here:  http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/scott-walkers-jobs-problem-050213

Wisconsin GOP Power Grab Continues, Carries Over To Other States

Tags

corruption, dirty politics, Duey Stroebel, elections, GOP, Illegal, Koch Brothers, One Wisconsin Now, Republicans, Scott Walker, voter fraud, voting, Wisconsin

Is There an Omnibus-load of New GOP Attacks on Voters’ Rights Headed Our Way? Author of Restrictions on Early Voting Previews More Attacks on Democracy Madison – In a weekend television appearance, Rep. Duey Stroebel, author of a bill to restrict early voting in Wisconsin, revealed that his proposal along with other GOP sponsored attacks on voting rights could be rolled into an omnibus package of anti-voter legislation. “Republicans have mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to restrict voter rights in Wisconsin that has only one goal, protect their grip on power,” according to One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross. He continued, “As they continue to pursue more of the same policies that have failed to create jobs and that unfairly benefit the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the rest of us, it’s no wonder they’re trying to make it more difficult for average folks to hold them accountable at the ballot box.” In March, One Wisconsin Now released a report documenting a laundry list of anti-voter initiatives that would make voting more inconvenient to outright impossible for thousands of legal Wisconsin voters. After the report was released, Senator Mary Lazich introduced another series of bills that would make it easier to throw out the votes cast by legal voters based on minor clerical errors. It was also recently revealed that potentially hundreds of thousands of records associated with the GOP’s redrawing of state legislative districts, which allowed them to gain seats despite receiving over 174,000 fewer votes, were deleted from state computers, possibly illegally. Ross concluded, “What’s so nefarious about the GOP’s continued scheming to make it harder to vote for workers, student and seniors is that Election Day is the one day everyone, whether they are rich or poor, young or old, is equal. It’s time for the GOP to start respecting our democracy and stop trying to dismantle it with another round of anti-voter legislation.”

One Wisconsin Now is a statewide communications network specializing in effective earned media and online organizing to advance progressive leadership and values.

Source:  http://www.pnstate.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=108921&em_id=86201.0

Note:  All battleground states including Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio are experiencing the same problems as the state of Wisconsin is.  You are just not hearing about them in the lame-stream media!  John E Loeffler – Fountain City, WI

 

11 Cities Divesting From Fossil Fuels! : )

Tags

American, Big Oil, cities, Divest, fossil fuels, fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking, natural gas, oil, oil industry, United States, Wisconsin

Two of those cities are in my home state of Wisconsin! That makes me happy! Ask your local leaders in your city to join the divestment, and kick Big Oil to the curb in the gutter where they belong! : )

 

The Price of Sand Fracking Wisconsin and Minnesota!

Tags

cancer-causing, Cancerous, corruption, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, fracking, Glacier Sands, Glacier Sands LLC, greed, hydraulic fracturing, Minnesota, money, Sand, Sand Fracking, Silica or Sand Fracking, Silicon dioxide, Silicosis, Texas, United States, Wisconsin

 

This is a trailer for an upcoming, must-see film!

It’s all about the money! Greed, greed and more greed! These companies moving in from down south, i.e. Texas, do not care about creating jobs, preserving our pristine environment, our highways and building infrastructures or cleaning up the aftermath of their massive mess! I have been to a Glacier Sands meeting (August 2012), and I can tell you with great certainty that this is all about the almighty dollar…period.

Hey, Wasn’t This Us? (A Reminiscing Poem)

Tags

Baseball, family, Fountain City Wisconsin, History, Mississippi River, Music, old, old-fashioned, Poems, Poetry, Reading, rhymes, Shopping, Society, U.S, United States

A little house with two bedrooms,
One bathroom and one car on the street.
A mower that you had to push
To make the grass look neat.

In the kitchen on the wall
We only had one phone,
And no need for recording things,
Someone was always home.

We only had a living room
Where we would congregate,
Unless it was at mealtime
In the kitchen where we ate.

We had no need for family rooms
Or extra rooms to dine.
When meeting as a family
Those two rooms would work out fine.

We only had one TV set
And channels maybe two,
But always there was one of them
With something worth the view.

For snacks we had potato chips
That tasted like a chip.
And if you wanted flavor
There was Lipton‘s onion dip.

Store-bought snacks were rare because
My mother liked to cook
And nothing can compare to snacks
In Betty Crocker‘s book.

Weekends were for family trips
Or staying home to play.
We all did things together —
Even go to church to pray.

When we did our weekend trips
Depending on the weather,
No one stayed at home because
We liked to be together.

Sometimes we would separate
To do things on our own,
But we knew where the others were
Without our own cell phone.

Then there were the movies
With your favorite movie star,
And nothing can compare
To watching movies in your car.

Then there were the picnics
At the peak of summer season,
Pack a lunch and find some trees
And never need a reason.

Get a baseball game together
With all the friends you know,
Have real action playing ball —
And no game video.

Remember when the doctor
Used to be the family friend,
And didn’t need insurance
Or a lawyer to defend?

The way that he took care of you
Or what he had to do,
Because he took an oath and strived
To do the best for you.

Remember going to the store
And shopping casually,
And when you went to pay for it
You used your own money?

Nothing that you had to swipe
Or punch in some amount,
And remember when the cashier person
Had to really count?

The milkman used to go
From door to door,
And it was just a few cents more
Than going to the store.

There was a time when mailed letters
Came right to your door,
Without a lot of junk mail ads
Sent out by every store.

The mailman knew each house by name
And knew where it was sent;
There were not loads of mail addressed

To “present occupant.”
There was a time when just one glance
Was all that it would take,
And you would know the kind of car,
the model and the make.

They didn’t look like turtles
trying to squeeze out every mile;
they were streamlined, white walls, fins
and really had some style.

One time the music that you played
whenever you would jive,
was from a vinyl, big-holed record
called a forty-five.

The record player had a post
to keep them all in line
and then the records would drop down
and play one at a time.

Oh sure, we had our problems then,
just like we do today
and always we were striving,
trying for a better way.

Oh, the simple life we lived
still seems like so much fun,
how can you explain a game,
just kick the can and run?

And why would boys put baseball cards
between bicycle spokes
and for a nickel, red machines
had little bottled Cokes?

This life seemed so much easier
and slower in some ways.
I love the new technology
but I sure do miss those days.

So time moves on and so do we
and nothing stays the same,
but I sure love to reminisce
and walk down memory lane.
With all today’s technology
we grant that it’s a plus!
But it’s fun to look way back and say,
Hey Look, guys, THAT WAS US!

Author Unknown

John Loeffler – Fountain City, Wisconsin (Picture-1925)