Overall, it has cost the state more than $5.75 million to protect Scott Walker during his first term as Wisconsin’s governor, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week.
The figure is the costs associated with providing security for Walker on at least 110 out-of-state trips — including travel for official, campaign and personal reasons — during his first three years in office.
Walker even reportedly took a state trooper to provide security on his family’s week long vacation flight to the Bahamas last August. Many other trips required airline flight, which Elisabeth Rosenthal of The New York Times has called our “biggest carbon sin”, dwarfing most families’ other total annual greenhouse gas emissions.
A large part of Governor Walker’s increase in spending on security came as a result of Walker’s decision to outlaw collective bargaining for most public employees under Act 10.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter interviewed Walker for the report, which appeared in the newspaper’s July 12, 2014 edition. “Have you been asleep for the past three years?” Walker said when pressed about his rising security budget and his perceived need for increased tax-payer funded security on his out of the state trips and for his family’s vacation.
The same question ought be asked of Governor Walker – if he has been asleep the last three years that climate change, resulting from global warming brought on by too much fossil fuel burning, has become a reality and a much greater threat to the planet than just 3 years ago? So why is it then that he continues to see the need to travel so much despite the obvious hefty costs on our budget and the sustainability of our planet? In addition to that, why does he not set a better example for everybody by spending his vacation dollars here in his own state which could use those dollars rather than in some exotic location?
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About Mike Neuman
Identical twin; Long-time advocate of protection of our environment; Married; Father to three sons; Grandfather to one granddaughter; Born and raised in Wisconsin; Graduate of University of Wisconsin; post graduate degrees in agricultural economics and Water Resources Management fro UWMadison; Former School Crossing Guard for City of Madison; Bike to Work for 31 years with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Retired from DNR in 2007; Biked to school crossing guard site 2 X daily for 7 years retiring in 2019; in addition to being an advocate of safeguarding our environment, I am also an advocate for humane treatment of animal, children, and people in need of financial resource for humane living. I am presently a Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, Madison, Wisconsin.
I oppose all long (>500 miles) distance travel (via fossil fuel burning) for nonessential purposes and all ownership of more than one home.
I am opposed to militarism in any form particularly for the purpose of monetary gain.
I am a Strong believer in people everywhere having the right to speak their minds openly, without any fear of reprisal, regarding any concerns; especially against those in authority who are not acting for the public good?in a timely fashion and in all countries of the world not just the U S..
My identical twin, Pat, died in June 2009.
He was fired from his job with the National Weather Service despite having a long and successful career as a flood forecaster with the Kansas City National Weather Service. He took a new position in the Midwest Regional Office in Minneapolis.
Unfortunately, Pat’s work for the NWS went sour after he began to see the evidence for concern about rising global temperatures shortly after relocating to Minneapolis, and how they appeared to effect of flooding on the Red River that flows out of Canada before entering the U.S. in North Dakota.
. Pat and I conversed on a regular basis with other scientists on the Yahoo Group named “Climate Concern “ and by personal email. The NWS denied his recommendation to give his public presentation o n his research at the “Minneapolis Mall of America” in February 2000, which deeply affected h,im. I will h He strongly believed the information ought be shared with the public to which I concurred. That was the beginning of the vendetta against my brother, Patrick J. Neuman, for speaking strongly of the obligations the federal government was responsible for accurately informing the citizenry.
A way great similar response to my raising the issue of too many greenhouse gases being emitted by drivers of vehicles on Wisconsin highway system, my immediate supervisors directed: “that neither global warming, climate change nor the long term impacts upon the natural resources of Wisconsin from expansion of the state highway system were to be any part of my job requirements, and that I must not communicate, nor in a memorandum to all the bureau, shall any person who works in the same bureau I do communicate with me, neither verbally on the phone, by email.
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