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Open in TheBrain

Univ of Wisc

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an 2 25

Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump by a narrow margin in November. Does that mean a majority of voters here want to cancel farmers’ federal contracts, shut down Head Start centers across the state and turn loose Elon Musk to feed federal agencies into the woodchipper while hoovering up private citizens’ financial information?

The new Trump era is putting Republican nihilism to the test. In our closely divided swing state, the first official indication of whether Trump voters are developing buyers’ remorse will come, fittingly, on April Fool’s Day.

In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, candidate Brad Schimel has received Elon Musk’s endorsement and is benefitting from a huge ad buy by Musk’s political action committee. And while some Republicans have expressed qualmsabout Trump and Musk’s assertions that they have unchecked power to ride roughshod over judges and the U.S. Constitution, Schimel has, notably, sided with Trump and Musk against the courts.

Last month, Schimel took to Vicki McKenna’s rightwing talk radio show to denounce the prosecution and sentencing of the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol after Trump lost in 2020, saying juries in Washington, D.C., were too liberal to deliver a fair verdict. Recently, on the same talk radio program, he criticized federal judges for blocking the ransacking of federal agencies by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), accusing the judges of “acting corruptly” by daring to issue temporary restraining orders.

The race between Schimel and Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will determine the ideological balance of the Court and, it seems, whether a majority of justices believe in the integrity of the court system at all.

Also on the April 1 ballot is the race for state schools superintendent, which pits a lobbyist for the private school voucher industry against a defender of public schools — an existential choice as the growth of schools vouchers is on track to bankrupt our state’s public school system and enrollment caps on voucher programs are set to come off next year.

The ideological struggle over the future of our state was on stark display this week as Gov. Tony Evers presented his budget plan — an expansive vision that uses the state surplus to boost funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin, health care, clean water and rural infrastructure, and leaves a cushion to help protect communities against what Evers called the “needless chaos caused by the federal government” under Trump.

In a familiar ritual, Republican legislators immediately shot down Evers’ plan, denounced it as “reckless spending” and promised to throw it in the trash and replace it with a stripped-down alternative based on austerity and tax cuts.

“Wisconsin voted for Donald Trump and his agenda to cut spending and find inefficiency in government,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared.

But did they?

It’s not clear that most Wisconsinites wanted what Trump and Musk are delivering — cuts to health care and veterans’ services, the claw-back of infrastructure projects, mass firings at the park service and the chaotic suspension of promised federal funds for child care and other essential services in Wisconsin.

For generations, Republicans have complained about “red tape” and “big government” and promised “freedom” and lower taxes to constituents who liked the sound of all that. Under Trump, we are seeing anti-government ideology reach its full, unchecked fruition. Trump’s No. 1 private donor, the richest man in the world, is laughing all the way to the bank. He’s using his access to trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds to cancel food programs for poor children and to bolster federal contracts that enrich himself.

This, in the end, is what privatization is all about — taking the collective wealth of millions of people who contribute to maintaining a decent, healthy society and concentrating it in the hands of one very rich, self-interested man.

The long-term, existential struggle between private wealth and the public good in Wisconsin includes the fight over whether to fund public schools or give away money to subsidize the tuition of private school families. It includes whether to be the second-to-last state to finally offer 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage to new mothers — something even our Republican legislators support, minus Vos. The two sides of our divided government are locked in a battle over whether our universities, public parks, infrastructure, clean water and affordable housing are a boondoggle or something we ought to protect.

Given what’s happening to our country, Wisconsinites will have to think hard about which side they’re on.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

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Some of that money has gone to public university researchers. Dr. Paul Mitchell, Associate Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at University of Wisconsin - Madison has published :{two:(style="color:#000000"):}: :{studies:(style="color:#000000"):}: in tandem with other members of Syngenta's "Atrazine Benefits Team," funded by Syngenta. Those studies on the "economic benefits" of atrazine and other related herbicides in the triazine family are referenced in Syngenta's Earth Day press release.

Study Finds Atrazine's "Benefits"; Costs "Wasn't My Area"

Syngenta's release summarizes the benefits analyzed by Dr. Mitchell's studies as follows:

When asked if he had examined other possible alternatives for reducing soil loss and carbon-dioxide emissions aside from the use of triazine herbicides, Dr. Mitchell said, "We were trying to estimate the benefits of atrazine. Just think about what would the world look like without atrazine, and then compare that to our current world. Well, if we didn't have atrazine, we would have more tillage. We tried to estimate what would that world with more tillage look like."

When asked if he had examined the potential costs of the use of atrazine, in addition to the supposed benefits, Dr. Mitchell said, "No, that wasn't my area. ... The company that hired me was interested in the benefits side..."  reb wilce

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paper acknol syng $ sugar, corn http://www.aae.wisc.edu/pubs/sps/pdf/stpap564.pdf

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Richard Fawcett: Atrazine Helps Farmers "Help the Environment"

Documents obtained by CMD show that Richard Fawcett, the president of Fawcett Consulting firm, is also on Syngentas's "benefits panel." Fawcett has performed studies for the Triazine Network and has publicly touted the economic and environmental "benefits" of atrazine.

On a 2011 "Atrazine Research Webcast" that was "brought to you from Syngenta [40]," Fawcett exalted the herbicide, stating that "atrazine helps farmers by helping them help the environment." Later in the talk, he dismissed Hayes' research on the adverse effects of the weed-killer on amphibians. He also attempted to extrapolate on the benefits of atrazine in nature: "Wildlife habitat has been greatly improved -- things like conservation tillage that atrazine plays a big role in actually creating wildlife habitat.... When I was a kid growing up on a farm in Eastern Iowa, I wouldn't have dreamed to see coyotes or otters or wild turkeys or even deer on our farm. Today, wildlife is back and farmers all know that we've seen this tremendous change, and its because we've changed the management on our farms."

Documents obtained by CMD show that Fawcett's firm has been paid at least $500,000 between 1995 and 2011 for his work that promotes atrazine.

Other members of Syngenta's team who serve on the atrazine "benefits panel" are Dr. Paul Mitchell, an agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Mike Owen, a weed specialist at Iowa State University, and Dr. David Bridges, president of the Abraham Baldwin College of Agriculture. The incomplete set of documents unsealed by the court do not indicate any payments they have received from Syngenta.

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The health harms of :{atrazine:(style="color:#000000"):}: are no secret. A widely used herbicide — particularly on corn — it is a known endocrine disruptor that can cause birth defects and reproductive harm at very low levels. It's also a suspected carcinogen. Still, atrazine’s defenders, especially its manufacturer, Syngenta, return time and again to economics to rationalize the chemical's continued use.

Industry-funded studies claim that without atrazine, our agricultural economy would suffer devastating consequences. But a report released yesterday — :{Atrazine: Consider the Alternative:(style="color:#000000"):}: — tells a different story. Taking a close look at the economics of atrazine, report authors conclude that Syngenta’s defense of the herbicide is full of holes.

Syngenta’s spin doctors

It comes as no surprise that Syngenta hand-picks its experts and put them on payroll to produce favorable data. :{That’s old news:(style="color:#000000"):}: for scientific research, and the same is true for economics.

In November 2011, a group of Syngenta’s researchers released a series of five papers defending atrazine. Aptly named the “Atrazine Benefits Team,” these researchers hailed atrazine for doing everything from preventing soil erosion to contributing $3.3 billion to the agricultural economy.

But even if Syngenta hadn’t funded these papers, they contain enough flaws to be questionable on their own. Yesterday’s report shows that these studies significantly overestimate the benefits of atrazine.

No change in yields

While Syngenta insists that atrazine ensures high yields for corn growers, there are forceful examples to the contrary. Since Italy and Germany banned use of the herbicide in 1991, they have seen no significant decrease in crop yields. And USDA studies in 1994 and 1997 estimated that an atrazine ban would lead to a minimal yield decrease just over 1%.

The report Atrazine: Consider the Alternatives — commissioned by NRDC and conducted by environmental and agricultural economists Frank Ackerman, Melissa Whited and Patrick Knight —flags a major gap in Syngenta-funded research: the industry figures that cite drastically reduced yields, if atrazine use is halted, fail to take into account :{alternative agricultural practices:(style="color:#000000"):}: that are less chemically intensive and can be highly effective.

As farmers see increases in herbicide-resistant :{“superweeds”:(style="color:#000000"):}: across the country, non-chemical farming practices are becoming more critical. And while Syngenta researchers are quick to point out the rise of glyphosate-resistant weeds as an argument in favor of atrazine use, they fail to acknowledge that atrazine-resistant weeds are also a quickly growing problem.

The report out yesterday touches on another important economic point: withdrawing atrazine from the market may actually increase revenue for growers. And the likely financial impact on consumers would be minimal; the cost of a hamburger would go up a little more than a penny, and a gallon of gas would increase about three cents.

Who wins?

The benefits of atrazine are elusive, but the :{costs are high:(style="color:#000000"):}:. And clear. USDA found atrazine in 94% of the drinking water sampled, meaning exposure is widespread, and those who come in the most direct contact with the herbicide — farmers and farmworkers — face the greatest health risks. While Syngenta digs in their heels on their flagship product, more and more farmers are finding innovative, safe techniques to manage weeds without relying on atrazine.

The new report, Atrazine: Consider the Alternatives, ends with a strong reminder about who would benefit most from reduced reliance on the health-harming herbicide:

If U.S. agriculture moved away from atrazine, the winners would include farmworkers, farmers and their families, and others who are exposed to atrazine either directly from field uses or indirectly from contaminated tap water, along with the natural ecosystems that are currently damaged by atrazine. The winners would also include the nation’s corn growers.

What’s striking about this list of winners is that almost everyone is on it… with Syngenta the sole winner if atrazine stays in widespread use.

Independent economists have taken another rigorous look at atrazine, and found that it doesn’t measure up to its claims. It’s time for EPA to do the same.

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