(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of government' gets done, and where you do what you must do, and you do it well.

We begin in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage this particular midwest subsidiary, was turfed out on Tuesday in favor of earnest liberal educator Tony Evers. The election was very close, and Walker found himself ridden out of office partly by his own hand.

You see, back in 2016, Walker signed into law a measure by which the recount requirement in Wisconsin elections was tightened up. Now, you had to have come within less than one percentage point of your opponent in order to qualify. On Tuesday night—I'm sorry, but the schadenfreude is up to my knees here at the moment—Walker finished 1.2 percentage points behind Evers. I hope the view from atop his own petard is to Walker's liking.

However, almost immediately, because the Democrats failed to flip Walker's pet state legislature, the Republican speaker of the state assembly announced that he might move immediately to take away from Evers the powers that the legislature had handed so freely over to Walker. From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said Wednesday he would discuss whether to look at limiting Evers' power with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau). Fitzgerald is open to the idea, according to an aide. "If there are areas where we could look and say, 'Geez — have we made mistakes where we granted too much power to the executive,' I'd be open to taking a look to say what can we do to change that to try to re-balance it," Vos told reporters.

Darren Hauck Getty Images

"Maybe we made some mistakes giving too much power to Gov. (Scott) Walker and I'd be open to looking at that to see if there are areas we should change that, but it's far too early to do that before I talk to Scott Fitzgerald."

This, of course, would be an utterly shameless thing to do, but not an unprecedented one. Last year, when Democrat Roy Cooper took over as governor of the newly insane state of North Carolina, his Republican legislature tried to do much the same thing. In fact, that effort continued right up to Tuesday night's state election. From Governing:

Two measures on the state ballot would have given the legislature greater authority over appointments. One would have allowed lawmakers to narrow the governor's choices for filling judicial vacancies to as few as two. The other would have taken the power to appoint members to the state ethics and elections board away from the governor entirely, instead allowing legislators to make the picks.

The judicial vacancy measure was turned down by 67 percent of voters, while the elections board measure was defeated with a 62 percent "no" vote. "If you look back at what's happened in Raleigh in the last couple of years, the state legislature has repeatedly tried to take power away from the governor and exert more control over the courts," says Billy Corriher, a senior researcher with the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive group in Raleigh.

Ni shagu nazad, as always, is Stalin's lasting gift to Republican politicians.

Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican Majority Leader of the Wisconsin Senate Justin Sullivan Getty Images

We pause in our weekly itinerary to take stock of a general crisis that The New York Times alerted us to in the days before the elections and the firing of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III blotted out the sun. Much was made on Tuesday night of the Republican strength in what were glibly referred to as "the rural areas" of the various states.

It turns out that, according to the Times, folks in those rural areas are facing a genuine crisis in their drinking water.

Now, fears and frustration over water quality and contamination have become a potent election-year issue, burbling up in races from the fissured bedrock here in Wisconsin to chemical-tainted wells in New Hampshire to dwindling water reserves in Arizona. President Trump’s actions to loosen clean water rules have intensified a battle over regulations and environmental protections unfolding on the most intensely local level: in people’s own kitchen faucets.

In Wisconsin and other Midwestern states where Republicans run the government, environmental groups say that politicians have cut budgets for environmental enforcement and inspections and weakened pollution rules. In Iowa, for example, the Republican-led Legislature dismissed a package of bills that would have blocked any new large-scale hog operations until the state cleaned up its nitrogen-laden rivers and streams. “The regulations favor agriculture,” said Gordon Gottbeheut, 77, whose nitrate-contaminated well near Armenia, Wis., sits next to a field that is injected with manure. “When they keep cutting enforcement and people, there’s nobody to keep track of what’s happening.” ...

Gerry Broome/AP/REX/Shutterstock

In Wisconsin, a state report recently found that as many as 42,000 of the state’s 676,000 private wells, or 6 percent, were likely to exceed the federal health standards for nitrates, which can come from fertilizer use and manure spreading. Nitrates have been linked to a dangerous blood condition in babies and may increase cancer risks in adults. One of those wells belongs to Carol Mount and Clark Elmore, whose home sits atop the sandy, permeable soil just down the road from a 3,000-cow dairy in the Armenia area. This spring, the nitrate levels in their well tested at 45 parts per million. The federal health limit is 10 parts. “Our water is screwed,” Ms. Mount said. Forty percent of her neighbors whose wells were tested this year also exceeded the federal standards for nitrates.

It's here where I point out that Juneau County, where Armenia is located, gave Walker, who cut enforcement and people, 56 percent of its vote for re-election, and that the Republicans in the state legislature strengthened their majorities.

Kriss Marion, an organic farmer campaigning for State Senate through southern Wisconsin, said the state’s wetlands, streams and groundwater were being stripped of protections as industrial farms were allowed to grow larger and larger. She said staff levels at the Department of Natural Resources had been “gutted” under Mr. Walker. “That’s why I am running,” she said. “This is the fight of the decade. The Republican incumbent in her district, Howard Marklein, supported a $3 billion incentive package championed by Mr. Walker to draw a huge new electronics factory to Wisconsin that also allowed the factory to bypass environmental and water rules. He has been endorsed by trade groups representing dairy, pork, cattle, potato and corn farmers.

Marklein was re-elected by eight points.

We are a bit bughouse on the subject of water here at the shebeen. It's one of those things that those of us of a certain age took for granted for which the government would look out. We figured that no politician who allowed the drinking water to go foul ever would be re-elected. Times change.

JOHN ALTHOUSE Getty Images

In Kansas, newly elected Democratic governor Laura Kelly is moving quickly to undo even more of the plague-ridden legacy left behind by former governor Sam Brownback, and not all the damage Sanctified Sam did was economic. From the Wichita Eagle:

Kelly on Thursday reaffirmed plans to reinstate an executive order providing a protection from discrimination that former Gov. Sam Brownback rescinded in 2015. The order, first put in place by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in 2007, prohibited harassment, firing or discrimination against state workers based on sexual orientation or gender identity. “I am planning to actually have an executive order drafted before I take office” to take action as soon as possible, Kelly said.

Kelly, who defeated Republican Kris Kobach on Tuesday, made the remarks in a wide-ranging news conference at the Kansas Capitol that touched on LGBT rights, foster care and her approach to filling the new administration. Brownback removed the protections following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. At the time, Brownback said the order had created “a new protected class” through executive action and that any change should be made by the Legislature.

I hope to live long enough to see the day when this kind of things doesn't change every time a governorship (or a presidency) change

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Custom Saddle Detailer Friedman of the Plains brings us yet another battle with history. From Readfrontier:

Karen O’Brien, councilor for District 3, said during the Urban/Economic Development meeting on Wednesday that there were “many reasons” why she was against changing the name of M.B. Brady Street to Reconciliation Way, an idea proposed last month by outgoing District 4 City Councilor Blake Ewing. M.B. Brady Street — previously named Brady Street — runs through the Greenwood District downtown, home of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and was originally named after Tate Brady, an influential early Tulsan.

Brady also was found to have been in the KKK for a time and was allegedly part of the Tulsa Outrage, where a group of men were tarred and feathered by a group of which he was included. “I understand the issue … about Mr. Brady being a Ku Klux Klanner,” O’Brien said during the meeting. “But he also did many many other good things, and that gets pushed to one side.” O’Brien then compared Brady’s complicated legacy to that of a math teacher who correctly completes an equation despite making a mistake early on.

OK, as curator of the shebeen's Bad Analogy Museum, I'm going to have to see how she manages this one.

“There’s a error in the mathematics, but the rest of it … is correct. The students only look at the error. That’s what we are doing these days, we are only looking at the error.”

Oh, yes. Stuck that landing! 8.5s across the board!

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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