“The rich are different,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald once declared, but I doubt if he meant quite so different as retail tycoon John Menard. His skinflint mentality, harsh methods of handling employees, and laughably inept methods of evading environmental laws all seem to reflect a man who lives in a world of his own. On the one hand, he is the world’s 136th-richest man, worth $5.5 billion, according to the most recent rating by Forbes magazine. Yet he does anything to pinch pennies, including finding cheap and environmentally harmful ways of handling toxic wastes that have resulted in fines against the company.
The Menards retail chain was recently ordered to pay $30,000 in fines and court costs for yet another environmental violation – in this case dumping a pallet of herbicide on a parking island – but his company’s history as a polluter goes way back, as a May 2007 story in Milwaukee Magazine by Mary Van de Kamp Nohl found.
Nohl discovered Menard and his company had more run-ins with state Department of Natural Resources than any other Wisconsin company. The classic example was in 1997, when the billionaire owner was caught using his own pickup truck to haul plastic bags filled with chromium and arsenic-laden wood ash to his own home to dispose in his household garbage. Menard and his company were ultimately fined $1.7 million for 21 violations.
Menards was also fined for disposing hazardous waste in 1994, charged by the Minnesota Attorney General in 2003 with manufacturing and selling arsenic-tainted mulch, fined $2 million in 2005 for having a floor drain that DNR officials believed was dumping chemicals into a tributary of the Chippewa River, and hit with an administrative order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for damaging a stream that ran through its property in South Dakota.
In response to the most recent charges of dumping herbicides, a Menards spokesperson claimed “a young part-time team member poured some weed killer” on the parking island at a store, “thinking it would kill the weeds.” The spokesperson also said Menard hired a consultant and concluded no environmental damage was done.
The only problem with this explanation is that the herbicide was dumped in January, not the best time to be killing (or finding) weeds. As for that consultant’s report, it was done two years after the dumping, rather late in the game to determine the impact. But perhaps the drollest idea is that a rogue member of the Menards team decided to stroll out of the store with a pallet of herbicide.
As Nohl’s story makes clear, employees are watched very carefully and tightly controlled, and subject to pages of rules and penalties. A columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune described Menards’ manner of handling an employee as “something exhumed from the Bronze Age with all its primitive logic intact.”
The amassing of power at the top was revealed by the details in a 1998 tax case involving the company, which showed its chief financial officer was paid just $55,702 while John Menard was pulling in $20.6 million in annual compensation. For more than three years, the Milwaukee Magazine feature has continued to generate an extraordinary outpouring of comments from across the country, much of it from current and ex-employees, with most complaining about how they were treated.
The State’s Success Against Voter Fraud
Conservatives arguing that we must crack down on voter fraud have repeatedly noted that every person who votes more than once cancels out a legal voter. There’s never been much evidence of this going on, but as a result of statewide changes made in 2006, any such violator can be easily caught.
It was back in 2002 that a federal law – Help America Vote – was passed with bipartisan support that called for improvements in each state’s database for voters. Until then, Wisconsin had no statewide database and no way to cross-check all voters. “We couldn’t do a match of records to check if a felon was voting,” says Kevin Kennedy, executive director of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board.
But in 2006, he notes, “We merged all voting records from 300 some local databases. Now, I can look up all people registered, whether in Clam Lake or Milwaukee.”
As a result, says Kennedy, “If any person does double vote, they will be caught in our system.” In the 2008 presidential elections, just two people statewide were caught double voting.
So the GAB isn’t finding much fraud? “No, we’re not.”
Would a photo ID offer any more protection against double voting? Not really, Kennedy says. “It will not stop this because people can go to more than one polling place.”
If the current system can nab any double voters or felons illegally voting, what other fraud is left? One possibility is a noncitizen voting. But these are people doing everything they can to remain in this country; it’s hard to imagine them risking their status by voting illegally.
Another possibility is an underage voter falsely claiming to be 21 years old. Neither kind of fraud – the underage or noncitizen voter – can be nabbed by the current state database, Kennedy says.
“People will cheat if there’s a payoff,” he notes, “but for one vote?” It takes time to doctor a utility bill to create a false identity, he adds, which is a lot of effort for that vote.
Still, Kennedy notes, if there is any fraud, “just the act of showing a photo ID discourages cheating.”
Kennedy, however, has urged the legislature to include all forms of picture ID, including other government-issued IDs, passports and student IDs. That seems a modest correction to a bill whose justification has yet to be proven.
The Buzz
-Rep. Jeff Stone, a candidate for Milwaukee County Executive, has called on the County Board to pass a resolution calling for a referendum to go before voters this April asking if the size of the board and the pay for board members should be reduced. As NewsBuzz reports today, another candidate for county executive, Chris Abele, said he supported the idea.
It’s a smart move by Stone. That could help drive voters who want a smaller county government to turn out, and their natural choice for exec would be Stone. That’s why Abele hopped aboard this train. Meanwhile, County Board Chairman Lee Holloway, another candidate for exec but one who intends to keep his job if he loses, will want to keep his current salary and kill the idea. And the more liberal candidate, former Democratic state Sen. Jim Sullivan, has so far avoided taking a stand on the issue. Given that the board is liberal-leaning, and that all legislative bodies inevitably rush to protect themselves, I’d guess this resolution won’t pass.
-Conservative radio talker Charles Sykes, who I predicted would go after Abele and promote Stone, was doing just that last week. Sykes had protested at my prediction, telling me he was intrigued by Abele. I guess the bloom is off the rose.
-This is quite an election for facial hair: Abele has a scruffy goatee, Stone a traveling salesman’s mustache, and Holloway a burly full beard. Will this give the clean-shaven Sullivan an advantage? It might with some voters.
-And how did new Brewers ace Zack Greinke get mixed up in the Packers’ Super Bowl Circus? The Sports Nut explains.
