Cleaning through my desktop today, and I found a few interesting articles that will once again prove how bad Republican policy are, based on anecdotal voter comments, when it comes to job creation and increased fulltime work:
WI Republicans Oppose Medical Marijuana: AARP 8/2019:
1. A Survey of 100,000 people over 50, after medical marijuana laws were passed, discovered a nearly 5 percent decrease in reported pain and an increase in full-time work.
WI Republicans Oppose Food Stamp Benefits: Wisconsin State Journal:
1. Positive impact on local employment with an increase of 0.4 jobs per $10,000 in SNAP from 2001-2014. During the GOP's Great Recession, SNAP reported an increase of $1.73 in US gross domestic product for every $1 spending.
2. Rural areas in 2010, the SNAP participation rate was82 percent but only 70 percent in urban areas.
3. Between 2008-2010, every $10,000 in SNAP redemptions resulted in one additional job.
Republicans holding Back Economy and Jobs: Purely ideological grumblings over food stamps defies reality, jobs, and economic benefits.
It's telling when a whole group of stories come together to tell one big story about the U.S. economy under Republican control (Trump/U.S. Senate/ Wisconsin's GOP Legislature).
Businesses are Dying, and Republicans are ignoring the COVID Job Killer: Republicans will gaslight and blame Democrats for the upcoming sluggish economy and lost businesses in 2021. But again, these are problems they created, and have no intention of solving.
On a National level, Trump has decided to tank the Biden economy, because he can and wants to:
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Federal Reserve Thursday that he wants his money back. Well, not his money, but rather $455 million from the CARES Act.
This money supported about a half a dozen Fed programs that stabilized credit markets. The Fed, meanwhile, has all but said directly that’s a bad idea. The Fed supported credit markets, so credit markets could support people.
In one of the most blunt and honest assessments of just what Trump is doing, check out the audio below:
"Marketplace" host Kai Ryssdal talks with Business Insider’s Linette Lopez and the New York Times’ Jeanna Smialek about the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, and how it's affecting coronavirus relief.
Sen. Jon Erpenbach recently asked Sen. Chris Kapenga to do something, anything:
"This isn’t fear mongering. This is real life. The sooner we get this virus under control, the sooner we can shop on our
Main Streets, dine in our restaurants, go to a Bucks game or enjoy an Old Fashioned at our local taverns."
JOB KILLING Kapenga: What we need are more Discussions (not businesses): Can they really get away with this year after year? Kapenga understated the economic urgency:
"Obviously, the citizens of Wisconsin have been speaking up, saying 'Hey, we really want you guys to get together and get something done,'" Kapenga said. "Obviously, we're concerned as the numbers continue to rise."
Obviously? Oh yea, Kapenga wants to bring back the one week waiting period for unemployment benefits because, well, the pandemic is now just an afterthought?
JOB KILLING Tiffany: COVID? Tiffany did nothing as well, putting businesses and unemployed workers at financial risk. Take a look at Tiffany's State Journal opinion piece that really did intentionally leave out the raging pandemic. (my interpretation in brackets):
From March to June, a period that included widespread school closures (widespread COVID?) … While potentially losing an entire generation of our children’s education is bad enough (thanks to no COVID legislation) …causing severe dislocations to families as well as our health care system (people are home, not working, with no or reduced income).
JOB KILLING PROOF, Follow the Timeline: The closing of Angelo's Restaurant proves how Republican public safety inaction directly affected Angelo's and every other business in the state:
At first, when dining rooms were closed by county order in March, McGuigan said Angelo’s did well with carryout, but that “trickled off” as the months wore on.
When Gov. Evers "Stay at Home" order reduced COVID-19 cases...
He was encouraged for a short time when restaurants were allowed a 50% capacity
But "freedom" and "liberty" Trump cultist won the day...
…but when the virus spiked and capacity was reduced back to 25%, it was hard to make it work. McGuigan said the early support was great, but he realizes at some point it gets expensive for people. “They’ve got to watch their costs, their expenses,” he said.
What's Next: Republicans continue discount wearing masks or any other public safety measure because they're hung up on Gov. Evers ability to call for a statewide mask mandate. That's really it, they won't do anything until the State Supreme Court kills it, then they can say how bad Evers is while still not putting their own statewide mandate in place.
And with the federal dollars ending in the new year, Republicans won't spend a penny.
Leaving it up to people to make that decision hasn't worked, and businesses around Wisconsin are closing and leaving families jobless.
Remember when we thought we could convince Republicans health care for all made economical and life saving sense? Or that higher wages and an investment in education for our kids would pay dividends in the future?
Boy, were we wrong or what?
Since Scott Walker, Republicans have refused to solve any and all statewide problems. But this too?
The Most Irresponsible, Breathtakingly Inhumane Cruel Abandonment of Governing: If there ever was a time to respond quickly, this would be it...:
Since when is it right to let the least informed, least responsible among us lead the way? And what will it take for Republicans to climb down from a warped ideology that values the "liberty" to ignore common-sense health rules over saving human lives?
We might have thought 1,000 new cases of coronavirus a day would do it.
But it didn't.
Not even 5,000 new cases could move them.
Or even 7,000.
Or 8,000 today!!!
After easily winning their gerrymandered elections by a shockingly disinterested voter base, this is what you get, even backhanding Gov. Evers desperate attempt to get Republicans interested:
“At this point, I haven’t seen anything that I’m real excited about,” incoming Senate President Chris Kapenga of Delafield, said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
He said he didn’t support Vos’ call for increasing contact tracing and didn’t like some of the main provisions of Evers’ proposed legislation, such as banning evictions and foreclosures and continuing to suspend the waiting period to receive unemployment benefits.
“I’m not real keen on that stuff,” Kapenga said.
Nice! We wouldn't want to encourage laziness while half the states businesses shut down during an out of control GOP induced pandemic. Get back to work you whiny masked snowflakes.
Kapenga said he was worried Evers’ mask requirement and other COVID-19-related policies were hurting the state’s economy.
“You’ve got people I think who are very scared right now and that’s part of the problem out there. There’s a lot of fear,” Kapenga said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for (Evers) to be what I consider fear mongering. I think it’s OK to have a healthy respect for what’s going on with COVID and I think people can make their own decisions on that.”
My Trump Cultist friend in Milwaukee sent me a MAGA March thread from Breitbart that illustrates how people like him are so easily manipulated.
What my friend watched was shocking and unsettling, but also an important part of the Trump mobs Proud Boy movement. At first I was very sympathetic...but then I saw the bigger picture.
Violent Content Warning: The Breitbart thread never once mentioned the Proud Boys and the other assaults during the MAGA March. The male MAGA protester who was cold cocked in the video below is no innocent victim. This was only part of the story, the end reaction to what really happened shown in the second video. I don't agree with these escalating brutal confrontations, but it is energizing propaganda and recruitment material for the Proud Boys. Also note how the male victim is helped and taken to medical help by sympathetic ANTIFA members:
Here's what really happened, and a lesson in right wing manipulation. Remember Trump encouraged this in tweets, and is all happening under his administration, not Biden's:
Guess who fell for this...Scott Walker. Not a smart man, but then you knew that:
After protecting their reelection chances by not making any tough decisions to slow down the now raging COVID-19 pandemic, Speaker Robin Vos is now magically dismissing any perception they did nothing for 6 months and that it was some kind of Democratic disinformation campaign that created the illusion of inaction. Seriously.
Vos and Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (who voters rewarded with a seat in Congress for doing nothing) didn't just disappear since the middle of May, their plan is now responsible for this devastating reality:
Vos' blames his brutal COVID avoidance plan on...Politics?: On WKOW's Capitol City Sunday, video below, Vos simply lied, telling Wisconsinites what they read and saw with their own eyes never happened:
1. "Democrats tried to create a narrative that Republicans didn't take COVID seriously, and didn't want to work together to get things done."
2. "Well it's really a political argument that's been made by the liberals, and their allies all across the state, again with out of state billionaire funded money just to try to win the legislature back!!!"
The state's highest court sided with Republican lawmakers Wednesday in a decision that curbed the power of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration to act unilaterally during public health emergencies.
Gov. Evers responded:
"Republican legislators convinced four members of the Supreme Court to throw the state into chaos," Evers told reporters Wednesday evening. "Republicans own that chaos."
Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote in dissent, "In striking down most of (the order), this court has failed to provide almost any guidance for what the relevant laws mean, and how our state is to govern through this crisis moving forward."
Predictably, Republicans never came back to define those relevant laws, leaving us with 7,7777 new COVID cases, more deaths, and predictions that it could get much worse. From Here and Now:
Vos' media blitz to cover up his now disastrous "people are smart, let them make their own decisions" policy. But Vos voters are dug in now:
But still....
I will let you fill in the blank(s): Vos is _____________________!
Samuel Alito!!! It is now clear Democrats need to expand the Supreme Court for the sake of saving our nation from the Supreme Courts whining babies. So this is what conservatives call "textualism?"
Protecting the Feelings of People's Racist Bigoted Speech, that's Alito's real Constitutional Test: The most frightening revelation was Alito's thought process, conclusions that have nothing to do with the Constitution, but more to do with protecting conservative speech.
No one restricting the speech of bigots and racists. It's just the inevitable consequences of owning your position that Alito objects to. If anything, Alito really wants to silence the speech of those calling out bigotry and racism.
Same-sex marriage? (These days,) “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman” without fear of reprisal from schools, government and employers, Alito said.
“Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it’s considered bigotry,” he said, adding: “One of the great challenges for the Supreme Court going forward will be to protect freedom of speech.”
Uh, we should protect speech from...people judging you, and holding a person responsible for their opinion? And that's where in the Constitution, snowflake?
Other curious holes in Alito's textural judgement:
1. He suggested there was no actual harm in a Colorado bakery refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, noting the couple “was given a free cake by another bakery, and celebrity chefs have jumped to the couple’s defense."
2. He suggested lawmakers had given too much deference to “experts.” He suggestively alluded to the idea that it was done so that “policy-making would become more ‘scientific’ " — a section that could certainly be read today to reflect conservative resistance to the advice of medical experts like Anthony S. Fauci: "And what have we seen in the pandemic? Sweeping restrictions imposed for the most part under statutes that confer enormous executive discretion."
Here's more:
Slate: On Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention … These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them.
The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.
Alito also disparaged Washington state for requiring pharmacies to provide emergency contraception—which, he claimed, “destroys an embryo after fertilization.” (That is false.) Finally, Alito rebuked Colorado for attempting to compel Jack Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.* He noted that the couple was given a free cake and supported by “celebrity chefs.”
Like everyone else, the suffocating spread of COVID-19 is making the simple act of going to the store a psychological nail biter.
COVID? What COVID? Thanks to Republican enablers and the State Supreme Court, the odds of getting the virus are increasing, dramatically. Still, at least Sen. Scott Fitzgerald easily won his election to congressman by a disinterested conservative QAnon base of voters.
While Wisconsin Republicans sit back letting COVID-19 ravage the state on Gov. Tony Evers watch, which they hope to use against him in 2022, the state Supreme Court will likely strike down Evers' mask mandate.
But surprisingly, area businesses are finally realizing their anti-regulation legislative allies are killing them and their costumers. About time, or too late?
The Truth, and a Warning: Conservative columnist and president of the Wisconsin Technology Council has changed his tune over the last year, especially on rural broadband, and offers up this business warning (I will be reminding voters of this article in 2022 as well):
The Wisconsin economy would recover much faster if the state held the national eye a while longer by demonstrating it can stop the spread of COVID-19.
That’s hardly a confidence builder for existing businesses, many of which continue to struggle to keep their doors open, or for business executives outside Wisconsin who may look elsewhere to locate or expand. If you view Wisconsin as a bizarre, noncompliant outlier in the fight against COVID, you might think twice about opening that new location.
Knowing the COVID-19 pandemic is hurting Wisconsin’s business climate and consumer confidence, many business associations have banded together under the flag of the “Stop the Spread” coalition. It has produced public service announcements, enlisting the help of marquee sports teams and respected figures to urge people to take simple prevention steps.
The shocking lack of accountability demonstrated in the election and more unbelievably, Scott Fitzgerald's easy Congressional win, offers up little hope conservative voters care or will ever learn any lessons from our FAILED "freedom and liberty" induced raging outbreak.
How bad is it?
WMTV: The spread of COVID-19 across Wisconsin is off the charts, literally.
So many counties are so far past the Dept. of Health Services' highest classification for case activity, that it needed to create a brand new category. And, although its minimum cutoff is nearly three times higher than the old top category. Nearly every Wisconsin county surpassed that threshold. The entire state too.
"Balance?" Business Tips Scale...: While Covid-19 is killing business and scaring away customers, the denialists at Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce believe we can "balance public safety with business concerns," which we're seeing IS NOT WORKING:
(WMC (and) manufacturers’ association and safety council … question the St. Croix County Board of Supervisors legal authority it has to issue a “Chapter 41 COVID-19 Communicable Disease Ordinance” that wouldrequire most people to wear facemasks indoors and limit gatherings to 25 percent of occupancy limits … "(It would) inflict significant economic harm on residents and businesses."
WMC’s letter explains that the ordinance is, “bad public policy that will simply create confusion, uncertainty, and fear, which will negatively impact local employers, workers, and customers.”
Dumber still, while the pandemic is seeing enrollment declines, as schools closed down for safer online classes, the Koch brothers Americans for Prosperity actually said this, ignoring the pandemic:
“Now is not the time to pump $1.4 billion of new taxpayer dollars into an education system that saw a huge decline in enrollment and is not meeting the needs of these families.”
The DPI budget request includes $1.48 billion in new state tax revenue appropriations for public schools and alters the funding formula to address declining enrollment from the COVID-19 pandemic.
AP: The only way to stop the coronavirus pandemic from getting even worse in Wisconsin is to “triple down,” individually and collectively, on public health measures, the state’s business leaders learned in a bleak update Wednesday. Dr. Mark Kaufman, chief medical officer for the Wisconsin Hospital Association, at a virtual meeting of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce said,
“We really know what works, we just need to do it and we all need to do it. We can flatten the curve, but right now that’s the only way we will flatten the curve.”
While Trump is trying to throw out the votes of millions of Americans across the country, Wisconsin Republicans are making it perfectly clear that they are fully on board with that idea, in support of an authoritarian one party Republican government.
Even after 8 years under Scott Walker and a whole new set of Rube Goldberg-like election rules, it's always something. You don't have to imagine how petty they would like to get, because it's spelled out in the first paragraph of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's story below:
As Republicans pursue a longshot chance of overturning the presidential results in Wisconsin, they’re focused on absentee voters' addresses, the state’s residency requirement and a flash drive that was briefly left in a counting machine.
The article goes on to explain how both the election commission and governor would have to approve throwing out the state election results and then incredibly replace the current electors with only Trump supporters, handing Wisconsin over to Trump. Mind blowing, true, but conservative voters would love to just sit back and let this happen.
Here's what the far right's Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-New Berlin, said on Monday:
Sanfelippo lunacy
…raised the prospect of having the state’s electoral votes go to Trump instead of Biden...
“If an investigation shows these actions affected the outcome of the election, we need to either declare this past election null and void and hold a new election or require our Electoral College Delegates to correct the injustice with their votes.”
Yea, likes that's going to happen.
Ousted "Constitutional textualist" Justice Michael Gableman see's legal language where there is none:
Republicans have raised concerns about instances in which clerks filled in the addresses of witnesses on absentee ballot envelopes. The state Elections Commission told clerks they could add the witness’ address if they were able to determine what it was.
State law does not explicitly say who must provide the address information. And Republicans on the commission have backed the policy allowing clerks to fill it out.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman contends the witness — not the clerk — is the one who is supposed to fill out the address information. “The one meaningful path that the president would have in Wisconsin would be to challenge the I believe illegal clerks writing in the addresses for the absentee voters’ witnesses,”
Gableman was thankfully booted by Wisconsin voters. But he did prove once and for all how textualism and originalism was nothing more hard core conservative drivel.
The silence from Republican leadership is also a concern. Are Republicans planning to take something to our conservative activist State Supreme Court that will help Trump steal the election? I think the video says it all:
