Grothman's 'both-sideism' boosts 'Worst in Wisconsin' status

One of Wisconsin's least-productive and most ill-informed permanent squatters at the US Capitol public trough said Wednesday he won't disclose whether or not he's been vaccinated against the raging COVID pandemic.

What could provoke such a block-headed and potentially-damaging leadership fail?

Because...he doesn't want to take sides:  

...the congressman declined to answer before taking off the microphone and walking away from the interview.

"I don't like to get into taking sides on it," [Cong. Glenn] Grothman said.

Who knew there were sides to public health advocacy during a planet-altering pandemic? 

Is he afraid to upset the 'bleach injections work best' caucus, or the 'indict Dr. Fauci followers'?

Does Grothman know that the fast-spreading COVID delta variant is running rampant? 

Delta variant accounts for 79% of COVID-19 samples tested in Wisconsin

And that even more ominous strains of the virus threaten to kill people, further upend the economy and undo the progress made against COVID.

Progress at great cost led by medical personnel, first-responders and everyday people - progress which can be undone by the partisan ideologues and selfish fools who have put Grothman and his oath-breaking, damage-inflicting colleagues in positions of power.

By the way, here's a one reminder among many of Grothman and his useless GOP colleagues' approach to science, COVID, and disease prevention.

And, for the record, and despite [his campaign ad's many] rambling tangents - from a pitch for Vitamin D (a good thing for seniors like me in our sunlight-deprived winters) - to the robotically-Republican/xenophobic-and off-note slam at China - give credit to Glenn Grothman for airing some masked-up images in a TV spot before its last-second reveal.

But don't put your hand in that whole bin...oops...well, too late.

 

Grothman, Fitzgerald, Tiffany and Steil vote against 'bipartisan' PFAS action

 [Reposted with a corrected headline to include Fitzgerald.]

To the contamination of Wisconsin waters with 'forever' PFAS chemicals enabled by Republican state lawmakers you can add pro-PFAS votes cast against a multi-pronged Federal measure by US GOP Reps. Tom Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman and Bryan Steil. 

  

Grothman joined fellow Republicans Fitzgerald, Tiffany, and Steil in opposition to Federal actions against 'forever' PFAS chemicals which are contaminating Wisconsin and other waterways.

I cannot explain why WisPolitics put this headline on its reporting but left out the names of four of five Wisconsin GOP Representatives whose "nay" votes undermine the 'bipartisan' thrust of the headline: 

DC Wrap: PFAS legislation clears House with bipartisan support

— U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher was the only GOP member of Wisconsin’s delegation to join all Dems in passing a measure to limit the use of PFAS pollutants. 

The Allouez Republican joined all 218 House Dems in a 241-183 vote that sent the PFAS Action Act to the Senate for consideration. While only one of Wisconsin’s Republicans supported the measure, 22 Republicans from other states joined him. 

The measure would set regulations on the use of PFAS chemicals and direct the EPA to list PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances. The EPA would also have to determine if these forever chemicals qualify as toxic pollutants under the Clean Water Act and set a national standard for the amount of PFAS chemicals allowed in drinking water. 

The report included a link to the roll call vote, but why send readers to a link with more than 400 names to scroll through when the names of the 'nay' votes in the small Wisconsin delegation could have easily been included in the text.

Not every reader can rattle off the names of the members of Wisconsin's GOP congressional delegation other than Mike Gallagher.

 

Grothman, Steil, Tiffany & Steil vote against 'bipartisan' PFAS action

To the contamination of Wisconsin waters with 'forever' PFAS chemicals enabled by Republican state lawmakers you can add pro-PFAS votes cast against a multi-pronged Federal measure by US GOP Reps. Tom Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman and Bryan Steil. 

  

Grothman joined fellow Republicans Fitzgerald, Tiffany, and Steil in opposition to Federal actions against 'forever' PFAS chemicals which are contaminating Wisconsin and other waterways.

I cannot explain why WisPolitics put this headline on its reporting but left out the names of four of five Wisconsin GOP Representatives whose "nay" votes undermine the 'bipartisan' thrust of the headline: 

DC Wrap: PFAS legislation clears House with bipartisan support

— U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher was the only GOP member of Wisconsin’s delegation to join all Dems in passing a measure to limit the use of PFAS pollutants. 

The Allouez Republican joined all 218 House Dems in a 241-183 vote that sent the PFAS Action Act to the Senate for consideration. While only one of Wisconsin’s Republicans supported the measure, 22 Republicans from other states joined him. 

The measure would set regulations on the use of PFAS chemicals and direct the EPA to list PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances. The EPA would also have to determine if these forever chemicals qualify as toxic pollutants under the Clean Water Act and set a national standard for the amount of PFAS chemicals allowed in drinking water. 

The report included a link to the roll call vote, but why send readers to a link with more than 400 names to scroll through when the names of the 'nay' votes in the small Wisconsin delegation could have easily been included in the text.

Not every reader can rattle off the names of the members of Wisconsin's GOP congressional delegation other than Mike Gallagher.

 

Tom Tiffany went border-tripping with quite the troubling group

I'd wondered why northwoods Republican US Rep. Tom Tiffany 

had missed the Tuesday vote on a bill to remove Confederate military and sympathizers' statuary from the Capitol - 

Grothman, Fitzgerald dishonor Wisconsin's Civll War dead

The U.S. House voted Tuesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Marylander who wrote the despised Dred Scott decision—as well as evict statues and busts of men who fought for the Confederacy or served in its government. 

Side note: How did Tiffany pass up another chance to take a slap at minority citizens in his district whom he 'represents'? 

Riddle solved: Tiffany was otherwise engaged Tuesday slamming the Biden administration - from the US-Mexico border - in some very unsettling company:

Capitol rioter accompanied members of Congress on trip to US-Mexico border 

A conservative YouTuber who participated in the January 6 riot accompanied Republican members of Congress on a trip to the border Tuesday night, serving as a translator at times.

Anthony Aguero, a close ally of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene can be seen in videos and photos with Republican members of Congress who traveled to a route along the border frequented by migrants on Tuesday night. CNN's KFile previously reported that Aguero went into the Capitol during the January 6 riot and cheered and justified the break-in.

During his livestream of the Tuesday visit, Aguero interviewed and chatted with Reps. Tom. Tiffany of Wisconsin, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Chris Jacobs of New York, Michael Cloud of Texas, John Rose of Tennessee, Ronny Jackson of Texas, and Mary Miller of Illinois.

This is at least Tiffany's third recently reported visit to the border  - here in April and again in May.

He is definitely on someone's short list, and leash. Who could that be?

Oh, Politico says it's that guy:

House Republicans use Trump visit to hammer Dems on the border

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas), whose invitation to the border Trump accepted, set the tone with an effusive introduction of the former president as having done "more to secure the border than anybody and any president ever has."

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) visits the U.S. border in La Joya, Texas. | Olivia Beavers/POLITICO

 

Wisconsin GOP is a sanctuary for the anxious and weak

There's been no rest for Republicans like US Sen. Ron Johnson - 

Ron Johnson, 2021 photo

- who had to patiently explain that despite what millions of people saw on television, no insurrection had taken place on January 6th in the inner sanctuary of the US Capitol.

Where for some reason members of Congress and staffers barricaded themselves in the sanctuary's officers and chambers from a phantom menace.

And speaking of sanctuaries, the state Republican party is saying 'absolutely, yes' to designating cities and counties as 'sanctuaries' from gun-rights-canceling Feds and weak Democrats armed with stupid, wimpy laws. 

Wisconsin Senate passes 'Second Amendment sanctuary' legislation limiting federal gun laws 

So we're learning that some sanctuaries are more sacred than others, which leads us to what Republicans are revealing about a suspicious sanctuary which a different unit of untrustworthy Feds just created in Lake Michigan.

Yeah, right! An underwater study hall.

What's next? Claiming that so-called eco-tourists might come to the Lake Michigan shoreline and spend money in 'sanctuary?'

When there are actual trees along the shoreline they could hug? (Well, except for 50,000 surplus trees in and adjoining the sanctuary known as Kohler Andrae State Park which a top GOP donor with the state's permission plans to dust.)

So thank Neptune that Johnson and other Republican sanctuary police have unmasked this Democrat Trojan Sea Horse that could hide in the 'sanctuary,' and when no one's looking, swim away with Bucky's Great Lakes pier rights, buried baubles - and even the fish.

Ron Johnson, Glenn Grothman and Mike Gallagher call for review of Lake Michigan marine sanctuary every 5 years

.'"...the sanctuary designation could hinder lake access for shoreline property owners and other property rights, recreational access, commercial and private fishing rights, and potential mineral rights....'"

And, again; give Johnson credit again for having sought to fulfill as far back as 2010 the destiny which libs have denied to the Great Lakes - being drilled just like the Gulf of Mexico or the Saharan desert.

One month ago, Johnson was asked by the media, "Would you support drilling like in the Great Lakes, for example, if there was oil found there?" Johnson said, “Yeah. You know, the bottom line is that we are an oil-based economy. There’s nothing we’re going to do to get off of that for many, many years, so I think we have to just be realistic and recognize that fact. And I think we have to get the oil where it is…”[WisPolitics, Interview, 6/14/10]

Grothman, Fitzgerald dishonor Wisconsin's Civil War dead

Two of Wisconsin's most reactionary Republican members of Congress voted against removing from the US Capitol statues honoring Confederate military leaders and other figures with racist pasts:

The U.S. House voted Tuesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Marylander who wrote the despised Dred Scott decision—as well as evict statues and busts of men who fought for the Confederacy or served in its government.

The legislation passed on a vote of 285-120, with all the nay votes from Republicans and 67 of them voting with Democrats. 

Wisconsin Republicans were divided, with Reps. Scott Fitzgerald and Glenn Grothman voting nay and Rep. Bryan Steil voting in favor. Reps Mike Gallagher and Tom Tiffany did not vote.

Some recent blog posts about Grothman, and Fitzgerald 

Fitzgerald was State Senate Majority Leader before being elected to Congress in 2020.

explain why their 'Nay' votes were not surprising 

The war against the seditionist Confederacy cost 12,000 Wisconsin soldiers their lives, state records show. 

"...the total number of men Wisconsin is credited with having furnished to the war is 91,327....

Of this number, 3,802 were killed in action or died of wounds, and the number of deaths from all other causes 8,499. Total deaths, 12,301."

Do any of these Wisconsin soldiers' families live in Wisconsin?

Would they wonder why Fitzgerald and Grothman would want the US Congress to continue to honor the Confederacy, the brutality and damage it caused and the evils it inflicted on African-Americans which continue to diminish US society today?

Side note: How did Tiffany pass up another chance to take a slap at minority citizens in his district whom he 'represents'?

Tiffany casts another vote against minority Americans

To his deliberate misrepresentation of minority Americans in his own district, you can add another blatantly bigoted move by Wisconsin's Northwoods US House Rep. Tom Tiffany -  

Cong. Tom Tiffany, (R-Whites Only)

- a vote against making Juneteenth a national holiday - to his expanding racist record, including:

* Opposing federal aid to African-American farmers after decades of discriminatory official programs and policies; 

* Voting "Nay" on anti-Asian hate legislation;

* And opposing the removal of statues from Congress that honored leading Confederate seditionists;

* A vote that lined up with his vote against accepting legitimate Electoral votes cast for President-elect Joe Biden in a failed effort to throw the election to the defeated former President - - a move which seditionist rioters tried to achieve through an attack on the US Capitol.

As I've noted, gerrymandered Republican bigots, embarrassments and ignorami are going to contaminate the Congress and accelerate Wisconsin's decaying national reputation for years and years.

Side note - Wisconsin's other notably reprehensible members of the state's GOP caucus - including Sen. Ron Johnson, and Reps. Grothman, Gallagher, Fitzgerald and Steil all voted "Yes" on the Juneteenth bill.

Which explains why Tiffany is strongly contending for the title of Worst Wisconsin Member of Congress.

RoJo says needy are lazy. His lazy fact-checking earns YouTube ban.

I have noted the reflexive and uncaring accusations towards poor, out-of-luck, and powerless citizens which subsidy-laden and professional ingrates like Republicans Scott Walker, Glenn Grothman & Paul Ryan - 

Paul Ryan Claims Black Men Are Lazy And The Cause Of Poverty In This Country

and others regularly throw out to manipulate the basest of their base supporters.

But I want to get on the record that Johnson is such a lazy thinker that he's stooped to channeling Walker's 2014 campaign demagoguery -

In the final month and a half of the campaign, Gov. Scott Walker is making a blunt promise to voters — that he'll ensure jobless workers aren't on drugs, or their recliners."My belief is we shouldn't be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox," Walker told cheering Republican campaign volunteers last week in West Bend.

- with an unimaginative and unattributed update of his own his week:  

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): “The Federal Government Has Subsidized Sitting On Your Couch”

The context for Johnson's nastiness is a worker shortage he attributes 

Highly-subsidized Senator seen here perhaps rooting out those getting small payments?

to modest Federal pandemic payments which are temporarily helping lower-income Americans meet pandemic-related rent, childcare, transportation and other burdens.

All of which are exacerbated by the federally-mandated rock-bottom hourly minimum wage of $7.25 which Republicans in Congress and Wisconsin have steadfastly refused to increase.

A bigger, more-informed picture about worker shortages can be found here:

“There are structural factors in our society that have brought us to this point where we have high numbers of unemployed still, especially among low-skilled workers, and now we have a burgeoning demand for qualified workers,” Wisconsin AFL-CIO president Stephanie Bloomingdale said. “To now complain that unemployed workers are getting $300 extra to get us through the pandemic — it falls short.”

But Johnson and other Republicans prefer tossing out resentment-building talking points to trigger donations and votes rather than actually doing anything about income inequality, systematic racism and persistent sexism which all have embedded and expanded America's underclass seemingly forever.

One positive note: Johnson should find himself with a little more productive couch time for a week because Google's YouTube business suspended his account for spreading misinformation.

• YouTube has suspended Senator Ron Johnson's account for spreading medical misinformation.
• The company specifically prohibits content that contradicts public health guidance.
• The Republican routinely holds Senate hearings where he promotes baseless conspiracy theories.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Bottom line: intellectual, arrogant laziness that spreads ideology over facts can get you suspended from a private-sector social media platform; a staffed-up US Senator with free and instant access to facts should know and do better.

On Critical Race Theory, WI has deep pool of white GOP experts

What luck!

A gaggle of white Wisconsin Republican legislators interested in blowing up Critical Race Theory Instruction -

Wisconsin GOP Introduces Bills Barring Critical Race Theory

- can supplement their first-hand ignorance with team teaching assistance by proven experts Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany and Glenn Grothman. 

Robin Vos can sub in for any of them.

Paul Ryan can bring his unique, 'smartest guy in the room' wisdom to the conversation.

And State Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack can add to the debate - should the notably-do-nothing/always-adjourning GOP-led Legislature actually conduct a debate - her special anthropological expertise on minority living in Wisconsin which she'd already shared from the bench when she was Chief Justice.

On, Wisconsin!

US legislators from WI say jobless citizens are lazy grifters

Citing no data, a resentment-stirring-grievance-and-talking-point-laden WI GOP Sen. Ron Johnson said "subsidies" to unemployed people are preventing employers from filling jobs:

"The biggest problem businesses in Wisconsin face now is finding people willing to turn down government subsidies and go back to work," U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Oshkosh said in a statement.

Democrats, and even business leaders, had a more layered and less judgmental analysis about post-pandemic unemployment and the impact of a temporary $300 per week payment to the unemployed which has millionaire Johnson so worked up:

Republicans and business groups contend some workers are reluctant to take jobs because of how much they make in benefits and say the situation is hurting the economy. Many Democrats say the help is still needed and note people often no longer qualify for benefits if they turn down a good job offer.

Republican office holders, including Paul Ryan (and again),  Glenn Grothman, Scott Walker and their hero, Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed fat, subsidized salaries, benefits and special perks as routine entitlements can instantly display a nasty disdain for people who are poor, down on their luck, out of work and/or routinely suppressed. 

Highly-subsidized Senator perhaps rooting out those getting smaller subsidies?

So, of course, all five of Johnson's junior and equally callous state GOP Congressional caucus members who each make more than $3,400 a week - or 11 times the temporary, $300-per-week unemployment support Johnson cannot abide - signed on to his shaming and shameful letter:

Johnson sent a letter to Evers on the issue that was also signed by the five Republicans who represent the state in the U.S. House — Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau, Mike Gallagher of Green Bay, Glenn Grothman of Glenbeulah, Bryan Steil of Janesville and Tom Tiffany of Minocqua. 

 

 

 

How today's GOP leaders are very old-school PC

The term "PC" these days usually stands for "politically correct" and is often a conservative grievance complaint launched at  liberal critics, but when we were kids back in another century you were branded "PC" if you behaved like a "privileged character," and it stung.

So it's ironic that some of the loudest and most "PC" conservatives are so at ease arrogantly and breezily displaying -without a grain of doubt or shame - for the basest of their base voters a judgmental superiority over entire communities and cultures.

We heard Wisconsin's GOP Assembly Speaker - and very PC Robin Vos - attribute COVID19 cases in his district to "immigrant culture," a cruel and ignorant finger-point that helped absolved Vos of any public service obligation to legislative lead against the pandemic.

Perhaps Vos felt entitled to disparage immigrant culture because Wisconsin's rightwing Supreme Court Chief Justice had a few weeks earlier opined that COVID19 cases among meatpacking workers - a heavily-immigrant population - were of less concern to her than whether so-called "regular folks" were at risk.

And the career of US GOP Cong. Glenn Grothman has been built on putting down other people's practices and culture, including the Black family, same-sex preference, single-parenting and more, noted here.

H/T to Vox media's Aaron Rupar Twitter account:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

·

2h

Glenn Grothman brings up Black Lives Matter and then says, "I know it's a group that doesn't like the old fashioned family."

Maybe Rick Santorum saw Grothman's shameless slam at the Black family and thought, 'hey, I'll trash all of Native American culture' - and, so far, get away with it - because this particular iteration of conservative PC keeps white bigots on the job.

Santorum made his remarks at a forum sponsored by Young America's Foundation, whose President, Scott Walker, has performed a superiority dance or two on the public stage because his audiences loved to hear minorities and the less-powerful get put down and this particular PC/GOP politician could effortlessly give his people what they wanted: 

People do not want to see Wisconsin "become another Milwaukee," Walker said.

And during a campaign two years later, this: 

In the final month and a half of the campaign, Gov. Scott Walker is making a blunt promise to voters — that he'll ensure jobless workers aren't on drugs, or their recliners.  

"My belief is we shouldn't be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox," Walker told cheering Republican campaign volunteers last week in West Bend. 

A census of ghouls, fools and tools

Some of the 2020 Census data is out, and Wisconsin retains its eight US House seats, and with two Senators, 10 electoral votes.

Remember that this is the Census which the defeated administration repeatedly tried to skew against big cities like Milwaukee with their immigrant - and legally countable - populations, so I expect we will see in subsequent data releases an official loss of population in Milwaukee which surely be an undercount.

I have some familiarity with the census procedures, having served during the Norquist years as the city's 1996 census liaison, and I know that even in the best of times (thus not with the Stephen Miller/White House-led campaign of anti-immigrant intimidation) there is understandable reluctance in neighborhoods and households with undocumented residents to open doors and speak with government officials who want to and can only legally count people, not turn them in to law enforcement.

But Wisconsin's census-related political problem with the number of Congressional seats we have - other than the overall transfer of power to the GOP-dominated south and West that strengthens an already-unfair and disproportionate Electoral College edge with it - has less with what we have and more to do what we do with them, and in particular with how heavily gerrymandered Republican incumbents abuse and devalue the majority of seats they've latched onto.

And these Three Fools and a Tool have had themselves quite a month of April - heaping on top of its long-acknowledged cruelty a toxic layer of cringe-worthy stupidity not seen in Wisconsin since Joe McCarthy showed the nation that indeed he had 'no sense of decency.'

Some April 2021 lowlights from the Three Fools:

* Grothman

The Oracle of Glenbuelah adds rap and dance to his expansive canon

* Tiffany

Ignored racism, enslavement and other American realities

* Fitzgerald

With Tiffany, Smeared top Biden health nominee.

But unsuccessfully, apparently.

* And then there's the [Russian] tool - Ron Johnson, who also had himself a high-profile and even more highly-embarrassing April.

Ron Johnson's new embrace of 7,400 COVID is nothing new

Because, remember: He even considered the deaths of 11 million Americans from COVID19 as an acceptable price for others to pay. 

GOP Senator Upbeat Coronavirus May Kill ‘No More Than 3.4 Percent of Our Population’ 

* And there's this one leading the Wisconsin State Assembly who displays elements of his more senior party leaders, so could easily blend in if he took a promotion to Congress as have The Fools: 

WI science foe Vos now expert on immunology. Also "The Matrix."

The Glenbeulah oracle adds rap & dance to his expansive canon

You've probably heard by now that GOP WI House member and Grammy Awards devotee Glenn Grothman has accused popular rapper Cardi B of contributing to the decline of American culture.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Glenbeulah, said on the House floor Thursday that rapper Cardi B's appearance at the Grammy Awards earlier this year was "inconsistent with basic decency" in a speech urging the Federal Communications Commission to ban performances like hers.... 

Cardi B, who won a Grammy Award in 2019 for best rap album, told her 17.9 million Twitter followers that Grothman should worry about more pressing issues facing the country.  

But before you denounce Grothman as some sort of ignorant, intolerant and small-minded misogynist, you might want to review other weighty matters - like geology, ophiology, the American family, African-American culture, single-parenting, and the War on Men - which Grothman has analyzed and addressed openly to better appreciate his mind and heart, including:

Garter snakes

Kwanzaa is bad and survey research proves it

The Black family, and more

Well caulking can ward off mining blasting

Public employees should work on MLK Jr. Day

'Gals' have schemes, and more (video)

Single parenting spurs child abuse

Legalizing equal pay for women is wrong

Single mothers get government bribes

The War on Men will destroy America, and more