WI GOP keeps expanding 'governing' by cop-out/opt-out

Republicans hold majorities in both Wisconsin Legislative chambers where the GOP 'style' of governance these days is all about ducking accountability, living by laziness and evading even the pretense of responsibility.

You may remember that former GOP Governor Scott Walker got caught trying to quietly remove the state's commitments to truth and public service from the "Wisconsin Idea," but GOP legislators have taken that assault on Wisconsin fundamentals to what seems like a bottomless low.

How else to describe GOP-led Legislature's nine-month, fully-paid vacation during the pandemic's 2020 rampage and nearly year-long focus on further diminishing of Gov. Evers' administrative powers rather than writing or promoting or cooperating on a pandemic-fighting plan? 

A thoughtless contempt for public health and life itself summed up in August, when despite exploding COVID19 caseloads and deaths - official data, here - then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald approvingly said people were 'complying if they want to' with Governor Evers' statewide masking mandate, and that was OK because things on the pandemic front were "going pretty well." 

We've had about a half-million COVID19 cases since Fitzgerald all but dismissed it as freedom's price for spreading the virus as you please - a sick scenario just now expanded because Legislative Republicans have wiped out Evers' masking mandate.

Though Republican legislators' last-minute cover-your-a** amending may fail to prevent the loss of almost $50 million a month in federal emergency food aid related to pandemic unemployment in Wisconsin - a risk Republicans are willing to take with people's most basic needs.

Your new Wisconsin Idea in action. Not by inaction, but by deliberate, calculated, calibrated malfeasance.

But while we're focused on this poisonously-partisan power-grab, please note the bonus bit of breezy, take-it-or-leave-it nonchalance on another important front that WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has added to his party's retreat from the hard work of leadership.

Not content to rest on the word-smithing chops he displayed in April when decked out in heavy-duty pandemic-protective gear declared it "incredibly safe to go out" - 

- Vos has now laid down a new do-as-you-please marker for contractors doing business with the taxpayer-funded State of Wisconsin.

CEO's and their bean counters haven't been given news this good since Ron Johnson sent them an even bigger dollop of dollars through the 2017 Federal tax 'reform' bill.

Vos's latest step away from accountability was an excuse he opted to confer on the Republican-championed Foxconn fiasco bulldozed into the Village of Mt. Pleasant which, according to state auditors, has yet to hit - and won't hit for three more years - its hiring targets at the radically reduced and redefined project in Mt Pleasant. 

No matter to Assembly Speaker Shoulder-Shrug who explained that he'd put himself on the state development commission to make sure Foxconn is allowed the contracting equivalent of Fitzgerald's 'comply if you want' - more or less. 

"I wanted to make sure that Foxconn and the people of Racine County are treated fairly and that we had a deal that, more or less, stuck to the original goals that we set."

Now I'm not recommending you offer the GOP-defining 'more or less' standard or the party's 'comply if you want' option when discussing things with an IRS agent or a State Trooper with a radar gun, but I do recommend the statement below issued Wednesday by some of Vos's constituents about what contract compliance by Foxconn in Mt. Pleasant looks like to them, more or less:

------------------------------------------

For Immediate Release

Contact: Kim Mahoney

262/721-8248

abettermtpleasant@gmail.com

VOS AND WANGGAARD CONTINUE TO GASLIGHT PUBLIC 

ON FOXCONN DEVELOPMENT 

“Foxconn is failing to fulfill financial obligations in Mount Pleasant while local spending continues in preparation for a factory that is not happening.” 

MOUNT PLEASANT, WI FEBRUARY 3, 2021 - A recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel regarding the ongoing contract renegotiations between the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) and Foxconn related to the controversial LCD factory which Foxconn promised to build in Mount Pleasant featured several statements offered by state representatives, Robin Vos and Van Wanggaard, about the project that were not just misleading, but factually incorrect. 

In response to a question on whether new state legislation would be needed to renegotiate the contract that WEDC has determined to be broken, Senator Wanggaard claimed “Foxconn is in substantial compliance with their existing contract...” This is false.

According to the written agreements, Foxconn is required to (1) build a 10.5 Generation LCD factory, (2) create and maintain approximately 13,000 full-time jobs, with an average salary of at least $53,875 plus benefits, and (3) invest approximately $10 Billion, mostly Area I in Mount Pleasant. There is no ambiguity about those terms in either the State contract or the local Development Agreement.

Further, Foxconn was required to have improved Area I by a minimum of $685 Million by December 31, 2019, but in its Performance Report submitted to WEDC, Foxconn reported that it had spent only $208.3 Million.

Foxconn is also required to add a value of $347.3 Million in 2020, and another $358.2 Million in 2021 in order to reach a total minimum assessed value of $1.4 Billion by January 1, 2022, and a minimum tax bill of $31.1 Million for the next 26 years. Having submitted no new development plans since 2019, and with the absence of any open bid packages for work to be performed in Area I, it is difficult to imagine how they will achieve that valuation. Indeed, Foxconn has not come even close to fulfilling their financial obligations in the State and local contract. 

Representative Vos would have the public believe it doesn’t matter what Foxconn makes, stating the decision to withhold tax credit payments to Foxconn is "a bunch of B.S" and “Do you care or does the taxpayer care if they’re making a TV or a circuit board? It doesn’t really matter.” Actually, what Foxconn makes does matter in order for it to meet its contract obligations.

The Generation 10.5 LCD factory Foxconn promised to build is beyond massive. It would have required at least 10,000 full-time jobs to operate and a $10 Billion investment to construct. The supply chain of manufacturing would have employed thousands more, and it would have required 10,000 construction workers each year for several years. 

In the last three years, Foxconn has constructed only two buildings in Area I - the “Multi-Purpose Building,” a 120,000 square foot warehouse in which there are a small number of employees reportedly assembling circuit boards; and a 1 Million square foot building that was supposed to house the LCD factory. Instead, a small number of employees are assembling coffee kiosks and a portion of the building is being used for storage. Foxconn’s disappointing efforts netted a total of 281 jobs in 2019, far less than their goal of 2080 full-time jobs.

According to the Wisconsin Division of Executive Budget and Finance, Foxconn’s LCD factory building is not even equipped to fabricate glass substrates but rather, “it appears to be a place equipped to perform assembly operations, and may be better suited for demonstration purposes rather than as a viable commercial glass fabrication facility.” 

It is unlikely that Foxconn will ever employ more than 1,500 full-time employees, which will be relegated mainly to low-level assembly work. A far cry from a technology hub that was promised to be the “eighth wonder of the world.” 

According to the Journal Sentinel article, Representative Vos claims “the agreement was centered around jobs, wages and the company building facilities,” but then he turns around and says “...All that really matters is how many people they employ and what they pay them.” 

Mr. Vos conveniently leaves out two key components of the contract - the building facilities and the investment necessary to build them. 13,000 full-time jobs, at least $53,875 per year plus benefits, a 20 Million square foot manufacturing facility, and a $10 Billion investment. 

Those components are the only reason the State agreed to offer nearly $3 Billion in tax credits and why Mount Pleasant agreed to spend approximately $1 Billion in infrastructure and land acquisitions. 

Senator Wanggaard and Representative Vos point out that Wisconsin has not paid any tax credits to Foxconn, but conveniently fail to recognize the hundreds of millions of dollars the Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County have already spent on property acquisitions, infrastructure and financing. 

They want you to forget about the 80 homes demolished for the project, many of which were unnecessary, and 2,500 acres acquired for the project, most of which sits vacant. Nevermind the $113 Million spent on an electric substation and power lines that will be paid for entirely by ATC’s ratepayers, and millions owed by Mount Pleasant to the Racine Water Utility for water Foxconn isn’t using. 

Our local and state leaders, like Senator Wanggaard and Representative Vos, have known for years that Foxconn was not going to build what they promised. That knowledge did not prevent them from sinking our Village into unprecedented debt. Nearly $1 Billion of debt that is guaranteed, in part, by Wisconsin taxpayers if Foxconn defaults.

WEDC has declared the original deal with Foxconn to be broken and requires renegotiation,  while our local politicians tell us that the local agreement, which calls for the same factory, jobs and investment, is intact and operational. It is not.

Mr Wanggaard and Mr. Vos aren’t just gaslighting their own constituents into thinking everything is fine. They are covering for the colossally irresponsible deal they struck three years ago that is turning out exactly as many experts anticipated. 

####

A Better Mt. Pleasant is a nonpartisan, community organization dedicated to advancing a fair,

accountable and transparent local government in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.

About racial issues, two-faced WI Republicans unmask themselves

Talk about irony.

Wisconsin Republican legislators let slip the mask that hides an inveterate racism at the very time they are continuing to fight statewide emergency masking orders Gov. Evers has issued to stem the spread of the pandemic which the same GOP legislators have enabled in Wisconsin through a toxic partisan mix of ignorance, denial and sloth.

Seems if a mask involved, Wisconsin Republicans are about to disclose another creepy fail.

The big Republican reveal about race which is roiling the Badger State came in a refreshingly - or sloppily -  candid email sent - but no doubt never meant to surface - by GOP Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke -  

- to his boss, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

The subject matter: how to mask the insincerity of a task force Vos was purportedly forming to examine racial issues after the controversial police shooting in Kenosha of Jacob Blake, a black man:

Props to UpNorthNews for the scoop:

EXCLUSIVE: Email Reveals Real Reason Vos, Republicans Created Racial Disparities Task Force

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke wrote he wanted to “figure out some guardrails,” providing illusion of Republicans being open to reform while making Democrats look bad.

Despite expressing apprehension in the email about the potential “political loser” effect, Steineke volunteered to lead the task force, saying he did not feel like it would get in the way of his political goals....Two weeks later, Steineke was named the task force’s co-chair. 

Steineke seems to have put a lot of time and thought into his selfless 'sacrifice' on behalf of his colleagues - and forget about the real life-and-death issues at stake - but his message and Vos's willingness to buy in by making Steineke chair of the task force [sic] - are not the only times Wisconsin Republican politicians or close allies have released their bigoted beliefs or behaviors into the public square.

* Most recently there was Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin's newest rightwing GOP Congressman, who while 'representing' northern counties which are home to many Native Americans, signed a public letter urging Pres. Biden to withdraw the nomination of the woman who would be the first Native American to ever hold a US Cabinet position. 

Can't have that. 

But let's go back a few years, because Henry Ford notwithstanding - history is not bunk:

* There was GOP Gov. Scott Walker campaigning for votes during the 2012 recall election in the heavily-Republican and upscale Waukesha County enclave of Oconomowoc Lake on a message of 'don't let Wisconsin become another Milwaukee.'

Seriously, what kind of an elected Chief Executive uses language like that about a state's only big city...where most the state's African-American residents live...within borders frozen since the 1950's by a Milwaukee-only anti-annexation statute? 

* There also was the more recent devaluing of minorities by Wisconsin State Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. Not just a state district judge, but The Chief Justice. 

Who displayed some easy, on-the tip-of-her-tounge stereotyping from the bench by minimizing an outbreak of COVID19 at Green Bay meatpacking plants which employ large numbers of minority workers by observing that the pandemic had not yet spread to 'regular folks.'

So her injudicious and unscientific conclusion was, what...whew?

* A similar theme was echoed a few weeks later when GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said the rising COVID19 caseload in his Racine County district was traceable to 'immigrant culture.' 

As opposed, perhaps, to crowded and unsafe working conditions on factory assembly lines, or other known socio-economic factors in Wisconsin? 

Well, that would be embarrassing, especially since Vos is a career Racine County politician who spent much of early 2020 undermining the Governor's pandemic-control measures, and then adjourned the Assembly to  a do-nothing vacation at full pay that lasted into 2021.

So Vos...doubled-down: 

Vos responded on Twitter, saying: "Listen to what was said and not the sensationalist headline. Facts show communities of color are disproportionally impacted. That's science."

Ah, yes, science. You know, that totem of wisdom which Wisconsin Republicans regularly disregard:

The 33 times Walker dissed, dismissed science

Of course, serious people who respect social, medical and political science understand know that that official governmental policies and GOP restrictions or cuts to transit, and food aid in Wisconsin have done systemic damage to communities of color.

Not to mention Republican barriers to health care services; remember Vos on Medicaid expansion?

Vos made the remarks to reporters immediately following an appearance at a Madison luncheon. 

Asked if he would take the expansion money as a means of striking a deal on other legislation should Democrat Tony Evers defeat Gov. Scott Walker in November, Vos responded emphatically: "Not going to happen. No way. Never."

Or as he put it, unambiguously: #never." 

Let's be clear: Vos and his party have exacerbated the very economic inequities which make minority populations in Wisconsin more vulnerable to illness, including COVID19.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services spells that out its webpage about Covid19 and "Racial and Ethnic Disparities:"

People who work in essential jobs or live in high-density housing are more likely to contract the virus because of unavoidable person-to-person interaction, and those who have less access to quality health care and certain chronic diseases have more severe outcomes. 

These conditions for greater exposure and worse outcomes have been concentrated in communities of color due to decades of deliberate policy choices and racist institutional practices like systemic housing discrimination of Black families, disinvestment from low-income neighborhoods, and breaking treaties with Tribal nations. 

For example, racial residential segregation has led to poorly-funded schools and educational outcomes for these communities, resulting in employment opportunities that are limited to sectors with high-exposure, low-paying frontline jobs that provide little protections for workers’ rights, often do not come with benefits, and fail to provide adequate paid sick leave. 

Furthermore, disinvestment from these neighborhoods has left communities with fewer grocery stores, lacking safe places to exercise, and more polluted air and water resulting in higher rates of chronic diseases, which can lead to more severe outcomes from COVID-19. 

These long-standing unjust conditions become compounded by an unequal response when, for example, those in frontline jobs, as well as the communities at large, are under-resourced with personal protective equipment, have limited access to testing, and lack the necessary investment in community infrastructure and public health to appropriately respond to a crisis of this magnitude. 

All of which Team Vos will continue to ignore.

Which is why when they had the chance to study and legislate on policing and justice reform they gaveled in and out of session in a matter of seconds - a repetitive maneuver legislative Republicans have used since Evers defeated Walker - to stiff Evers and burnish a Badger State GOP variation on the Mitch-McConnell  obstructionist brand.  

Lawsuit demands immediate WI wolf hunt

Even though Wisconsin state law says an annual wolf hunt shall begin in November - 

- and a long-standing federal court ruling says such matters require advance consultation with Wisconsin's multiple Native American bands, a lawsuit has been filed by wolf hunters demanding the WI DNR authorize an immediate wolf because the Trump administration had in its closing weeks removed the wolves protected status.

The action, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of Hunter Nation Inc., a Kansas-based hunting advocacy group, claims the DNR's decision violated state law and the Wisconsin state constitution’s guarantee of a right to hunt.

The DNR's oversight board two weeks ago declined to authorize an immediate wolf hunt.

History, related links, here. More to follow.

Two things missing in US Rep. Fitzgerald's 1st e-newsletter

Newly-minted Republican US Rep. Scott Fitzgerald posted his first monthly newsletter.

January 29, 2021 

Press Release

As I wrap up my first month in Congress there is a lot to reflect on....

Let me reflect on a couple of things I don't see in the newsletter.

1. Any mention of Fitzgerald's first vote, which he cast against counting electoral votes after a seditionist mob attacked the Capitol - which is, by the way, Fitzgerald's workplace. 

Which sure makes Fitzgerald's appointment to the House Judiciary Committee a laugher.

2. And where is Glenn Grothman's mask? He's the only person in a group photo Fitzgerald included in his e-newsletter who is not wearing a mask. 

Why Wisconsin keep sending these doofi to the US Congress and continuing to devalue those offices? 

One Florida man sees anti-Harley wish coming true

Another huge financial blow which Milwaukee's Harley-Davidson just acknowledged is probably putting a smile on the face of one otherwise troubled Florida man with Wisconsin enablers who had publicly bashed the company, as I noted in 2018.

Trump even called for a consumer boycott, yet apparently will also have Scott Walker as Team Trump's Wisconsin re-election chair.

So when you read today that Harley-Davidson's sales are dropping, don't forget who had made it his business to poke a stick in the company's spokes or sat by and watched:
------------- 

TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2018

Supine Scott Walker enables Trump's WI-trashing rage

Behaving less like a President and more like the score-settling investor loser in a proxy fight, Trump ramped up his attack on Milwaukee's iconic Harley-Davidson.

Riders from Pennsylvania roll away from a stop at the Harley-Davidson Museum in downtown Milwaukee. The corporate headquarters and engine works are a few miles away.

WI Republicans: Harsher COVID makes mask-wearing more important

Wisconsin GOP legislators still ignoring COVID-fighting science while spouting instead about dictators have time to save reputations lives - maybe even their own - by abandoning campaigns against Wisconsin's masking mandate and following through on the latest public health recommendation:

U.S. response to coronavirus variants emphasizes masks and vaccines instead of lockdowns

As America faces the potential for catastrophic coronavirus spikes fueled by highly infectious variants, public health authorities remain wary of imposing the stricter measures adopted by other nations. 

Instead, they continue to embrace a stick-to-the-basics strategy: Wear a mask, maybe even two. Avoid crowds. And get vaccinated — fast.

GOP Assembly Speaker, seen here in a 2019 photo, could bring forward soon the State Senate's measure that would end Gov. Evers' statewide emergency masking order. The WI GOP-led Legislature spent most of 2020 on vacation and has been opposing Evers' COVID19 prevention policies for months.

 

Milwaukee again says "no" to sprawl-serving highway building

The Milwaukee Common Council is boosting its opposition to a ground-level expansion of I-94 past Miller Park, across the face of the Story Hill neighborhood and in the face of several close-by cemeteries. 

Ald. Bauman introduces resolution directing the City to lobby against I-94 reconstruction

It's important to understand that this costly, taxpayer-paid expansion has been opposed by both the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee County Board, for years.

It was forced into a seven-county regional highway expansion plan by the sprawl-inducing-road-building crowd in the counties which surround Milwaukee and dominate the regional planning commission - and which has included then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, long-time Metropolitan Milwaukee Executive Director Tim Sheehy and others.

I have often documented the effort to expand the so-called (because it's hardly 'free') freeway system through a city that does not want to lose more value while acquiring more pollution at public expense. 

The Milwaukee Common Council went on record against the project in 2003. 

Here is its letter.

Also - here are some of numerous blog postings about this grindingly long process: 

Ald. Bauman and grassroots opposition from the group Coalition Allied for Highways, (CASH), in 2007; an initial documented item from 2009; Story Hill's opposition, 2013; the coordinated resistance by Milwaukee social justice organizations, 2014; and this 2015 summary from which I will quote extensively:

Walker motion in 2003 tripped off SE WI highway overspending

[Updated, 6/22] Outstate Republican legislators still griping about out-of-control highway spending in Southeastern Wisconsin - - check the record in this item reposted from last week: 

Walker led the charge for unsustainable overspending on highways in SE WI that you now don't like.

The Wisconsin Legislature is grappling with a state highway budget unsustainably bloated by reckless borrowing and overspending on the so-called SE 'free'way system - - a problem that has helped stall the entire state budget process while preposterous presidential hopeful Scott Walker keeps skipping out to campaign from Iowa to New Hampshire and beyond.

So it's important to remember that Walker - - as Milwaukee County Executive - - played a key role in 2003 on a SE regional planning commission advisory committee which voted, without a companion financing plan, to recommend to state highway planners that Wisconsin add to the SE 'freeway' system themaximum number of new lanes among the alternatives considered - - 127 miles of lanes instead of 108 - - in what ultimately became a $6.4 billion package.

Walker's motion added an estimated $750 million to the ultimate price tag and also increased the number of structures and land removed from the tax base. 

Though the price tag of the still-incomplete-and-still-unfunded Zoo Interchange has come down from its original projection, other segments of the seven-county system have not begun or may be delayed, further driving up their estimated costs - - all of which are in 2003 dollars.

The regional planning commission - - SEWRPC - - often turns major projects over to advisory committees - - and in this case, the full SEWRPC commission accepted the recommendation and forwarded it to WisDOT, which, in turn, accepted it as the unfolding blueprint for billions in SE WI highway work that continues to be underfunded.

[Update] Following the vote, The Milwaukee County Board passed a resolution opposing the expansion of the freeway system, per Walker's motion, and Walker vetoed it. Fifteen members of the Milwaukee Common Council, nearly its entire membership, sent SEWRPC a letter also opposing the costly expansion and noted Walker's resolution veto.

I attended the advisory committee meeting where Walker made his accepted motion for the full lanes' expansion that added 19 miles of construction cost, and I wrote about it for this blog in June, in 2009: at the highlighted link, begin on page 7 of the advisory committee's report for Walker's motion and comments in the minutes, with the final vote at the end of the committee report.

Also for the record: then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, Milwaukee Common Council President Marvin Pratt and several others voted no. Call them the taxpayers' true friends, unlike Walker, then-Waukesha County Executive Daniel Finley and others, including private sector special interest representatives.

These are the key sentences from the meeting minutes with regard to motions and votes:

Mr. Walker moved to amend the motion such that the final plan would include the provision of additional capacity on 127 miles of the regional freeway system – specifically, adding to the 108 mile recommendation the widening to eight lanes of IH 94 between the Marquette and Zoo Interchanges and of IH 43 between the Mitchell Interchange and Silver Spring Drive, as proposed in the preliminary recommended plan....

Later:

Chairman Drew asked if there was any further discussion or possible amendments to the main motion. There being no further discussion or proposed amendments, Chairman Drew asked for a roll call vote on pages 14-19 of Chapter VII as amended to include the provision of additional capacity on 127 miles of the regional freeway system and to recommend that the WisDOT present to the State Legislature and Governor a financing plan before proceeding to the reconstruction of each freeway segment. 

On a vote of 15 ayes to 8 nays, pages 14-19 of Chapter VII as amended were approved. Messrs. Buestrin, Cook, Drew, Dwyer, Finley, Kehl, Melvin, Miller, Norem, Sheehy, Speaker, Walker, White, Wirth and Ms. Jacobson voting in favor of pages 14-19 of Chapter VII as amended. Messrs. Fafard, Holloway, Leonard, Millonzi, Norquist, Pratt and Ms. Estness and Ms. McCutcheon voted against pages 14-19 of Chapter VII as amended. Mr. Matzke abstained from the vote. 

------------------------------------------------------ 

Final note: Recent I-94 expansion south to the Illinois border was pushed by Team Walker to service the failed-so-far Foxconn development - a project which the state says will take "prime farmland" from 59 owners.

Similar expansions also in recent years took even more property in downtown Milwaukee -  

Beneath the Marquette Interchange. an $800 million small piece of 'freeway' expansion work which has moved north, south, and west of Milwaukee past and even through low-income city neighborhoods.

- after having devastated Milwaukee's African-American community for the convenience of north shore commuters. 

The expressway disconnected black people by running right through neighborhoods and sliced east-west streets in half. It harmed commercial business and sent loyal consumers elsewhere.

And state planners, along with special interests and obeisant politicians have for years derailed train service so road-builders could continue to feast at the public trough.

State officials had to be sued under civil rights law to spend even a relative pittance on bus services.

And the same 'conservative' politicians have systematically curtailed coordinated bus and rail investments by disallowing the formation of Regional Transit Authorities, or RTAs - a pro-road-building move engineered by GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos:

The real issue here, besides general GOP aversion to transportation spending that benefits people who would prefer not to drive cars, is that RTAs might raise revenues without the permission of state legislators, and that simply cannot be allowed in tea party-driven, Vosian ideology. 

Another real issue -- again, for Republicans -- is that mass transit tends to be in most demand in more heavily populated, urbanized areas, which often skew politically blue. And Republicans are too often loathe to help those regions. 

So here we are again; the state wants to squeeze in another expansion of I-94 through an urban corridor where local officials and residents do not want it.

Hasn't this antiquated and exclusionary mindset already been allowed to take more than its fair share?  

 

 

Tom Tiffany likes # of Native American cabinet members kept at zero

Wisconsin's Northwoods GOP US Cong. Tom Tiffany - 

kicked off his Congressional service with a sedition-hugging election overthrow vote, but apparently felt that didn't make a big enough splash in the Republican rightwing sewer.

So Tiffany is raising his commitment to exclusionary 'governance' by signing a going-nowhere-public letter/dog whistle written by House Representatives who have no say in the matter that urged Pres. Biden to withdraw his nomination of Cong. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. 

President Biden:

January 26, 2021

We write today urging the withdrawal of the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) as Secretary of the Interior. Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources.

If approved by the Senate, Cong. Haaland would be the first Native American to serve in a Presidential cabinet.

But that single, simple step towards a more representative US Government is unacceptable to Tiffany and 14 other members of Congress - including Colorado's unstable GOP Cong. Lauren Boebert - all of whom are finding new ways to shame their home states while cashing salary checks of nearly $15,000 month collected from all taxpayers of all political parties, races, ethnicities, et al.  

As to Tiffany, regrettably we say - what's new?

He accumulated a long, dreary record as a state legislator reliably ready to do business's most reactionary bidding.

* He sandbagged climate science at the Department of Natural Resources. Some additional history, here.

* He led the failed fight to mine the Penokee Hills - regardless of the damage it would have caused to Native American land, waters and treaty rights - all at then-Gov. Walker's behest.

* And he later wrote a broader bill that has opened up land and water resources statewide to destructive sulfide mining:

Gov. Scott Walker signed into law on Monday a bill lifting the state's effective moratorium on sulfide mining, a move supporters say will clear the way for an economic boost to depressed areas of the state. But opponents say the environmental risks are too great to allow such activity. 

The bill's authors, Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, and Rep. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield, say it allows conversations about mining to occur that cannot happen under current law. 

"Conversations?" 

It's a little more consequential than that, as we learned just three days ago:

Natural Resources Board Approves New Rules For Sulfide Mining

State Regulators Must Notify Tribes Near Any Proposed Sulfide Mine.

The changes are part of proposed new permanent rules for nonferrous metallic mines that extract sulfide minerals like gold, zinc and copper. The rules aim to comply with changes as part of a 2017 law that repealed the state's decades-old mining moratorium. 

Final thought: I have no first-hand knowledge of how school districts in Northern Wisconsin, and in Tiffany's Congressional district, teach local and state history.

But as a tourism business owner who had run a boating firm for 20 years, I wonder if he and others in Northern Wisconsin understand that without land, water, wildlife and timber taken under duress from the indigenous people whom Tiffany is 'representing' - while having worked in the Legislature to further degrade the small territory they have left - he and other business owners in the Northwoods would have had nothing to offer to customers at all. 

Shorter summary: Does Tiffany have a clue about his own entitled white privilege?

Vos reaches out to Evers by calling him a 'dictator...czar'

Nothing says "work with us" more sincerely than labeling the other party a "dictator" and "czar."

Vos says Evers ‘acting like a dictator’ in issuing health emergencies without Legislature’s support 

The Rochester Republican said in a WisPolitics.com virtual event Thursday the guv’s decision to keep reissuing emergency orders every 60 days without getting approval from the Legislature was illegal. 

He said the Legislature has been asking “since last June, to be able to work with us and do it in the process that’s legal, as opposed to one where you kind of take the law into your own hands and act like a dictator.” 

Remember that Vos, his Senate GOP colleagues and then-Gov. Walker began their 'work with us' outreach to Evers prior to his inauguration in late 2018 by stripping him of powers Walker had routinely enjoyed.  

Having botched emergency mask ban, WI GOP triggers emergency circular firing squad

Wisconsin Republicans are having themselves a messy Thursday. 

After the State Senate had moved precipitously to overturn Gov. Evers' COVID19 mask prevention order without knowing the dumb move would cost the state and unemployed workers nearly $50 million a month in related emergency food aid, Assembly Speaker Vos had to also precipitously yank the measure and blast his GOP Senate 'colleagues' for sloppy work:

"Our job is to guarantee when we pass legislation we know what the ramifications are," he told reporters. "Unfortunately our Senate colleagues passed it, they didn’t necessarily do the same due diligence."

No doubt this about-face on Vos's big day of partisan achievement was disappointing, but the good news for the Assembly Speaker was there were even dumber scapegoats to blame.

Who and where, and how dumb might they be? 

Why, look no farther than Vos's 'colleagues' in the GOP-run State Senate with whom the Assembly shares a State Capitol.

And that GOP-led Senate today tried to paper over its blunder by quickly a passing a make-up replacement measure - a sort of 'ban lite' - that would tolerate some Evers' issuance of a limited measure so the Federal government could pretty-please send the food aid funding anyway.

Mind you, the food aid funding is available to seriopus-minded states which employ emergency COVID19 prevention measures like the one the GOP-led Senate had just blocked and was now trying to pretend they really hadn't. 

Sort of, but questions arise:

* Will grudgingly allowing Evers to pass a half-baked  emergency order pass a federal smell test?

* 'Does COVID19 abide by insincere partisan half-measures,' asked more than 6,300 dead Wisconsinites?

* Would a parallel and limited reduction in food aid funding mean there would be only new limited hunger here?

I guess we'll see.

But asking for the money after blocking Evers' masking order reminds me of the ridiculous and failed move then-Gov. Walker made in 2011 when he asked the Federal government pretty-please to send Wisconsin $150 million in Amtrak upgrade financing after he followed through on his long, loud and politically-inspired, slam-Obama campaign pledge and permanently blocked the larger and fully-funded Amtrak construction upgrade between Madison and Chicago.

Feds turn Walker down on passenger rail funding request

So we ask again today, as we did when Walker wrecked rail transit in Wisconsin for his own partisan advancement - and then asked for a bailout:

In what world of cavalier denial do these so-called Republican 'leaders' live and work in?

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Today he just spotted a State Senate full of scapegoats who can help him - for now - avoid making a $50-million-a-month blunder. 

Robin Vos is having himself a signature (dooms) day

The GOP-led WI Legislature should just declare Friday, January 28th "Robin Vos Doomsday" throughout the land, as no Assembly Speaker will ever lay claim to having spread so much ill wind and literal illness statewide in a 24-hour period, by:

* Pushing across the finish line an end to the Governor's statewide masking order while the COVID19 pandemic is still spreading, and;

* In the process throwing away nearly $50 million in related federal funding, bringing the WI GOP legislature's federal funds forfeitures through COVID19 mismanagement to $75 million - details here.

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in protective equipment while claiming in April that it was "incredibly safe" to go out into the pandemic and cast an in-person April election ballot.

* Appointing himself to WEDC, the state development agency board, which is trying to salvage something from the failing Foxconn fiasco which Vos, Walker et al foisted on taxpayers for partisan purposes, and;

* Now being able to keep a closer eye on a few things, as I noted a couple of years ago:

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos managed in a state without two spare potholes-filling nickels to rub together to steer to and through his district a quarter of a billion federal and state road-and-interchange widening dollars that will trigger sprawl beyond bulldozed Mount Pleasant farms even if Foxconn never diverts a gallon of Lake Michigan water to produce a single big screen LCD TV.

Look at it as an adjunct to the gerrymandering Vos helped create that serves his own interests - - interests his caucus wants to protect through litigation, voter suppression and power-grabbing lame-duck legislating.

* Using his taxpayer-paid perch to help rewrite completely the entire Foxconn fiasco with statements like these:

“I strongly supported getting rid of the old Department of Commerce and creating a new and more nimble economic development agency, that’s what WEDC is, and I want to make sure it stays that way and does not become a political operation with different values than we had when the bill was originally passed....” 

“I think we need to do everything we can to make sure it’s successful so that the folks that I represent don’t end up, because of the actions of the governor or the WEDC, getting stuck with the bill,” Vos said.  

And by "Governor,' Vos means Evers, though the record shows he should have said "Walker," as Bruce Murphy so succinctly put it, here:

WISCONSIN’S $4.1 BILLION FOXCONN BOONDOGGLE

Gov. Scott Walker promised billions to get a Foxconn factory, but now he’s running away from it

* And, finally, proving that the Wisconsin gerrymander receiving national attention which has allowed dim bulbs like Fitzgerald, Tiffany and Grothman to shine in Congress while giving Vos power statewide beyond a modicum of rationality or fair play is a permanent obstruction to Wisconsin ever recovering its long-lost progressive heritage.

Which was the plan which began with Walker's corporately-driven ascension, has deeply strengthened the right's strong ideological grip statewide and now is producing Vos's permanent, pandemic-heightened malfeasance.

Surprise! WI GOP's mask ban forfeits $49 million in food aid

Because they rushed a purely partisan power-grabbing masking ban bill through the State Senate without elementary research or a hearing, Wisconsin Republican Death Cultists got to make a bonus addition to an agenda of angst - creating more hunger - that through inertia and obstruction has sped the pandemic's spread across the state.

How can the GOP-led State Assembly convert this found opportunity to make life here even more difficult for low-income residents whom Republicans reflexively diminish, scapegoat and otherwise repress?

By voting Thursday to wipe out Gov. Evers' emergency COVID19 masking order knowing the move would end $49 million in food assistance awarded to states under a federal program that supports states which use emergency powers to fight pandemic-related job losses: 

A COVID-19 package Congress passed last year gave states additional funding for food stamps if they have emergency health orders in place. Republican state lawmakers plan to end Wisconsin's health emergency order on Thursday, which would prevent nearly 243,000 households from collecting $49.3 million in assistance, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. 

Will Republicans in the Assembly do the right thing and decline to take such a nasty vote knowing that their horribly-drafted bill could remove food from the kitchen tables of families in Wisconsin whose breadwinners lost their jobs during the pandemic?

Let's look at the record:

* The GOP-led Legislature delayed passing a COVID action plan last year, and that deliberate stall by small minds in the name of small government cost Wisconsin citizens $25 million in COVID19-related unemployment payments.

* Yes, that's the same program which Republicans hamstrung with insufficient budgets and archaic technology for years - read all about that, here - because they don't believe in using government to actually help people.

And because a government that doesn't work well boosts the GOP's self-fulfilling anti-public sector gloat that, as their icon Ronald Reagan put it in his first inaugural address: 'Government isn't the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem.'

But now they are gleefully using the under-performing unemployment compensation program politically - and accountability free - to bash the Evers' administration with yet another partisan cudgel - a pattern they've used since 2018 - to keep hammering a Governor they recognize only when scheming to weaken his credibility and hijack his authority.

* And do not forget that Wisconsin Republicans during the Walker years used a variety of mean-spirited drug testing mandates, along with punitive work requirements and flat-out arbitrary, cold-hearted take-backs to use food as a weapon against people with the fewest resources to make ends meet.

Or course, Wisconsin's Republican legislative leaders are not above raising their own daily taxpayer-paid, no-receipts-necessary expense account limits whenever their tummies start growling, as they did in 2016:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last week quietly expanded a taxpayer-funded perk for state legislators in a move that could increase an Assembly lawmaker's annual pay by more than $1,000, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has learned.

The decades-old perk, known as per diems, allows legislators to claim daily allowances on top of their $51,000 salaries for each day they work in Madison on state business. Assembly members may claim up to $69 for single-day trips or up to $138 for overnight business.

And this 2018 story shows those limits had been raised again: 

Most Assembly legislators could claim up to $157 per overnight visit to Madison last year and up to $78.50 per single-day visit. Senators could claim up to $115 per day regardless of lodging needs. 

Bottom line: The Wisconsin GOP-led Legislature will always put itself first.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Now he's got the state's poor and unemployed in his sights.