Wednesday, May 6, 2020

WI Chief Justice Roggensack and her irregular Covid-19 victims

We've had a lot of talk about masks these days: Did you watch Tuesday as the Wisconsin Supreme Court dropped its mask of already-damaged credibility and let We The People see on live-streaming video how some of its rightwing majority really thinks and behaves?

As the Court was 'deliberating' the fate of Gov. Evers' "Safer-at-Home" order, and while Associate Justice Rebecca Bradley quickly jumped out headline hunting with her stunningly ignorant connection of the order with "tyranny" and the militarized imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, it was Chief Justice Roggensack's injudicious dismissal of Brown's County's Covid-19 victims that exposed the Court majority's gratingly counterfeit credibility.
She said they were not "regular folk."
CHIEF JUSTICE ROGGENSACK: "These were due to the meat packing, though, that's where the Brown County got the flare. It wasn't just the regular folks in Brown County."
Oh. I guess those unworthy outsiders got what they deserved.
Immigrant Rights Group Speaks Out Against Conditions in Area Meat Packing Plants
For the record, we're talking about the second-highest county-wide positive caseload among the state's 72 counties - more than 1,500 human beings - including nursing home patients and others who presumably didn't get sick carving up animal carcasses, assembly-line style:
Brown County coronavirus: 11 dead, 1,500 infected, and meatpacking not only source of spread
Not surprisingly, accusations of racism and elitism are piling up:
"It's classist, and it's out of touch," said [State Rep. JoCasta] Zamarripa, a Milwaukee Democrat who is also a Milwaukee alderwoman. "It's embarrassing that we have a Supreme Court justice who would say something like that."
And The Washington Post took note of the Justices' injudicious remarks.

You may remember that the far-right WI legislature put the state with taxpayer money through two straight session approvals, and then a statewide constitution-amending referendum to change the Chief Justice's annual selection from seniority to a vote by the Justices - all to install the conservative Roggensack in place of Shirley Abrahamson, the longest-serving but unacceptably too-liberal Justice.

Urban Milwaukee's Bruce Murphy called the campaign to diminish the now-retired Abrahamson a "trashing."

You can add to that trashing more than 1,500 sick and deceased Brown County souls.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent. Wisconsin again made the national news for being a backwater even in our GOP run Banana Republic.

Unknown said...

The Packers of Green Bay may have a different view of what regular folks in the area are.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure there will be a ruling today. Look for the announcement Sometime between 9pm and midnight, all the lights turned off and no media allowed. Not surprised if their face is hidden and the voice altered to hide their identity.