COVID-19 in WI gets fuel from right-wing culture of science cancelation

Wisconsin's spiking COVID-19 caseload has us at #8 on a nasty top ten national list, so it's important to underscore and understand that moral mismanagement and policy perversion gave COVID-19 the freedom - there's an abused word these days - in Wisconsin to terrorize, sicken and kill.

* The most egregious failure rests with donor-obeisant and GOP cozy State Supreme Court right-wingers who gave Republican legislative leaders and their publicly-paid litigators a 'victory' over Gov. Evers.

The ruling followed Chief Justice Patience Roggensack's indifference and tolerance for COVID-19 casualties among immigrant workers in Brown County that appeared to spare others she called "regular folks," and Associate Justice Rebecca Bradley's out-right weird assertion that Gov. Evers' "Safer-at-Home" policy amounted to tyranny reminiscent of the US military's armed detention in camps of Americans of Japanese descent for years during World War II.

* Meanwhile, moving from historical ignorance to medical malpractice, noted masking-science expert and WI GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald took a break from his Congressional run - no, not to call the Senate back into session after its continuing, months-long vacation - but to weigh in with a big-picture suggestion that the COVID-19 virus just might be able to discern partisan and physical distinctions in the State Capitol:

I know some Republican staff are already back in the building hard at work and have been for some time,” Fitzgerald said in a statement, referring to the Capitol. “I won’t be pushed around by Dane County or the Evers Administration — we control the Senate wing. Senators should be able to decide what they do in their own offices.” Fitzgerald said he would also oppose a statewide mask order.

* Not surprisingly, Fitzgerald in the last few days proudly posted photos of himself  on Twitter with supporters going mask-free at a community event, just as WI GOP Congressman Glenn Grothman - another known science dismisser - had done Monday:

Wisconsin GOP Congressman and inveterate science denier Glenn Grothman - like his former State Senate clone and Congressman-in-waiting Scott Fitzgerald - took to Twitter this morning to show off his mask-free campaigning among his mask-free supporters.

* Fitzgerald, by the way, has not yet scheduled a confirmation vote on Andrea Palm's January 3, 2019 nomination as Secretary of the WI Department Health and Human Services, leaving her in a diminished capacity as Acting Secretary while a viral pandemic rages on.

* And Robin Vos, Fitzgerald's partner in nearly two years of partisan power grabbing at the expense of traditional Wisconsin Gubernatorial and Attorneys General prerogatives, has backed Palm's road-blocking and diminution while weighing in with a personal and ignorant attack on Palm's public service and credentials:

Vos even called her a "lackey." 

Vos said the state Senate should not confirm Andrea Palm as Evers' health services secretary. She has been serving in that role for nearly a year and a half without confirmation.

Some senators on Thursday called for firing her, but Vos cautioned that would not result in changes to how the administration operates. 

"That’s kind of a secondary issue because whoever Tony Evers picks, the next lackey is going to do the exact same thing," Vos said. 

Look at her credentials.

Andrea Palm most recently served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Obama, where she oversaw the public health and human services agencies, encompassing more than 60,000 staff. She also served as the Chief of Staff for HHS from 2013-14. Her executive career spans more than two decades, with key leadership positions for the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Congressman Robert Matsui. She was a Senior Advisor at the White House Domestic Policy Council during the implementation and rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Palm received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a graduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

* Popcorn-business owner and Whitewater apartment magnate Vos, by the way, gave us a look at his COVID credentials and humanity deficits when he blamed immigrant workers' culture for their own illnesses. In his district, no less.

That cruel and unscientific assessment - and Wisconsin had eight years of partisan and corporately-friendly intentional science dismissal at the core of Walker's governance - 

Walker's 8-year attack on Wisconsin's environment. Part 18. The 33 times science was dissed, dismissed.

- came after telling voters it was "perfectly safe" in April to vote in-person, but showed up on for election-day poll-assistance duties dressed up like an operating room brain surgeon.



All of which helps explain how a self-supporting knot of right-wingers has left us on our own to battle the worst pandemic in a hundred years, perhaps until Wisconsin next month when the arrival of newly-elected progressive State Supreme Court Associate Justice Judith Karofsky might cement a State Supreme Court majority willing to uphold a statewide masking policy if Evers orders it.

And even Karofsky's addition does not guarantee a pro-masking majority.

The only sure thing is that the disease continues to expand in Wisconsin as schools reopen soon with students, parents and staff forced to navigate the virus's dangers worsened by selfish ignoramuses and their partisan death culture fueled by science-cancelation.