Saturday, January 9, 2021

After modeling COVID gear, Vos models fake COVID legislating

We've heard a lot from Trumpian Republicans about fake news, but COVID costume model and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos modeled fake legislating this week by touting a COVID 'aid' bill that principally aims to boost GOP power and has zero chance of being signed into law.

This is not the first time we've seen Vos use the language of reasonableness and concern as props that conceal on-the-record motives and agendas:

While in court to stop mask rules, Robin Vos calls to remove politics from COVID response

So we'll let Vos model both the COVID protective get-up he wore earlier to convince you that it was "incredibly safe to go outside"

- and the language with which he wrapped his going-nowhere 'COVID' bill that models GOP partisan power game-playing and one-party obfuscation: 

"So, I am very optimistic that everything in here is something that is modeled off of good ideas," he said. "It's modeled off past practice and, in many cases, it's modeled off what other states with divided government have been able to accomplish when they put their nose to the grindstone."

Words, words, words. So many words.

And you can tell what's being modeled is bullish*t when who's selling it - whether new and improved mouthwash or even bigger jumbo shrimp - feels it necessary to repeat a buzzword phrase to camouflage the truth. 

As Vos was doing when he said three times in two sentences that his bill was 'modeled off' other things.

Such as? From where? Suggested by whom, and when, exactly?

And, also he says his bill is 'modeled off of good ideas.' 

Seriously? That's the pitch?

Can't remember a government official touting an important measure with 'everything in here is modeled off of bad ideas.'

And was Vos trying to dress up his grab for partisan control in Wisconsin over COVID policy-making and financing by tapping into all the talk and writing about disease prediction modeling - the real epidemiological tool which experts are using to track and tame the virus?

Man, oh man: talk about a manipulation!

Such slippery rhetoric reminded me of Scott Walker trying to convince veteran Madison reporter Bill Lueders that the sweeping union-busting package known as Act 10 which Walker had just sprung on unsuspecting citizens and legislators modeled only 'modest,' requested changes.

And because he knew that Act 10 was not made up of of 'requests' that were 'modest,' Walker said it twice thinking the repetition would lull Lueders and others into buying it.  

"These are bold political moves, but these are modest, modest requests," Walker asserted, of proposals that would completely strip public employees of their right to collectively bargain for anything except salaries (and to severely limit their ability to do even this), along with sweeping new rules that will make it difficult for their unions to survive. 


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