WI GOP's too-little-too-late COVID plan is Power Grab 2.0

After nine months of paid vacation while thousands of Wisconsinites were killed by the coronavirus, Wisconsin GOP legislators are fast-tracking (har!) a package that purportedly seeks to confront the already-rampant virus but in actuality grabs the executive branch's emergency and public health functions - as well as some local jurisdictions' powers, too - - from the incoming Governor Evers whose powers Legislative Republicans with defeated Gov. Walker's assistance began seizing in late 2018 even before Evers was sworn in.

Let's be clear: The GOP package is not made up of science-based-best-practices-disease-fighting-public-policy-buttressing measures.

It is a purely partisan power move to puff up the gerrymandered GOP caucus while mocking people who have contracted the virus, or who lost their jobs to it or watched over a video hookup as relatives took a last, COVID19 choked breath in the presence of overworked frontline medical staffers whose well-being has been also been disregarded by GOP malfeasance, too.

All you need to know about these Republican charlatans is that Speaker Vos told the public it was "incredibly safe" to go stand in line for April in-person voting while he was draped in protective gear - 

- and GOP State Senator Van Wanggaard said in October that he opposed the kind of science-backed virus-restraining masking order which Republicans had been opposing for months even if the Wisconsin coronavirus caseload increased ten-fold.

You've heard of virus super-spreaders. Meet a Wisconsin stupid-spreader.

Does he sound like the kind of 'leader' you want in charge of safe schooling, medical supply funding, vaccination distribution and other elements of the so-called GOP virus-fighting package?

I'm glad to see organizing against the GOP move by the League of Progressive Seniors :

Urgent Message: Stop Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from taking control of COVID policies, federal money and vaccine distribution!

During 2020, Vos closed down the legislature and did nothing to protect the state while almost 5,000 people died. He filed a series of lawsuits to stop the Governor from preventing the spread of COVID. In December, Governor Evers and the State Assembly developed a joint plan to fight COVID using new federal aid and the vaccine supplies. Now, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos dumped the joint plan and introduced his own bill, taking power over the whole process of fighting the pandemic. He is pushing it through the legislature as fast as possible.   Today is the “public“ hearing for the Vos bill, and the vote in the Assembly is Thursday. His bill gives the Assembly – where Vos has maximum power – control over: local governments efforts to address the pandemic. school districts ability to respond to COVID. how to spend funds coming from the federal government. how to distribute the vaccine.

Click here to download a Report on the Vos's Failure to fight Covid in 2020 and the details of his plan.

Look to Gov. Evers to veto this do-nothing-but-grab-power package that has been belatedly cobbled together by the state's leading AWOL COVID coddlers.

Links to Van Wanggaard's remarks and other WI GOP intentional public health obstruction during the pandemic are in a December post, here.

A guide to WI's right-wing COVID-coddling

Soon this singularly awful year will be over and optimism about COVID19 vaccines - along with flat-out, coast-to-coast exhaustion - could dull the memory of what we've gone through.

So I want to gather examples of what some Wisconsin right-wing politicians and officials actually did and said while everyday citizens with less power and fewer resources were - and continue to be - overwhelmed, sickened, impoverished and killed by COVID19.

This updates a similar item posted November 9th.