Top WI Republicans, including Darling, are hazardous to our health

Wisconsinites are getting sick, being hospitalized and dying in record numbers from the coronavirus, but State Sen. Alberta Darling, (R-River Hills), is piously campaigning 

as a helpful, reliable veteran lawmaker while also agreeing that it's OK that her party has refused to legislate during the pandemic for more than six months. 

The Republican co-chairwoman of the Legislature’s budget committee said lawmakers have done enough to fight the surging coronavirus pandemic Thursday, echoing the comments of another GOP legislator this week who said there is nothing more they can do.

I've been saying for months that the WI GOP has become a death cult -  

I've said several times - here and here - that Wisconsin Republican leaders' disregard for their fellow citizens' survival in the face of the persistent Covid-19 pandemic has turned the Party of Lincoln (more self-pitying, horrifying and sadly-history making irony on that score, here) into a Death Cult.

- and now they're recruiting us into the fold in record numbers 

DHS: 4,205 new COVID-19 cases; deaths up record 48 in Wisconsin

- every day without our consent. 

In fact, another WI GOP State Senator said the tallies could go up ten-fold and he still wouldn't support a masking mandate.

And he said it when Wisconsin's daily new case count was 'only' 2,300 - just a bit more than half of what we're reporting now.

That's death cult 'thinking.'

More masking data revealed. As is a masked (sort of) Republican.

We know that Wisconsin's Republican leaders, and the rightwing litigants who scour the courts for allied enablers, will not put two-and-two together and embrace simple mask-wearing to save their neighbors and constituents' lives, and perhaps someone living right in their own homes.

But here, regardless of their free-to-be-a-menace recklessness, is the latest science that explains yet again that the rampaging killer virus - and with more than 195,000 cases recorded we'll hit 200,000 cases in less than 48 hours, data suggest - could be stemmed with the simplest of personal behaviors.

If 95% of Americans wore masks in public, more than 100,000 lives could be saved from Covid-19 through February, a new modeling study suggests.

The study -- from the Covid-19 forecasting team at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation -- notes that, in September, only about 49% of US residents reported that they "always" wear a mask in public. 

If mask-wearing is 49% through February and states continue with removing social distancing mandates, the Covid-19 death toll across the United States could reach about 1 million deaths by February 28, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Medicine on Friday.

A data comparison -  Wisconsin's surge is producing double the new cases in California where nearly seven times as people many live, and we're also doubling Michigan and Indiana's new case numbers, records show. Why is this not moving GOP Legislators to meet and help?

And, for the record, and despite the ad's many rambling tangents - from a pitch for Vitamin D (a good thing for seniors like me in our sunlight-deprived winters) - to the robotically-Republican/xenophobic-and off-note slam at China - give credit to Glenn Grothman for airing some masked-up images in a TV spot before its last-second reveal.

But don't put your hand in that whole bin...oops...well, too late.

Foxconn demonstrates...more irony

There is something about the Foxconn 'development' in Racine County that keeps keeps displaying a penchant for parody.

You can begin with Donald Trump saying the promised complex would be The Eighth Wonder of the World. You knew as soon as you heard that there would be heartbreak dead ahead. 

Because the days of building destinations like The Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were long gone, especially if the guy who was making the pledge was the same guy had managed to run three casinos into the ground in Atlantic City.

For another thing, Trump, the company and Team Walker decided that the bulldozing of wetlands, homes and farms for this wondrous project would take place in a Village named Mount Pleasant. This image following a not-so-unusual Wisconsin rainstorm after the bulldozing had begun -  

- suggested that something really unpleasant and out of character was taking in Mount Pleasant. 

Which was literally undermining the message and the way things had been there.

Then there was Walker's insistence that the bulldozed site and its surroundings were to be known as "Wisconn Valley." 

Where he said "a whole 'entire ecosystem" with 13,000 high-paying jobs would be created:

Gov. Scott Walker: Foxconn jobs will create an entire ‘ecosystem’ in ‘Wisconn Valley’

Again; there is no valley there because there is no Wisconn Valley. It's like Narnia or Dune. You can't find it on a legitimate map. I don't even think nearby restaurants had put it on those paper placemats for the kids to color on, if that's still a thing.

Wisconn Valley [sic] was Walker's clumsy effort to associate his expensive campaign prop with California's actual "Silicon Valley." At the expense of an existing agricultural ecosystem. That had to be dug up, hauled away and paved over as part and parcel of one of the most extensive and expensive campaign fantasies, photo ops and government-engineered transfers of wealth in Wisconsin history.

But all Walker accomplished with that dopey word-smithing - and we now that wordy stuff is not his strong suit - was to contrast the world-renown Silicon Valley with his made-up, self-serving imitation that, when said out loud, lands hard at 'con,' just as some of his critics had been alleging. 

And now there is this latest bit of punning parody in this Eighth Wonder of the World's continual shape-shifting: 

Days before the state declined to give the Foxconn Technology Group tax credits for work done in 2019, officials wrote that the Mount Pleasant facility "may be better suited for demonstration purposes rather than as a viable commercial glass fabrication facility." 

To which I say that the project has been a demonstration...of everything imaginable that could be done with public money for partisan purposes by shallow politicians including a GOP President, GOP Governor and GOP legislators at the expense of the land, water, the people's treasury and public trust.

This is probably not the exact definition of 'demonstration purposes' that Walker and the company had in mind, but it's what's been demonstrated by three years of reality checks and failed promises. 

Trump's SuperSpreader Express heads to COVID hotspot Waukesha County

Waukesha County with its news-making and repetitively-reported and  climbing COVID-19 case rate 

seems the perfect spot for Donald Trump to host another of his mask-maligning, distancing-dismissing and COVID-compatible rallies. 

Let's see if Trump's purported state co-chair Scott Walker, leading US Senate and all-purpose enabler Ron Johnson and the rest of the culpable cult show up, masked or otherwise.

WI's fresh COVID tally blows past NY & CA's, blows up RoJo claim

You only have to compare medium-sized Wisconsin's COVID-10 caseload catastrophe with the smaller numbers in the far-more populated states of New York and California to appreciate the Trump-serving dangerous deceit in Ron Johnson's 

"we've flattened the curve" misrepresentation of the pandemic's status quo:

From the most-recent daily New York Times' compilation of official state COVID-19 statistics:

California

3,060 new cases, and drop in deaths of 5% in the previous 14 days.

New York

2,029 new cases, and a drop in deaths of 4% in the previous 14 days.

Wisconsin

4,327 new cases and an increase in deaths of 78% in the 14 previous days.

You can argue that these are cherry-picked or apples-to-oranges' comparisons, but with only 5.9 million people when compared to California's almost 40 million and New York's 19+million populations, there's no denying that Wisconsin is represented brutally badly in pandemic times by GOP bad apples Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald and Robin Vos.

RoJo echos Trump's false 'COVID is weakening' narrative

Trump's 'rounding-the-corner' b.s. about the COVID-19 pandemic weakening now has its own Wisconsin dishonest variation from

you-know-who:

Wisconsin on Wednesday reported a record 48 deaths from the coronavirus and admitted its first patient at a field hospital as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson falsely claimed the state had flattened its curve of COVID-19 deaths....

He made the comments just hours before the state released figures showing the last seven days were the deadliest of the pandemic, with 173 deaths due to the virus between Oct. 14 and Wednesday.

Seriously, are we surprised? RoJo was on the record earlier about mass deaths from the pandemic being the OK price for living in a wide-open economy, and has been a Lindsey Graham-Plus ally of Trump's on a host of matters - impeachment, Biden bashing, and fiscal and budget policies.

Don't forget that Johnson and Trump have been scratching each other's back for years; remember that Johnson supplied Trump with a pivotal vote on a tax bill vote after Trump agreed that the bill would include the provision near-and-dear-to Johnson's heart and business for which Johnson had been been holding out:

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson flips to "yes" vote on GOP tax bill, clearing major hurdle 

And that vote is now raising fresh questions, so stay tuned.

A thought about the WI GOP's COVID gaffe machine

When the history of Wisconsin in 2020 is written, will we ever learn the identity of the hacker(s) with regular access to the GOP's messaging apparatus, who, in the face of Wisconsin's brutal and escalating COVID realities 

kept supplying key Republicans with ideas and materials that allowed mainstream reporters to produce stories with these actual quotes or headlines:

* Like first example back in April: 

Republican Assembly Speaker wears protective gear while telling voters they are "incredibly safe to go outside.

* Then GOP State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald's miscalculated dismissivemess in August about the value of mask-wearing when the fast-spreading virus was already rampaging: 

“I think things are going well right now. People are complying if they want to.”

* Along with this month's "'believe me, there aren't a lot of smart people" in state government,' uttered by State Sen. Duey Stroebel.

* And now the latest jaw-dropper reported Tuesday starring WI GOP State Rep. and Assembly Health Committee chairman 

Joe SanFelippo, (R-West Allis Indifferencetown): 

Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, who heads a health panel, contends there is nothing more the government can do to fight COVID-19

There has to be at least one mole inside the Wisconsin's Republican's servers who is pumping out talking points worthy of The Onion Hall of Fame because no group of professional politicians could keep attracting so much self-destructive media without a lot of help.

And if these GOP legislators are doing this on their own, maybe Duey Stroebel is more accurate than he knows, and shame on me.

Robin Vos looms over twin WI debacles; a devastating pandemic & more Foxconn fiasco

It's not a coincidence Wisconsin is roiled right now by two major negative stories - the worsening COVID-19 catastrophe - 

Record-shattering 4,591 coronavirus cases as state catches up on reporting; record 218 COVID-19 hospitalizations

- and the FUBAR Foxconn fiasco in Mt. Pleasant - 

Three years later, the factory — and the jobs — don’t exist, and they probably never will.

- and that GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos played key roles in launching both of these realities into Wisconsin homes and an exhausted political environment.

Basically, Vos's role in these twin failures speaks volumes about the dangers of power concentrated in a key state position held by an ultra-partisan who keeps betting badly with other people's money and lives that he and his corporatist ideologies know better.  

As more attention is focused on Foxconn's failure to provide the payrolls and products it promised in exchange for billions in subsidies engineered by then-Gov. Scott Walker, let's remember that some of us have warned for more than three years that his scheme was a self-serving mirage, with leading local Racine County winner with your money - the incautious homefield booster Robin Vos had been on board from day one:

Wisconsin Assembly passes $3 billion for Foxconn

“Usually if you rush things, FYI, it means the deal stinks,” said Democratic Rep. Gordon Hintz, an opponent of the project who noted that Foxconn has made promises to build factories elsewhere and never followed through.

But Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos argued that the project was an “American field of dreams” that will transform the state’s economy and should not be passed up. 

Voters in Vos's district have a chance to hold him accountable for his arrogant, hyperbolic miscalculations, but that's not likely to happen. More about that in a few paragraphs. 

Then there is the literally-more-painful calamity side-by-side with the Foxconn debacle - the killer pandemic rampaging through the state that keeps producing some of the country's worst data.

Vos, along with GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, convinced the State Supreme Court to overturn Gov. Evers' 'Safer-at-Home' COVID-19-prevention order when the virus was not yet out of control here.

The latest Fitzgerald-Vos attack on Evers' plan was at the time just the Republican's latest grab at Evers' powers that predated his 2018 swearing in - 

- and the result has been since the Fitzgerald-Vos 'win in May has been a predictable surge in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

The most-recently reported state COVID-19 data for Monday, October 19 showed new daily cases had spiraled by a factor of 13 to 3,777 in the five months since May 13 - the day of the Court's ruling. 

And the state's current reported cumulative COVID-19 case total on Monday of 173,891 has ballooned by a factor of 16 since the 10,902 total cases had been reported on May 13. 

To which Vos and Fitzgerald have responded by only continuing related battles against subsequent Evers' efforts to cool off Wisconsin's status as a national COV-19 hotspot while remaining into a seventh month of vacation and while also refusing to put forward a battle plan they'd said early they just wanted a chance to present to Evers 

So you ask yourself: How is that Vos could exercise this constellation of powers: quick situational litigating, quick situational legislating, and the opposite - stupendously long-delayed policy-making and long-lasting recesses - even during a pandemic.

Some of the explanation is institutional: The Assembly Speaker in Wisconsin is a key cog in Wisconsin's already unusually powerful Legislature and Vos has not been shy about exercising his authority, by, for example:

* Unilaterally raising his members' per-diem allowances;

* Stacking the Legislature's budget-writing committee with reliable right-wing allies;

* Expanding his staff;

* Commandeering state aircraft;

* Hiring private lawyers for partisan advantage at taxpayer expense;

* Hiring some more:

In all, Republican lawmakers have spent more than $5 million over the last two years on private attorneys at taxpayer expense. The largest part of that amount — $2.1 million — went toward defending lame-duck laws that limited Evers’ powers, according to bills released under the state's public records law.

* Plus and this is important - managing a grotesquely lopsided and self-serving gerrymandered legislative remapping in 2012 that keeps Republican legislators and Vos's GOP colleagues effortlessly in office despite stronger Democratic statewide turnout, as Isthmus explained in 2018.

Dems sweep statewide offices in midterms but remain underrepresented in Assembly

* And Vos, having had success before, is threatening to do it all over again again - regardless of efforts by Evers and others to open up the process.

Wisconsin Republicans dismiss non-partisan redistricting plan

"He can form whatever kind of fake, phony, partisan process he wants to create, but I have no doubt in the end we will do it the way we always have, which is to follow the constitution," Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said. 

That's vintage Vos - arrogantly on the attack and ready to use his considerable powers - but powers exercised recklessly for partisan advantage can contribute to an unnecessary and unapologetic sacrificing of people's lives - in a pandemic - and the sacrificing of public dollars - for an already wealthy Taiwan-based multi-national business allied with Donald Trump and his re-election strategy, all to chase after corporate canards and phantom jobs under partisan pretenses into filled Racine County wetlands and plowed-under farms. 

If anyone can find public purpose or democratic affirmation or serious hope for a repaired Wisconsin in the near future in any of that, feel free to leave a comment. 

Like Mt. Pleasant, UW-Madison faces unfulfilled Foxconn promises

Of course Wisconsin's concern about Foxconn's unfulfilled promises has long been focused on Mt. Pleasant in Racine County's 'Wisconn Valley[sic]. 

From NBC Nightly News, 7/21/19

That where on torn-up prime ag lands no one is building the high-tech/flat-panel devices which Trump and Team Walker said would wondrously move on a new, taxpayer-paid automated highway lane for export worldwide through a new duty-free Milwaukee shipping center.

But let's not forget that Foxconn more than two years ago pledged $100 million to the UW-Madison for research and development, as I noted in August, 2018.

But like the regional hubs Foxconn promised in Green Bay and elsewhere across the state which happened to track some Scott Walker last-ditch 2018 re-election politicking, the actual investment Foxconn has made in UW-Madison is close to nothing.

More, here:

St. Sup. Ct. killed WI's anti-COVID strategy. Then cases skyrocketed.

While I've frequently called out the state's GOP Legislature for literally hiding from COVID accountability for more than six months, it's important to remember that it was a rightist State Supreme Court majority which took the GOP ideological bait, killed Gov. Evers 'safer-at-home' virus-controlling order and gave Republicans their 'win.'

Which launched Wisconsin into the escalating pandemic without a coordinated 'we're-all-in-this-together' statewide prevention plan.

Right-wing WI Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack wrote the 4-3 majority opinion shelving the state's Safer-at-Home order - while the Court safely met online.

Sort of like having the local government lock up its only fire station to satisfy a faction of angry firefighters knowing that the worst blaze in state history was moving towards town driven by the strongest winds recorded in a century. 

And to make matters worse, the angry faction's officers told all the firefighters they could take a six-month vacation while the fire frightened more people, disrupted more businesses, burned more buildings and killed more citizens.

You can plot the virus's rampage on the state health department's COVID-19 website since a 4-3 rightwing decision by a majority of Justices set the state free of a virus-control plan on May 13. 

There were 291 news cases reported that day which brought Wisconsin's total to 10,902 since the tally began March 15 - a period of about two months, and Evers' order and plan were in place for much of it.

Pretty big numbers, but wait, there's more.

The most-recently reported state COVID-19 data for Monday, October 19 showed new daily cases had spiraled by a factor of 13 to 3,777 in the five months since May 13 - the day of the Court's ruling. 

And the state's current reported cumulative COVID-19 case total on Monday of 173,891 has ballooned by a factor of 16 since the 10,902 total cases had been reported on May 13. 

As the Chief Justice might say, that's a lot of regular folks.

Another national takedown of Walker's Wisconn Valley debacle

Let's thank ex-WI Gov. Scott Walker for dreaming up and running with the ridiculous but paradoxically-prescient "Wisconn Valley" label (emphasis added) he attached to the record-shattering Foxconn debacle he directed as a failed re-election Hail Mary to a plowed-under prime Racine County farmland site -   

 

- and I'm further grateful Monday for this detailed and strongly-reported fresh summation of the debacle from The Verge - 

Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

- I am adding to the hundreds of postings in my 40-month-long archive "A Foxconn Fever Primer."

When now-inert WI GOP legislators had through their work

A single headline and lede sentence on a November, 2018 Friday tell all:

Senate leader signals lame-duck session on fast track, says it could happen Tuesday

The Republican leader of the state Senate has signaled GOP lawmakers are pursuing a fast track for a lame-duck legislative session before Gov.-elect Tony Evers takes office, saying it could happen as soon as Tuesday.

And this other little GOP legislative dictator did his high-speed part, too. 

(Feather-bedding) 

With words & deeds, two WI officials shine, one embarrasses

As the pandemic rages through Wisconsin, good for Barron County Judge James Babler for commonsense respect for the law:

Gov. Tony Evers order limiting gathers, bar capacity is ban in place after judge's ruling

And good for Gov. Evers' fact-based precision in response:

“This critically important ruling will help us prevent the spread of this virus by restoring limits on public gatherings. This crisis is urgent. Wisconsinites, stay home. Limit travel and going to gatherings, and please wear a face covering whenever you have to go out." 

But condemnation for the perpetually campaigning and harmfully selfish GOP Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald - leader of the comply if you want caucus - who let the world know through Twitter this weekend that he doesn't give a crap:

@FitzgeraldForWI

US House candidate, WI-5

Great to speak with voters of #WI05 this morning at the West Bend farmers market!

12:19 PM · Oct 17, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

AWOL WI GOP leader was mask-free at West Bend street market

Call it a Friend of the Virus Walking the Walk:

WI GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has yet to offer any plan to battle COVID-19 in hotspot Wisconsin, but the most recent posting on his congressional candidacy's Twitter account shows him chatting up a citizen in the Washington County seat of West Bend and neither of them are wearing masks.

Note that last week, Washington County was reporting 61 new COVID-19 cases per day, and official County Health Department data published last week for Washington County alone showed totals of 40 deaths and 3762 positive cases, plus the case trajectory was rated "increasing," and the case burden and status both rated "very high." 

A state health department data collection and reporting system upgrade prevented the release of more timely local and statewide data over the weekend and until Tuesday, fyi. 

Meanwhile, from the Fitzgerald campaign Twitter feed, this photo which shows little social distancing being practiced (and perhaps one mask in the background, left margin), but why should people take these precautions if this leading public official will not?

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Scott Fitzgerald

@FitzgeraldForWI

US House candidate, WI-5

Great to speak with voters of #WI05 this morning at the West Bend farmers market!

12:19 PM · Oct 17, 2020·Twitter for iPhone