Happy Friday and welcome to another edition of the Milwaukee Leader’s weekly news roundup. Take a few moments to slip off that respirator mask while you read. The air is clearing up now, but that particulate matter is no joke. And while we Milwaukeeans are normally happy to have Canadian visitors, the plume of wildfire smoke has been pushing its luck. We haven’t been left gasping for breath like this since the last time the Moose shut out the Ads at the Panther Arena. But it’s not all climate-change gloom; we’ve got unvarnished honesty from Milwaukee’s representation in the State Legislature, more transphobic lunacy in the South Suburbs, a new (cruel) state budget, and more. Thanks, as always, for your support of the Leader.
Wildfire Smoke Harms Milwaukee’s Working Class The Most
Nobody in the city enjoyed the last few days; even the traditional Milwaukee prophylactic for the summertime blues (six or seven drastically overpriced High Lifes at a Brewers game) was no comfort against Canadian wildfire smoke that blanketed the city with some of the worst air quality on the planet. AQI indices in excess of 270 were rated as ‘very unhealthy’ for anyone, and city health officials dutifully recommended that people stay home and run their air conditioning to avoid respiratory issues. Unfortunately, this advice is not possible to follow for many citizens of this city.
Those who work outdoors have suffered the most immediate effects. Wildfires or no, the trash must be picked up, the mail delivered, and architecturally and financially dubious lakeside skyscrapers erected. Workers complained of headaches and shortness of breath, with some requiring medical attention. As the climate warms and the fire season grows longer, even we here next to the world’s largest surface deposit of freshwater are not immune to the consequences.
The wildfire smoke also laid bare stark racial disparities in housing and access to health care. Over half of calls placed to the Office of Emergency Management for respiratory issues have been from Black Milwaukeeans. Black Milwaukeeans are more likely to suffer from asthmatic complaints than the average citizen, and decades of racist housing policy and structural exploitation have meant that many Black Milwaukeeans live in housing with poor ventilation and respiratory hazards such as mold. Although many people were fortunately able to be treated at home with nebulizers and did not require hospitalization, this crisis is another grim reminder that decades of disinvestment and exploitation have left far too many Milwaukeeans of color without adequate health care resources or safe and secure housing, purely for the sake of preserving the profits of a few. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Milwaukee Leader)
Area School District Takes Bold And Brave Stand Against Vulnerable Teenagers, Stands Up For Rights of Milwaukee County’s Most Insufferable Spittle-Flecked Car Dealership Owners
In a move indicative of the kind of forward-thinking and reasonable discourse that our southern suburbs are regionally famous for, the Franklin/Oak Creek school district has chosen to ban teachers from displaying ‘safe space’ stickers in their classrooms on the grounds that such stickers amount to ‘controversy’. Such a decision came as a balm to our county’s most vulnerable citizens: perfectly cubic ham-colored men who own Kia dealerships and throw a clot every time they see someone with a they/them pin at a retail establishment. Finally, such delicate lambs are free from the tyrannical yoke of underpaid schoolteachers and teenagers trying not to be bullied.
Sarcasm aside, it almost goes without saying that this kind of petty, resentful culture war will serve only to further marginalize and intimidate students who just want to be treated with dignity and respect at their schools. Scant wonder that Wisconsin is so consistently unable to find people willing to work in our schools with this kind of treatment. Come for the subpar pay and legislatively crippled protections, stay for the opportunity to have a guy shaped like a bipedal Holstein scream in your face at parent-teacher conferences that you are a ‘groomer Marxist sharia’.
The Leader reaffirms its commitment to full protection of and recognition for LGBTQ+ youth; socialism means a movement for the entire working class, no matter who you are or who you love. We will win, and the bastards will lose. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Republicans Send Budget to Governor’s Desk, Filled With Goodies For The Rich And Middle Fingers For Working Families
Secure (for the time being at least) in their gerrymandered majority, Republicans in both chambers of the state legislature passed a budget on party lines to go to Governor Evers’ desk today. There’s no point in sugarcoating things; it’s bad. Readers of this publication will not be shocked to hear that laudatory programs like PFAS mitigation, child care assistance, Medicaid expansion, support for mental health, even suicide prevention programs, didn’t make the cut. And the reason for that is now plain: Republicans wanted to give gigantic tax cuts to Wisconsin’s capitalist class.
Some of the legislation’s worst effects will be felt immediately. As federal aid for child care supports runs out, 25% of licensed child care centers in the state are now at risk of closing, putting the child care of 87,000 Wisconsin children at risk. Yet Republicans unanimously voted down amendments in both Assembly and Senate to restore funding for Child Care Counts. Republicans also voted unanimously to cut $32 million from the University of Wisconsin system budget – a move which could lead to tuition hikes and campus closures in the immediate future. Public schools were also left out in the cold, with an increase in per-pupil funding that came in well below inflation and less than a quarter of the minimum increase needed to give students a quality public education.
Other effects will take longer to mature – a fact which allows the Republicans who created this monster to avoid blame. Among other things, failing to invest in children and families, maintaining a 174-year-old abortion ban, and refusing to legalize cannabis, put the thumb on the scale against any reasonable person under the age of 35 (hell, 45) from wanting to move here.
Republicans have tried to sugarcoat this by emphasizing that their restraint in spending helps to finance tax cuts for all Wisconsinites. Yet 84% of the tax savings would go to the top 25% of Wisconsin households by income. Wisconsin’s richest would see tax cuts of $30,000 each, while filers with incomes between $30,000 and $40,000 would see an average tax cut of $32. Now, don’t spend it all on pennywhistles and moon pies!
It’s worth noting here that Evers is equipped with a powerful veto pen; Wisconsin empowers its governor with a “line item veto”, which means they can strike individual pieces from a budget while passing the rest. Evers should use that ability to eliminate the obviously reactionary measures like tax cuts for already rich Wisconsinites while preserving what budget items would actually serve the state’s working families. To restore provisions Republicans deleted, Evers would have to go further, however, vetoing the entire budget and forcing Republicans back to the drawing board.
Some might caution against such a step on the grounds that doing so would endanger a constructive relationship with the legislature and inflame partisan tensions. But if the least 13+ years of Wisconsin politics have taught an insightful observer anything, it is that the Republican Party in this state is utterly uninterested in good faith negotiation and will do absolutely everything it can to turn the screws on Milwaukee, Madison, and marginalized people anywhere in the state. These are not people seriously committed to governance. They are a minority committed to a pathological tangle of grievance. Everything is the same to the Wisconsin conservative; the Marxist teachers are the same as the groomer libs, who are the same as the DEI consultants, which is the same as the 1619 Project, which is the same as trans athletes in school sports, which is the same as the “knockout game”, and on and on and on. This is a party that has enjoyed an insanely unrepresentative gerrymander for so long that it no longer meaningfully resembles a party in a democratic society. The sooner state Democrats grapple with that fact, the better off we will all be. (WCPT 820; Milwaukee Leader).
Milwaukee State Senator Shocks Madison By Speaking Straightforwardly, Accurately
The Leader would like to briefly but sincerely congratulate Milwaukee State Senator LaTonya Johnson of the 6th district on her remarks related to the recently passed state budget. To wit, State Senator Johnson stated before the State Senate, “Fuck the suburbs because they don’t know a goddamn thing about how life is in the city.” Your correspondent for the Leader had some of his upbringing in a suburb in Milwaukee before moving back to the city, and for his part, can vouch wholeheartedly for the Senator’s comments on this matter.
The divide between Milwaukee and its suburban municipalities is no recent development; in line with the trend of suburbanization across the United States in the postwar period, Milwaukee’s suburbs were an intentional (and federally protected) refuge for white families seeking a tax-free ride on urban economic concentration and an all-white neighborhood patrolled by baton-swinging Barney Fifes. We are reminded by Senator Johnson’s comments of the words of the great Sewer Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Frank Zeidler, who once said “The city consults with suburban governments, but we do not believe they have reason for existing.” Some wisdom, it turns out, is timeless. (Twitter)
