It’s Friday in Milwaukee. And it’s been, to put it mildly, a week. And as ever, it falls to us to ask: hey, wha’ happened? So let’s get right into it.
Live from the Losers’ Table: It’s Wednesday Night
On a hot summer night (apologies to Meat Loaf), Republicans from across the country descended on Milwaukee’s gleaming Deer District. There were floodlights sending up a beacon throughout the city. A towering image of Brett Baier, or the creature who now wears the Brett Baier suit, beamed down from the Forum’s edifice. On television, a brief and cursory flyover of the Milwaukee lakefront appeared. An inscrutable opening segment featured interviews with patrons at the Brady Street Walgreens. And there were brief shots of a mostly phantom crowd–handpicked by Republican party operatives–who alternatively hooted and exploded at appointed moments when the eight sociopaths who met the criteria for the debate clashed over how they would either uphold or modify the legacy of the man who was not on the stage, and the man who none of them yet appear to be capable of defeating outright in the primaries. Candidates tacked between brief symbolic feints towards economic populism followed, seconds later, with promises to gut Social Security and Medicare (sometimes in the guise of the “national debt”), praised tax cuts for the rich, and called for increases in military spending. But in the end, it was less of a debate than a kind of frenzied bacchanale. With no time for monologues, the actors on the stage–all of whom would be persona non grata at a public event in a decent country–proceeded to maim one another, likely to the delight of the Great Leader, whose interview with Tucker Carlson was airing simultaneously.
Back to the Future: Child Labor Edition
Three Republican state legislators are circulating legislation that would eliminate work permits for Wisconsin’s 14- and 15-year-old job seekers. This makes Wisconsin one of 14 states where proposals to roll back century-old protections against child labor––many of which violate federal laws––are being discussed. In states around the country, industry groups, primarily the National Federation of Independent Business, as well as hotel and tourism associations, are pushing to relax restrictions on child labor, in large part because youth workers are exempt from minimum-wage requirements. Wisconsin’s proposal also comes only a month after a 16-year-old boy died from injuries sustained in an industrial accident while working at a sawmill in northern Wisconsin. The U.S. Labor Department is currently investigating the incident for possible violations of federal child labor laws. (WPR)
Hot Weather, High Profits
Milwaukee was scorching this week. On Wednesday, the city saw a heat index value of over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. As temperatures soared, We Energies has been implementing rate hikes of 11% for residential customers, 8% for small businesses, and 6% for big businesses. And more rate hikes are coming next year. Had enough? Power To The People is holding a campaign town hall at the Kosciuszko Community Center on Saturday, September 23, at 12 p.m. The utilities that Milwaukee residents depend on to survive will only start measuring their success through people’s quality of life — rather than profits — when they are truly publicly owned. (Milwaukee Leader)
Vos to Protasiewicz: I Am the State
You can be forgiven for imagining that Republicans would––after seeing their preferred nominee for the Wisconsin Supreme Court get pantsed in the spring election, creating a 4-3 liberal majority––have to face the fact that the days of their absurd, worst-in-the-nation gerrymanders were numbered. But think again. Now, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is demanding that newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz recuse herself from any cases involving redistricting or face the threat of impeachment. The reason? During the campaign, she described a reality known to everyone––and, as reams of e-mails clearly show, deliberately created by Republicans––the state’s maps are rigged in the GOP’s favor. Vos and his partisan colleagues will attempt to make the argument that Protasiewicz violated the oath she swore to hear cases impartially. But as Bruce Thompson effectively argues here, that’s preposterous for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that she was a candidate for office making an objective claim about the state of Wisconsin redistricting rather than offering a legal opinion as such. This will obviously not matter to Vos, who has been quite content to employ a far more lenient standard to Justice Rebecca Bradley, who has––among other things to her credit––routinely heard cases brought by Republicans despite the fact that she has taken significant donations from the state GOP. The stakes of losing power are, evidently, just too high to walk away. Anyone imagining that normal legal procedures or rationally persuasive arguments are going to restore democracy in Wisconsin is probably in for a rude awakening.
