Photo via Robin Vos - vosforassembly.com
Robin Vos
Robin Vos
We’ve just seen the Wisconsin Republican version of Kevin McCarthy’s House crazies recklessly threatening to destroy the national economy to create a worldwide recession unless President Biden abandoned his Democratic agenda of improving the lives of poor and working-class Americans.
The threat from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was Republican legislators would bankrupt Milwaukee and financially cripple local governments throughout the state unless Democrats stopped trying to prevent police from using excessive force against racial minorities and ended programs to assure equal treatment under the law regardless of race or gender.
In the end, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had little choice but to sign a so-called “deal” with Republican legislators to restore state-shared revenue and institute local sales taxes providing hundreds of millions of dollars for local governments throughout Wisconsin that had been financially eviscerated under Gov. Scott Walker.
Gerrymandered and Underfunded
Restoring state-shared revenue based on population has been Evers’s goal ever since his first election in 2018. It was even more crucial in 2023 when the intentional underfunding of Democratic cities statewide by the gerrymandered Republican legislature had put Milwaukee on the brink of bankruptcy.
As Democratic Milwaukee Sen. LaTonya Johnson accurately described “negotiations,” Evers “had a gun to his head. Either he gave my (Republican) colleagues what they wanted or Milwaukee went into insolvency. And he chose to save Milwaukee.” But that didn’t make the vicious racism by the Republican legislature’s majority primarily representing overwhelmingly white, small towns and rural areas any less cruel.
A major target of those white Republicans was the destruction of Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission. Under the leadership of Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone, it had become a national model for effective citizen oversight to stop policing that was killing African Americans 2½ times more often than whites during routine arrests primarily for minor, nonviolent, traffic offenses.
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The commission’s success in banning no-knock warrants and deadly chokeholds by police and assuring public access to body-camera footage of police brutality and shooting incidents were why Republicans for whom Black lives don’t matter were eager to abolish its powers.
Vos claims Republicans simply wanted to prevent liberal Democrats from spending state tax dollars to promote a radical, leftwing, political ideology. Republicans also explicitly banned local governments from using state funds to promote racial and gender equality. There’s nothing ideological about cities supporting equal rights for their citizens and protecting their lives. It’s what decent Americans do.
Who’s Pushing Ideology?
Here's Vos’s preposterous cover story: “That’s not what taxpayer dollars should be for … If you want to have a bake sale or put money into your own ideology, you have every right to do that because we live in America. But it’s not the right to use taxpayer dollars to try to push one ideology over another.”
What makes Vos think only Democrats believe in equal rights for all Americans and oppose violent policing of African Americans? It sure seems that way these days, but there’s no reason Republicans and Democrats shouldn’t agree to support such fundamental constitutional protections in our democracy.
The Republican party is still suffering from a debilitating hangover from Donald Trump’s anti-American presidency. Vos still believes the corruptly gerrymandered Republican state legislature should have the last word on how tax dollars can be spent in Wisconsin. The good news is he’s absolutely wrong.
In a month, there’s going to be a new sheriff in Madison. The unethical, extreme rightwing majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court that for 15 years has consistently sided with partisan Republican legislators assaulting our state democracy will mercifully come to an end.
Progressive Majority
On Aug. 1, Justice Janet Protasiewicz will join the high court creating a new 4 to 3 progressive majority that will make decisions based on the state constitution and the rule of law instead of partisan political advantage.
The court will decide the constitutionality of Republicans banning all abortions under an outdated 1849 law and corruptly gerrymandered voting districts that produce two-thirds Republican majorities in the legislature even when Democrats win more votes than Republicans.
With a Trumped-up, far-right supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court destroying nationwide protections for women’s rights and voting rights, it’s made state supreme courts the most powerful courts in the land protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Democrats, independents and conservatives who care about continuing to live in a democracy have learned their lesson for ignoring the decade’s long destruction of the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican presidents in league with the radical, rightwing Federalist Society.
The battle in the courts over abortion rights and electing a state legislature that accurately reflects Wisconsin, a closely divided state between Democrats and Republicans, won’t all be resolved by the presidential election. But those issues will be top-of-mind for voters in local, state and national elections in 2024 and many more elections to come.
