Uppity Wisconsin

Okay, llet's be honest. Gerryymandering is an American tradition. Whatever party is in power has always tried to gain the upper hand by organizing congressional districts to suit their needs. Packing and cracking of districts has happened for a very long time, and it helps to keep the winning party in power over the long term.

But something has changed. The ability to use computer power to set district boundaries (and the will to use them for that purpose) has resulted in districts in Wisconsin that make it next to impossible for party power to change in the local district. We see it time after time.  Good challenging candidates just lose because surmounting the party bias in their own home area is impossible.

Just a quick note.  It's my intention to, some time in the next few months, move Uppity Wisconsin over to be one of the communities in WIs.community .  My goal here is to have one less web site to maintain, and to help out with the growth of the Wis.community platform.  This isn't going to be quick, it's currently a fairly low-level activity for me.  In general the goal here is to make the move as transparent as possible, and to have the site still appear at https://www.uppitywis.org and have all the blog posts appear in the same place.   So this willl probably not happen for a few months - just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

At an April 30 town hall, U.S. Rep., and Republican, Glenn Grothman, was asked if he would protect funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. His answer was stunning.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, at a recent town hall, put taxpayers into three groups, the ultra-rich, the middle class and "those who could be working harder." No kidding. You can watch it here.

No shocking surprise here, but governor Walker says he is willing to consider getting an exemption for Wisconsin to opt out of crucial portions of the ACA if in fact those waivers make it through the Senate.  So - you want good health insurance?  Move to a state that supports it.

Remember - this exemption not only applies to the people who are on Obamacare currently but also applies to the folks who have insurance through their employer. This means that a cheapskate employer could fix it for their employees so they would have crappy low-cost insurance as well. 

As always, if there is a race to the bottom, Scott Walker wants to get a jersey and participate.

A letter of support has been circulating for Mike McCabe of Blue Jean Nation to run for the governorship in 2018.  I spoke today to Mike on the phone about this letter.

WISCONSINITES UNITE TO DRAFT MIKE McCABE FOR GOVERNOR

Dear Mike, We strongly urge you to run for governor. Our reason is obvious: the levers of political power have been seized and are being manipulated by those interested primarily in self-enrichment and personal power. The actions of those who currently control the Capitol are extremely short-sighted as well as morally and ethically corrupt, and sap our state of its underlying strength and vitality.

The following are some videos from Glenn Grothman's recent town hall in Neenah - embarrassingly, the plac where I grew up. This includes a few choice words from Grothman on climate change (in the 70's we were worried about global cooling, and that never happened, so ---), shutting down Planned Parenthood (you can get your birth control at the grocery store), and a lot of other topics.  So - first up, climate change, then Planned Parenthood, then the entire town hall.  Thank you to Dan Wilson for the videos. And the rest of you - on those rare occasions when your congress-critter has a town hall, we'd love to see the video or audio.