Yearly Archives: 2021

Republican lawmakers in Madison are preparing to spend the next week approving nearly a dozen changes to how they want Wisconsin to spend its billions in federal stimulus money.

Gov. Tony Evers is promising to veto any and all of the 11 pieces of what Republicans are calling the Responsible Stimulus Plan.

Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, on Wednesday announced their committee, the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, will hold hearings and approve the 11 pieces of legislation that would spend Wisconsin’s $3.2 billion in stimulus money on their priorities.

“We do not know how – or when – the Governor will allocate the massive amount of Federal funding available to Wisconsin in the most recent stimulus plan,” Marklein said. “Our legislation provides specific plans based on the real priorities of citizens statewide. We need to dedicate these funds in a meaningful way that will support the people of our state who are working to recover and move forward after the last unprecedented year.”

The list includes paying down debt, creating a statewide public safety communications system, setting money aside for Wisconsin’s unemployment trust fund, and sending grants to small businesses, nursing homes, and tourism operations across the state.

“The people of Wisconsin deserve to have their voices heard through their elected Representatives and Senators on how all of this federal money is spent,” Born said. “As I’ve said before, this money should not be unilaterally allocated by one person.”

But it will be spent by just one person. Congress gave governor’s the power to spend the money, and Gov. Evers in March vetoed legislation that would have granted lawmakers some say over the money.

The governor’s office on Tuesday reminded lawmakers of that veto.

There are also some questions about whether some of the Republican priorities are allowed under the American Rescue Plan that is providing the money. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau this week issued a report that said the plan to retire $500 in debt doesn’t appear to be allowed.

“Once again, the governor has chosen the go-it-alone approach,” Born said Wednesday. “But that won’t stop Legislative Republicans from advancing this package, which includes a number of items including grants to small business and tourism, funding for broadband expansion, and aid to households that will directly benefit the residents of Wisconsin.”

The plans will clear the Joint Finance Committee, then head to votes in the Assembly and Senate. Those final votes could come as early as next week.

(The Center Square) –There were almost no surprises on Election Day in Wisconsin.

Democrat Jill Underly won Tuesday’s election for state superintendent of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. She defeated Republican Deb Kerr. The state superintendent's race is officially nonpartisan, but it saw lots of political spending. Underly was the choice of Wisconsin’s teachers’ unions, and she attracted more than $800,000 in outside political money. Kerr’s campaign got off to a slow start with a number of missteps, and she was massively outspent.

In other races, southeast Wisconsin is sending a conservative to the state’s appeals court. Judge Shelley Grogan easily defeated Tony Evers-appointee Jeff Davis in Tuesday's election for the Second District Court of Appeals. Grogan currently clerks for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and is a part time municipal judge in Muskego. Davis was serving out the last of Brian Hagedorn’s term on the appellate court. The second district seat covers all of southeast Wisconsin, with the exception of Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Republicans will hold on to their majorities at the State Capitol by winning two seats in special elections yesterday. Republican John Jagler won the Senate seat that used to belong to Scott Fitzgerald in southeastern Wisconsin. Elijah Behnke won the Assembly seat north of Green Bay that used to belong to John Nygren. Both men were expected to win. The victories mean Republicans will retain majorities in the state legislature.

Most of the races on Tuesday’s ballots were local races for school board, city council, and local judges.

There is no official vote count for Wisconsin yet, but many local clerks say their turnouts were less than 20%.

(The Center Square) – More than 850 criminals have been encountered at the U.S. border with Mexico this year, including 92 sex offenders and 63 gang members, a U.S. Border Patrol agent tweeted this weekend.

Included among “the copious amounts of groups being encountered” at the Rio Grande Valley, Hastings said, are “a Salvadoran man with a prior conviction for murder” along with 862 criminals, Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted.

Hastings, who is taking to social media to write about the border crisis while the Biden administration has prevented access to the media, has been reporting the types of people who have been apprehended. Among them were five large groups of families, unaccompanied minors, and some adults totaling 539 people, including 93 unaccompanied minors.

Hastings said that so far in 2021, more than 18,000 unaccompanied minors have been encountered by agents at the border. Prior to March 23, over 16,500 of them were in the custody of either Customs and Border Protection or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Biden has received backlash from Texas border Democrats calling on him to reinstate Trump-era policies.

U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, pointing to Border Patrol data, said that among those encountered at the border, 13 percent of unaccompanied minors are under age 12.

“One logical approach to this situation would be to return the older teenagers to their home country and provide funding for an effort supervised by the United Nations to properly care for those teenagers upon their return,” Vela said. “Then, once the pandemic is under control you could phase the program back in so that there would be some semblance of control over the process. I think that this would help relieve the current burden.”

Instead, in response to the surge of illegal immigrants flooding the Texas border, the Biden administration called on federal employees to volunteer for up to 120 days to assist border officials. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a memo on Thursday to the heads of executive departments and agencies asking them to seek staff to volunteer.

Volunteers are needed in Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Bliss in El Paso. Volunteers would be responsible for making contact with migrant children and coordinating with Border Protection, the American Red Cross, and FEMA.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, whose congressional district lies along the southern border, shared more photos with CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday. The photos show unaccompanied minors sitting or laying on the floor with foil blankets in crowded conditions.

“Border Patrol does not want to keep people there longer than 72 hours,” Cuellar told CBS News. “But there’s two issues, two factors coming into play. One, there are so many, there’s a large number of people coming across every single day, groups of over 100 individuals coming into Border Patrol custody, number one. Number two, the flow through, that is through [Health and Human Services], they’re moving and they’re trying to get more shelters open.”

Cuellar said adult illegal immigrants have been “pretty much returned” to Mexico. “Those are being returned, expelled back. Some family units are turned back into Mexico depending on the age of the kids. Thirteen and above are being returned.”

However, Cuellar said that roughly 2,000 people who entered Texas illegally were released into the general population by federal officials under Biden's order without any notices to appear at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement court date in the future.

“They’re supposed to appear, show up, maybe in 60 days, report to an ICE office,” he said. “This is unprecedented.”

(The Center Square) – California’s two U.S. Senators, both Democrats, are calling on President Joe Biden to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the United States.

Sens. Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla sent a letter to Biden urging him to "follow California's lead and set a date by which all new cars and passenger trucks sold be zero-emission vehicles."

Last September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who now faces a potential recall election, signed an executive order banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California by requiring all new cars and trucks being sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Currently, electric vehicles account for less than 3 percent of all vehicle sales in the U.S.

"We urge your administration to take advantage of this effort and make real progress in coordination with states, like California, that share your goals to aggressively fight climate change by eliminating harmful pollution from the transportation sector," the senators wrote.

They said they “support aggressive national standards for greenhouse gas emissions, clean transportation technology, and sensible fuel economy for passenger vehicles.”

Feinstein and Padilla asked the Biden administration to require the auto industry to commit to shifting to primarily producing electric vehicles, something some in the industry, like General Motors, has said it “aspires" to do by 2035. Ford has announced its intention to shift its car models in Europe to be solely electric by 2030.

The Environmental Protection Agency said tougher emissions rules "will play an important role in confronting climate change and advancing economic and employment opportunities," and that it was “working with the Department of Transportation, California and other states, the automobile industry, labor, and other stakeholders to consider a range of views on how to set ambitious [emissions] standards."

On Jan. 27, Biden signed an executive order committing the federal government to purchase zero-emission vehicles for the US Postal Service, which is in the process of developing a next generation of delivery vehicles.

In California, one electric auto assembly plant exists, a former GM-Toyota plant in Fremont, California, near San Francisco, which is now being used by Tesla, the world's leading maker of electric cars.

The California senators said "at an absolute minimum" new federal emissions rules should follow California’s lead and agreement with automakers.

However, electric cars are worse for the environment per mile than comparable gasoline-powered cars, according to a report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Among its findings, the researchers concluded, “over ninety percent of local environmental externalities from driving an electric vehicle in one state are exported to others, implying that electric vehicles may be subsidized locally, even though they may lead to negative environmental benefits overall.”

According to the International Energy Agency, there could be 125 million electric cars in use worldwide by 2030, maybe double that if governments require it.

(The Center Square) – There will soon be a lot more questions about the 2020 election at the Wisconsin Capitol.

Legislative Republicans on Tuesday took the first step toward an official investigation into claims of voter fraud or voter malfeasance.

“Over the past year, year and a half, we’ve heard allegations of improprieties. Specifically, state laws not being followed,” Rep. Joe SanFelippo, R-New Berlin, said.

Sanfelippo is the second in command on the Assembly’s elections committee.

Republican lawmakers have been demanding answers since news broke about questions just what outside political activists Green Bay did for the city’s election office.

That report said the activists all but took over.

“I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to be open and forthcoming in how our elections are administered throughout the state,” Sanfelippo added.

Sanfelippo said he hopes that election managers voluntarily appear before his committee, and answer all of the questions they are asked. But he said lawmakers are ready to issue subpoenas if necessary.

“I can’t honestly see why anyone would not want to answer questions or provide documents,” Sanfelippo explained. “This just gives us the necessary tools to move forward.”

Sanfelippo and other Republicans say their goal with their investigation is to restore trust in Wisconsin’s election system.

(The Center Square) – Violent crimes in Wisconsin numbered 293.2 per every 100,000 residents of the state as of 2019, the 32nd highest rate among the 50 states, according to a new analysis from the website 24/7 Wall St.

The total number of murders in Wisconsin in 2019 came in at 175, according to the 24/7 Wall St. analysis of FBI crime data, while the state’s poverty rate was estimated at 10.4%. The study’s authors pegged Milwaukee as the most dangerous city in the state.

Nationwide, the violent crime rate for 2019 was found to be 366.7 incidents per 100,000 Americans, according to 24/7 Wall St. The violent crimes tracked in the study were aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assault and murders or non-negligent manslaughters.

The poorest states also tend to have the highest rates of violent incidents, the study’s authors concluded. New England states, which have relatively high incomes and less poverty, were among the safest in the nation, while many lower-income Southern states had the highest violent crime rates, the analysis found.

The most dangerous cities in Hawaii and Alabama could not be pinpointed due to a lack of municipal crime data in those states, according to 24/7 Wall St.

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Violent Crime Rates by State as of 2019

Rank (50=Lowest)StateViolent Crime Rate (per 100,000)Total 2019 MurdersIncarceration Rate (per 100,000)Poverty RateMost Dangerous City50Maine115.22014610.9%Biddeford49New Hampshire152.5331977.3%Manchester48Connecticut183.610424510.0%New Haven47Vermont202.21118210.2%Rutland46New Jersey206.92622109.2%Camden45Virginia208.04264229.9%Portsmouth44Kentucky217.122151616.3%Louisville43Wyoming217.41342810.1%Riverton42Rhode Island221.12515610.8%Woonsocket41Idaho223.83547511.2%Garden City40Utah235.6722068.9%South Salt Lake39Minnesota236.41171769.0%Minneapolis38Iowa266.66029311.2%Council Bluffs37Mississippi277.933263619.6%Laurel36Oregon284.411635311.4%Astoria35North Dakota284.62423110.6%Williston34Hawaii285.5482159.3%--32 (tie)Ohio293.253843013.1%Cleveland32 (tie)Wisconsin293.217537810.4%Milwaukee31Washington293.91982509.8%Tacoma30Nebraska300.9452899.9%Omaha29Pennsylvania306.466935512.0%Scranton28West Virginia316.67838116.0%Huntington27Massachusetts327.61521339.4%Springfield26Georgia340.765450713.3%College Park25New York358.655822413.0%Newburgh24Indiana370.837739911.9%South Bend23North Carolina371.863231313.6%Henderson22Florida378.41,12244412.7%Florida City21Colorado381.02183419.3%Sterling20South Dakota399.01742811.9%Rapid City19Montana404.92744012.6%Helena18Illinois406.983230211.5%Sauk Village17Kansas410.810534211.4%Wichita16Texas418.91,40952913.6%Snyder15Delaware422.64838211.3%Wilmington14Oklahoma431.826663915.2%Muskogee13Michigan437.455638113.0%Muskegon Heights12California441.21,69031011.8%Stockton11Maryland454.15423059.0%Baltimore10Arizona455.336555813.5%Phoenix9Nevada493.814341312.5%North Las Vegas8Missouri495.056842412.9%St. Louis7Alabama510.835841915.5%--6South Carolina511.346435313.8%Greenwood5Louisiana549.354468019.0%Opelousas4Arkansas584.624258616.2%West Memphis3Tennessee595.249838413.9%Memphis2New Mexico832.218131618.2%Gallup1Alaska867.16924410.1%Anchorage

Source: 24/7 Wall St.