3 comediennes taunt Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman: "Good luck getting laid."

Apparently, he didn't support some laws they wanted, so this is what passes for comedy and liberalism these days:



ADDED: Don't miss the part of the taunting that comes in the form of insinuating that the senator is gay, as if it's okay — for liberals? — to use that as a form of disparagement.

Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman caught up in a flap about Kwanzaa.

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield and Roland Martin pile on.

Here's Grothman's press release — PDF. I had to wonder why a state senator was attacking a holiday that some people like to celebrate. What business is it of his? He talks about the origins of the holiday (which I haven't independently researched) and asserts that it's not a "real holiday." But so what? It's usually just not a very good idea to make pronouncements about the truth or falsity of other people's religions. He ends the press release with the statement: "Be on the lookout if  a K-12 or college teacher tries to tell your children or grandchildren it's a real holiday."

Okay, is something going on in public schools? Are they celebrating Kwanzaa? That would obviously be wrong — a violation of the Establishment Clause. But Grothman seems to be merely saying that teachers might be teaching about Kwanzaa in perhaps a social studies lesson about the various holidays that are celebrated. I suppose we should be alert to whether teachers are feeding schoolkids inaccurate lessons, but the characterization of Kwanzaa as a holiday isn't an egregiously incorrect fact.

We could go deeply into the subject of what makes a holiday a real holiday and debate about whether Kwanzaa is in or out. It depends on how you define holiday. Or we could debate about what constitutes a sound social studies lesson. We don't want kids to hear that white people celebrate Christmas and black people celebrate Kwanzaa or that Africans arriving in the New World brought a Kwanzaa tradition with them.

Grothman ought to give us the specifics about defective lessons in schools and aim the criticism right there. Don't just tell us to be on the lookout for teachers who might dare to refer to Kwanzaa as a holiday.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: Meade is attacked by a mob.

This is one of the more disturbing of the videos we recorded last year. Meade was protectively standing by a woman, a Walker supporter, who went into the big anti-Walker crowd at the Capitol to stand with a sign that read "Public workers don't need collective bargaining." At first the woman is confronted, and eventually Meade asks some questions and people turn to him.

I'll start you off a couple minutes in, but feel free to scroll back to an earlier point so you can see how this ugliness develops. Stay for the very end, where an old woman gets up in Meade's face and says "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you."



How thoroughly awful and creepy these people were! I hadn't watched this video since I edited it, but I just watched it now. How terrible people were! And I was just reading John Nichols book, "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street." He assures readers that media talk of thuggery was a lie:

Yes, of course, talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh would condemn the marches and rallies by Wisconsin workers, farmers, teachers, and students as “thuggery,” “mob-ocracy” and “an anti-democratic movement.” Dismissing the protesters as “union thugs,” Limbaugh ridiculed “the same old traditional argument; the rights of working people are being trampled on,” as if the fact that the rights of working people were being trampled on, and had been trampled on for a long time, was rendered irrelevant by the mere use of the term “union thugs.” 

Page 22.

It was not uncommon during the course of 2011 to hear protests by middle-class families and prim-and-proper students dismissed as gatherings “of filthy hippies,” “criminals” and “union thugs.” The truth is quickly sacrificed by those who fear the numbers and the message of protesters against a corrupt status quo.

Page 160.

But there were thugs. Going downtown in our own city to see what was happening, Meade was surrounded by thugs. Watch that video and see how the mob creates its own energy and attains a righteous belief that it can designate a human being as "a person against all of us." And, as we learned later, it was just the previous day that a vicious mob had surrounded GOP state senator Glenn Grothman.

People were losing their humanity:

I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders.... [W]hen they perceive that Meade isn't one of them they flip... into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who's finding out what's going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their "plant" theory. And it's not just a theory. They know he's a plant. 

But he's not a plant. He's a human being. An individual human being. And so are all the protesters, but I fear they are losing their grip on that reality.

Later, Meade defends a monument.

25 most-watched Althouse/Meade videos of 2011.

1. Wisconsin Capitol protesters disrespect the Veterans Memorial. 66,919 views.

2. Wisconsin protesters get children to chant. 37,011 views.

3. Gov. Scott Walker compared to Hitler. 28,944 views.

4. 14-Year-Old Girl at Tea Party Rally in Madison Drowned Out by Chants and Boos. 26,219 views.

5. First-hand View of the Attack on Althouse at the Wisconsin Capitol Singalong. 25,674 views.

6. Attack on Althouse at the Wisconsin Capitol Singalong. 24,054 views.

7. Protest at the Wisconsin Capitol, Saturday, Part 15. 15,359 views. (Doctors give excuse notes to protesters.)

8. Protesters re-take the Wisconsin Capitol. 12,111 views.

9. Sarah Palin in Madison, Wisconsin. 11,766 views.

10. Anti-Scott Walker protesters get aggressive. 11,657 views.

11. A Class War Is Coming. 10,668 views.

12. Scraping the Stickers and Tape Off the Wisconsin Capitol Marble. 10,502 views.

13. Meade washes communist graffiti off a Madison Civil War monument. 9,375 views.

14. The Silent Majority Walk and the Naked Bike Ride. 6,697 views.

15. Protest at the Wisconsin Capitol, Saturday, Part 12. 6,639 views. (I question a woman who yells about "teabagging.")

16. Althouse and Meade return to the Veterans Memorial at the Wisconsin Capitol protest. 6,217 views.

17. Russ Feingold stirs up the Walkerville crowd. 5,639 views.

18. At the Wisconsin protests: "Hang them all!" 5,007 views.

19. 6 Questions About the Kloppenburg-Prosser Election. 4,852 views.

20. JoAnne Kloppenburg Asks For a Recount of the April 5 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. 4,472 views.

21. Meade Is New Media. 4,087 views.

22. Madison city salt trucks circle Capitol Square blowing horns in apparent solidarity with protesters. 3,992 views.

23. Politicizing the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election. 3,510 views.

24. 2 teachers protest outside the window of Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman. 3,781 views.

25. A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda. 3,643 views.

After the "disgusting... union busting," the largest state employees unions in Wisconsin fail to meet the recertification deadline.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Marty Beil, executive director of the 23,000-member Wisconsin State Employees Union representing largely blue-collar workers, said none of the units in his group will seek recertification....

To win the recertification election, unions must get 51% of the vote of all the members of their bargaining unit, not just the ones who take the time to cast ballots - a much higher bar than state elected officials have to clear to win their offices.

A spokesman for Walker had no comment.

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), a vocal critic of unions, hailed the news.

"It means that in the future decisions will be made in the best interest of the public and the best state employees, but the radical employees or the underperforming employees will have much less say," he said.

Here's the old "What's Disgusting/Union Busting" chant as recorded by Meade in the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda, originally posted on February 16th:

Wisconsin legislators fight over whether to fully reimburse Madison for law enforcement help during the protests.

The budget committee approved $8.2 million to cover all the extra law enforcement that was required during the protests, but some GOP legislators are resisting paying $751,500 to the city of Madison, on the theory that Madison police and Dane County deputies might not really have been serving in good faith.

"It's almost a slap in the face to ask that question," Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said. "It's very disappointing as a law enforcement professional that someone for political reasons would question the ethics and the integrity of our (work)."...

Republicans on the committee urged Walker administration officials to consider carefully the claims by the City of Madison and Dane County before paying them....

"I hope you're aware that the mayor of Madison clearly would have preferred his police officers to stay on the other side of the (Capitol) Square," Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) said.

Committee co-chairman Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester) echoed those reservations, saying he believes there were "legitimate concerns about actions of individual officers."...

Wray, the Madison police chief, said he never denied any direct request for help from the Capitol police or other state officials. He said that Madison police usually stayed off the Capitol Square grounds because of a prior agreement with the state that they would police the areas around it, which are their jurisdiction.

I'd like to see the specifics of those "concerns about actions of individual officers." In observing the protests nearly every day through the entire period of the protests, Meade and I often tried to figure out what the police were doing, including the Capitol police. There seemed to be a policy of facilitating the protesters, perhaps because it actually was the best strategy for maintaining order when the police were vastly outnumbered. I have video of protesters assuring me that "The police are on our side."

But allowing the protesters to believe that was one way of keeping them calm and under control. It made a lot of protesters willing to wait patiently in lines when they could have rushed doors, and it made them willing — much of the time — to listen to polite requests from police. I don't like the idea of questioning the integrity of the police who were faced with controlling huge crowds of relentless, angry people who felt righteously entitled to occupy the Capitol building and grounds.

Put the specifics out there, or pay up and move on.

As for the protesters, you drained that $8.2 million out of the state treasury. Take responsibility for that.

ADDED: From the Badger Herald:

A statement from the [Joint Finance Committe] said operating decisions of the Madison police during the protests were inappropriately affected by the political leanings of high ranking members of the police department and the Mayor’s office.

“The comments and actions of (then) Mayor [Dave Cieslewicz], Police Chief Noble Wray, County Executive Kathleen Falk and Sheriff Dave Mahoney encouraged the behavior of the siege participants in an attempt to achieve a partisan political outcome in this government crisis,” the statement said. ...

Rep. Steven Nass, R-Whitewater, a member of the JFC, said he believes the police administrators inappropriately relaxed their officer policies during the protests....

“I am concretely certain that’s exactly what they did,” Nass said. “Clearly, [the police officers] were siding with the protesters and they were not going let them help. Quite frankly it was very unprofessional.”

These decisions made the protests a much more dangerous situation and inflated the cost on the taxpayer, Nass said....

Madison and Capitol police were only in the building for a handful of days, Nass said, and remained primarily absent from the Capitol grounds and rotunda for the majority of the protests. He said the city has overfilled the bill in order to get improper state financing.

“[I believe] that the city of Madison has padded this bill,” Nass said. “They saw a way to take advantage of tax payer dollars, and they are taking that opportunity.”

The problem of absentee voting in the Wisconsin recall elections.

If any of the elections in the next 2 weeks are close, I think we'll be hearing a lot about the students sending in ballots from out of state.

“The absentee ballot provisions are there for permanent residents, to make sure those otherwise occupied have the ability to cast a vote in elections where they live,” said State Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend). “A dorm contract that expires in May or a lease that begins in September does not qualify you to vote on August 9. The law is not there to simply make things easy to cheat.”

Summer elections are unusual around here.

3 recall elections against Democratic state senators will go forward.

These will go forward on July 12 19th, along with a week after the 6 recall elections for Republican senators.

The Government Accountability Board... took note of Democrats' claims of fraud by circulators of the petitions against the three, but disallowed only about 230 signatures, connected to just one of the circulators, because of the fraud.

Good. 

We just watched Senator Grothman on the Eliot Spitzer show, and he said that "even on [his] darkest days," he did not picture the Democrats taking over the majority in the senate.

(By the way, it was really weird watching that, because Grothman was standing outside the Capitol, a couple miles from where we live, and the tornado warning siren went off. The siren went off on the television, not where we could hear it live, but it seemed to apply to us. We were having a big thunderstorm, with mothball-sized hail.)

ADDED: I had to correct the dates for the elections. Sorry I'd misread that. This means that when the Democrats face recall, we will already know whether there is a potential shift in the majority. That is, if at least 3 Republicans lose their seats, then it will create tremendous pressure on the Republicans to oust a Democrat to regain their majority. I'm assuming we'll know the outcome of the election at that point, but maybe we'll need some recounts and court challenges before we know.

2 teachers stand vigil outside the window of Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman.

Meade shot this video on March 15, 2011, outside the Wisconsin Capitol. The teachers, from Sauk City, say the GOP legislation has turned them into "peons." Meade interviews them until they walk off, ending the vigil.

Will the legislature cut back on affirmative action in the University of Wisconsin System?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Affirmative action in the University of Wisconsin System and state contracting would be abolished or significantly scaled back under legislative proposals to be taken up today by a committee of state lawmakers and citizens.

One measure would draft a constitutional amendment that would prohibit state agencies and public universities from granting preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin....

Other proposals, crafted by Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), chairman of the Special Committee on Affirmative Action, would:

• Require racial or ethnic minorities applying to the UW System or state contracting agencies to prove they are at least 25% that race or ethnicity to receive preferential consideration.

• Require racial or ethnic minorities applying to the UW System to demonstrate "knowledge or experience" of their racial or ethnic group to receive preferential consideration. If applicable, the applicant would have to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English.

• Prohibit the UW System from considering the race or ethnicity of an applicant unless the applicant proves that his or her family makes less than 400% of the federal poverty level ($80,000 for a family of four)....

David Giroux, a spokesman for the UW System, said there was a "compelling need for diversity" in public universities and that it would be a shame for the Legislature to move against affirmative action, which he described as a "divisive issue."

"Diversity benefits all students, improving the quality of their education and their prospects for career success," he said.

Grothman disagreed.

"I think it's racist to imply that I'm going to learn something from you because your great-great-grandparents came from someplace else," he said. "Unless you literally grow up in another country, you're an American just like everyone else. You follow the Packers, eat McDonald's, and share the same tastes as everyone else."

(Do some people figuratively grow up in another country? Apparently, yes.)

I understand Grothman's point, that diversity-based admissions ought to connect to some real diversity that the student will bring to the classroom. But isn't his solution worse than the problem he cites? We're going to ask students to prove what percent of a race they are? That's really ugly, worse than abolishing affirmative action altogether I would think.

Growthman!

Letters in Bottles is simulblogging the Future of Wisconsin conference -- some kind of conservative policy fest. The first panel is moderated by someone identified as Growthman, possibly some sort of superhero or possibly someone actually named Grothman. Anyway, it would be cool if there could be some government policy geek superhero named Growthman, solving all our problems with endless economic expansion.