Trump Escalates Republican War Against Voting in Cuckoo Recount Effort

Jacob Lawrence - from the Migration Series (1940–41)

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — In modern America, the Republican Party's war against voters is waged as a full-spectrum assault against liberty, accelerating in the last ten years.

Destroying black and brown lives, stripping human beings of dignity and liberty, have long been sport for white folks here. But Republicans have escalated  systemic destruction of the foundational right to cast votes (see Article III, Wisconsin Constitution; Ballotpedia).

Trump's new effort to ultimately convince courts to declare that 100,000s of voters' ballots are illegal is the latest of this anti-human project.

Trump's campaign gives County Canvassing Boards names of disfavored voters and says, throw out these ballots.

Extreme action for certain, but business as usual in a broader sense.

I worked as a Wisconsin election inspector (poll worker), for some 60 shifts between 1998 and 2016.

It used to be funny — because it was pathetic — to witness the sudden chill in the room, uncomfortable shifting in chairs, worried expressions of white poll workers morphing into grimaces bordering on disbelief as young black men entered the polling place in the morning shift at the old Fire Station Number Two in Fitchburg, Wisconsin (Alder Dist One).

Well, who can blame the white folks? 

You should have seen the voters' black hair, dark-brown skin, often adorned in golden jewelry and tight dark tee-shirts of I don't know what. You know what they do, who they are. 

And our white votes get cancelled out by these guys?

It's the way it is.

White poll workers and the Fitchburg City Clerk's office were not amused by black folks. In fact, they were hostile to anyone who reported Fitchburg racism. I know. [By the way, anecdotal reports from the 2020 presidential general elections indicate the voting experience is getting better now.]

This is Wisconsin, so it may surprise readers what one becomes inured to, but from a first-person stand-point, I can say I tried to alert the political world about Fitchburg. See also Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of One City Learning Centers, and his experience with Fitchburg.

Nothing surprises me here.

Trump's latest absurd forays into obliterating swaths of voters can be seen as a continuation of white efforts to troll black and brown folks, ongoing Republican work to transform election law to stop non-Republican voters and a heightened operation against entire jurisdictions such as Dane County and Milwaukee County. (See Beck, Glauber and Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nichols, The Capital Times).

In 2016, in the voting rights litigation, One Wis­con­sin Insti­tute v. Thom­sen, much Repub­li­can vot­er-obstruc­tion leg­is­la­tion was swept away, opening up metro voting districts to help voters vote and have those votes count.

Of course the Republican legal empire struck back.

In June 2020, Judge Frank Easterbrook, from the Seventh Circuit, using his propensity to play loose with facts, penned Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Easterbrook reinstated most of the Republican-enacted restrictions on early voting.

Easterbrook sees no racism in Republicans' Wisconsin election law, as long the Republican Party's animus toward minorities includes an animus toward Democrats. A bizarre judicial doctrine.

Crazy is the order of the day.

You hear about the Trump campaign attorney heading up the stop-the-ballots effort here? 

Trump's lead attorney, Jim Troupis, and his wife's votes would be invalidated, were Trump to prevail in his current recount-and-stop ballots efforts in Wisconsin (see Beck, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Law and Crime). 

This is because Trump wants early voting, (in-person, absentee), votes invalidated in Dane and Milwaukee counties. 

One can think of a few Due Process and Equal Protection problems with Trump's sought-after remedy for an imagined injury at the hands of Dane and Milwaukee counties.

Bear in mind, limiting early voting and racial intent and effect in Republican efforts to halt voting in jurisdictions where black and brown people live is fine, [no Constitutional problems], with Easterbrook.

But even Easterbrook, were this case to reach the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, would recoil.

It's crazy time in Wisconsin, but crazy is pretty much standard-going the last ten years, and is consistent with Wisconsin's secular religion: Most white folks really don't like black and brown people very much.

Wisconsin Got What It Wanted — Systemic, State Violence, Administered by the Badger Judenrat

Wisconsin Democrats administer the carceral state that sees
innocents swept off the streets and warehoused in prison,
and administrative bail-probation-parole complexes.
Municipal and other Judenrat are rewarded handsomely.

Madison, Wisconsin — The attempted destruction of the European Jews stands as the beginning of modern world history.

But not because of the defeat of totalitarianism and anti-Semitism as political systems.

Not because by-standers, compliance, and acting out of convenience in the face of moral horror became imprecatory to human affairs. 

Totalitarianism won. Hate won. 

The Judenrat won.

The fight continues, but the proposition that human beings retain rights to life and liberty is a sick joke to anyone with a fleeting understanding of American post-war foreign policy and the modern domestic police state.

Prison-state America has destroyed countless lives, and the best one generation offers now is to cancel people on social media not anointed of their taboo morality and contrived, ahistorical understanding of America and its inception.

Tens of thousands of municipalities have become mini-police states, some of the modern-day Judenrat becoming so enamored of their offices of authority, local police load up with military weapons, and face down imaginary threats to the community, in self-defense of course.

Domestically, and Wisconsin is a paradigm, many statist Democrats erected a police-prison state that shamed the cause of liberty and made the 'progressive state' the worse place to be black and brown in America. 

Police roadblocks, William Rehnquist was right jurisprudence has dominated Wisconsin Democratic Party politics for decades, though ultimately as least roadblocks and show-me-your-papers operations were rejected by voters, putting Democrat Kathleen Falk out of political business.

Who could be stupid as to not realize black and brown people doing nothing except driving do not want and deserve encounters with police as a condition of driving? Wisconsin Democrats.

Democrats are back at it of course, and any acclamation of the Fourth Amendment is met with suspicion by police-state Democrats.

Increased criminalization means giving local police more power to attack black and brown people. @GovEvers has no clue what he is doing. Defense against bogus citations and cowboy judges is impossible, and @GovEvers wants "to send a message"? This guy is a dolt. https://t.co/ixr3HFC51d

— Michael Leon (@mal644) January 2, 2019

It used to be reasonable to believe that Democrats like Gov. Tony Evers (D), Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D) were simply clueless about what police do to harm black and brown people.

This is folly. You meet a cop on the road, and your life is at risk. 

This is the way Democrats want it.

Community outrage continues today against such recent police killings in Wisconsin of Paul Heenan (Schenider, The Capital Times (2013)) (killed by Madison Police Officer Stephen Heimsness who resigned in June 2013 (Erickson, Wisconsin State Journal), Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. in Madison (Dean, The Capital Times), Michael Bell in Kenosha (2004), and Dontre Hamilton in Milwaukee (Luthern, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; Mal Contends). Too many victims to list. See also Paul Gottinger in CounterPunch.

Democratic judges are aligning with the disreputable Democratic-led Dept of Justice to keep an innocent man, Steven Avery, in prison.

Until Steven Avery and his equally innocent nephew, Brendan Dassey, are free, I will never cast a vote for any Democrat again.

Meanwhile, police repression continues in Kenosha, in Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, the whole god-damn state of Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Dept of Justice announced it is looking for a new head of the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).

Don't worry, I'm sure the Democratic-led police operation will find the perfect man for the job.

Someone who can reliably implement solutions well.

Wisconsin DOJ is #hiring a new head of the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI). The administrator is responsible for the leadership and overall management of DCI, which investigates crimes of statewide importance in Wisconsin. Cc: @wiscjobs Apply: https://t.co/AOrPjtwIUI

— Attorney General Josh Kaul (@WisDOJ) August 4, 2021

Milwaukee Cops Harassed Wisconsin State Rep, He's Now Co-Plaintiff in ACLU Suit Against Cops

Wisconsin State Rep. David C.
Crowley, (D-Milwaukee), was
pulled over by Milwaukee
cops with guns drawn, searched
and frisked. Crowley is a
black human being.

Updated - Armed police stopping anyone, invading homes, harassing, issuing bogus citations, and arresting is now public policy in Wisconsin, and one surmises other states as well.

This is a fact of American society that remains hidden to many.

In the class-action suit filed in federal court in Milwaukee, Collins v. City of Milwaukee, et al, citizens are pleading their liberties under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. See ACLU press release.

The following piece was first published in The Pontiac Tribune by Isiah Holmes.

By Isiah Holmes, (via Cop Block)

Wisconsin’s ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) just amended their lawsuit against the Milwaukee Police Department. The action, filed at the beginning of 2017 blasting problematic stop and frisks, increased its plaintiff list. Now, Representative David Crowley, (D-Milwaukee), is joining as a victim of harassment in the troubled city.

Milwaukee-local TFC, (The Fifth Column), writers were notified of these developments by Wisconsin ACLU Associate Director Molly Collins. The notification was issued as a press release to TFC, and other local media outlets. According to the release, Rep. Crowley–of Wisconsin’s 17th Assembly District–was subjected to an unnerving MPD stop.

ACLU recounted Crowley’s experience, taking place before he’d been elected to his current position. While walking with his god brother, the pair heard distant gunshots and opted to walked away. Gun violence can be quite common in some parts of Milwaukee, particularly during the summer. "A patrol car stopped in front of us," says Crowley, "and two officers jumped out with guns drawn and pointed right at us. I was terrified."

He then states officers took their wallets and I.D’s as the pair stood with hands up. "The officers drew their guns on us, searched us without our consent, and never explained why," Crowley states. The pair were then asked if they’d discarded a gun in the field they were walking in. Rep. Crowley feels MPD "treated us like suspects, yet we had done nothing wrong." As many with similar experiences feel, Crowley states officers "decided the Constitution didn’t apply to us."

ACLU’s lawsuit also added other new plaintiffs, both with similar tales. 19 year old Jeremiah Oliver says he was stopped without reasonable suspicion, ACLU’s statement reads. Yet another, Jeremy Brown, claims an officer stopped him because he didn’t recognize his face. According to ACLU, Brown was then ordered to drop everything, and stand against a fence for questioning. Upon returning from the police station, Brown was issued a $185 disorderly conduct ticket.

The Milwaukee Police Department has been routinely interfering in the lives of tens of thousands of Black and Latino residents, stopping them, searching them, and worse—all without reasonable suspicion and as if the Constitution didn’t exist – Karyn Rotker, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Wisconsin.

Rotker goes onto state the MPD’s routine harassment of minority citizens has deeply eroded trust. Without it, the department’s ability to effectively investigate crime is inherently crippled. Ultimately, ACLU hopes to help improve MPD’s oversight, and community discourse. Not only that, but–as Collins expressed to the author in March–the nonprofit hopes other departments take notice. In Milwaukee County, this may be necessary, as MPD isn’t the only concerning department.

In a nearby suburb, which borders Milwaukee, officers have long been accused of racially-biased policing. The Wauwatosa Police Department, although largely overshadowed by MPD, has left lasting negative impressions in some residents. Such feelings boiled over last summer, when an officer shot his second person in 11 months.

The circumstances surrounding Jay Anderson’s shooting continue to bounce around the community. Namely, many residents were disturbed at WPD’s lack of transparency in the case, and pushback against protests staged by Anderson’s family. These actions, in fact, were provoked by WPD’s reluctance to disclose any information regarding the killing. Prior to the shooting, which the author covered extensively, WPD’s transparency issues became the subject of a documentary, also produced by the author.

When the lawsuit was first filed in Febrary, MPD Chief Ed Flynn defended his department’s stop and frisk procedure. Specifically, Flynn pointed to a lack of citizen complaints despite increased stops. As Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, most stops don’t produce tickets, or even arrests. That fact, however, does not remedy the level of distrust the policy has generated throughout Milwaukee.

It’s difficult to predict exactly how MPD will eventually respond to any success the lawsuit might have. Last year, MPD consented to a DOJ practices probe during a time ripe with protests and investigations. The move was encouraging, as other departments reviewed at that time didn’t consent to probes. MPD also went the extra mile, with Chief Flynn attending a massive public forum to hear grievances. The audience choked with dissatisfied citizens victimized by stops, beatings, searches, and even more serious offenses like rape.

Confidence in the meeting, however, waned after MPD was then caught using Stingray cell data surveillance to illegally monitor citizens. The surveillance operations were so sketchy, in fact, that they were hidden from courts. Wauwatosa PD also collects and analyzes cell data, though how they achieve this isn’t currently known.

As the lawsuit develops, it’s becoming increasingly clear that something must give. In the last year, Milwaukee has had massive riots, several police shootings, including routine practices. The playing field is primed for ACLU’s lawsuit to make headway of some kind. If not, then the public’s resentment and frustration will simply manifest again.
#
Below is the ACLU of Wisconsin press release:

State Legislator Joins ACLU Lawsuit Against MPD Stop-and-Frisk Program

MILWAUKEE — Last night, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin, and the law firm of Covington and Burling filed an amended complaint in their class-action lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee over its police department’s vast stop-and-frisk program. The revised complaint adds three named plaintiffs to the lawsuit, one of whom is Representative David Crowley, a state legislator representing Wisconsin’s 17th Assembly District. Like the other named plaintiffs and tens of thousands of other Milwaukeeans of color, Rep. Crowley has been subject to an unconstitutional stop and frisk by the Milwaukee police without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and based on racial profiling.

One evening before he was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly, Rep. Crowley was walking with his godbrother in Milwaukee. “We heard gunshots in the distance, so we walked in the other direction to avoid trouble. A patrol car stopped in front of us, and two officers jumped out with guns drawn and pointed right at us. I was terrified,” said Rep. Crowley.

He and his godbrother put up their hands. The police frisked them, taking their wallets from their pants pockets and pulling their IDs from the wallets. One officer asked if the two men had thrown a gun into the field where they had been walking.

“The police treated us like suspects, yet we had done nothing wrong. The officers drew their guns on us, searched us without our consent, and never explained why,” said Rep. Crowley. “As young Black men, we were presumed guilty. The police decided that the Constitution doesn’t apply to us.”

Another new plaintiff in the suit is Jerimiah Olivar, a 19-year-old Latino Milwaukeean, who was stopped and frisked by police without reasonable suspicion while riding his bike in the early afternoon. The third new plaintiff, Jeremy Brown, is Black, and a police officer stopped him while he was walking one morning because the officer didn't recognize his face. The officer ordered Mr. Brown to drop what he was carrying and stand against a fence while he questioned him. Mr. Brown was eventually taken to the police station and released with a $185 ticket for disorderly conduct.

“The Milwaukee Police Department has been routinely interfering in the lives of tens of thousands of Black and Latino residents, stopping them, searching them, and worse—all without reasonable suspicion and as if the Constitution didn’t exist,” said Karyn Rotker, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Wisconsin. “The department’s practices have caused Black and Latino Milwaukeeans to deeply distrust and fear police, crippling its ability to investigate crime.”

The Milwaukee Police Department conducts far more stops and frisks in neighborhoods that are predominantly Black or Latino than in other parts of the city.

Collins v. City of Milwaukee seeks reforms of the Milwaukee Police Department that protect constitutional rights through bias-free and evidence-based policing, transparency, and accountability. These reforms include an end to conducting stops and frisks without reasonable suspicion and to stopping people based on race or ethnicity. The lawsuit also seeks improved training, supervision, and monitoring of officers who conduct stops and frisks, and the collection and semiannual release to the public of data on all stops and frisks to permit analysis for evidence of constitutional violations.

For the amended complaint and more information about the lawsuit:

ACLU:https://www.aclu.org/cases/collins-et-al-v-city-milwaukee-et-al
ACLU of Wisconsin: http://aclu-wi.org/issue/collins-v-city-milwaukee
For more information about Covington & Burling:https://www.cov.com/

PDF Download: 

2017_5_23AmdedCmplt.pdf

Wisconsin — Democrats Fly Identity-Politics Flag, and Virtue-Signal amid Calls for Liberation

Madison, Wisconsin — Wisconsin is the worst place to be black.

It's an empirical fact. If you're of a darker hue, it's an experiential fact.

One of the last places one hears challenge to our generic ideology, racism, is from the Democratic Party.

Forget Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Forget Philly, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis; they're all fonts of integration and social justice compared to Wisconsin and greater Milwaukee.

This tragedy is sustained by the gerrymandered-empowered White Party, with full cooperation from the Democrats that as a political force steers clear of fighting racism.

In this milieu, we consider heroic work of liberation fighters in Madison, Milwaukee, Wauwautosa, the whole state, including Fond du Lac, my native city where praise-the-lord hosannas co-existed with nigger jokes in the 1970s-80s.

Wisconsin's ole-time religion explains why Reps Tom Petri, (R-Fond du Lac), Toby Roth, (R-Green Bay), and James Sensenbrenner (R-White People) all opposed establishing Dr. King's holiday in 1983, (Gov Track).

Petri, Roth and Sensenbrenner knew Wisconsin — white and white — and racists were this trio's kind of people.

This is fine with Democrats, who respond today with virtue-signaling, which is to say a vacuous liberal emitting of sounds employing identity politics and political correctness, while embracing the brutal police war against black and brown folks.

Virtue-signaling and political correctness have the additional qualities of repulsing millions who see the toxic and insincere quality of liberal posturing on race, for example.

Wisconsin State Sen. Tim Carpenter

Consider the pro-drug war Wisconsin State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) who antagonized a group of protesters in Madison in June, grabbed some headlines and continues his crusade against minorities following decades of service in the drug war.

Carpenter didn't show up to Madison for support Black Lives Matter in early Summer.

Carpenter is a cop-wanna-be who brags he "completed the Milwaukee Police Department Citizen Academy in 2018," and made the Wisconsin Professional Police Association Law Enforcement Honor Roll, (Drug Task Force).

Carpenter helped killed marijuana reform during the 2007-11 period when the Democrats controlled both the Wisconsin state legislature and the governor office.

Human rights and civil liberties do not occupy a prominent place in Carpenter and the Democratic Party's ambitions.

There were no decriminalization efforts, no decarceration, no ripping up the State drug crime statues, no eviscerating the Wisconsin Code of Ordinances, a common citation tool used by municipal police against minorities and dissenting citizens. Protesting, you inciting a riot.

So, just before the July Fourth Holiday, I posed questions and challenges to Carpenter on Twitter on why he was continuing to oppose efforts by black liberation groups, specifically citing his misreported conduct during the liberation protests here in June.

Carpenter's responses did not disappoint.

This is a politician demonstrating no comprehension of what police routinely, and systemically, inflict onto black and brown communities.

Instead, Carpenter protests that he is gay, hence is an "ally" of black folks, in his telling.

Carpenter even puts emojis on his Twitter posts, a revealing example of virtue signaling while advocating for public policy that makes Wisconsin the worst place to be black.

The social media questions and challenges and Carpenter's responses are posted below.

A question not included below, but one I pose here is: Will Carpenter oppose law enforcement action against all parties involved in his agent provocateur's conduct last June.

Question, during 07-11 when Dems had unified control, could you point to criminal reform laws you passed, pot reform, med pot, civil liberties laws, Con amendments for same? Police violence reform? No. Had change of heart I guess from all of your love for black people now.

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 3, 2020

You milked a scrap against BLM, got your national press, played victim of scary black men. You're a cop-wanna-be since before you killed pot reform 15 years ago. You live on identity politics, nice ticket for vapid Dem Party that has incarcerated, killed black folks for decades. https://t.co/qvO7mdNAPr

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 3, 2020

Now, you are explicitly defending cops as not racist, and defending a fundamentally racist system. You're a Democrat. You're also a charlatan, you don't care about civil and human rights anymore than most of the Dems do. https://t.co/VntZ4nfiHz

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 4, 2020

@TimCarpenterMKE is drug warrior, helped kill pot reform 07-11; hates progressives. But he's gay so identity pols love em He's wasn't here to help, but to antagonize, give BLM a black eye. Carpenter brags re police links: Police Dept Citizen Academy, so on https://t.co/XGEPKOUMN5

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 1, 2020

Dialogue? Give me a break. Milwaukee cops are vicious, hostile, racist assholes. You must know this. Only a radical restructuring of this gang of thugs and punks is called-for. Hey, how did that dialogue work out?

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 3, 2020

Mike-Sherman Park riots, Police relations w/Black residents were strained. I decided to learn about police procedures, so I went to MKE Police Citizen’s Academy to learn about Police training to create ways for better dialogue w/the public. Tried to get 2 parties talking! ☮️ ❤️🙏🏽

— Tim Carpenter (@TimCarpenterMKE) July 3, 2020

Dialogue? Give me a break. Milwaukee cops are vicious, hostile, racist assholes. You must know this. Only a radical restructuring of this gang of thugs and punks is called-for. Hey, how did that dialogue work out?

— Michael Leon (@mal644) July 3, 2020

Wisc DoJ, Kenosha Police Union Launch PR Campaign for Killer Cop as Press Descends on Kenosha

Message to National Press on Racists, Rusten Sheskey and Kyle Rittenhouse and Kenosha

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — As the nation bears witness to the Kenosha carnage in advance of Pres Trump's Tuesday tour, some features bear notice: Wisconsin law enforcement: They lie; not just garden-variety lies, but mission-critical lies in the worst state to be black and brown.

Municipal, County, State Patrol, Capitol Police, Dept of Justice [Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)] — multi-generational institutions perfect lies in police reports, statements at 'crime' scenes, press conferences, testilying, investigations of police conduct, defaming, bad-mouthing citizens (our brothers and sisters) and as we know, mayhem and attempted murder by police.

Name a situation in which a cop communicates and he will soon lie; no act is too petty or too vicious and inhuman for police here and candor will not precede or follow. Sever a spine, eviscerate a black man, it's all in a day's work for police who retreat to their cult, knowing their police union and in Kenosha, Democratic Party officials, will lay down cover.

The Kenosha Police union is in full-out attack mode against Jacob Blake, and you can bet they are not consulting anyone but police when they put out their propaganda.

Wisconsin is racist, certainly among the worst states in this all-American enterprise.

Kenosha stains the nation because its racists are more open about their antipathy of black people and ostentatious in their disdain for the press, civil liberties and human rights.

It's the way it is. Don't take my word, national press; seek background from Wisconsin criminal justice litigators and scholars, though it is not considered politic to state the above facts on the record. 

Better yet, ask anyone who is black in Kenosha, Wisconsin. If you're a journalist from out-of-state, literally walk up to any random black person anywhere and ask if police are racist and dishonest.

This is a bi-partisan misinformation project, apartheid and slow-motion Holocaust project, and of course Republicans are the worst statewide, not so in Kenosha. Democrats dominate City and County government, though the leading clown, the sheriff, is a Republican, like most cops.

Some of the primary law enforcement liars at work against truth and black people are, (in no particular order) heavy Democratic Party hacks:

Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) - This little turd is a particularly fetid example of a liar. By the way, this site is working with advocates for the wrongfully convicted Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer. Kaul abides blatant law breaking by his staff. With respect to Kenosha, Kaul's dept is already laying the groundwork for the no-charge against the racist Kenosha cop as the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) handles both public relations and crafting the case for why the racist cop should not be charged, discarding its statutory mandate to work as objective investigators. Kaul worked as federal prosecutor in Baltimore before moving back to Wisconsin. but Kaul sees no racism, and police can do no wrong, not in Baltimore, not in Kenosha.

Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis - Miskinis runs the police department as a white-power militia, under color of law, viewing with suspicion any citizens of a dark hue. Miskinis has already exonerated his police for maiming Jacob Blake, and for offering aid and comfort to the racist killer and aspiring cop, Kyle Rittenhouse. He instead blames curfew violators for being murdered by Rittenhouse. Human rights and civil liberties groups are calling for the immediate resignation of Miskinis and Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth.

Miskinis is hostile to the idea of liberal democracy and he enjoys the political support of Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian (D), a steady force against black people in a city that arrests church member in broad daylight for bringing water and food to this despicable bin of racists.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth - Like Miskinis, Beth fantasizes that black people should disappear and be warehoused away, as noted prominently in the Washington Post.

CNN reported on this racist, David Beth:

David Beth addressed reporters in January 2018 following the arrests of five people for shoplifting at a Tommy Hilfiger outlet store in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and a high-speed chase that led to their arrests.

At least four of the suspects were Black, according to jail records. The fifth suspect was a minor, the sheriff's department said in a statement.

'I'm to the point that I think society has to come to a threshold where there's some people that aren't worth saving,' Beth said at the news conference a day after the incident, according to CNN affiliate WTMJ. 'We need to build warehouses, to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives.'

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley will decline to prosecute Kenosha's racist cop Rustin Sheskey. For Graveley, Kenosha cops like Sheskey are one of theirs'.

Graveley, a racist who gets bi-partisan political support, loves prosecuting black people, but would never touch a cop, no matter how outrageous the conduct. (See, for example, Harvard Crimson and the absurd case of Chrystul D. Kizer).

When Gravely last ran for election, he fed his bi-partisan support, including from David Beth, to local media. From the Kenosha News:

Graveley, named last week as Wisconsin Prosecutor of the Year by Attorney General Brad Schimel, said he will run as a Democrat. In a bipartisan show of support, County Executive Jim Kreuser, a Democrat, and Sheriff David Beth, a Republican, both strongly endorsed Graveley.

Kreuser and Beth described Graveley as a strong advocate for crime victims and a friend of law enforcement.

Screw over enough black people, and law enforcement will make you prosecutor of the year here.

Then, there's the Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian, a Democratic Party pol, who provides cover and political support for the whole Kenosha mad-dog operation.  

Antaramian will never call for the resignations of the more open racists, Beth and Miskinis. They have a nice tax payer-funded game going and they watch each others' back, as they shoot black people in the back.

Kenosha County Exec Jim Kreuser (D) will do nothing and say nothing to advocate for black folks and human rights.

Black lives don't matter here. Trump wants this news trumpeted, more loud chaos, more graphic death. Democrats want this reality quiet, warehouse blacks away, but do it quiet, make Kenosha look peaceful and friendly.

Don't look for police press conferences for candid anwsers, if Kenosha cops decide to actually conduct them in the face of mounting national ridicule.

Justices on 7th Circuit Do Duty for Racist GOP — Slash Voting

Wisconsin voting rights workers worked to defend citizenss against
Republican-enacted voter obstruction laws. Molly McGrath (L), a
voting rights attorney with the ACLU, works with Madison residents
to get the IDs they need to vote under Wisconsin’s restrictive
voter-ID law. (Courtesy of Molly McGrath)

Madison, Wisconsin —You should have seen Wisconsin voters streaming into metro voting precincts after a voting rights victory in the Summer 2016, (One Wisconsin Institute v. Jacobs, [Thomsen] (16-3091).

With black hair and dark skin, voters sometimes teamed-up with white women just to stick it in good folks' collective face; and ole-time Wisconsin values looked frayed as Gov Scott Walker (R) was knocked out of office in 2018.

Used to be, you only had to deal with black folks at Bucks games and visits to the Milwaukee Zoo. Now, you can find black folks in Fond du Lac marching down the street like they own the place.

God-fearing racists need not have worried.

Judge Frank Easterbrook is the racists' ace in the hole, though Easterbrook, and his propensity to play with loose with facts, proved an unpunctual card to play in Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), voting rights cases decided June 29, 2020, (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Easterbrook's job, as he sees it, is to diminish voting rights, and devise new ways for Republican legislators to stop minorities to vote.

Reports Rick Hasen, election law expert, on Easterbrook's I-see-no-racism-here June 2020 opinion from the Seventh Circuit: [Hasen's analysis should result in a code-red response, as 2020 will be the most comprehensive voter-obstruction project since the Civil War].

[W]ith no explanation for the 3-year delay ... overall this is a very voter-unfriendly decision (and I say that not necessarily because of the holdings but because of the dismissiveness of the panel’s approach to voting rights issues and what it means for future challenges).

Some details:

This appeal is complicated: it comes from two separate cases where various election laws were challenged as unconstitutional, a violation of the Voting Rights Act, or both. Some of the decisions of the lower court judges were inconsistent, and some of the issues, came up to the 7th Circuit in earlier challenges to the voter id aspects of the law.
Judge Easterbrook, as is his style, gives breezy and superficial treatment to many of these voting issues, making the three year delay in a unanimous case all the more inexplicable.

The opinion starts out with a very troubling discussion of Judge Adelman’s findings that some of these restrictive Wisconsin voting laws were passed with racial and partisan animus. The 7th Circuit found little direct evidence of racial discrimination and then suggested, in a very troubling way, that making it harder to vote on the basis of party is perfectly acceptable. ('If one party can make changes that it believes help its candidates, the other can restore the original rules or revise the new ones. The process does not include a constitutional ratchet.'). In support of this terrible idea, Judge Easterbrook cites the Rucho case from the Supreme Court, which held that there are no judicially manageable standards to separate permissible from impermissible consideration of party in redistricting. But that did not carry over into voting rules, like rules for early voting, and the Supreme Court has never held that partisan animus provides a legitimate basis for discriminatory voting rules.

Making matters even worse, Judge Easterbrook dismisses without analysis the argument that discriminating against Democrats when so much of the party is made up of racial minorities can in some circumstances be a form of racial discrimination. ('The record does not show that legislators made any of the changes because Democratic voters are more likely to be black (or because black voters are more likely to support Democrats). The changes were made because of politics.').

What Easterbrook's dismissive opinion does is give the green light to Republicans to stop as many black and brown people as possible from voting, as long as their party-line-enacted statutes and elected Republicans do not explicitly state 'stop black and brown voters.'

Two U.S. District judges in Wisconsin see Republican voter obstruction differently.

For example, Judge James Peterson writes in One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen, [Jacobs] (16-3091).:

[I] find that 2013 Wis. Act 146, restricting hours for in-person absentee voting, intentionally discriminates on the basis of race. I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose. The legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African Americans. Thus, I conclude that the limits on in-person absentee voting imposed by Act 146 fail under the Fifteenth Amendment, as well as under the Anderson-Burdick analysis.

In sum, Wisconsin has the authority to regulate its elections to preserve their integrity, and a voter ID requirement can be part of a well-conceived election system. But, as explained in the pages that follow, parts of Wisconsin’s election regime fail to comply with the constitutional requirement that its elections remain fair and equally open to all qualified electors.

No rational person in Wisconsin disputes that the intent and effect of the Republican transformation of Wisconsin election law is to obstruct voters, except Easterbrook and fellow Republican judges on the Seventh Circuit.

So, for example, Waukesha County clerk Kathleen Novack (R), commenting on increased early-voting hours, opined in May 2016, that there "too much access to the voters as far as opportunities," (The Capital Times).

Novack added, when asked about increased municipal early-voting efforts in Madison and Milwaukee: "There has to come a point where it’s just giving over-access … to particular parts of the state." Novack wanted to stop early voting opportunities for Madison and Milwaukee, where most black and brown people live here.

Wisconsin Republicans know that four new Trump-appointed judges to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—vetted by the Federalist Society to whom Trump outsources vetting of judicial appointments—will sustain the Republican Party position against voting rights.

Stopping non-Republican voters from voting is a strategic initiative for Wisconsin Republicans.

The  grave threat to democracy is existential. See See Twenty of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. They're scared. "If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast."

In less than three months in late September, absentee voting begins for the November General Elections.

Republicans know their only chance for victory is to suppress the total vote of non-Republicans, a commitment about which they hold no shame, and that Frank Easterbrook supports on the bench, (Wisconsin State Journal).

And Wisconsin racists are happy.

Wisconsin Black Lives Matter Routs Democrat State Senator

State Sen. Tim Carpenter faked a collapse in front of WKOW-TV
at the Capitol, and then began his campaign demonizing Black
Lives Matter. This fake collapse was preceded by Carpenter's hollered
conversation as the Democrat spoke with several protest medics and
peacekeepers in an eight-minute conversation captured on audio,
Pittman/WORT News. Audio shows Carpenter declining medical
attention before his fake collapse.

Madison, Wisconsin — Not one Wisconsin elected Democrat stood up for Black Lives Matter and two innocent women pursued by an unhinged Democrat, State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee).

Via Medium.

Black Lives Matter don’t really matter, not here.

And BLM liberation protesters enjoy no presumption of innocence when protesting police violence, not while the Democratic Party has power.

In massive demonstrations during the 2020 Summer supporting George Floyd and demanding police end their war against the community, human rights workers irked one State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) — a drug warrior and self-proclaimed “reactionary” Democrat.

Forget Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Kenosha, Madison police have it in for black folks, and Wisconsin Democrats back the police, diligently defend wrongful convictions, harassment, police and prosecutor misconduct, amid a permanent low-intensity war against the darkly complected.

It’s SOP in Wisconsin.

Tim Carpenter is the perfect Democrat, a narcissistic corporatist so self-involved and malicious he would embarrass Joe Biden.

Carpenter is renown in some circles for single-handedly blocking doctor-prescribed marijuana in 2009, the better the State has weapons to imprison black and brown people in the drug war.

So, it was no surprise that Carpenter drove to Madison in late June 2020 and started a melee against a couple of hundred protesters rallying next to the Capitol near Midnight during the height of the George Floyd protests.

Carpenter, (later claiming he was making a late-night Capitol visit on official business), grabbed his phone and started recording the BLM group, a provocative action to which the group took offense.

Protesters explained to Carpenter that rightwing doxxers were recording BLM rallies, increasing fear that night that someone was going to get hurt on a night during which the marchers had to contend with gun shots and cars trying to run the group down.

The melee ensued, after which Carpenter unconvincingly played the victim.

But the group was easy prey for Carpenter and his political campaign, backed by the police, the district attorney and corporate media.

After lecturing the crowd that he was an ally of Black Lives Matter, a laughable proposition, a traumatized Carpenter performed a collapse on the Capitol grounds in front of a WKOW-TV (Madison) crew.

Carpenter did not fall uncontrollably to the pavement; he gently set himself down to a sitting position and laid down on the soft manicured brush. The media dutifully reported he collapsed. It was a charade.

Before and after his performance, Carpenter refused medical treatment.

Carpenter then enlisted the Democrat Dane County District Attorney to press charges against someone, anyone, at the Capitol that night.

The DA picked two local socially conscious women with no criminal records, Black Lives Matter protesters Kerida O’Reilly and Samantha Hamer, whom even Carpenter and the police could not identify as so much as laying a finger on the precious state senator.

The two women were each charged with multiple felonies and a misdemeanor — felony crime of Substantial Battery with Intent to Cause Bodily Harm, felony Party to a Crime, and misdemeanor Disorderly Conduct.

Both women faced years in prison in a Court presided over by a Gov. Scott Walker appointee, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Josann M. Reynolds, (R) appointed to the bench in 2015.

Charge stacking like what was endured in these cases serves two purposes. One, to coerce innocent protesters into pleading no contest to charges of which they are innocent; and two, to deter protesting of unlawful police behavior in the streets.

The Democrat-led Dane County District Attorney’s office changed its charging standard for this one case to accommodate Carpenter and the paucity of evidence against the defendants. The conventional evidentiary standard for the Dane County DA is case can be proven to a reasonable doubt, changed to: Reasonable inference. [(See, for example, WISC-TV 2018; Madison . com).

At a probable cause hearing in August 2020, Asst DA William Brown, known for over-the-top prosecutions and Manichean court posturing, admitted, “We don’t know exactly what happens [at the rally] … other than we have a witness that says various people began kicking and punching. There is a reasonable inference that those two people who are aggressively running at him are the ones involved in the exact same incident,” (Rickert, Wisconsin State Journal).

Judge Reynolds is corrupt against defendants’ rights, a status that draws few objections in Dane County.

At the prosecution’s behest, in early Sept 2021, Reynolds issued a radical ruling that compelled the appearance of three, then two area journalists covering the protests though none of these three could identity the defendants as touching Carpenter.

The rationale behind the forced Court appearance of journalists was to establish there was a large rally and ralliers were passionate.

Armed with the testimony that the rally was passionate, the prosecution argued in court that Ms. O’Reilly was passionate and near Carpenter, so it was reasonable to infer she assaulted Tim Carpenter.

Thus, we see the Wisconsin judiciary join the bad faith, logical fallacy and ill will on the part of the police and prosecutors who face little recrimination in this political culture wired to give these same police and prosecutors free reign.

After the two women were arrested, Carpenter went on a public relations spree to demonize Black Lives Matter; sponsored a bill to criminalize damaging statutes out of Carpenter’s spite; and accosted and harassed a black candidate for the State Senate, before being forced to apologize after the intercession of the state Democratic Party Chair and the Senate Minority Leader criticizing Carpenter, (The Capital Times, WTMJ — July, Fox News — June 30, Spectrum News One — Aug).

Carpenter was unhinged and petulant.

That the two women were not implicated by any direct evidence was of no apparent concern to Carpenter, the police, and the media who toed the police line all the way.

Bowing to the ridiculous lack of evidence, the DA in April 2021, offered a deal that featured no jail time and a deferred prosecution, that would have wiped the protesters’ record clean, WKOW-TV, (Galli).

No deal, we’re innocent, replied O’Reilly and Hamer.

O’Reilly declined another deal last month that would have dropped all three criminal charges in exchange for pleading no contest to the equivalent of a parking ticket. No deal, said O’Reilly.

BLM protester Samantha Hamer took the deal, fearing she was gambling her life on the whims of a jury.

On Oct. 19, after a two-day trial, the jury verdict was delivered to the remaining defendant: O’Reilly: Not guilty on all counts. The jury deliberated for just three hours.

This was an are-you-kidding verdict, but the resultant local coverage, with the exception of Tony Galli and Peter Culver at WKOW, barely mentioned the verdict.

Instead, overwhelmingly, the not-guilty local coverage is a rehash of the accusations, omitting entirely the fact noone saw the two women touch Tim Carpenter.

O’Reilly told WKOW that she will continue to support Black Lives Matter.

O’Reilly said she also felt relief that the truth came out. She was scared.

“I did not make physical contact with him, [Carpenter],” Kerida O’Reilly testified at trial, a statement even Tim Carpenter was forced to acknowledge in the face of aggressive questioning by defense attorney, Jessa Nicholson Goetz.

So, why this bogus prosecution? Because police and prosecutors want to.
That’s it.

Police face no recrimination for their arrest of the Black Lives Matter protesters. The DA faces no consequences, and Tim Carpenter, beyond burnishing his reputation as an asshole, faces no backlash from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Tim Carpenter is running for reelection in 2022. Progressive and pro-Black Lives Matter forces want a candidate to run against him in the Democratic Primary.

But Wisconsin also needs DAs and a criminal justice system that function as a check for deceitful politicians, and guard the rights of citizens against these same politicians and police who pose a threat to a peaceful community.
#

(Michael Leon is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His stories have appeared nationally in The Progressive, In These Times and CounterPunch. He can be reached at: malleon @ live.com .)

Scale of Voting Obstruction Project Is Not Acknowledged

Consider Wisconsin election law and the failure and refusal of elected representatives, bureaucrats, corporate press and most of the judiciary to note the intent behind unconstitutional voter obstruction, beyond passing comment. The voting rights community is small and its prospects are not heartening.

On the racist, voter obstructionist side, we have Wisconsin Republicans.

Wisconsin Republicans, and only Republicans, crafted the transformation of Wisconsin election law since they assumed elected office in 2011. This is a fact of Wisconsin public policy, and is noted in the July 2016 opinion in the voting rights case, One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen (U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)). (Worth noting, as well, is Judge James T. Peterson's silly and polemical characterization of Republican-enacted election law changes as "election reforms." [See page 8. "Since [2011], Wisconsin has implemented a series of election reforms. These laws covered almost every aspect of voting: registration, absentee voting, photo identification, and election-day mechanics." What's Peterson going to do later when the Republican-enacted photo voter ID is further litigated, adopt the Republican Hans von Spakovsky, and John Fund's talking point, 'Easy to vote, hard to cheat,' as his own? (Mal Contends) (Mal Contends).])

Peterson's bending over to find no fault with Wisconsin Republican motives in his One Wisconsin opinion, [Peterson found some fault], ignores both the intent and the effect of Republicans' work to block voters. Republicans stopped 10,000s of voters living in the black sectors of Milwaukee from voting so mission accomplished in election 2016, but with not enough help from Peterson protecting voters.

Effect of Republican Voter Obstruction Laws

Election law scholars, Lawrence Tribe, Ned Foley, Rich Hasan and Chris Carson, weigh in on the question of obstruction effect on voters this week.

A citizen's right and ability to vote is worth considering under the assumption that the political appointees, federal judges like Peterson, are political animals, and upon assumption to the bench do not suddenly become dispassionate Constitutional geniuses. Federal judges most often can be best understand as politicians in robes, and as such write opinions that are politic. Broadly so legal-political commentary and analysis written by politicians have he same defect.

Very rarely will readers find in the judiciary or the academy a finding of fact that Wisconsin Republicans for example, and only Republicans, craft law after law to obstruct the vote, and use new election laws to administer elections in an unconstitutional fashion.

I've yet to find widespread note that Wisconsin Republicans' legislative objective is to frustrate, aggravate, and obstruct as many minority, young and disabled voters as possible in an effort to suppress the total vote in favor of the Republican Party, (Mal Contends).

It should not be surprising that Lawrence Tribe's comment on voter obstruction has been met with widespread hostile commentary. Tribe writes, "Call it what you like, but the # of voters turned away for not having required forms of ID exceeded margin of T’s victory in MI, Pa and Wis."

It takes a major social-scientific investigation to quantify the phenomenon of voter obstruction, because protecting voting just is not in the cards of American political culture. But Tribe is certainly correct from data in the Milwaukee black and brown areas alone.

Wisconsin Republicans have since 2011 worked to transform every corner of government into Republican operations, (Mal Contends) (Mal Contends).

One of the first Republican-enacted changes to with respect to the adminstration of Wisconsin election law was the Republicans' concerted effort in 2011 to staff 3,500 polling places with Republican partisans, to further the objective of obstructing the vote of undesirables.

The lack of acknowledgement and challenge to this Republican attack on the foundation of American democracy should send chills through the political world. I don't believe this is the case, and we should all thank Lawrence Tribe and Chris Carson for noting the scale of the Republican voting obstruction project.

Who are the Republicans staffing your local polling place? Ask your local municipal clerk to find out. Tape record the conversation, the recording may come in handy.

In the meantime, check out the conversation in Ned Foley and Rich Hasan's sites. A great conversation, but one which omits the prospects for voting for 10,000s of black and brown Americans.

Wisconsin Is Number One in Racial Inequality Between Black and White Children

Historic white antagonism towards ethinc minorities continue
with Wisconsin leading the way in targeting minorities with
punitive policy and taunts. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's
Race for Results study offers stunning data showing minority
children remaining victims in white-dominated America, (p. 5).

Madison, Wisconsin—Black children facing systemic socioeconomic obstacles have made Wisconsin the worst state in the country as judged by the disparity in well-being between white and black children, a national social scientific study, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Race for Results, finds, (Gothner , WISC-TV).

Notes WISC-TV news:

Wisconsin ranked 10th in well-being for white children, but ranked 41st when it comes to black youth, making for largest well-being gap of its kind in the country.

'I wish that I could say I was surprised with the findings,' Ken Taylor, executive director of Kids Forward, formerly the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, said.

Michael Johnson, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, which works with youth of color in the Madison area, agreed with Taylor.

'(It's) the same report we've seen for the last 40 years,' he said. 'The question is: When are we going to get serious about investing in young people and coming up with programs that are going to help to change these disparities in our state?'

The Race for Results report comes amid increased open hostility towards minorities by racists in municipal and state government in Wisconsin emboldened by the election of Donald Trump and Gov. Scott Walker, (R), both of whom have long histories of campaign taunts and the use of public policy to target black and brown families.

In the segregated city in southern Dane County, Fitchburg, non-profits serving large minority populations have been targeted for defunding because of resentments in Fitchburg city government by whites towards minorities. Fitchburg also continues to place racially antagonistic white poll workers in a voting district with a large minority population.

A white municipal columnist in the Wisconsin State Journal, Chris Rickert, commenting on the Fitchburg defunding-of-non-profits scandal, emits the racist trope of reckless black parents who neglect their children:

[I]t’s not surprising that [Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, Michael Johnson’s] allies have on occasion framed the [Fitchburg] funding dispute as one between those who favor helping low-income kids of color, and those who don’t — even though it has way more to do with differing opinions about the government’s obligation to such kids, as opposed to the obligation owed to them by, well, their parents.

The study's findings confirm the everyday experience of minorities in Wisconsin, which remains a virulently racist state.

The report described the disproportionate barriers facing children of color, and it recommended strategies that policy, community and civic leaders can use to guide their decisions so that all our children have a fair chance to thrive.

Race for Results was our first report to measure how children from different racial backgrounds — African American, American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino and white — were faring on the path to opportunity. The report introduced an evidence-based set of 12 key indicators that serve as steppingstones to opportunity, which were combined to generate a composite index score for children of every race in every state. Thanks to researchers, writers and activists, conversations about race and implicit bias have begun to include a more sophisticated vocabulary to discuss how and why race and racist behaviors, systems and structures shape life trajectories. ..

... African-American children had a composite index score that placed them further from opportunity than kids of other races and ethnicities. The index scores were not much better for American Indian and Latino children. The index scores for white children were significantly better, and Asian and Pacific Islander kids had the highest index scores, although disaggregated data showed wide variation depending on their parents’ nation of origin. While the scores do not tell the story of individuals, as each has his or her own experiences and talents, the data offer  an important snapshot of disparity in opportunity and the barriers that exist for different groups of children. 

The index quantifies how much work we still have to do if our nation is to live up to its values of opportunity and justice for all, regardless of race, ethnicity or country of origin. [pp 2,3, introduction]

For racist Republicans in Wisconsin, inflictions against minorities are a strategic Party initiative, so the findings of Race for Results represent success.