Milwaukee County: Corona Virus Not Abating

From the Milwaukee County COVID-19 Dashboard, the seven day running average of new cases in Milwaukee County.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Not good.

The total number of cases in Milwaukee County, as of this writing, is listed as 4,480. Given that the population of Milwaukee County is 945,726, we are far short of having any useful amount of herd immunity.

Of course, that calculus is complicated by the fact that there may be many undiagnosed cases of the virus in the county, and some people may have a sufficiently robust immune system to have fought off the virus without symptoms. Large scale testing has just begun, and will clarify the situation a bit.

Governor’s Order Overruled

The State Supreme Court has overruled the “stay at home” order of one of Tony Evers’ bureaucrats. But in spite of hand wringing from the left (one of Evers’ lawyers fumed: “The court will have blood on their hands and the people of Wisconsin will not forget”) the decision, like Evers’ order, is increasingly moot.

In the first place, local officials can issue their own orders, which take into account local conditions. For example, two Wisconsin counties have zero cases (Langlade and Taylor), and an additional eighteen have five or fewer. Having the same rules for the entire state made no sense.

But in the second place, just because people can do risky things doesn’t mean they necessarily will. I and my wife will remain pretty isolated until the numbers have taken a sharp dive. (Although our wife can’t resist regular visits to garden centers.)

The Resistance

Those who have resisted the lock down, demonstrating in places like Madison and Lansing, Michigan have been vilified by the mainstream media.

But in fact, they have served a very useful function in a democracy, by giving voice to legitimate concerns about the economic and social damage of the lock downs.

It’s not that they have gotten their way. It’s that they have forced a more nuanced set of policies, allowing the opening of economic activity were it could be engaged in safely (stores with social distancing rules in place), but not mass gatherings that expose thousands or tens of thousands of people (Major League Baseball).

Ultimately, American democracy has performed pretty well — but with the normal amount of messiness, partisan bickering, finger pointing and overheated rhetoric. Normal politics under abnormal conditions.

Milwaukee County Executive Candidates to Speak at Law School

From an e-mail:

The major candidates in the race for Milwaukee County Executive will make their first joint appearance Friday, Jan. 21, at Marquette University Law School during a forum co-sponsored by the Law School and the Milwaukee Press Club.

The event is scheduled from Noon to 1:15 p.m. and will be held in the Appellate Courtroom of Eckstein Hall, which is located at 1215 W. Michigan Street.

Invitations to the forum have been extended to philanthropist Chris Abele, interim Milwaukee County Executive Lee Holloway, State Rep. Jeff Stone and former State Sen. Jim Sullivan. The candidates will be questioned by a panel of Milwaukee journalists.

The candidates will square off in a Feb. 15 primary. The top two contenders will advance to the April 5 general election. Public admission to the candidate forum is free, but seating is limited, and pre-registration is suggested. A light lunch will be served.

County Supervisors Pushing for Sales Tax

We just got a flyer in the mail from the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, pushing for the passage of a one cent Milwaukee sales tax.

This has been a huge issue in Milwaukee, and we’ve let other bloggers (and conservative talk radio) cover it, but the blatant electioneering of the flyer was something we couldn’t overlook.

The flyer skirts rules against electioneering by stopping just short of a “call to action” in favor of the tax. But the language is intentionally misleading.

It promises readers a 27% reduction in property taxes.

Just who believes that? Let’s see the hands? Oh . . . there is a liberal blogger over in the corner with his hand raised? Hey . . . guy, I want to talk to you about some beachfront property in Arizona that I can sell you.

County Supervisor Joe Rice has been the driving force behind opposition to the tax increase, leading a group that includes Mark Borkowski, Paul Cesarz, and Joe Sanfelippo. The rest of the Supervisors are either supporting it, or wanting a signal that their constituents will let them get away with voting for it.

We reached Supervisor Rice, and he pointed out that any actual decrease in property taxes is unlikely, as the experience with the last sales tax increase in 1991 shows.

The wording of the referendum is quite simply dishonest. It asks whether Milwaukee County will have the “authority to provide tax relief of at least sixty-seven million dollars.” Nothing requires the Supervisors to do that. And of course, we all know how these games are played. If you currently pay $1,200 in County property tax, and all the spending the bureaucrats and politicians want would bring your bill to $1,400, and the budget is “slashed” such that you end up paying $1,300, voilà, you have gotten $100 in tax relief!

Rice has sent us a Powerpoint presentation that we have turned into a PDF file, which you can see here.

One of Rice’s most interesting points: the sales tax is regressive, falling most heavily on the poor. The liberals are supposed to opposed that sort of thing. But give them a choice between taxing the poor, and not taxing at all, they will tax the poor.

Lena Taylor: Anti-American

Great bit of investigation from Daniel Suhr at GOP3.COM.

It seems that Taylor’s Myspace page has (or at least had) a cartoon lampooning Americans for being (supposedly) so terribly provincial.

Here is the cartoon. If you click on it, you can see a larger version, which will be more readable.



Lena Taylor, it seems you are rather like Jeremiah Wright.

We checked the site, and apparently it has been sanitized. We could not find the cartoon in question.

But we did find an interesting motto that Taylor has.

“If nothing changes, then nothing will change!”

Lena Taylor, meet the concept “tautology.”