Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:17 and sunset 7:33 for 13h 16m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin Elections Commission staff have confirmed that conservative activists trying to recall Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos didn’t gather enough signatures from the right places to trigger an election.
But as one recall wraps up, those organizers say they’re already working to recall Vos again.
WEC staff vetted thousands of signatures submitted by Burlington resident Matt Snorek in March. To initiate a recall election, Snorek and others in the Recall Vos campaign needed a number of signatures totaling at least “25 percent of the number of electors who cast a vote for governor” in the district two years ago.
No reason to stop now. Inspiration for the work ahead: Quitters never prosper — If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — I think I can, I think I can.
Good Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset 7:18 for 12h 39m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1973, the last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
A second recall attempt has been launched against Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the effort driven by the same organizers who appear to have fallen short of signatures in their first attempt to remove the powerful Republican from office.
Burlington resident Matthew Snorek filed paperwork with the Wisconsin Elections Commission Wednesday. It states Vos “should be recalled for his tacit support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a “lack of election integrity” and “flagrant disrespect for his own constituents by calling them ‘whack-jobs, morons and idiots.’”
The insults from Vos were directed at Snorek and others behind their first recall attempt, which started in January.
According to the WEC, signed petitions for the new recall effort would be due no later than May 28.
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset 7:17 for 12h 36m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
One could say better late than never, but Speaker Robin Vos’s better-late-than-never recognition of Michael Gableman’s misconduct comes only after years of conspiracy-mongering. Anya van Wagtendonk report Vos: Gableman, leader of failed 2020 election probe, should be ‘disbarred’ (‘Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, and fired him 14 months later’):
Michael Gableman — the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who led a pricey probe into the 2020 presidential election that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing — should be “disbarred,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in an interview that aired over the weekend.
Vos, who initiated that investigation, told WISN-TV’s “UpFront” program that hiring Gableman “is probably the single biggest embarrassment that I have ever had.”
“I hope eventually he gets disbarred,” Vos, R-Rochester, said. “He should not be an attorney. Anybody who thinks about hiring him, call me, because I will tell you what an awful decision that I made to hire him.”
Well, yes. Gableman should be disbarred. Vos did make an awful decision.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 7:00 for 11h 52m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Matthew Snorek and other activists said Monday that they submitted about 11,000 signatures to force a recall election of Vos, the powerful Rochester Republican who has frequently sparred with former President Donald Trump. Under state law, the Wisconsin Elections Commission has said it would take 6,850 valid signatures to force a recall election.
But those signatures must come from voters who live in the district Vos represents, which recently changed after Wisconsin’s old legislative map was overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His new district lines were part of a map that passed the Legislature, which was drawn and signed by Gov. Tony Evers.
According to Wisconsin Elections Commission staff attorney Brandon Hunzicker, recall organizers turned in a total of 9,053 valid signatures, but only 5,905 of those come from Vos’ previous district, the 63rd Assembly District. That would fall 945 signatures short of the total needed.
A memo prepared by Hunzicker for members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that just 32 signatures would fall within the boundaries of Vos’ new district, the 33rd Assembly District, which would fall well short of the required threshold. Even when combined with signatures collected from a third district containing territory previously represented by Vos, the organizers would still come up short.
The Elections Commission has asked A.G. Josh Kaul to request a ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
So MAGA is chasing Vos and Vos may need a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling to save himself from a recall.
Someone might want to push a little kibble sprinkled with Xanax under the bed while Vos awaits a determination beyond his control.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 62. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset 6:57 for 11h 46m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
MADISON, Wis. — Backers of an effort to oust Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office over his opposition to former President Donald Trump announced Sunday that they’ve collected enough signatures to force a recall vote.
Supporters of the recall campaign plan to present signatures Monday to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, saying they have more than the required 6,850 signatures from voters in Vos’ southeast Wisconsin district.
“With more than 10,000 signatures on our recall petition, they’ve said it loud and clear: they’re tired of the status quo and demand new representation,” Matt Snorek, who started the campaign in January, said in a statement.
Vos has dismissed the recall attempt as a waste of time and resources, which he reiterated in a statement Sunday. He questioned the group’s tactics and the validity of the signatures, promising that a team he had assembled would “evaluate each individual signature.”
Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset 5:25 for 10h 32m 57sof daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 28.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Six parties submitted maps to be considered and consultants recently said that the two sets of legislative maps submitted by Republican lawmakers and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) amounted to more partisan gerrymandering.
The consultants did not pick a preferred map, but said the other maps, including Evers’ submission, were “nearly indistinguishable.” Those proposals have been projected to reduce Republican control of the Legislature from its current near-supermajority status
Republicans lawmakers have found Evers’ maps, which would likely keep a Republican majority, although a smaller one, in the Legislature, preferable to the other submissions before the state Supreme Court.
“Republicans were not stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Sen. Van Wannggard (R-Racine) said in a statement about the vote. “It was a matter of choosing to be stabbed, shot, poisoned or led to the guillotine. We chose to be stabbed, so we can live to fight another day.”
….
Vos, who was the only representative to speak during the floor session, also rejected the idea that the move was a legal strategy.
Ahead of the floor sessions, some Democrats expressed concerns that Republicans wanted to pass Evers’ maps and then back a federal legal challenge before Republican-nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Diane Sykes, formerly a conservative justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Such a challenge “could ultimately keep the state with its current gerrymandered maps, Democrats told the progressive news platform Democracy Docket.
“If we get these new maps, the governor’s maps, signed by the Republicans, it’s more than likely that there’ll be a challenge in the 7th Circuit Court,” U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said over the weekend. “We’re fearful the Republicans are finally trying to come around to do what they should have done in the first place, but they’re doing it with — I guess the technical term would be ‘with sh-t-eating grins on their faces.’ We can assume that this is not done because of the idea of good government.”
Evers’s maps would be an improvement, but Vos’s trustworthiness is discernible only with an electron microscope. Delays in Evers’s maps, either as implementation within the legislation or by litigation against implementation, would be objectionable.
Vos does objectionable quite well.
Note to the special-interest men (movers & shakers, lobbyists, p.r. men, whatever) in Whitewater: looking up to Robin Vos is like looking up to the pigeon that’s gonna relieve itself on a car. Normal people do not respect the men, or the pigeons, who do that.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset 5:06 for 9h 57m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Wisconsin students who miss 30 or more days of school could be held back a grade, under a new proposal.
If the legislation is approved, beginning in the 2025-26 school year, public school students and students at private schools that receive state money who miss a month or more of class would not advance to the next grade.
Currently, state law requires school boards to have policies stating what conditions a student must meet to be promoted from third to fourth grade, fourth to fifth grade and eight to ninth grade.
The bill, and five other truancy-related proposals, are the result of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s Task Force on Truancy. If passed by the Legislature, the legislation would need approval from Gov. Tony Evers.
The state’s attendance rate reached a new low of 91 percent in the 2021-22 school year and nearly a quarter of students missed at least a month of school, according to data from the state Department of Public Instruction.
New truancy data won’t be released until March 2024.
Vos aims to solve a socio-economic problem that varies across hundreds of Wisconsin districts with uniform state statutes. Success seems doubtful. Alternatively, Vos aims to convince the delusionally gullible WISGOP base that He’s got this, Wisconsin! Your dawg Robin’s on it!
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 14. Sunrise is 7:21 and sunset 4:48 for 9h 27m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1944, Allied forces launch the first of four assaults on Monte Cassino to break through the Winter Line and seize Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 105,000 Allied casualties.
Yesterday, I posted on a story about a ‘bipartisan’ marijuana decriminalization bill that seemed unlikely to go anywhere. SeeOn Decriminalizing Marijuana Possession, Bipartisan Bills Don’t Assure Passage (“Success for this bill will not come from those who have proposed it, but instead only if opponents on both sides of decriminalization (‘no’ and ‘more’) are prepared to accept the proposal of a few legislators working in bipartisanship. (As of 12.22.23, the bill had only a few sponsors.)”).
Commenter Joe noted that “Nonetheless, the dinosaur abolitionists in the state senate are persisting and will likely sink Vos’ bill. Evers offering to sign it was probably the kiss of death. No way the Senate R-Team will want to be seen actually cooperating on a matter of high public support with the dreaded Dems.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos doesn’t plan to compromise with Senate Republicans who oppose his plan to create a medical marijuana program in Wisconsin.
Vos, a Republican from Rochester, told reporters Tuesday he won’t amend a bill from Assembly Republicans to create the program to address concerns Senate Republicans have with the legislation.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:41 for 9h 17m 56s of daytime. The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.
Anya Van Wagtendonk reports Recall effort launched against Vos (‘Conservative opponents of the powerful Assembly speaker hope to force a recall election in June’):
Conservative activists have launched a recall effort against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, citing his criticisms of former President Donald Trump and what they describe as an insufficiently right-wing record.
Matthew Snorek, a resident of Union Grove in Racine County, filed the petition to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Wednesday. Vos, R-Rochester, has represented parts of Racine County in the state Assembly since 2005.
In the complaint, Snorek alleges Vos “is blocking fair elections in WI” and pointed to Vos not contributing to efforts by a small bloc of right-wing Assembly members to impeach Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election administrator.
“Wisconsin must move ‘Forward’ without Robin Vos in power,” the complaint reads.
In a statement, Vos called the recall “a waste of time, resources and effort.”
….
Snorek’s petition will need to get about 7,000 signatures — calculated as a quarter of votes cast in Vos’ Assembly district in the 2022 gubernatorial race — in order to force a recall election. Organizers are aiming for an election date in June.
Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 15m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Independence Holiday events continue today at the Cravath Lakefront: Wristband Sessions 12-4PM, 5-9PM Food Vendors…
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 20m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM. On this day in 1865, two years…
Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 5:49 PM for 11h 27m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.53% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1981, the ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair…
Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM for 9h 05m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 56% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed. On his Twitter…
Good morning. Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM for 9h 04m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1845, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas. Foxconn was, and…
