Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:09, and sunset is 6:11, for 11 hours, 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 94.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1815, Napoleon begins his exile on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The cold, rigid hand of the WISGOP yet grips Wisconsin. Erik Gunn reports Scott Walker holdover’s labor review board term expired in 2023, but she’s still on panel (‘Evers’ commission nominees haven’t gotten state Senate hearings, confirmation votes’):
Six years after Gov. Scott Walker left office, an official he appointed continues to interpret state laws covering jobless pay, workplace injuries and civil rights.
Georgia Maxwell’s term as one of three members of the Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission (LIRC) expired March 1, 2023, more than 18 months ago. Nevertheless she remains in the seat even though Gov. Tony Evers has appointed her replacement.
Maxwell is following the example of another Walker appointee, Fred Prehn, a Wausau dentist who refused to step down from the Natural Resources Board at the end of his term in May 2021.
As the Wisconsin Examiner reported, Republican leaders in the Legislature held off formally confirming Evers’ appointed successor to Prehn and encouraged the Walker appointee to hang on to his seat. A legal battle led to a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in June 2022 declaring Prehn could remain in the post until the Wisconsin Senate approved his successor.
In response to an interview request Monday, Maxwell said she would not answer questions about her decision and instead referred to the letter she sent Evers the day before her term expired.
In that Feb. 28, 2023 letter, Maxwell cited the Supreme Court ruling in the Prehn case and asserted her belief “in the continuity of work that we do” at the commission.
Consider, from 2018, the will of Wisconsin’s voters:
How ’bout 2022? Here are those results:
And yet, and yet, Walker appointees are still holding over.
No one should be shocked. In 1968, George Romero made a full-length documentary1 about creatures that just won’t go away:
NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission Launches From Kennedy Space Center (Highlights):
- From that film, one of the finest exchanges in cinema history:
Field Reporter: Are they slow-moving, chief?
Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up. ↩︎