It feels strange to say this, but something not-terrible finally happened in my broader political scene. My state, good ol’ Once-A-Bastion-Of-Progressive-Policies Wisconsin, has managed to vote done a pair of proposed constitutional amendments that would have radically altered the way the state government works in what is a naked grab for power by the Wisconsin Republican party (which holds about two-thirds of the state senate and state assembly despite routinely losing popular votes) now that their horribly gerrymandered maps have been deemed unconstitutional and rewritten. They’re going to lose power over the next few elections and the massive voting power that Wisconsin has managed to mobilize in recent years despite the largely pessimistic outlook of its citizens can go from desperately denying them a supermajority to actually feeling represented by the political powers of the state. It sure would be nice to have a functional state government again, since almost nothing happens any more because the Republicans who control the senate and assembly just show up and immediately adjourn rather than actually do anything. They’re slowly losing their grip on the state’s governance and, thankfully, the voters of this state have seen through their transparent attempt to once again deny power to the governor (they tried to do something similar as the previous Republican governor, Scott Walker–may he suffer the same indignities he visited upon others–was on his way out) and voted against it. It is a relief and I’m glad it has been avoided, but even this moment of relaxation is overshadowed by just how precarious the future still looks. I wish I could just enjoy this win, but I can’t even think about it without being aware of just how we got to this point in the first place.
Continue readingGerrymandering
Election Reflection as Things Stay Mostly Blue in 2022
A week later and most of the election results are in. The heavily gerrymandered places represent huge miscarriages of democracy and, for the most part, weren’t nearly as bad as I thought they’d be in my home state of Wisconsin. I will say that it sucks to see so many people disparraging my state for leaning so heavily toward the facists without considering the fact that more than fifty percent of the population voted for democratic candidates and still wound up with barely a third of the seats in the state government. Which, you know, has been the case for about the last four or more years now (I really can’t remember when the gerrymandering happened, but it feels like forever ago).
Continue readingWisconsin’s Woes and Weather
For the second summer in a row, the weather where I live has been fairly dry and relatively mild. Eighties during the day, sixties overnight, and mostly small strips of storms and rain that rush past, or clouds that seem to split around us before reforming once they’re past so they can drop their moisture elsewhere. Mild, compared to the heavier storms, flooding, and record-adjacent seasons of the first six summers I spent in the area. I mean, my first summer was marked by a massive storm system that dropped a few tornados southwest of Madison that, among other things, tore up a bunch of trees and some of the buildings of my then employer (my memory of the storm was being the only one in my apartment that woke from the tornado sirens at one or two in the morning to take shelter in the basement).
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