November 19, 2020 at 2:58 p.m.
Tony Evers' best executive order yet
Tony Evers' best executive order yet
What's not to like, for in his order, Evers ordered ... well, he ordered nothing at all.
Oh, it was full of recommendations all right. He wants every one of us to stay at home as much as possible. People shouldn't travel, and they should only venture outside their homes when necessary, for things like, you know, food and making a living.
Otherwise, stay home, and, if possible, forget about the food and the job. It will be good for your health.
Oh, about the part we like - the governor didn't order anyone to actually do or not do anything, as he has apparently finally realized that he is powerless to control the lives of the residents of Wisconsin, no matter the legal or political hammer he chooses to use.
Nobody was much listening to the governor anyway; Wisconsin long ago tuned him out. The truth is, people know how to take responsibility for themselves and their families, and that is as it should be.
Of course, because he is an increasingly isolated and unpopular governor, and given to actually believing the stuff he proclaims, Evers has had a lot of time on his hands, and so it was just a matter of time before he came out with a new batch of COVID-19 relief bills he wants the Legislature to consider.
Who is going to tell him the Legislature isn't listening to him any more than the people are? Nor should they be. The legislative bills - let's call them mishaps, just to be nice in the holiday season - are as ridiculous as his stay-at-home proclamations and would be about as effective as his mask mandate, meaning not much.
(Correct us if we're wrong, but didn't COVID-19 infections mushroom after the mandate, even as surveys showed a high degree of mask-wearing compliance?)
Anyway, there's a lot of bad stuff in those proposals. The first is the price tag, which is an estimated $541 million. If the bulk of that money would actually temporarily help people in need, it would be one thing, but much of it seems designed to be another tool for income redistribution, using COVID-19 as the funnel.
And a lot of it is just bad, pandering policy. Evers would ban evictions and foreclosures for all of 2021, for instance. Now we know that many people are struggling, but just canceling the need to pay rent for more than a year is extreme, and an equally extreme temptation for some to game the system, pile up rent debt, and vanish.
It's a bad idea in and of itself, but especially so when we don't know what will happen in the next few months. The virus could subside, as it did in the Sunbelt and other places after a second wave, and in any event coming vaccines could potentially change the virus game over the span of the next year.
Speaking of people struggling, Evers would continue to suspend the one-week waiting period for unemployment, but that is just laughable given the thousands and thousands of people who never received their unemployment after filing and are still waiting - 94,000 as of this writing - with many just giving up.
How about getting people the aid they've earned, rather than handing out "Get Out Of Paying Your Rent" cards indiscriminately for a year?
Excuse our language, but what a moron.
Better yet, how about unfettering the economy so people can get back to work and earn the money they need to pay their rent and live a decent life. Evers's limits on public gatherings, where they are enforced, are continuing to hurt small businesses, and jobs, and he should lift them.
Then, too, while Evers wants to spend a whopping half-billion dollars on his "relief" package, only $75 million is slated to go to businesses he directly hurt with his lockdown, and those are in the form of tax breaks rather than direct aid, which could be too late for many businesses.
Of course, the anti-education governor couldn't help but to try and further penalize our children by suspending for another year the standardized testing that measures the performance of schools. That just gives schools one more incentive to completely shut down, just as Evers's allies in teachers unions want. Everyone knows that remote learning doesn't work.
Everyone also knows schools are not coronavirus super spreaders. As a report this week by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty found, the presence of a teachers union and the politics of a particular region appear to drive district-level decisions about in-person learning, not the presence of the virus. Evers just wants to hand the leftist union crowd another tool to use to argue against in-person education.
This governor doesn't want to merely punish today's workers, but an entire generation of students who need to be in school. He must think destroying a generation will be a fitting legacy.
Instead of incentivizing schools to stay away from in-person instruction and the accountability that goes with it, why not endorse measures that move us in the other direction, toward getting our students back in the classroom and toward holding their teachers accountable?
To that end, we believe a far better proposal comes from state Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) who would have school teachers declared essential workers.
"It is important that we not lose yet another year of educational instruction," Stroebel said. "Declaring teachers to be 'essential workers' would be a good way for school boards and administrators to manage the expectations of staff and parents."
Yes, far better than suspending all accountability for schools.
The list goes on and on. Fortunately, given remarks we have heard since the governor's release of his package, most legislators are content to keep tuning the governor out, just like most people in the state did a long time ago.
Indeed, can anyone remember a governor who has become more irrelevant than this one? Scott Walker certainly was not; Jim Doyle was relevant, too, though not in a positive way; Tommy Thompson was relevant; even Scott McCallum, an almost invisible human being, managed to become relevant by refusing to split the DNR down the middle.
This governor has become just noise, and it's too bad we don't have a statewide noise ordinance to deal with his screeching.
Not that the governor didn't find a way to try and make everybody's holiday miserable anyway. Last week he announced there would be no state Christmas tree at the capitol this year, lighting a festive light for woke leftists everywhere.
It's disappointing and unnecessary but hardly surprising, for, after all, the Grinch has decreed that nobody should be celebrating anything this year. God forbid there should be some holiday relief for the unemployed and the poor.
That's too bad because, given Evers' unemployment system, holiday relief is probably the only relief they will get.
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