Jay Weber Show transcript 12-3-20 6:10 am
So...Governor Evers has announced that-due to covid-19 the 2021 state of the state address in January will be done virtually. On-line only.
I cannot imagine that -a single- lawmaker on either side of the aisle is sad to hear this: they won’t have to work late that night....and pile into the assembly chambers ...in order to watch a grey man in a grey suit speak in monotone while reading from a three-ring binder.
His own democrats-won’t have to force themselves to fight to stay awake...and pay attention so that they can be sure to hit all of the right applause lines.
This guy is such a snooze. If you’ve tuned into his daily covid-19 briefings, you know what a live wire he can be.
And without that three-ring binder, he’d be lost. It must be what Maggie Gau puts together in the afternoons...as Evers checks out at two pm and heads back to the governor’s mansion for his pudding.
Evers is quickly shaping up to be the worst governor ever...in our lifetimes.
In fact, it’s not even a contest, so far.
I might not have liked Jim Doyle’s politics-but at least he was on top of things...and engaged. We have no evidence of that with Evers.
In fact, matt kittle has a very good piece over at empower Wisconsin about how lawmakers are getting concerned that Gov Evers still hasn’t spent the 2.2-billion dollars in covid-19 relief money that the feds sent us as part of the cares act-
With the explicit instructions to either use it by December 30th-or lose it.
Folks...so far...only about half of it has been actually documented as earmarked and spent...and no one quite knows where the rest of the money is going.
And when asked about it, the Evers administration claims, generically, that they have committed the rest of the 1.2-billion dollars to be spent....but won’t say how.
And as Kittle points out ‘committed’. Is not spent. 'committed’ is ‘we intend to send the money out’...or...’we think we know where it’s going’.
It hasn’t been sent- or spent.
And the federal government’s directive was clear.
As kittle notes: as of Nov. 17, according to federal records, the Evers administration had allocated more than $1.1 billion of the total $2.3 billion, or less than half of the cares act funding.
He quotes senator Andre Jaquez as saying: “myself and my colleagues are extremely concerned that we have the potential to lose a substantial amount of federal funding, at a time when the governor is asking for more funding,”
You might remember that Congressman Bryan Steil was first to raise concerns that Evers was sitting on all of this money that was meant to combat covid-19 and doing nothing with it.
Steil publicly asked the Evers administration way back in July: why aren’t you spending this money?
Even back then....Evers and the democrats were ninnying and nannying and insisting we needed to do more to fight covid-19...and yet...he and he alone was sitting on this money and he and he alone had the ability to dole it out.
The legislatures have-no role-in saying how this 2.3 billion dollars is spent.Congress intentionally set it up that way- figuring that it was the governors who were managing the pandemic-and it was the governors who knew where the most immediate needs were.
Immediate needs?
Evers has had this money since June...and he still hasn’t spent it. You have both a public health emergency here and an economic emergency here- and Evers sits on the money?
All thru July, all thru August, all thru September, all thru October....
In November- his team finally admits that only half of it is spent....
And all of that time Evers and company moan and complain about how the republicans need to do more?He literally had-billions-at his fingertips with which to do more.
Congressmen Steil is still stunned over Evers’ lack of effort here. Kittle quotes him as saying:
“It makes you wonder what the priorities of this governor are when you look at the money not spent.’ “The priority in my mind was keeping schools open, at least for younger students.”
Nope.
Evers is a longtime state schools superintendent who spent a career-pretending-to care about the kids and families. But only ever cared what the teachers unions said.
If the teachers unions want to close their local schools....the grey governor isn’t going to stand in their way.
Think about it for weeks now...we have had the director of the CDC, the glorious Dr. Fauci and their federal ‘experts’sayingchildren should be back in school.
Not only is it safe-but it might be safer for them to be in school than to be at home or out doing other things.
Whether schools should be reopened full time isn’t even a debatable thing anymore.
It genuinely isn’t...if you’ve been following along. It’s actually CDC guidelines now.
And still....Gov Evers and WI Dems sit...inert...because they are slaves to the teachers unions.
The teachers unions are some of Gov Evers’ biggest campaign contributors, and were responsible for putting him and keeping him in the dpi position... And so he owes them bigly.
Tony Evers owes the state teachers unions for his career. Quite literally. He’s not going to cross them and insist that our public schools reopen state wide...
And clearly-he’s not going to spend any of this large chunk of federal money to help them reopen. Not if the unions don’t want them opened.
Congressman Steil says most states have effectively spent their funding to assist frontline health care workers, protect the more vulnerable populations, and fund safety measures to reopen schools....
Evers sits on it...like a miser sits on his fortune.
It’s not Evers’ money and it comes with an expiration date.
And the administration can claim all it wants that they have it committed to certain things or that they generically have a plan to spend it...but they are clearly in no rush to actually get those people in need the money!!
Send! The checks!
Otherwise...Evers and Maggie Gau are going to be a mad, half assed rushto spend it on something. Anything. Before the New Year just to beat the deadline. How stupid is that?
As it is- Evers has wasted a bunch of this money on non-covid-19 emergencies. Kittle’s piece also quotes State Rep. Janel Brandtjen as saying...my god...Tony Evers only dedicated a little bit of this money- seven million dollars - to do covid-19 testing in Wisconsin’s nursing homes ... He’s spent $15 million in grants to bail out the arts!
So...when Evers-has-spent the money he’s spent it stupidly. As Brandjen put it:
“Our governor has not used the science to shield the elderly and those most at risk,”
This has been yet another quiet debacle by the Tony Evers administration.
And you wonder how much incompetence the liberal accomplices in the media will put up with before they start telling the truth about this administration.
Gov evers and his advisors are doing very little...and are making dumb decisions when they do decide to act....and this last two years has been marked by both-incompetence and bitterness.
I’ve talked about how Evers’ team is full of hyper partisans who simply cannot let the last ten years of GOP success go.
They just-cannot- get over the walker era and the fact that he, Vos and Fitz racked up so many wins and changed Wisconsin-and Wisconsin politics- so dramatically.
It eats at them-every day.
And so their sole motivation is to ‘screw the Republicans’. ‘Resist the Republicans’. Never give in to the Republicans.
Their sole motivation should be running the state government on behalf of the people.
And they are blowing it big time.
Because....on top of the baseline bitterness...we have seen two years of utter incompetence...when Evers’ team does need to act.
We still have a flood of unemployment claims not met.
It’s been six months and Evers-still-hasn’t used 2.3-billion dollars in federal money to combat covid-19, as intended. All of the other States used the money. Evers and his team are too incompetent to figure it out. They’d rather report to work every morning and sit around and bitterly bitch about the GOP....even though they! Are supposed to be leading.
photo credit: Getty