Two Beatles anniversaries today:
1964: The Beatles make their third appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show.”
1969: “Get Back” (with Billy Preston on keyboards) hits number one:
Meanwhile, today in 1968, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful were arrested for drug possession. (Those last five words could apply to an uncountable number of musicians of the ’60s and ’70s.)
Today in 1969, the Who released their rock opera “Tommy” …
… two years before Iron Butterfly disbanded over arguments over what “In a Gadda Da Vita” (which is one-third the length of all of “Tommy”) actually meant:
The number one British album today in 1970 was “McCartney,” named for you know who:
How, you ask, has this blogger been spending evenings during the coronavirus-mandated statewide lockdown of sorts?
Binge-watching a TV series that screams the ’80s, NBC-TV’s “Miami Vice.”
The short version of the creation of the TV series is two words from NBC programming executive Brandon Tartikoff: “MTV cops.” Or. more precisely, two cops that looked as if they had stepped out of an MTV music video. (Back when MTV played music videos.)
In one sense, “Vice” could be said to be a 1980s iteration of a classic that had recently gone off the air, the original “Hawaii Five-O.”
Both were set in lush locales that hid the seething sewers of crime (and, in Miami’s case, decadence) underneath. (To unreasonable ends, in Five-O’s case; as costar James MacArthur once put it, the show probably solved every crime in the islands halfway through its run.)
Things diverge from there, though. Unlike, say, “Adam-12,” I am confident in asserting that no one decided to go into police work based on “Miami Vice.” Outside of the setting Five-O was a straight police procedural. Vice was sort of film-noirish in that the heroes had skeletons in their own closets.
James “Sonny” Crockett was a former college football star and Vietnam veteran who started the series by trying to avenge his young partner’s death. Ricardo Tubbs was a New York City police detective who went to Miami to avenge the death of his brother, another NYPD detective.
The two are members of the Miami–Dade (then known as “Metro–Dade”) Police Department’s Organized Crime Bureau, called “Miami Vice,” investigating and either arresting or killing drug dealers and various other purveyors of South Florida vice, as well as their politician and dirty cop (including feds) enablers.
Crockett lives on a sailboat moored in a harbor. Thanks to asset forfeiture, Crockett gets to drive a “Ferrari Daytona” (which was actually a replica car on a Corvette chassis) and a speedboat. (Ferrari was upset about the use of the faux Daytona, which wasn’t built by Ferrari to be a convertible anyway, so Ferrari donated two Testarossas for use.)
It’s always interesting to learn who was considered for the roles that were iconically played (if that’s a word) by the eventually chosen actors. Crockett candidates included Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte, Richard Dean Anderson, Mickey Rourke, Gary Cole, and Larry Wilcox (yes, of “CHiPs”) before Don Johnson, who had been in four failed pilots (as was Tom Selleck before “Magnum P.I.”) was chosen, reportedly over Wilcox. Denzel Washington would have done a great job, but different job, as Tubbs. Geoffrey Cole, who ended up on “The Cosby Show,” also auditioned for Tubbs.
Johnson considered leaving the series after its second season. Mark Harmon, formerly a rookie cop on “Adam-12,” a sheriff’s rescue guy on “240-Robert” and a San Francisco cop in the movie “The Presidio,” was considered as Johnson’s replacement.
Their boss was initially Lt. Lou Rodriguez, played by character actor Gregory Sierra (previously seen playing a detective in “Barney Miller”). Sierra, however, didn’t like working in Miami, so he was killed — I mean, written out — and Edward James Olmos was cast. And arguably that’s where the series took off in a character sense; the conflict between detectives Crockett and Tubbs and their boss was rather stereotypical in Sierra’s case, but Olmos’ Castillo, described in one place as a “modern-day samurai” with an improbable background for a police lieutenant, was impenetrable and unpredictable, at least until writers lost the plot of his character in the final season. (Olmos joked that he was the highest paid actor per word in Hollywood.)
We started watching the second season, and then when we purchased the whole series (from exactly where you would expect to get DVDs — Menards) we moved to the pilot and the first season. The series certainly was rolling in the second season.
The series is famous for a lot of things, including the start of a lot of acting careers:
One way you can tell its cultural impact, beyond the pastels (an idea creator Michael Mann came up with after going to a Miami paint store — and Crockett’s penchant for baggy light-colored clothing and shoes without socks) …
… is the number of musicians who started appearing in the series during season one, a trend that continued through the third season. The soundtrack is basically a who’s-who of pop and rock music of the ’80s, with a few pleasant flashbacks as far back as the early ’60s.
And, of course, Johnson became a star, as did Olmos.
One of the more amusing moments is when Johnson’s ex-wife, Melanie Griffith (the daughter of Tippi Hedren, with whom Johnson appeared on the 1973 movie “The Harrad Experiment”), appears in an episode as the owner of a call girl service. After the series ended Johnson and Griffith remarried, and then re-divorced.
To say the series is an unrealistic depiction of police work is completely beside the point. Every officer, including Castillo, contributes to the series’ body count to the extent that all of them should have been fired, even if all the shootings passed shooting review board muster. The bad guys usually have the shooting aim of Star Wars storm troopers. Castillo’s detectives lie to their boss about getting personally involved in cases without impunity, and only get called on it once. (Though that was an epic 15 seconds, with Castillo calling their professional conduct in the case “abominable.”)
Miami is, as Hawaii was, depicted as a nest of crime and, well, vice, buried under a sea of cocaine, the wonder drug of the ’80s. (A place called Sex World is prominent in one episode and part of others.) One can only imagine what the producers (including Dick Wolf before he started the “Law & Order” juggernaut) would have come up with a decade later after “NYPD Blue”
The series is quite dark. According to one website 108 people are killed in the five seasons, and frankly that seems low. Crockett is a Vietnam veteran (how that dovetails with his being a college football star and his apparent age in the mid-1980s … well, it’s TV, which is not subject to the usual measurements of time), and he runs into damaged Vietnam veterans who make up plot points in a few episodes. And whether or not Crockett was damaged by Vietnam, he’s got the macho-sensitive brooder thing down. (In two episodes he regrets previous behavior toward a female high school classmate and a former police partner who was homosexual, not to mention his being an absent husband and father, which is why he is an ex-husband. Young Crockett didn’t learn that the way to avoid regrets is to not do the wrong thing(s) in the first place.)
It was also unique for its abrupt endings in the first two seasons of the series that leave unanswered questions. (Did he survive or not?) Not often are there tags with humorous conclusions. In fact, five consecutive second-season episodes end with a suicide, with Crockett yelling “NO!!!” as the character prevents his or her being able to return to the series.
Two of the main characters start by providing comic relief — detectives Switek and Zito, usually found in a van filled with surveillance equipment. (Complete, early on, with a giant bug on the roof.) They’re portrayed as something less than competent early on, though that changes. And then Zito gets killed, and Switek, larger than everyone else and with a penchant for inappropriate comments to match, develops a gambling addiction. The two female leads, detectives Gina Calabrese and Trudy Brown, seem to spend the largest parts of the episodes they’re in engaging in prostitute sting operations.
There is humor in the interaction of the characters, particularly Izzy Moreno the malaprop-plagued informant, such as …
… and another informant known as “Noogie,” but otherwise it was pretty grim until the fourth season, which featured episodes about dueling televangelists, a cryogenically frozen reggae singer, UFOs, and the theft of bull semen. Black humor (appropriate for a series involving police) can be found throughout the series, such as when a chemist developing the most pure synthetic cocaine in the world tries some himself (after Izzy fakes trying some), and achieves the first and last high of his life.
Throughout the series Crockett and Tubbs had underworld alter-egos, Burnett and Cooper, respectively. Oftentimes Crockett/Burnett and Tubbs/Cooper got involved with women as part of their cases, but it always ended badly for the women (one of Tubbs’ girlfriends doesn’t survive the teaser), particularly singer Caitlin Davies (played by singer Sheena Easton), who over several episodes testifies against a corrupt record producer, falls in love with Crockett, marries him, gets pregnant, goes on tour and gets shot to death.
One episode later the writers trotted out the trope of a character’s getting amnesia, and so into the fifth season Crockett thought he was Burnett, and acted accordingly, adding to the series’ body count. And then magically Burnett went back to Crockett, conveniently forgetting Burnett’s carnage, and conveniently avoiding the usual career repercussions for a police officer who killed several people.
After Crockett returns to his right mind, the rest of the series (including four episodes that ran after the series finale, one of which may have been a pilot for another series that NBC didn’t buy, and another of which NBC declined to broadcast because of its subject matter, child molestation) foreshadows the end of the series through Crockett’s increasing burnout. That could be said to apply to the series too, particularly when the last two seasons featured increasingly bizarre storylines or repeated stories from earlier seasons.
The series ended with a two-hour finale movie in which Crockett and Tubbs are recruited by mysterious feds (are there any other kind?) to rescue from a fictional Latin American country a corrupt dictator (supposedly based on Panama’s Manuel Noriega, though he looks more like Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and he’s played by non-Latino non-Arab actor Ian McShane) who is willing to tell all to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Crockett and Tubbs are, of course, nearly killed on several occasions and repeatedly double-crossed, which leads them to their living end.
The series interestingly ends not with the iconic theme music, but with a solo effort by Chicago guitarist Terry Kath …
… whose song ended another cult classic, the 1970s movie “Electra Glide in Blue.”
Lopez Video reviewed the series after doing what we did:
The concentration on raw aesthetics during the first 2 seasons makes this show a classic. Whether it was Michael Mann, this Yankovich character, or whoever, the primary emphasis of the show was raw aesthetics – the detective stuff came second (albeit a close second).
This was a show about pastel colors, Art Deco architecture, pop music, cars driving fast beach-side, drugs, and most importantly, sockless loafers with flowing blazers over a wrinkled V-neck.
The detective stuff was obviously interesting on a biological level: I want to know the answer to the mystery! The more mysterious, the more I want to know the answer. And the regional ideation with the various Columbian drug cartels or anti-Castro Cubans or the corrupt cops / politicians… It’s all just fun to watch, especially if you’re from Miami. Like bubblegum.
I stand by my original assessment that the show would’ve been far more addicting if the writers had extended the life of the first drug king-pin, Calderone. His story is tied to the motivational drama of Rico Tubbs – Calderone murdered his brother in New York City, thus kickstarting the entire show.
Instead of killing Calderone by the 5th episode of the 1st season, they should’ve made Calderone an almost omnipotent drug kingpin. His power is profound & supreme. He exists only in shadows.
And so the capturing of Calderone would’ve become the specter that ties the entire series together. This is the season finale everybody tunes in to see (Think: “Lost“).
Anyway, they didn’t do that & the show quickly develops into a psuedo-CSI with a “monster-of-the-week” feel; sometimes introducing random-ass female love-interests for both Sonny & Rico. It’s all kind of blah but you stick around waiting for that new awesome 80s tune or that one unexpectedly good episode of that surprise cameo appearance by Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts.
Not enough Calderone? They took on Calderone and his brother and his cousin. And Tubbs fell in love with Calderone’s sister and they had a child, but of course they both died.
The double agent aspect of the show elevates it to something special. It reminds me of Scorsese’s “The Departed” & Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” There’s something spectacular in seeing people transform by putting on masks to exist in separate worlds. Having to live two realities is extremely archetypal, and very cinematic.
The undercover theme is what made the show consistently interesting for me.
As far as acting, the real stand outs are Edward James Olmos and Martin Ferrero, with Don Johnson representing the blank every-man like a Warhol silkscreen: even his name is a blank canvas for projection… Don Johnson. It might as well be Al Whiteman.
Yet after a while, Don Johnson becomes quite identifiable as the ideal of a Warrior spirit: the kind of person you want to visualize weekly being in your world, because of this-quality or that-quality.
And as for his partner, played by Philip Michael Thomas, he is the quintessential balancing-force of this Warrior energy… with perhaps more of a Lover archetype activated & mixed-in, as he’s usually depicted rocked by his erotic emotions. Johnson is shown this way as well, but his character seems to develop an awareness overtime to consolidate these feelings in exchange for heightening his job performance… like a pure Warrior. Nothing stands out about Philip Michael Thomas’s character, and yet couldn’t imagine this particular show without him. He’s like the ground-rock that keeps the animality of Sonny Crockett contained.
Finally, the music in the show is great. There’s some classic music-movie moments, running all throughout the show, to the very end of the season finale. The resurrection of good obscure music (even if it was popular in its day) by contextualizing the sounds to new images, is just something I adore about cinema. It gets me high.
Everyone has an opinion of the best episodes …
“Miami Vice” clearly is of the ’80s, which is why it was a stupid idea to make a movie. (I will not dignify that idea by watching said movie.) I wonder, though, if a Vice-style show featuring police chasing around all matter of human depravity could be done in a different locale — say, Las Vegas. (Not like the original “CSI” did.)
There’s nothing quite like a Badgers home football game at Camp Randall Stadium in the crisp fall air.
But Dane County’s stringent, slow, phased-in reopening plan doesn’t allow for the kinds of mass gatherings that University of Wisconsin-Madison home games attract. It could cancel the iconic events — or at least drastically cramp the Camp’s style.
The so-called Forward Dane plan, really more of an order, laid out by Public Health Madison & Dane County, includes strict metrics for businesses to reopen and for Madison life to return to anything approaching normal. Even if the the COVID-19 reduction goals are met, the plan limits outdoor mass gatherings to 250 people maximum, not including employees, until a vaccine is found for the virus.
That’s 250 people in a stadium that seats more than 80,000 rollicking fans. Closing Camp Randall would punch a huge hole through a significant source of revenue for the University of Wisconsin and its expensive athletic department. And it would sock it to hospitality businesses in downtown Madison and beyond, businesses that have already been hit hard by the Evers administration’s two-month lockdown of the state.
“So many businesses in the Madison area — restaurants, bars, hotels, Uber drivers, you name it — rely on these Badger home games as a piece of their revenues,” said Scott Manley, executive vice president of Government Relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. “There’s a cottage industry built around entertaining people for Badger home games. If the UW isn’t allowed to have Badger home games, those businesses are just going to be destroyed.”
UW spokesman John Lucas in an email told Empower Wisconsin that the local order “does not apply directly to units of a state agency,” but the university will “continue to consult closely with the city and county as conference and university reopening plans continue to develop.”
Responding to a follow-up email asking whether that means the university will hold home football games this fall at Camp Randall, Lucas would not definitively say.
“We’re continuing to work closely with PHMDC and will consult with them as more information becomes available about the shape of a football season,” he said.
In the previous email, Lucas said UW Athletics is aware of the planning phases incorporated into the Forward Dane plan from Public Health Madison & Dane County as it relates to gatherings. He said UW-Madison participates in an ongoing partnership with local and state health authorities.
He said the Big Ten Conference is evaluating plans for a return to competition, “with the health and safety of student athletes and spectators as its most important consideration.”
There’s much at stake.
The UW-Madison athletics department generates a $610 million annual statewide economic impact, according to a study by Econsult Solutions Inc., a Philadelphia-based consulting firm. Badgers sports attract about 1.8 million out-of-state visitors to Wisconsin every year, the report, released last year, found. In Madison alone Badgers sports has an annual economic impact of nearly $400 million.
“Obviously being as close as we are to Camp Randall, that has a huge affect on our fall business,” said Trevor Wilkinson, kitchen manager for Jordan’s Big 10 Pub, at 1330 Regent St., blocks away from the stadium. “We have high hopes that there will be football, but that is as out of our hands as can be at this point.”
Mangers of downtown bars and restaurants who spoke to Empower Wisconsin Wednesday said they’re trying to keep up with local health information that is daily changing. Jordan’s Big 10 Pub, like others, is restricted to curbside service, for now, under the local health orders. Wilkinson said owners hope to bring back some dine-in service, with social-distancing limitations, next Tuesday. The loosening of the restrictions, of course, is subject to change.
The phased-in Forward Dane plan also could stifle Badgers basketball and hockey games. It limits indoor mass gatherings to 100 people maximum, not including employees — again, until there is a vaccine. Again, that could be a matter for UW and local government officials to iron out.
Even in the best-case scenario, pre-vaccine, restaurants, retailers and other Dane County businesses, will only be able to operate at 75 percent capacity. The plan asserts that, in the absence of a vaccine or treatment, “isolation, quarantine and, most notably, strict social or physical distancing such as public health orders like (Gov. Tony Evers’) Safer at Home” are the preferred method of containing COVID-19. While the creators of the plan acknowledge “the strictest of these prevention strategies” come at a “significant cost” to the economy and community, they are more than willing to turn the screw on an extended shutdown if COVID-19 numbers rise.
“(W)e must not reopen too quickly or without the tools in place to minimize the speed of the virus. Doing so could threaten the progress we’ve made and have more significant health and economic consequences,” the public health policy states.
A Dane County spokeswoman said she was seeking clarification from experts and would be in touch. She had not followed up as of publication.
Manley said Dane County’s slow reopening plan puts businesses in peril of shutting down permanently. He said it underscores why it’s economically harmful to have local governments like Dane County create islands of anti-business public health orders.
“Businesses have to stay at 75 (percent capacity) until we have a vaccine, and we don’t know if we will have a vaccine,” the WMC official said. “For those types of businesses, particularly retailers, it’s going to be very, very difficult to remain in business.”
I thoroughly disagree with the number one song today in 1961:
Today in 1965, the Beatles found that “Ticket to Ride” was a ticket to the top of the charts:
That night, ABC-TV’s “Hollywood Palace” turned this classic …
… into, uh, this:
The number one album today in 1971 was the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers”:
M.D. Kittle wrote this Saturday:
One state senator wants Gov. Evers to withdraw his embattled health secretary’s looming rule that could shut down Wisconsin again, while another is asking the secretary to step down.
Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) issued a statement Friday asserting Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm has failed to see the writing on the Wisconsin Supreme Court wall. Palm and her staff were busily working on a new agency rule that would replace the emergency order she signed last month extending Evers’ lockdown order. The Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this week struck down the emergency rule, ending Evers’ stay-at-home order.
“Now, most rational public servants would get the message that the rule of law and the constitutional limitations on government are not optional or mere suggestions,” Nass said. “The DHS Scope Statement leaves little doubt that Secretary-Designee Palm is no longer acting in a lawful capacity by circumventing the Supreme Court ruling and once again trying to improperly take control of the daily lives of every Wisconsin citizen.”
As Empower Wisconsin reported, Evers on Thursday sent notice to his agency heads that he approved an “emergency statement of scope” by the Department of Health. The statement gives DHS authority “to establish protections for Wisconsin citizens by maintaining appropriate social distancing or other measures to slow and contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect health and safety.” The statement also is supposed to, as the governor puts it, turn the dial to reopen Wisconsin’s economy.
Actually, what it does is layout the broad powers Team Evers and his DHS Secretary-designee, Andrea Palm, believe they have under Wisconsin’s public health emergency statutes. And, while the agency just began the process of promulgating “new emergency rules to address” COVID-19, it seems clear they want control back.
Outgoing state Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) said it’s time for the secretary-designee to step down.
“Secretary-designee Andrea Palm must immediately resign from her appointment as Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary,” he said in a statement. Tiffany easily won Tuesday’s election for the 7th Congressional District, filling a seat long left empty by Evers’ political maneuvering.
“The recent Supreme Court ruling confirmed that Ms. Palm’s power grab exceeded her authority. Her shotgun approach to lock down Wisconsin has produced disastrous consequences.”
Evers sounded indignant when asked by reporters what he thought of Tiffany’s comment.
“Senator Tiffany, please, you just won an election. Just relax. This is an insane statement. We talk about trying to tone down the rhetoric, and I’ve done everything I can to do that, and to make a statement about someone who’s dedicated her life to saving lives. Please sir, give us a break,” Evers said at a press conference Thursday.
The governor’s record, however, doesn’t reflect his words. Was Evers’ toning down the rhetoric when he tweeted that a legal challenge to his lockdown by Republicans in the Legislature was tantamount to homicide?
“Today legislative Republicans told the 4,600+ people in the state of Wisconsin who have contracted COVID-19 and the families of the 242 people who have died, we don’t care about you —we care about our political power,” he wrote late last month.
And the idea that Palm has “dedicated her life to saving lives” is more than a stretch. The former Obama administration official has committed much of her professional life to the political advancement of the left’s health care agenda.
Tiffany isn’t the only one calling for Palm’s resignation, but it seems unlikely the Republican majority in the senate — which just increased to 19-13 after Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling’s (D-La Crosse) resignation — will hold a confirmation vote on Palm in the foreseeable future.
Nass has been a vocal critic of the DHS secretary-designee. The co-chair of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules says the panel’s powers to suspend emergency rules like the one DHS is promulgating “are not in doubt.”
“DHS is needlessly creating a political fight that does nothing to move the state forward on the legal and proper path of fighting COVID-19,” the senator said.
“I call on Gov. Evers to withdraw the Scope Statement and end this needless confrontation before it escalates and leads to greater public discontent with the public health officials in the state,” Nass added.
That was Saturday. On Monday, DHS announced it was withdrawing the scope statement, apparently ending the attempt to recreate Safer at Home by rule. But on Tuesday, Empower Wisconsin reported:
Gov. Tony Evers’ health chief was prepared to take her power play local after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state lockdown.
In her “Safer at Home and Badger Bounce Back Template for Local Health Officials,” Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm laments that the court“diminished the Department’s ability to respond to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.”
Not exactly. What the 4-3 ruling declared is Palm grabbed up power that was not unilaterally hers in defiance of state law. That law calls for legislative oversight. More so, her extended order locking down the state failed to follow the constitution.
But no worries, Palm says in her guidance. “Local health officials may still issue local orders to protect their communities from communicable diseases like COVID-19.” In short, If the Republican-led Legislature and the conservative-controlled Supreme Court won’t allow me to take away your civil liberties in the name of public health, maybe local government can do it.
Palm points to state statute which says local health officers “shall promptly take all measures necessary to prevent, suppress and control communicable diseases” within their county. Another statute, the DHS director said, allows local health officials to “do whatever is reasonable and necessary for the prevention and suppression of disease,” including forbidding public gatherings.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision does not affect this authority,” the DHS document asserts.
Liberal Attorney General Josh Kaul argued the same points in an opinion insisting the local orders are legal. His opinion was not shared by other prosecutors.
Green County District Attorney Craig Nolen on Monday wrote to local Health Officer RoAnn Warden and county officials that regardless of the attorney general’s opinion, he highly recommends rescinding Green County’s extended stay-at-home order. Green County, as of Monday morning, was one of about 20 counties and cities statewide that had continued some form of lockdown.
“The enforcement of the order is frankly impossible, as Section 4-4-4 applies to places only under County Zoning Restrictions, and likely to be struck down if challenged,” Nolen wrote in an email obtained by Empower Wisconsin. “My office will not be enforcing it in any criminal action, after further review and analysis of the issues presented. I foresee significant liability to the County at this point with no real ability to enforce the order.”
Warden finally heeded the DA’s advice and the order was rescinded Monday afternoon.
Green County’s neighbor to the north stayed the course on its lockdown while playing lip service to reopening. Public Health Madison and Dane County on Monday released its Forward Dane plan. It “allows” businesses to begin Tuesday to prepare to reopen, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
“If key metrics are in a favorable position for at least one week, the county will step into the first of three reopening phases. Each phase will last for at least 14 days — the incubation time of the coronavirus — before Public Health assesses whether to move to the next phase,” the newspaper reported.
In other words, it may take more litigation for Dane County businesses and citizens to get their rights back.
The number two isn’t accurate anymore. Kittle and Joshua Waldoch report:
At least five Republican senators want to send Gov. Tony Evers’ Department of Health Services-designee Andrea Palm packing, as discontent continues to grow among conservatives about the former Obama administration official’s handling of the COVID-19 response.
Empower Wisconsin sought comment from all 18 Republican state senators. Sens. Dave Craig (R-Town of Vernon), Andre Jacque (R-De Pere), Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), and Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) are calling for a Senate confirmation hearing on Palm’s nomination. They all say they would vote against her confirmation.
“She’s exceeded her authority, and broken the law,” Kapenga said. “We’ve removed people for less.”
Craig has been on record saying Palm has shown “incredibly poor judgment in dealing with COVID-19.”
“Her pervasive disregard for the law, the constitutional rights of citizens and the very data and ‘science’ she claims to follow is clear justification for her immediate removal,” the senator said in a statement last month. Craig announced on Tuesday that he would not seek another term.
“As he’s told our leadership and said publicly last year, Sen. Nass opposed her pre-COVID-19,” said Nass spokesman Mike Mikalsen. His position hasn’t changed. Palm, he said, has shown no remorse for her “illegal actions” in trying to “ram through” emergency rules that were the same as the stay-at-home orders. “Steve believes that any day the Senate comes back to floor this session her nomination should be on the agenda and voted down.”
The Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee approved Palm’s nomination last year on a 4-1 vote. Jacque cast the lone “no” vote, citing concerns about Palm’s deputy Nicole Safar, former vice president of public Affairs for Planned Parenthood. His position has not changed, particularly after watching Palm’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. Sens. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) and Pat Testin (R-Stevens Point) did vote to confirm her in the Health Committee vote.
Stroebel, who has been a vocal critic of Palm and the DHS during the pandemic, told Empower Wisconsin he is open to a vote, and he would vote against the secretary-designee’s confirmation.
Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua), who resigned from the Senate this week to take the 7th Congressional District seat he won earlier this month, also has called for Palm’s ouster.
“Ms. Palm came here as Governor Evers’ hired gun, and she will leave with Wisconsin’s corpse if she continues,” Tiffany recently said in a statement.
Before being tapped as Evers health chief, Palm served as senior counselor to the secretary of Health and Human Services under former President Barack Obama. She has held leadership positions with Hillary Clinton, when Clinton was a U.S. senator from New York, and other liberal politicians and organizations.
Republicans hold an 18-13 majority. It had been 19-14 before Tiffany’s departure and Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling’s (D-La Crosse) sudden resignation.
Many senators did not return Empower Wisconsin’s request for comments.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) doesn’t believe it’s an appropriate time to hold a confirmation hearing, said the senator’s chief of staff, Scott Kelly.
Senate President Roger Roth (R-Appleton) said he does have serious concerns about Palm’s leadership, but many Republican caucus members have “agreed it would be best for there to be stability with the position.” He noted Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has made it clear that Palm would not be removed from her position during the crisis.
Post-pandemic, however, Roth said he thinks it would be best to re-refer her confirmation appointment back to the Senate Health Committee for another public hearing.
“We have seen how DHS operates, sometimes unlawfully, so it is prudent for Senators and the public to be allowed an opportunity to weigh in again after seeing how this pandemic was handled in Wisconsin,” he said.
One strange anniversary in rock music: Today in 1968, Paul McCartney and Jane Asher attended a concert of … Andy Williams:
Eleven years later, not McCartney, but Elton John became the first Western artist to perform in the Soviet Union.
Four years later, David Bowie’s suggestion reached number one:
U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas):
The debate over reopening the economy has a peculiar characteristic: It breaks down almost entirely along political lines. Liberals emphasize the dangers of an open society, shaming those who want to go back to work. Conservatives argue the opposite. Red states are steadily reopening, while most blue states lag. House Democrats believe it isn’t safe for lawmakers to go back to work, while the Republican-controlled Senate is back in session.
It isn’t obvious that such a debate should be partisan, yet it is. Why? One popular explanation is that all roads lead to President Trump. Whatever he says, the left will say the opposite.
Geographic distribution has also been proposed as a factor. Liberals tend to pack into crowded cities, where the virus spreads more easily, while conservatives populate the more rural, safer regions. This explanation is neat but fails to explain the divide within cities, where Republicans support reopening more than their Democratic neighbors.
Another factor is that the economic fallout has harmed working-class, high-school-educated Americans far worse than the liberal-leaning college-educated. It is easy to “prioritize public health” when you work comfortably from home.
Finally, the far left is treating the lockdowns and the consequent economic devastation as an opportunity to “restructure” America into a socialist utopia. So they’re in no rush.
These factors contribute to the partisan divide, but I believe a complete account would take us deeper, into the realm of psychology and morality. Liberal and conservative brain function has been shown to differ considerably during exercises in risk-taking. These differences led researchers to conclude that socially conservative views are driven, at least in part, by people’s need to feel safe and secure. While liberals present themselves as more open to experience and change, conservatives seem more likely to protect that which we know. This divide appears to apply to multiculturalism, traditional institutions and financial risk, but not all unknown risks.
Today conservatives are the ones ready to confront risk head-on. That’s consistent with my experience in the military, where the overwhelming majority of special operators identify as conservatives. Recent data confirm my experiences, indicating that high-risk civilian occupations tend to be filled by those who lean right. If conservatives show more brain activity when processing fear, they also seem better at overcoming it.
Liberals are also more comfortable with a government that regulates more behavior and provides more services. They often say, “You can’t be free if you don’t have service X, Y and Z.” Such statements sound nonsensical to conservative ears. The conservative emphasis on personal responsibility leaves less room for the government micromanagement we’re witnessing now.
Conservatives understand basic morality differently, too. Research shows that among the five moral foundations—care, fairness, authority and tradition, in-group loyalty, and purity—liberals prioritize care and fairness, while conservatives engage all five about equally. The liberal weighting means that far more emphasis is placed on a single consideration—“If it saves even one life …”— to the exclusion of others, such as the costs to society. Liberals equate those costs with simple monetary hardship, easily replaced by a government check. Conservatives realize economic devastation may affect lives for years, altering their entire trajectories.
The liberal approach betrays a lack of imagination. Just because you dislike Mr. Trump doesn’t mean he must be wrong here. Just because you can work remotely doesn’t mean others can, too. Just because you don’t want to confront risk doesn’t mean others should be prevented from doing so. Just because you have a single-dimensional view of “caring” doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore the consequences of economic devastation.
It is time to reopen America in a smart and deliberate fashion and stop calling people murderers because they want to get back to work. The American people are responsible enough to live free and confront risk. Let them do so.
Today in 1966, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who decided to replace for the evening the tardy drummer Keith Moon and bass player John Entwistle with the bass player and drummer of the band that played before them at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor, England.
When Moon and Entwistle arrived and found they had been substituted for, a fight broke out. Moon and Entwistle quit … for a week.
The number one single today in 1967:
Before their unpaid furlough, the white lab coats at Blaska Policy Werkes had been studying the disconnect between the rhetoric of progressives like Bernie Sanders, Mark Pocan, John Nichols, and A.O.C. and their actions.
Like Marxists everywhere, they purport to speak for the common man but represent the interests of tenured academics, the governing class, professional grievance peddlers, and other elites. They left “the Deplorables” to Donald Trump.
The farmers, tavern keepers, and hairdressers who protested WI Gov. Tony Evers’ rigid economic paralysis were motivated by “fear,” or “paranoia” or “just plain manipulated for political reasons,” Pocan sniffed. (Recounted here.)
The Progressive Dane mayor of Madison was more succinct: “Idiots!” she called them. Pocan, Mayor Rhodes-Conway, Nichols et al have yet to miss a single paycheck during a lockdown that has idled 33 million proud American workers and made them supplicants for Nancy Pelosi’s charity.
Peggy Noonan gets it. “Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in charge — scientists, doctors, political figures, consultants—calling the shots for the average people. But personally they have less skin in the game,” Noonan writes in “Scenes from the class struggle.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 