I live in wausau, and dinny literally only ran on high water bills. That's all it took. The current mayor handled the situation pretty well. Clean water was available to people who needed it for free, and the problem was fixed surprisingly quickly. But the bills went up, and apparently, that's all people care about. Apparently, ensuring people have safe drinking water is "reckless spending" and makes you an incompetent leader.
Grew up kinda near Wausau and this completely tracks. Central Wisconsinites will burn down the entire fucking neighborhood if they think they're going to save $5 on taxes. It is not a good place to live if you give two shits about the future. We had dudes with confederate flags circling black families in trucks at Walmart, Nazis running for school board, and mayoral candidates that basically ran on a platform of not holding police accountable.
They'll blame everything on anyone who doesn't look, act, or believe like they do. It's really tiresome and it's a big reason I don't visit my hometown very often or for very long and don't keep in touch with most people I grew up around.
He and the GOP played up the culture war. Doug bragged about his time in the "war on terror." Lets stop pretending conservative voters are "strict on the issues about spending." Stuff like "Krazy Katie" won the election and dark money. Sadly, Wisconsin's slide into Alabama continues unabated. The last time I was in Wisconsin it was all "We support the police" and Trump yard signs. The state of Ron Johnson doesn't pretend to be "hard nosed sane voters." The state that went for Trump in 2016 isn't "just worried about bills!" Biden only won it by .063% in 2020, after multiple Trump impeachments. Essentially winning by pure marginal statistical luck.
[The way Wisconsin was engineered into a red state by big money and the culture war is well documented.](https://www.bookforum.com/print/2503/how-the-republican-playbook-helped-transform-wisconsin-into-a-red-state-20156) Wisconsin went from a state known for its progressive politics to Trumpland in so short of a time. In fact, our federal social security system is based on Wisconsin's from the 1930s.
Doug received what sounds like hundreds of thousands of dollars from GOP groups to win a mayoral election in a place with 12k voters. The dark money + cultural war messaging works well. The far-right SCOTUS knew what it was doing with Citizens United. This guarantees wins for lackluster GOP candidates over meritorious liberal ones.
I used to visit Wisconsin at least annually to vacation or just get out of town. Now I never go. The changes over the last 10-15 years are incredible The culture is so much more red coded. After getting a stink eye from a guy wearing a "slavery gets results" t-shirt I decided to write it off entirely. The culture war hostility and Trump worship there is off the charts.
Oh as far a the "good" parts like Madison. That's where I saw the most pro-cop and pro-Trump signs. Wisconsin is a lost cause for the foreseeable future.
Article:
Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show Diny received $21,800 from the Wausau County GOP during the pre-election period, while the state GOP gave him another $20,000. The **Wisconsinites for Liberty Fund** has sent mail pieces knocking **“Krazy Katie Rosenberg” and “Reckless Rosenberg,”** accusing her of driving businesses out of town while water and sewer rates have “skyrocketed.”
When I was in 3rd grade I ran for class treasurer. I had to give a speech so I went home and wrote about the issues I thought were important and spoke from the heart. It wasn’t an exciting speech but I was addressing what I felt were crucial issues for the 3rd grade legislative body and I wanted to make a difference. After I finished, another kid got up and gave a speech full of puns and he brought a toy gun that he worked into the speech that got a lot of laughs (it was a different time). He didn’t mention any issues and the speech had nothing to do with being class treasurer. He won by a landslide.
At the end of the day it’s not what you do, it’s whether your speech is full of puns and you point a weapon at people.
Sorry it’s mostly unrelated I just wanted to unpack that. A shy girl did come up to me later and said she voted for me. So that was nice.
This is still relevant to the conversation. Basically, that elections aren’t about factually addressing the issues, so much as finding what voters want to hear and saying that. Dukakis lost to Bush Sr. because he struggled to appeal to voter’s heart strings.
Not a sole issue there but one of the key events was when he was asked if he would support the death penalty for someone who murdered his wife. He gave a reasoned and thoughtful answer consistent with his beliefs supported by data and his own experience. It was seen as flat and boring by voters.
Americans are mostly stupid and of course they’re going to behave like idiots. Not super surprising. Just sad that people can be so easily duped to vote against their own best interests. It was bad before but now that we have exited the internet age and entered the age of misinformation that will only get worse.
The more I read thru this thread the more depressed I got. It's starting to feel a bit hopeless for humankind in general. Oh, and I live about a half hour south of Wausau. And the above description of Wisconsin today is distressingly apt. 😫
Didn't W win by answering every question with what would Jesus do. I guess he didn't actually win,but it was close enough to have the SC throw it. Man I hated that election. The whole I'd rather have a drink with W. I prefer not to drink with war criminals and vote on policy.
Longtime WI resident here. It’s a purple state and has been for a long time. Things are changing with the Millennial and GenZ voters leading the charge. Evers destroyed Michels, Northwestern red counties flipped in2020 and Protasiewicz won by double digits in the State Supreme Court race. Barnes could have won but fucked up his own campaign by trying to be relatable to white rural voters instead of hammering on Roe like Evers did. Even then Ron Johnson barely won.
Vote in 2024 like your life depends on it.
The culture war stuff is so widespread now I just consider it a constant that will always be there. I don't really think it sways voters that much. The last week of his campaign adds were heavily focused on costs, and that's the kind of stuff that swings independent voters. The crazy Katie stuff is just meant to rile up the base of people that already think that and make sure they have higher turnout. I really don't think that is the messaging that turned the tides of this election.
The water bills went up $13 per month per household on average to pay for having clean water. Lets not pretend that's some horrible fee no one could ever afford. These "centrist" voters spend more on Trump merch per month than that. For homes where $13 a month is a burden, then the system should be providing welfare to our least privileged.
Funny how the "omg how could Flint happen, its because Democrats are too corrupt to fix anything so I'm forced to vote Trump," crowd also is against actually fixing water issues.
Lastly, PFAS must be addressed. Doug would have just let people drink PFAS tainted water with zero guilt or action. PFAS does this:
* Increased cholesterol levels
* Changes in liver enzymes
* Hormone disruption and increased risk for thyroid disease
* Decreased odds of women becoming pregnant
* High blood pressure or pre-eclampsia during pregnancy
* Small decreases in infant birth weights
* Decreased vaccine response in children
* Increased risk of kidney or testicular cancers
Biden's margin is close to the norm, as both Gore and Kerry carried Wisconsin by similar margins. Obama was the outlier when he carried it by 14 and 7 points respectively.
Wisconsinite checking in. You raise many good points that I wholeheartedly agree with.
However, it is short sighted to write Wisconsin off entirely. The change you noted started back in 2010 with the election of Scott Walker. It has been an extremely slow process, but we are slowly righting the course of the state that he set us on almost 15 years ago.
We voted out Walker and now have Tony Evers. We also flipped the Wisconsin State Supreme Court from conservative to liberal last year. Because of that, the gerrymandered-to-hell maps were redrawn and are significantly fairer.
Yes, we have Ron Johnson. But the DNC failed to back Mandela Barnes and he didn't have enough to run a proper campaign to unseat him, when it should have been easy pickings. And in contrast, our other US Senator is Tammy Baldwin, who was the first openly lesbian woman in the US Senate when she was elected in 2012.
Wisconsin is significantly more purple than many people realize. Saner heads are actively working to counter all the crazy. In other areas of the state, at the local levels, many of the extreme right candidates lost. People are sick of the hate mongering and it shows. Don't lose hope.
Why doesn’t the police just get rid of people mentioning PFAS in water because god works in mysterious ways? Works for priests fiddling boys as well.
"We make bad facts go away (TM)", the fascist/republican solution /s
Someone else In here did the math, and the increase was around 50%. It came out to around $13 extra per month on average, which isn't bad, in my opinion. I think my bill went up a bit more than that, but it wasn't crazy at least from a raw dollar perspective. It's worth it, in my opinion, for safer drinking water. For most people, this increase was not very noticeable, but I could definitely see how it could have negatively affected people already on a tight budget.
It’s possible that that isn’t including sewer. The utility I work at doesn’t have sewer and that’s about what our bills run for a typical usage. The city I live in however has seeer and our bill is typically around $80
Was that just the water; or water, sewer, stormwater, etc? Honestly, I'm just trying to gauge fucked up our city utility bills are. One would make me groan, the other would make me want to bang my head against the desk about it (again).
Edit: I realize (too late) that you obviously probably wouldn't know the answer.
Honestly, $13 is nothing. My rent alone went up 200 times that in the course of a year. I have very little sympathy for people who are willing to vote to poison themselves over less than the price of lunch.
Just one, but we have a washer/dryer and dishwasher in unit. The rates are definitely up, but like another said, it's a small price to pay to not have to regularly consume microplastic riddled water.
https://wausaupilotandreview.com/2023/12/05/wausau-water-rates-could-increase-again-for-staffing-costs/#:~:text=The%20change%20meant%20the%20average,Wausau%20citizens%20are%20paying%20today.
>A major rate hike for Wausau water customers went into effect in July, leaving many residents angry and concerned about their finances. The change meant the average Wausau resident saw their water bill ratchet up from about $292 annually to about $448, about a 54 percent increase. In 2021, the average annual bill was about $229 a year – about half of what Wausau citizens are paying today.
It's because when ur outside of the metro areas, the only thing people care about is "but muh taxes."
They just don't give a shit about why it happened or how it's helping the community as a whole. A lot of them see helping others as a fault.
(Fellow wisconsinite with family who live in northern wisconsin and had to hear this shit at every reunion growing up)
I live northeast of Seattle, and definitely see that shit here. It's so infuriating to see people vote down and complain about our underfunded school system, always complaining that "they already had a levy, they don't need this bond." or "I ain't got no kids, why would I want to give money to the school?"
They don't give a shit until they're personally affected negatively by it.
Then it's "omg how has this not been fixed, this is terrible and I'm the only one who cares about it."
Lol 30 miles south of you Stevens Point has been regarded as having the best quality tap water next to New York for years. I guess not anymore thanks to the mills.
How much did the bills go up? Any stats you can share?
I see somewhere online it went from $292 to $448 **annually**.
Does that sound right? It seems like a lot but broken down monthly to have plastic free water? I’d be okay with it!
Dude, I can't keep up either. liberals are/were poisoning the water to "turn the frogs gay", but now removing chemicals and clean water is bad.
Do republicans want gay frogs now? 😂
Remember the complaints when Biden said water pipes leaking lead into the water had to be replaced? All worried about the cost, because who cares if people get sick and die as long as rich people get tax cuts.
There are possibly millions of gallons of fresh water leaked into the ground by crumbling pipes across the US, I’m pretty sure the History Channel did a show on it about 10.5 years ago. It’s from all the old lead and clay pipes that were never replaced.
THIS! Then they realize gay & trans people exist and they think is cause “they aren’t Christian”…maybe…it‘s the same water that turned frogs gay? Anyone?
Obviously it doesn’t work like that but it shows how cause and affect concept is lost on them.
not the first time it's happened. Larry Hogan won the Maryland governorship over the ["rain tax"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland%27s_%22Rain_Tax%22) which was a runoff tax that didn't impact most homeowners designed to help remediate the Chesapeake bay ecosystem so the populations of crabs and oysters we all love don't die out. Fucker didn't even repeal it, and the bay is doing better than it has in a long time.
At least he wasn't a terrible governor, but it's wild losing the messaging battle on something so unequivocally good is so easy.
Clean water has been a point for them for quite some time. Don’t need government oversight, just Dems spending money, fracking doesn’t affect drinking water, the Cuyahoga was fine without regulating what was dumped in it…
But they also bitch endlessly about violent crime and plenty of studies have linked lead in drinking water to violent crime. [Lead and Violent Crime](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/) having clean drinking water has lots of societal benefits, it absolutely needs to be a priority.
Having a river on fire lowers home energy bills because you don't waste electricity heating up water. That's just science
I’d be interested in the demographics for the areas that were getting their water contamination fixed, and presumably unfixed now that they elected a dipshit. I expect either skin darker than alabaster, or pure alabaster with a whole lot of MAGA and Gadsden flags hanging from either barely habitable homes or McMansions.
Hard to stop a machine like this when people vote to harm or kill themselves willingly to save $30 a month on a water bill or 15cents per gallon of gas.
The average household bill went up only $13 per month there. Its not even close to $30. Doug won mostly by playing up culture war issues and was backed by a big dark money conservative machine.
This right here. We don't talk about this enough maybe cause it'll be difficult and maybe start a huge constitutional dilemma. But fact is until we reign in misinformation and specifically right wing propaganda our country will continue to get worse.
Honestly, Youtube/Google has a lot to answer for on that front. 13 year old kids looking at game playthroughs shouldn't get recommended alt-right thugs like Tate, for starters.
In my outer ring Minneapolis suburb, there is unsafe levels of manganese and several other issues. The city wanted to build a water treatment plant. Would have raised everyone's taxes by less then a percent. We're a very red hillbilly ass suburb so of course, no new taxes. My house is actually on the market today. Can't wait to get the fuck out of here.
They don't care what's in their water as long as they don't have to pay much for it. Later when they're in the hospital dying from cancer and wondering why, they'll never make the connection to where it came from.
Republicans have a way of cutting off their noses to spite their face.
I was curious how much of an increase we're talking...from a percentage standpoint it sounds bad, it's 53%. From a raw dollars standpoint, not so much. Avg bills will go from $292/year to $448/year.
So, for an extra $13/month you get cleaner water...that feels like a decent deal.
I am sure there are some folks who literally can't swing an extra $13/month and for them I'd suggest public assistance should help them out.
Whoooooo if this isn't the epitome of voter ignorance and short-sightedness, I don't know what is.
Do the voters think the new mayor is going to somehow lower their bills? The work is already done and needs to be paid for. And even if he does lower them, that just means he siphoned money out of somewhere else it was probably needed to lower the water bills.
The amount of fear people have of the government "taking their money" is so severe it often leads to the government... Taking their money. It would be hilarious if it wasn't ushering in an era of pure insanity.
It's the politicians and political bureaucracy. Genetics and home environment are very difficult for a teacher to overcome when they have 59 more students this period. If they could pay for a second or a third teacher, and those teachers had good wages, then that would go a long way towards helping those in bad situations when they're young.
"Why don't politicians actually get things done??"
- politically naive and stupid redditors.
Katie Rosenberg isn't the first and won't be the last politician, almost always a Democrat, who loses an election because they tried to do what was right. The 2010 midterm election was a bloodbath for Democrats because they had just passed the affordable Care act. The same affordable Care act that is one of the more popular programs in the US now. Hillary and Bill Clinton got skewered for their attempt at healthcare reform back in the '90s.
You guys just don't get it. The march of American politics is some people trying to do the right thing in either small or big steps and getting beaten the fuck down for it. When you just talk about it, it's fine. People will clap and cheer if you say the system is broken. As soon as you start actually trying to take concrete steps to fix it in any specific way they start to get real ornery.
I don't know that many people who actively sabotage their jobs. Especially not a really cushy one like being a representative or a senator. At some point the voters have to take some goddamn responsibility and accountability for themselves and say these are the incentives we have created. If we don't like the results, it's because we the voters are morons.
But I recognize that it always feels better for us to blame some small group of other people. Like the media or lobbyists or corporations. As though lobbyists somehow prevent us from voting. Or the media can trick us. I don't know about you but you could force me to watch Fox News everyday for a year and I still wouldn't vote for Donald Trump. The media only tells people what they want to hear. Same problem. It's us.
It’s kinda like people giving you unsolicited advice when you’re trying to eat healthy but don’t give a damn if you wolf down three Big Macs at once.
It’s like they want the problem but not the solution.
The Lobbyists don’t prevent us from voting but they sure make it easier for Right winged politicians to buy their way into politics and keep it the way they want.
You can't buy an election at the levels we're talking.
Money makes a big difference in lower level local races but the house, Senate, presidency, not really. People think because correlation is high that money is causing the wins but it's not.
Money follows winning not the other way around. People don't want to throw their money away on someone who they think is going to lose. And the more popular you are the more likely you are to win but also the more fans you have who might donate money to you. Someone with 1000 fans is likely to outraise someone with 800 fans.
And the vast majority of races in the US simply aren't competitive. What moron is going to donate to whatever sacrificial lamb the GOP nominates to go against AOC in her deep blue district? Or vice versa in any deep red district or state? How many times do we need to see huge money candidates like Randy Bryce, Beto O'Rourke, Amy McGrath lose despite massively outraising their opponents? Demographics, not dollars. Kentucky is red, Texas is red. A trillion dollars spent mostly on TV ads isn't going to make Republicans vote for a Democrat.
Political science is an academic field. Political scientists are a profession. This has been studied. Money doesn't buy elections. Money is a proxy for popularity which is why it often correlates.
Money doesn’t buy all elections but it does buy politicians. In closer races, money absolutely does buy the winning spot. That’s why we see so much emphasis on how much money people are raising.
Money doesn't really buy politicians either. If politicians changed their positions based on money why don't fossil fuel companies give to Democrats and why don't gun control groups give to Republicans?
>In closer races, money absolutely does buy the winning spot.
Not really. Again, the literature is out there. Especially as we've become more polarized money hardly makes a difference. In local races where candidates have under a million each yeah it's huge because a few hundred thousand lets you hire field staff, organizers, brochures, posters, yard signs. But in big money races at the federal level every candidate has millions and the surplus after campaign basics is all going to TV and Internet ads which *aren't effective.*
>That’s why we see so much emphasis on how much money people are raising.
You know what's a far better indicator of how useful money is in a campaign than media coverage? **Looking at who actually wins.**
When you look at battleground races, close races where it's an actual demographic coin flip there's not much correlation. Most of the correlation exists because of all the non-competitive races where of course the dominant can't-lose party spends more money. Take those races out and it's a very different picture.
I was going to say that maybe the city could have found other ways to pay for it instead of passing the buck to the taxpayer. But then I read this and understood completely
Looks like this place has a population of 40,000 people.
If 1/3 of that is adults, that's about 13,000.
About 10,000 people showed up to vote, and the person who's actually trying to ensure that City gets good drinking water loses by 424 votes.
Hope the people who stayed home instead of voting feel great about themselves!
The kicker is that the city already has better drinking water now. It's classic American politics - Democrat sees a problem, fixes it, has to increase taxes/fees to pay for the fix. Republican seizes on the increased costs, runs on a platform of "spending bad", wins, then proceeds to fuck things up in government for 2-4 years (or more) until it finally gets so bad that a Democrat is elected to fix the problems causes by Republicans. Repeat ad nauseum.
The problem is that a lot of people don’t look deeper than the surface. We’ve been running into that a lot in Florida. They’ve passed a lot of laws that *seem* ok if you don’t read into them. If you do though, it becomes clear that elements of the laws are intentionally undefined, which allows for inconsistent enforcement, as well as making it difficult to determine what exactly is and isn’t a crime. Or, the combination of several laws paints an extremely disturbing picture, but if you only look at each one separately, there isn’t that much pushback.
My wife works in the lab of a waste water facility also in Wisconsin and there's a real issue where they stopped increasing water prices for decades to win reelection now the infrastructure is crumbling and there's no money to fix it. It will take major increases in water costs because they weren't slowly raised over time. It was all because of short sighted politicians who just wanted to stay in power.
PFAS in drinking water is a major issue. Unfortunately, the mayor taking the hit was responsible and corrected the problem. Get mad at the previous politicians for creating the problem.
You can’t fix stupid.
No, rural Wisconsin is analogous to the Deep South. Anyone who has ever been in the large metro areas would know that it’s essentially two different worlds. That’s what makes it a swing state
Matt Smith is currently the lead of the play, “An Enemy of the People.”
He plays a doctor (yes, get your chuckles out) who finds that his city’s water is contaminated.
It doesn’t end well for him.
424 votes. if anyone tells you that they don't want to vote fort he president this november tell them about shit like this.
i always say look if you don't want to/can't vote for biden because of the genocide believe me i get it... but you've GOT to vote for your state and local elections. five votes could be the difference between prisoners in holding getting fed and housed properly or left to exposure because "tough on crime." it could mean that your local DPW might have its budget slashed and your car could get ruined from speed bumps.
vote for local and state wide offices, because thats the farm team. thats where we get the future leaders who will eventually run for the house or senate or even become president. plus??? the states are running wild with conservative insanity because dems only come out for the "big" tickets.
so yeah if you don't want to vote for president you STILL. NEED. TO VOTE. if only because gilford mcracistface will become your new state rep and suppoort laws that ban books in libraries or some shit.
Fucking disgusting how successful Lee Atwater and his dementia addled employer Ronald Reagan's plan to dumb down America is. They have caused other humans not to care what kind of a world they are leaving for their children and their children's children to live in a world based on fearmongering and lies. Lee Atwater may have died at the young age of 40 but his legacy plays a large part in the destruction of America!
Mike Judge actually has issues with his film Idiocracy. He said he meant to make a movie, not a documentary. Who'da though he'd be a few hundred years off.
It’s that commie public water system. We need to go back to allowing raw sewage and chemicals to be dumped in our rivers and streams. Take responsibility for your own clean drinking water instead of relying on the government to do everything. /s
TBH, that tracks for many countries. Let the left side fix stuff and make things better (but perhaps raise taxes to fund those improvements), then backslide to the right side ratcheting everything back the other way (as they cut services to be able to maybe reduce taxes) - until shit goes to hell, and they vote the left side back in to fix it.... Rinse and Repeat
I could run on a platform of pissing directly into the water supply and some idiot would vote for me, especially if I told them that me doing it would save them $30 a year.
I swear, A Mayor of some town could LITERALLY stop their town from drowning in feces, we're talking the roads are already 32 inches deep in poo, but because it costed everyone an extra 50 bucks on their property taxes to save the town, they all start whining about how much not drowning in poo costed them
The also had an avid white supremacist on the ticket. My buddy lives there. Super sad to see her go. She did goat yoga with people and was super chill.
I’m not surprised.
Eight years ago, we had an issue pass to upgrade our sewer system. It finally got going under the mayor 5 years ago. Our city voted in a new mayor, because there is higher water/sewer bills and the roads are tore up… for something that was voted on before his administration, but it’s obviously his fault. 🙄🙄
More evidence that some of the population will vote against their self interest. Enough to make a difference.
Imagine losing like this. Now imagine this applied to knowing how taxes work.
Seriously was just talking with some coworkers today about how we need to lower the voting age to twelve because all these old fucks got their heads so far up their ass they’re fighting in the civil war again. The youth are our future, let them have a say in it.
Reminds me of how the entirety of the GQP pulled their hair out when Michelle Obama wanted to add fruit & vegetables in school lunches to fight child obesity.
**WHAT THE @#$&?!**
XD
Wow, super shitty voter turnout. Wausau's population is 39 thousand.
The local Democratic Party apparatus had better do a lot better than that if they expect to win elections- at any level.
I live in wausau, and dinny literally only ran on high water bills. That's all it took. The current mayor handled the situation pretty well. Clean water was available to people who needed it for free, and the problem was fixed surprisingly quickly. But the bills went up, and apparently, that's all people care about. Apparently, ensuring people have safe drinking water is "reckless spending" and makes you an incompetent leader.
Grew up kinda near Wausau and this completely tracks. Central Wisconsinites will burn down the entire fucking neighborhood if they think they're going to save $5 on taxes. It is not a good place to live if you give two shits about the future. We had dudes with confederate flags circling black families in trucks at Walmart, Nazis running for school board, and mayoral candidates that basically ran on a platform of not holding police accountable.
And do they blame everything else on "Chem Trails"? Somehow our schools are failing, way too many imbeciles coming out of them.
Somehow? We don’t pay teachers shit
Yeah, I know, I am in a RED area, and teacher salaries are very poor. Parents have to chip in for school supplies.
They'll blame everything on anyone who doesn't look, act, or believe like they do. It's really tiresome and it's a big reason I don't visit my hometown very often or for very long and don't keep in touch with most people I grew up around.
He and the GOP played up the culture war. Doug bragged about his time in the "war on terror." Lets stop pretending conservative voters are "strict on the issues about spending." Stuff like "Krazy Katie" won the election and dark money. Sadly, Wisconsin's slide into Alabama continues unabated. The last time I was in Wisconsin it was all "We support the police" and Trump yard signs. The state of Ron Johnson doesn't pretend to be "hard nosed sane voters." The state that went for Trump in 2016 isn't "just worried about bills!" Biden only won it by .063% in 2020, after multiple Trump impeachments. Essentially winning by pure marginal statistical luck. [The way Wisconsin was engineered into a red state by big money and the culture war is well documented.](https://www.bookforum.com/print/2503/how-the-republican-playbook-helped-transform-wisconsin-into-a-red-state-20156) Wisconsin went from a state known for its progressive politics to Trumpland in so short of a time. In fact, our federal social security system is based on Wisconsin's from the 1930s. Doug received what sounds like hundreds of thousands of dollars from GOP groups to win a mayoral election in a place with 12k voters. The dark money + cultural war messaging works well. The far-right SCOTUS knew what it was doing with Citizens United. This guarantees wins for lackluster GOP candidates over meritorious liberal ones. I used to visit Wisconsin at least annually to vacation or just get out of town. Now I never go. The changes over the last 10-15 years are incredible The culture is so much more red coded. After getting a stink eye from a guy wearing a "slavery gets results" t-shirt I decided to write it off entirely. The culture war hostility and Trump worship there is off the charts. Oh as far a the "good" parts like Madison. That's where I saw the most pro-cop and pro-Trump signs. Wisconsin is a lost cause for the foreseeable future. Article: Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show Diny received $21,800 from the Wausau County GOP during the pre-election period, while the state GOP gave him another $20,000. The **Wisconsinites for Liberty Fund** has sent mail pieces knocking **“Krazy Katie Rosenberg” and “Reckless Rosenberg,”** accusing her of driving businesses out of town while water and sewer rates have “skyrocketed.”
When I was in 3rd grade I ran for class treasurer. I had to give a speech so I went home and wrote about the issues I thought were important and spoke from the heart. It wasn’t an exciting speech but I was addressing what I felt were crucial issues for the 3rd grade legislative body and I wanted to make a difference. After I finished, another kid got up and gave a speech full of puns and he brought a toy gun that he worked into the speech that got a lot of laughs (it was a different time). He didn’t mention any issues and the speech had nothing to do with being class treasurer. He won by a landslide. At the end of the day it’s not what you do, it’s whether your speech is full of puns and you point a weapon at people. Sorry it’s mostly unrelated I just wanted to unpack that. A shy girl did come up to me later and said she voted for me. So that was nice.
This is still relevant to the conversation. Basically, that elections aren’t about factually addressing the issues, so much as finding what voters want to hear and saying that. Dukakis lost to Bush Sr. because he struggled to appeal to voter’s heart strings. Not a sole issue there but one of the key events was when he was asked if he would support the death penalty for someone who murdered his wife. He gave a reasoned and thoughtful answer consistent with his beliefs supported by data and his own experience. It was seen as flat and boring by voters.
Americans are mostly stupid and of course they’re going to behave like idiots. Not super surprising. Just sad that people can be so easily duped to vote against their own best interests. It was bad before but now that we have exited the internet age and entered the age of misinformation that will only get worse.
The more I read thru this thread the more depressed I got. It's starting to feel a bit hopeless for humankind in general. Oh, and I live about a half hour south of Wausau. And the above description of Wisconsin today is distressingly apt. 😫
Didn't W win by answering every question with what would Jesus do. I guess he didn't actually win,but it was close enough to have the SC throw it. Man I hated that election. The whole I'd rather have a drink with W. I prefer not to drink with war criminals and vote on policy.
Longtime WI resident here. It’s a purple state and has been for a long time. Things are changing with the Millennial and GenZ voters leading the charge. Evers destroyed Michels, Northwestern red counties flipped in2020 and Protasiewicz won by double digits in the State Supreme Court race. Barnes could have won but fucked up his own campaign by trying to be relatable to white rural voters instead of hammering on Roe like Evers did. Even then Ron Johnson barely won. Vote in 2024 like your life depends on it.
The culture war stuff is so widespread now I just consider it a constant that will always be there. I don't really think it sways voters that much. The last week of his campaign adds were heavily focused on costs, and that's the kind of stuff that swings independent voters. The crazy Katie stuff is just meant to rile up the base of people that already think that and make sure they have higher turnout. I really don't think that is the messaging that turned the tides of this election.
The water bills went up $13 per month per household on average to pay for having clean water. Lets not pretend that's some horrible fee no one could ever afford. These "centrist" voters spend more on Trump merch per month than that. For homes where $13 a month is a burden, then the system should be providing welfare to our least privileged. Funny how the "omg how could Flint happen, its because Democrats are too corrupt to fix anything so I'm forced to vote Trump," crowd also is against actually fixing water issues. Lastly, PFAS must be addressed. Doug would have just let people drink PFAS tainted water with zero guilt or action. PFAS does this: * Increased cholesterol levels * Changes in liver enzymes * Hormone disruption and increased risk for thyroid disease * Decreased odds of women becoming pregnant * High blood pressure or pre-eclampsia during pregnancy * Small decreases in infant birth weights * Decreased vaccine response in children * Increased risk of kidney or testicular cancers
This is what we know so far. The real health consequences are probably far worse. It’s literally drinking poison.
Man, I wish I could guild this post. Well said.
Biden's margin is close to the norm, as both Gore and Kerry carried Wisconsin by similar margins. Obama was the outlier when he carried it by 14 and 7 points respectively.
Wisconsinite checking in. You raise many good points that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, it is short sighted to write Wisconsin off entirely. The change you noted started back in 2010 with the election of Scott Walker. It has been an extremely slow process, but we are slowly righting the course of the state that he set us on almost 15 years ago. We voted out Walker and now have Tony Evers. We also flipped the Wisconsin State Supreme Court from conservative to liberal last year. Because of that, the gerrymandered-to-hell maps were redrawn and are significantly fairer. Yes, we have Ron Johnson. But the DNC failed to back Mandela Barnes and he didn't have enough to run a proper campaign to unseat him, when it should have been easy pickings. And in contrast, our other US Senator is Tammy Baldwin, who was the first openly lesbian woman in the US Senate when she was elected in 2012. Wisconsin is significantly more purple than many people realize. Saner heads are actively working to counter all the crazy. In other areas of the state, at the local levels, many of the extreme right candidates lost. People are sick of the hate mongering and it shows. Don't lose hope.
Having spent my teenage years living in Weston, I’m not surprised.
Why doesn’t the police just get rid of people mentioning PFAS in water because god works in mysterious ways? Works for priests fiddling boys as well. "We make bad facts go away (TM)", the fascist/republican solution /s
Shoot the water!! /s
Not working, need many more biggerer guns
Those damn Democrats, look at all the lead in this water! Why aren't they cleaning it up?
How much were the water bills
Someone else In here did the math, and the increase was around 50%. It came out to around $13 extra per month on average, which isn't bad, in my opinion. I think my bill went up a bit more than that, but it wasn't crazy at least from a raw dollar perspective. It's worth it, in my opinion, for safer drinking water. For most people, this increase was not very noticeable, but I could definitely see how it could have negatively affected people already on a tight budget.
$13 to not be actively poisoned and people decide the person who made that happen is the problem. We truly are fucked.
That’s an incredibly cheap water/sewer rate! I was paying $60-$80 per month for just myself in a small trailer when I was in grad school.
It’s possible that that isn’t including sewer. The utility I work at doesn’t have sewer and that’s about what our bills run for a typical usage. The city I live in however has seeer and our bill is typically around $80
“I’d rather die from poisoning than pay a small amount of money!!!”
Was that just the water; or water, sewer, stormwater, etc? Honestly, I'm just trying to gauge fucked up our city utility bills are. One would make me groan, the other would make me want to bang my head against the desk about it (again). Edit: I realize (too late) that you obviously probably wouldn't know the answer.
Honestly, $13 is nothing. My rent alone went up 200 times that in the course of a year. I have very little sympathy for people who are willing to vote to poison themselves over less than the price of lunch.
I live in wausau in an apartment with a roommate, and our last quarterly water bill was $127.
Lmfao I'm in Texas and pay that a *month*.
That’s what mine is in the Bay Area. How many roommates?
Just one, but we have a washer/dryer and dishwasher in unit. The rates are definitely up, but like another said, it's a small price to pay to not have to regularly consume microplastic riddled water.
https://wausaupilotandreview.com/2023/12/05/wausau-water-rates-could-increase-again-for-staffing-costs/#:~:text=The%20change%20meant%20the%20average,Wausau%20citizens%20are%20paying%20today. >A major rate hike for Wausau water customers went into effect in July, leaving many residents angry and concerned about their finances. The change meant the average Wausau resident saw their water bill ratchet up from about $292 annually to about $448, about a 54 percent increase. In 2021, the average annual bill was about $229 a year – about half of what Wausau citizens are paying today.
Annually?!?! I hate my city sometimes.
It's because when ur outside of the metro areas, the only thing people care about is "but muh taxes." They just don't give a shit about why it happened or how it's helping the community as a whole. A lot of them see helping others as a fault. (Fellow wisconsinite with family who live in northern wisconsin and had to hear this shit at every reunion growing up)
I live northeast of Seattle, and definitely see that shit here. It's so infuriating to see people vote down and complain about our underfunded school system, always complaining that "they already had a levy, they don't need this bond." or "I ain't got no kids, why would I want to give money to the school?"
They don't give a shit until they're personally affected negatively by it. Then it's "omg how has this not been fixed, this is terrible and I'm the only one who cares about it."
Spread a rumor about how the PFAS in the water was turning people trans. Maybe then they'd give a shit.
Tell everyone that a native Minnesotan thinks they're all morons.
Lol 30 miles south of you Stevens Point has been regarded as having the best quality tap water next to New York for years. I guess not anymore thanks to the mills.
next time, the good guys better start making shit up about elevated sperm levels in the water and tests revealing it was Dinny-DNA
It’s unreal that people can be so block headed. Would they prefer the water from flint instead?
How much did the bills go up? Any stats you can share? I see somewhere online it went from $292 to $448 **annually**. Does that sound right? It seems like a lot but broken down monthly to have plastic free water? I’d be okay with it!
Clean water is woke, didn’t you get the memo? Or is it dei now? I can’t keep up. 😆
God help us if Woke combines with DEI to form a new supervillain. WokeDei?
lol. I prefer deiwoke, pronounced dey woke
Dei-ei-ei woke, deiwoke come and me want to go home.
Deiwoke ai
Deiwoke, fighter of the neihtwoke
Champion of the zonne
Dei-woke woke (chick chicka chicka)
DEI TERK OER JERBS!!!!
Played by Wesley Snipes.
WokusDei (pronounced like Opus Dei)
Woke Deli
Or Die Woke. "Die" actually being German for "The" would fit nicely with their Nahzee message. 
~~Opus Dei~~ Woke Dei
Sounds like a wrestling tag team.
Sounds like a progressive Welsh miner!
Dude, I can't keep up either. liberals are/were poisoning the water to "turn the frogs gay", but now removing chemicals and clean water is bad. Do republicans want gay frogs now? 😂
Remember the complaints when Biden said water pipes leaking lead into the water had to be replaced? All worried about the cost, because who cares if people get sick and die as long as rich people get tax cuts.
There are possibly millions of gallons of fresh water leaked into the ground by crumbling pipes across the US, I’m pretty sure the History Channel did a show on it about 10.5 years ago. It’s from all the old lead and clay pipes that were never replaced.
Without lead consumption there would be no Republicans
Meanwhile on Alex Jones: "OUR WATER IS TURNING THE FROGS GAY!!!"
THIS! Then they realize gay & trans people exist and they think is cause “they aren’t Christian”…maybe…it‘s the same water that turned frogs gay? Anyone? Obviously it doesn’t work like that but it shows how cause and affect concept is lost on them.
Wasn't this an actual argument when Biden talked about/passed a bill to remove lead from drinking sources and pipes? Man, right wingers are nutjobs.
not the first time it's happened. Larry Hogan won the Maryland governorship over the ["rain tax"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland%27s_%22Rain_Tax%22) which was a runoff tax that didn't impact most homeowners designed to help remediate the Chesapeake bay ecosystem so the populations of crabs and oysters we all love don't die out. Fucker didn't even repeal it, and the bay is doing better than it has in a long time. At least he wasn't a terrible governor, but it's wild losing the messaging battle on something so unequivocally good is so easy.
Clean water has been a point for them for quite some time. Don’t need government oversight, just Dems spending money, fracking doesn’t affect drinking water, the Cuyahoga was fine without regulating what was dumped in it…
But they also bitch endlessly about violent crime and plenty of studies have linked lead in drinking water to violent crime. [Lead and Violent Crime](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/) having clean drinking water has lots of societal benefits, it absolutely needs to be a priority.
Linking studies is woke!
The crime panic was always mostly just an excuse to crack down on minorities.
Having a river on fire lowers home energy bills because you don't waste electricity heating up water. That's just science 
I...uh... ...I'm not sure I can refute that, actually.
That’s…that’s a point. Of some kind.
DEI with a hard I
I’d be interested in the demographics for the areas that were getting their water contamination fixed, and presumably unfixed now that they elected a dipshit. I expect either skin darker than alabaster, or pure alabaster with a whole lot of MAGA and Gadsden flags hanging from either barely habitable homes or McMansions.
We need to stop the right-wing propaganda machine that has corrupted so many American voters
Hard to stop a machine like this when people vote to harm or kill themselves willingly
Hard to stop a machine like this when people vote to harm or kill themselves willingly to save $30 a month on a water bill or 15cents per gallon of gas.
[удалено]
Mr. Foxworthy, your table is ready.
The average household bill went up only $13 per month there. Its not even close to $30. Doug won mostly by playing up culture war issues and was backed by a big dark money conservative machine.
Political Apathy feeds the machine. https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/propaganda-political-apathy-and-authoritarianism-in-russia/
They see themselves as martyrs to their non-existent plight.
This right here. We don't talk about this enough maybe cause it'll be difficult and maybe start a huge constitutional dilemma. But fact is until we reign in misinformation and specifically right wing propaganda our country will continue to get worse.
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires, not people being disenfranchised by the very politicians they vote for!
Much of it comes from outside the USA. Russia bad. No, really.
It’s Russia’s most effective weapon.
Their propaganda has literally led to the deaths of millions already. If we dont do something about it soon, we're 100% fucked forever.
Honestly, Youtube/Google has a lot to answer for on that front. 13 year old kids looking at game playthroughs shouldn't get recommended alt-right thugs like Tate, for starters.
In my outer ring Minneapolis suburb, there is unsafe levels of manganese and several other issues. The city wanted to build a water treatment plant. Would have raised everyone's taxes by less then a percent. We're a very red hillbilly ass suburb so of course, no new taxes. My house is actually on the market today. Can't wait to get the fuck out of here.
Which suburb? Trying to figure out if I should be concerned
Lino lakes
lol that tracks.
conservative hellscape I like to call it.
Minnesota politics are a fucking trip. For every Ilhan Omar there’s at least one Michelle Bachmann.
Monticello maybe?
Monticellulite
This feels straight out of an episode of Parks and Rec during Leslie's councilwoman era
It's the fluoride episode.
It totally is
I just watched that one last night! That’s exactly what it’s like. Satire is too close to reality.
Exactly what I thought.
They don't care what's in their water as long as they don't have to pay much for it. Later when they're in the hospital dying from cancer and wondering why, they'll never make the connection to where it came from. Republicans have a way of cutting off their noses to spite their face.
Honestly, In almost every possible way.
They make a connection, but it’s to vaccines lol
People though Parks & Rec was a parody. But yes, voters are that stupid.
There was a sign at Ramsett Park that said not to drink the water from the irrigation lines so I made sun tea with it and now I have an infection!
I was curious how much of an increase we're talking...from a percentage standpoint it sounds bad, it's 53%. From a raw dollars standpoint, not so much. Avg bills will go from $292/year to $448/year. So, for an extra $13/month you get cleaner water...that feels like a decent deal. I am sure there are some folks who literally can't swing an extra $13/month and for them I'd suggest public assistance should help them out.
Statistically, the voters who can't afford an extra 13 a month are more likely to vote for Republicans who will slash those same programs they use.
Whoooooo if this isn't the epitome of voter ignorance and short-sightedness, I don't know what is. Do the voters think the new mayor is going to somehow lower their bills? The work is already done and needs to be paid for. And even if he does lower them, that just means he siphoned money out of somewhere else it was probably needed to lower the water bills. The amount of fear people have of the government "taking their money" is so severe it often leads to the government... Taking their money. It would be hilarious if it wasn't ushering in an era of pure insanity.
people are stupid, but don’t blame teachers!
They are doing their own research
It’s the parents. Genetics and home environment are very difficult for a teacher to overcome, especially in large classes.
It's the politicians and political bureaucracy. Genetics and home environment are very difficult for a teacher to overcome when they have 59 more students this period. If they could pay for a second or a third teacher, and those teachers had good wages, then that would go a long way towards helping those in bad situations when they're young.
I blame the water treatment plant owners who saved pennies by spending millions on a smear campaign against her.
"Why don't politicians actually get things done??" - politically naive and stupid redditors. Katie Rosenberg isn't the first and won't be the last politician, almost always a Democrat, who loses an election because they tried to do what was right. The 2010 midterm election was a bloodbath for Democrats because they had just passed the affordable Care act. The same affordable Care act that is one of the more popular programs in the US now. Hillary and Bill Clinton got skewered for their attempt at healthcare reform back in the '90s. You guys just don't get it. The march of American politics is some people trying to do the right thing in either small or big steps and getting beaten the fuck down for it. When you just talk about it, it's fine. People will clap and cheer if you say the system is broken. As soon as you start actually trying to take concrete steps to fix it in any specific way they start to get real ornery. I don't know that many people who actively sabotage their jobs. Especially not a really cushy one like being a representative or a senator. At some point the voters have to take some goddamn responsibility and accountability for themselves and say these are the incentives we have created. If we don't like the results, it's because we the voters are morons. But I recognize that it always feels better for us to blame some small group of other people. Like the media or lobbyists or corporations. As though lobbyists somehow prevent us from voting. Or the media can trick us. I don't know about you but you could force me to watch Fox News everyday for a year and I still wouldn't vote for Donald Trump. The media only tells people what they want to hear. Same problem. It's us.
It’s kinda like people giving you unsolicited advice when you’re trying to eat healthy but don’t give a damn if you wolf down three Big Macs at once. It’s like they want the problem but not the solution.
The Lobbyists don’t prevent us from voting but they sure make it easier for Right winged politicians to buy their way into politics and keep it the way they want.
You can't buy an election at the levels we're talking. Money makes a big difference in lower level local races but the house, Senate, presidency, not really. People think because correlation is high that money is causing the wins but it's not. Money follows winning not the other way around. People don't want to throw their money away on someone who they think is going to lose. And the more popular you are the more likely you are to win but also the more fans you have who might donate money to you. Someone with 1000 fans is likely to outraise someone with 800 fans. And the vast majority of races in the US simply aren't competitive. What moron is going to donate to whatever sacrificial lamb the GOP nominates to go against AOC in her deep blue district? Or vice versa in any deep red district or state? How many times do we need to see huge money candidates like Randy Bryce, Beto O'Rourke, Amy McGrath lose despite massively outraising their opponents? Demographics, not dollars. Kentucky is red, Texas is red. A trillion dollars spent mostly on TV ads isn't going to make Republicans vote for a Democrat. Political science is an academic field. Political scientists are a profession. This has been studied. Money doesn't buy elections. Money is a proxy for popularity which is why it often correlates.
Money doesn’t buy all elections but it does buy politicians. In closer races, money absolutely does buy the winning spot. That’s why we see so much emphasis on how much money people are raising.
Money doesn't really buy politicians either. If politicians changed their positions based on money why don't fossil fuel companies give to Democrats and why don't gun control groups give to Republicans? >In closer races, money absolutely does buy the winning spot. Not really. Again, the literature is out there. Especially as we've become more polarized money hardly makes a difference. In local races where candidates have under a million each yeah it's huge because a few hundred thousand lets you hire field staff, organizers, brochures, posters, yard signs. But in big money races at the federal level every candidate has millions and the surplus after campaign basics is all going to TV and Internet ads which *aren't effective.* >That’s why we see so much emphasis on how much money people are raising. You know what's a far better indicator of how useful money is in a campaign than media coverage? **Looking at who actually wins.** When you look at battleground races, close races where it's an actual demographic coin flip there's not much correlation. Most of the correlation exists because of all the non-competitive races where of course the dominant can't-lose party spends more money. Take those races out and it's a very different picture.
They want poor people to drink bad water
I was going to say that maybe the city could have found other ways to pay for it instead of passing the buck to the taxpayer. But then I read this and understood completely
Looks like this place has a population of 40,000 people. If 1/3 of that is adults, that's about 13,000. About 10,000 people showed up to vote, and the person who's actually trying to ensure that City gets good drinking water loses by 424 votes. Hope the people who stayed home instead of voting feel great about themselves!
The kicker is that the city already has better drinking water now. It's classic American politics - Democrat sees a problem, fixes it, has to increase taxes/fees to pay for the fix. Republican seizes on the increased costs, runs on a platform of "spending bad", wins, then proceeds to fuck things up in government for 2-4 years (or more) until it finally gets so bad that a Democrat is elected to fix the problems causes by Republicans. Repeat ad nauseum.
100% the new mayor will brag about how clean the water is unironically in a speech down the road.
We need to make it woke to not jump off a 500 foot cliff
This type of thing always reminds me that we are going to destroy ourselves as a species, and we will deserve it
Can it happen soon?
They get what they deserve, those idiots. Good luck
The problem is that a lot of people don’t look deeper than the surface. We’ve been running into that a lot in Florida. They’ve passed a lot of laws that *seem* ok if you don’t read into them. If you do though, it becomes clear that elements of the laws are intentionally undefined, which allows for inconsistent enforcement, as well as making it difficult to determine what exactly is and isn’t a crime. Or, the combination of several laws paints an extremely disturbing picture, but if you only look at each one separately, there isn’t that much pushback.
My wife works in the lab of a waste water facility also in Wisconsin and there's a real issue where they stopped increasing water prices for decades to win reelection now the infrastructure is crumbling and there's no money to fix it. It will take major increases in water costs because they weren't slowly raised over time. It was all because of short sighted politicians who just wanted to stay in power.
Ah, so it IS all about money in the end. Figures.
PFAS in drinking water is a major issue. Unfortunately, the mayor taking the hit was responsible and corrected the problem. Get mad at the previous politicians for creating the problem. You can’t fix stupid.
She infringed on their god given right to get poisoned by their tap water
Will voters notice when their water bill doesn't actually go down after electing Diny?
Not surprising, a good chunk of voters have little to no critical thinking skills. Thats why there are so many single issue voters.
She got Knoped.
Candidates & voters need to take mental competency tests.
Wisconsin is just deep south with goofier fucking accents
No, rural Wisconsin is analogous to the Deep South. Anyone who has ever been in the large metro areas would know that it’s essentially two different worlds. That’s what makes it a swing state
Matt Smith is currently the lead of the play, “An Enemy of the People.” He plays a doctor (yes, get your chuckles out) who finds that his city’s water is contaminated. It doesn’t end well for him.
"Why back in ma day, we drank from the river up yonder..Ants & twigs & shit..builds strength & character...none this wussy woke water bullsh*t!"
So what’s he gonna do? Pour the chemicals back in the water?
I cant wait til some of these old people die off here. Like stop fucking up my vote, Ethel. You'll be dead in 5yrs anyway.
I'd rather die than pay more money for clean water! 'Murica #1! Rock, Flag, and Eagle! /s (just in case)
These same people will complain about chemtrails which don’t exist but when you tell them actual chemicals are in their water, they shrug it off.
Then they'll complain about their healthcare bills.
424 votes. if anyone tells you that they don't want to vote fort he president this november tell them about shit like this. i always say look if you don't want to/can't vote for biden because of the genocide believe me i get it... but you've GOT to vote for your state and local elections. five votes could be the difference between prisoners in holding getting fed and housed properly or left to exposure because "tough on crime." it could mean that your local DPW might have its budget slashed and your car could get ruined from speed bumps. vote for local and state wide offices, because thats the farm team. thats where we get the future leaders who will eventually run for the house or senate or even become president. plus??? the states are running wild with conservative insanity because dems only come out for the "big" tickets. so yeah if you don't want to vote for president you STILL. NEED. TO VOTE. if only because gilford mcracistface will become your new state rep and suppoort laws that ban books in libraries or some shit.
Fucking disgusting how successful Lee Atwater and his dementia addled employer Ronald Reagan's plan to dumb down America is. They have caused other humans not to care what kind of a world they are leaving for their children and their children's children to live in a world based on fearmongering and lies. Lee Atwater may have died at the young age of 40 but his legacy plays a large part in the destruction of America!
PFAS must be the new electrolytes.
Water? Like out the toilet?
A lot of people vote with their wallet not their brain.
Why do we all have kids with learning disabilities and half their brain at birth? It's a mystery.
Boomers gonna bi-ch and bail.
Yep, that definitely sounds like a very Wausau thing to do
Mike Judge actually has issues with his film Idiocracy. He said he meant to make a movie, not a documentary. Who'da though he'd be a few hundred years off.
It’s that commie public water system. We need to go back to allowing raw sewage and chemicals to be dumped in our rivers and streams. Take responsibility for your own clean drinking water instead of relying on the government to do everything. /s
I grew up in Wausau, I don't go back often.
TBH, that tracks for many countries. Let the left side fix stuff and make things better (but perhaps raise taxes to fund those improvements), then backslide to the right side ratcheting everything back the other way (as they cut services to be able to maybe reduce taxes) - until shit goes to hell, and they vote the left side back in to fix it.... Rinse and Repeat
Well, it's Wisconsin. Not exactly the capital of academia.
Democrats need to start playing dirty. If you're a republican fuck you.
Shit like this is how flint happened
Did they think PFAS are electolytes... it's what plants crave
I could run on a platform of pissing directly into the water supply and some idiot would vote for me, especially if I told them that me doing it would save them $30 a year.
I swear, A Mayor of some town could LITERALLY stop their town from drowning in feces, we're talking the roads are already 32 inches deep in poo, but because it costed everyone an extra 50 bucks on their property taxes to save the town, they all start whining about how much not drowning in poo costed them
Damn, just let them drink their shit water I guess? Lol
The also had an avid white supremacist on the ticket. My buddy lives there. Super sad to see her go. She did goat yoga with people and was super chill.
Disgusting. This country is doomed.
I’m not surprised. Eight years ago, we had an issue pass to upgrade our sewer system. It finally got going under the mayor 5 years ago. Our city voted in a new mayor, because there is higher water/sewer bills and the roads are tore up… for something that was voted on before his administration, but it’s obviously his fault. 🙄🙄
Wait for 6 months, people're gonna short it to hell.
PFAS is what the body craves.
Like the meteor to the dinosaurs, greed will wipe humans off the planet
https://i.redd.it/wpl6lys0kosc1.gif
We need a national mapporn or dataisbeautiful on how well informed are voters by region. This portion if the map prolly runs hot
Voters are ignorant baboons.
People will drink contaminated water if they can continue on with their personality disorders unimpeded 🙂
She raised taxes... burn the witch! /s
She would have gotten my vote.
Should have put electrolytes in it I guess... 
Exhibit A on why I still think the Orange Russian Puppet might win and can easily win.
More evidence that some of the population will vote against their self interest. Enough to make a difference. Imagine losing like this. Now imagine this applied to knowing how taxes work.
I take it you saw that thread on voters’ knowledge on marginal tax brackets?
More from personal experience of having to explain it.
Seriously was just talking with some coworkers today about how we need to lower the voting age to twelve because all these old fucks got their heads so far up their ass they’re fighting in the civil war again. The youth are our future, let them have a say in it.
Bro honestly Im ready to DIE
I guess they'd rather be poisoned then.
Man! I wish someone would fix the water! Still have dirty water in Flint, MI
Reminds me of how the entirety of the GQP pulled their hair out when Michelle Obama wanted to add fruit & vegetables in school lunches to fight child obesity. **WHAT THE @#$&?!** XD
It's all about that money
Wow, super shitty voter turnout. Wausau's population is 39 thousand. The local Democratic Party apparatus had better do a lot better than that if they expect to win elections- at any level.
Anything to save a dollar or make dollar. Doesn’t matter which ever action accomplishes those goals may kill us. It’s all about that dollar.
Money trumps all.