Boots & Sabers

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Author: Owen

Protasiewicz’s record speaks

by | 0711, 14 Mar 2323 | , | 0 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a slice:

A funny thing happens when liberals run for court positions. Irrespective of their past statements, actions, or documented history, every liberal suddenly transforms into a virtuous law and order hardliner. One is always best served by looking at a person’s actions instead of their words. Protasiewicz has been a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge for almost a decade. Her record is extensive, and terrible.

 

[…]

 

In May of 2020, a 15-year-old girl was walking in Milwaukee when a man in a pickup truck pulled up beside her, grabbed her by the wrist, and forced her into the truck. He took her to a hotel, raped her, and tried to force her to become a prostitute. Thankfully, she escaped and notified police.

 

Originally charged with three felonies for kidnapping, trafficking of a child, and second-degree sexual assault of a child, Protasiewicz signed off on another plea deal that reduced the charges to third-degree sexual assault and child enticement. He was convicted and Protasiewicz then gave him time served for jail time and stayed all of the prison time. He was put on probation for four years. In other words, despite his long criminal history and kidnapping and rape of a child, he did not serve any prison time thanks to Judge Protasiewicz.

 

This monster has since been convicted of a felony for being a felon in possession of a firearm in Washington County. He is still free on the street thanks to a Washington County judge cut from the same cloth as Protasiewicz. For a multiple felon child rapist, Washington County Judge Sandra Giernoth, an appointee of Governor Tony Evers, sentenced him to six months in jail and then gave him time served. The guy is happily living in Milwaukee — free as a bird.

 

[…]

 

When people talk about soft-on-crime liberal judges, Janet Protasiewicz is a prime example. She has been letting violent felons roam free for years because that is who she is. And that is who she will be if Wisconsinites elect her to the Supreme Court.

Mexico is Safer than the U.S.

by | 2122, 13 Mar 2323 | , | 1 Comment

Snort.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has threatened to urge Mexican-Americans not to vote for Republican candidates if they continue their criticism, rejected U.S. official security warnings that depict much of Mexico as a risky place to visit.

 

“Mexico is safer than the United States,” he told reporters when questioned about the warnings at a news conference. “There’s no problem with traveling safely around Mexico.”

 

[…]

 

At 28 per 100,000 people, Mexico’s murder rate was around four times higher than in the United States in 2020, according to data published by the World Bank. Homicides fell about 7% last year in Mexico, but the current government is on track to register a record total for any six-year administration.

Illinois Dictates PTO Policy to Businesses

by | 2113, 13 Mar 2323 | , | 0 Comments

It’s not about whether it is a good idea or not. It’s about whether or not it is the role of government to dictate the terms of an employment contract.

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois will become one of three states to require employers to offer paid time off for any reason after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law on Monday that will take effect next year.

 

Starting Jan. 1, Illinois employers must offer workers paid time off based on hours worked, with no need to explain the reason for their absence as long as they provide notice in accordance with reasonable employer standards.

 

Just Maine and Nevada mandate earned paid time time off and allot employees the freedom to decide how to use it, but Illinois’ law is further reaching, unencumbered by limits based on business size. Similarly structured regulations that require employers to offer paid sick leave exist in 14 states and Washington, D.C., but workers can only use that for health-related reasons.

Government Closes Another Bank

by | 1921, 12 Mar 2323 | , | 4 Comments

Rut rho.

U.S. regulators on Sunday shut down New York-based Signature Bank, a big lender in the crypto industry, in a bid to prevent the spreading banking crisis.

 

“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC said in a joint statement Sunday evening.

 

[…]

 

Signature is one of the main banks to the cryptocurrency industry, the biggest one next to Silvergate, which announced its impending liquidation last week. It had a market value of $4.4 billion as of Friday after a 40% sell-off this year, according to FactSet.

 

As of Dec. 31, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing.

Unborn Weigh in on Climate Change Policy

by | 1150, 12 Mar 2323 | | 0 Comments

Great. Now do government deficit spending and debt.

Seven years ago, Sophie Howe became the world’s first ever future generations commissioner. Tasked to be the guardian of the interests of future generations in Wales, she was made responsible for giving advice on long-term thinking to the Welsh government – including on climate.

 

It’s a role that at once both makes sense and raises a host of difficult questions. How on Earth can someone manage to represent people who will be born in five, 50 or 100 years, for example? “I always say that I sort of represent the unborn but they don’t talk to me very often,” says Howe. “It’s impossible for us to know exactly what future generations are going to need.”

 

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, however. As climate impacts begin to bite, and are only set to get worse as time goes on, governments, societies, philosophers and young people are finding themselves tasked more and more to consider how the wellbeing of the billions of people who will live in the future can be accounted for in decisions today.

Bank CEO Wants to Collude with Government to Illegally Monitor Americans

by | 2012, 11 Mar 2323 | | 2 Comments

Given the recent news of bank failures, one would think that bank managers would be spending their time checking their books, running scenarios, and shoring up their assets. Nope. They are trying to inject themselves into how you live your life.

The new classification was first proposed in 2021 by Amalgamated Bank, a 100-year-old U.S. bank that seeks to be a socially responsible financial-services provider. In a statement, Amalgamated’s CEO, Priscilla Sims Brown, said that it was unfortunate that “an important measure to help law enforcement deter criminal activity and gun violence has been placed on hold,” but that just as the ISO took a few months to come around to the value of the code, she’s confident “the industry will implement this commonsense way to keep our communities safe.” In a conversation with TIME in December 2022, Sims Brown explained why she thinks the code would be effective.

 

[…]

 

However, when you follow a repeated practice of high-dollar amounts after taking out a number of new credit cards, I think there would be cause for questions, and those questions could lead to the detection of crime.

And what the hell is a “congressional amendment?”

Are you a supporter of the Second Amendment?

 

Absolutely. And every other congressional amendment for that matter.

Feds Warn Florida’s Surgeon General

by | 1857, 11 Mar 2323 | | 1 Comment

With all due respect, the federal agencies have lost their credibility on this issue.

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. health agencies have sent a letter to Florida’s surgeon general, warning him that his claims about COVID-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.

 

The letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was sent Friday to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. It was a response to a letter Ladapo had written the agencies last month, expressing concerns about what he described as adverse effects from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Credit Card Companies Pause Effort to Track Gun Purchases

by | 0955, 11 Mar 2323 | , , | 1 Comment

It’s just a pause, but the news is welcome. I don’t think Visa and Mastercard understand the American gun-owning consumer very well. They stand to lose a lot of revenue as we just use cash.

Visa and Mastercard paused their decision to start categorizing purchases at gun shops, a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearms purchases.

The move is a setback for gun control groups. They say categorizing credit and debit card purchases might help authorities see potential red flags — like significant ammunition purchases — before a mass shooting could be carried out.

After Visa and Mastercard announced their plans to implement a separate merchant category code for gun shop purchases, the payment networks got significant pushback from the gun lobby as well as conservative politicians. A group of 24 GOP state attorneys general wrote a letter to the payment networks threatening legal action against them if they moved forward with their plan.

[…]

In a statement, Visa indicated that the legal pushback was partially the reason it paused the implementation.

“There is now significant confusion and legal uncertainty in the payments ecosystem, and the state actions disrupt the intent of global standards,” the company said.

Visa and Mastercard have said the gun shop categorization was a decision out of their control. The International Organization for Standardization, better known as ISO, is the group that categorizes merchant codes and Visa and Mastercard were just following their decision, the companies said. Gun control advocates lobbied for the change to ISO, not to Visa and Mastercard.

Another Bailout?

by | 0938, 11 Mar 2323 | , | 0 Comments

Decisions will be made soon.

Silicon Valley Bank was aptly named: It held the funds of hundreds of U.S. tech companies and was a crucial player in the valley’s economy. But on Friday, it became the second largest bank failure in U.S. history after a rapid run on its deposits. Some $175 billion in customer accounts were taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which is now tasked with returning money to the bank’s customers.

 

But more than 85% of the bank’s deposits were uninsured, according to estimates in a recent regulatory filing. That’s because FDIC deposit insurance is meant for everyday bank customers and maxes out at $250,000. Many Silicon Valley startups had millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars deposited at the bank—money they used to run their companies and pay employees. Right now, nobody’s sure how much of that cash is left.

 

The tech sector was already wading through a harsh macroeconomic climate, with layoffs abounding and stock prices sinking precipitously. Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall is likely to exacerbate those problems—and could threaten the wider economy. “It’s like a Lehman Brothers moment for Silicon Valley,” says one Silicon Valley startup founder whose company has millions of dollars tied up in SVB. “It feels like something that never should have happened, because it’s such a trustworthy entity.” The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are worried about losing customers over their ties to SVB.

Insured to $250k means exactly that. The taxpayers should not be on the hook for anything above that. Does it suck for the depositors? Absolutely. Is it tragic for the people who won’t get paid next week because the money is gone? I can’t imagine the stress. It sucks. It all sucks.

But terms are terms and contracts are contracts. We have to stop the madness of thinking that the American taxpayers will ride to the rescue every time bad things happen in the private sector. There is too much money in the economy chasing too few goods. Hence, inflation. While it sucks, the evaporation of billions of dollars out of the economy is a necessary evil to stymie the larger evil of inflation. I continue to contend that the best thing would be for the federal government to cancel much of the inflationary spending, but absent the political will to do that, the private sector will have to contract to let the air out of the inflationary bubble.

Warning to all. If you have more than $250k in a bank, you should spread your money into multiple banks or accept the risk.

Man Kills Sex Offender with Moose Antler

by | 0910, 11 Mar 2323 | | 0 Comments

Well then...

Levi Axtell, 27, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Lawrence V. Scully, 77, who was beaten to death Wednesday at his home in Grand Marais.

 

A criminal complaint filed Friday said Axtell killed Scully with a shovel and a moose antler and then drove to the Cook County Sheriff’s office and confessed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

We really should ban the big antlers. Small ones are okay.

Homeowners blockaded in Vilas County

by | 0852, 11 Mar 2323 | | 0 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week.

After years of wrangling through a convoluted mess of contracts, bad record keeping, broken promises, state, local, federal, and tribal laws, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has decided to blockade dozens of non-tribal families in the dead of winter. In a dramatic escalation, tribal officials are demanding $20 million in order to lift the blockade.

 

The root of the issue rests in the 19th-century Dawes Act when the federal government broke communal tribal lands into parcels to be allotted to tribal families as private property in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Some of those private parcels wound up in the hands of non-tribal people through sale, foreclosure, and other means by which private property changes hands. Now, more than a century later, those private parcels are owned by non-tribal families who are being blockaded.

 

The conflict is over the roads that traverse tribal land to reach those private parcels. The easement by which the homeowners were granted permission to use the roads expired about ten years ago and a protracted negotiation began. The relevant parties are the Lac du Flambeau tribe, two title companies, the Wisconsin Town of Lac du Flambeau, the U.S. government, and the state of Wisconsin.

 

At the risk of simplifying a very complex legal issue that is imbued with generations of justified distrust and unethical behavior, the disagreement really is straightforward. When the easements expired, the tribe wanted money to grant new easements. The tribe also wants temporary easements to give them the latitude to renegotiate the payments every time they expire. On the other side, the title companies and town wants permanent easements, and they want to pay less money than the tribe wants. Both sides appear to have had their moments of bad behavior and have been unable to resolve the impasse.

 

Complicating the issue is the fact that the roads in question have been largely built with money from federal taxpayers. According to congressman Tom Tiffany, who represents the area, the tribe has received about $213 million in federal funding since 2013 through the Tribal Transportation Program. Since the roads received federal funding, the general public is supposed to have access, but tribal authorities argue that tribal law supersedes such federal requirements.

 

On January 31, in a grotesque escalation, the tribe blockaded the four artery roads with concrete blocks and wire. About 60 homes are sealed off from the outside world except for emergencies. Even then, tribal authorities must be called to open to roadblocks ahead of time. Some residents have been forced to abandon their homes entirely while others are having to use snowmobiles and sleds to cross the frozen lakes to get supplies, medical care, work, and attend school. With the spring thaw looming, they are weeks away from losing that frozen lifeline.

 

To lift the blockade, the tribe is demanding $20 million for a 15-year easement. This is an exorbitant sum for a simple easement, but the tribe seems content to hold non-tribal homeowners hostage in order to extort the sum. For comparison, the most recent offer that the tribe rejected was for about $1.1 million plus all future state gas tax revenues from the town for perpetual access.

 

The most innocent party in this whole dispute is the one suffering the most — the homeowners. They bought their properties in good faith and have been dutifully paying their taxes to maintain the schools, emergency services, and, yes, roads. Yet their property values have been obliterated, their lives are being disrupted, and their safety is being endangered.

 

The situation has reached a crisis point and real leadership will be needed to resolve it. It is unacceptable that one group of Americans should be blockading another group of Americans as a negotiating tactic in a legal dispute. This is not about sovereignty or some noble cause. It is about cold, hard, cash. If the tribe will not immediately lift the blockade and return to the negotiating table, the governor must step in to protect the homeowners from being used as hostages.

 

Time will tell what a fair resolution looks like, but any deal derived from the duress of innocent homeowners is illegitimate and an affront to justice.

Unanimous House Votes to Declassify COVID Origin Docs

by | 1800, 10 Mar 2323 | | 0 Comments

Good.

WASHINGTON — The House voted unanimously Friday to declassify U.S. intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, a sweeping show of bipartisan support near the third anniversary of the start of the deadly pandemic.

 

The 419-0 vote was final congressional approval of the bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk. It’s unclear whether the president will sign the measure into law, and the White House said the matter was under review.

 

“I haven’t made that decision yet,” Biden said late Friday when asked whether he would sign the bill.

Silicon Bank Collapse

by | 1658, 10 Mar 2323 | , | 0 Comments

The Fed’s efforts to deflate the economy to stem inflation is working. Sort of. The problem is that there will be unforeseen consequences. A better way to cool inflation would be for the federal government to pull back hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that are committed, but not yet spent, as part of the various spending sprees of the past five years.

Regulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company’s downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.

 

Even now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB’s demise.

 

“This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs,” Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor of Restive Ventures, told CNBC. “This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.”

 

The episode is the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve’s actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate hiking campaign in four decades. The ramifications could be far-reaching, with concerns that startups may be unable to pay employees in coming days, venture investors may struggle to raise funds, and an already-battered sector could face a deeper malaise.

 

The roots of SVB’s collapse stem from dislocations spurred by higher rates. As startup clients withdrew deposits to keep their companies afloat in a chilly environment for IPOs and private fundraising, SVB found itself short on capital. It had been forced to sell all of its available-for-sale bonds at a $1.8 billion loss, the bank said late Wednesday.

“nearly all”

by | 1255, 9 Mar 2323 | , | 7 Comments

What an utter abuse of power and miscarriage of justice. “Nearly all” is not “all.” The standard and obligation of the prosecution is “all.”

On Tuesday, prosecutors said that “nearly all” of the Capitol security footage Carlson played was previously available to attorneys representing riot defendants.

Roger Roots, an attorney for New York Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, wrote that the video Carlson played of the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, proves protesters went into the Senate Chamber on the invitation of US Capitol Police. Roots alleged that prosecutors “withheld” the footage from his client.

“This footage is plainly exculpatory; as it establishes that the Senate chamber was never violently breached, and – in fact – was treated respectfully by January 6 protestors,” Roots wrote. “To the extent protestors entered the chamber, they did so under the supervision of Capitol Police. The Senators on January 6 could have continued proceedings.”

The Conservative Protasiewicz?

by | 2104, 8 Mar 2323 | , | 5 Comments

Well, this is curious. It feels like a false flag operation.

Michael Madden and Dr. Mark Madden, her former stepsons, of Fox Point and Virginia respectively, don’t buy the reincarnation. They believe it’s a ruse to get liberal voters to put Protasiewicz on the state Supreme Court.

 

“She told us that she was a conservative, and that she was pro-life, and that she was a Catholic,” Michael Madden, the son of Protasiewicz’s ex-husband, the now-deceased conservative Judge Patrick J. Madden, told Wisconsin Right Now in a two-hour interview. He lived with his father and Protasiewicz during their 9-month marriage in Fox Point. It dissolved in ugly recriminations in 1997.

 

“We would sit around these tables and she would mention these things,” Michael Madden said.

 

Michael Madden spoke at the Fox Point home where they all once lived before the brief and quickly disintegrating marriage ended in an extremely contentious divorce and annulment battle that we will reveal in part two.

 

Asked about her current views on abortion and other issues, Michael Madden warned voters, “She’s a chameleon who will do and say whatever is necessary to get what she wants. What she is being promised right now is this job on the Supreme Court if she will do the bidding of the machine.” In his view, because Janet Protasiewicz then is so different ideologically from Janet Protasiewicz of today, Madden believes it’s completely unclear how she would actually rule on the court.

U.S. Senate Votes to Block D.C.’s Criminal-Coddling Laws

by | 1934, 8 Mar 2323 | , | 1 Comment

Even Democrats would like to make it to work without being assaulted or robbed.

The Senate passed a Republican-led resolution on Wednesday to block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill that opponents have criticized as weak on crime. The measure will next go to President Joe Biden, who has said he won’t veto it.

The effort to block the crime bill divided Democrats and highlighted the difficult balance the party is attempting to strike as Republicans accuse them of failing to tackle the issue of crime.

 

[…]

 

The final vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan with a tally of 81-14.

Michigan to Return to Forced Unionization

by | 1837, 8 Mar 2323 | , | 1 Comment

This could be a boon for Wisconsin if we had a governor who knew how to play it. Instead, I’m sure Indiana will appreciate the new manufacturing jobs.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan’s Democratic-led Legislature moved Wednesday to repeal the state’s “right-to-work” law that was passed more than a decade ago when Republicans controlled the Statehouse.

 

Repealing the law, which prohibits public and private unions from requiring that nonunion employees pay union dues even if the union bargains on their behalf, has been a top priority for Democrats since they took full control of the state government this year. Party leaders announced Tuesday that they planned bring the repeal to a vote in the state House on Wednesday.

 

The state House is also expected to vote Wednesday on restoring the state’s prevailing wage law, which requires contractors hired for state projects to pay union-level wages. The House Labor Committee advanced the bills early Wednesday along party lines.

 

Homeowners blockaded in Vilas County

by | 0743, 7 Mar 2323 | , , | 2 Comments

We have a hostage situation going on in Vilas County. I wrote a little about it for the Washington County Daily News. Here’s a part:

After years of wrangling through a convoluted mess of contracts, bad record keeping, broken promises, state, local, federal, and tribal laws, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has decided to blockade dozens of non-tribal families in the dead of winter. In a dramatic escalation, tribal officials are demanding $20 million in order to lift the blockade.

 

The root of the issue rests in the 19th-century Dawes Act when the federal government broke communal tribal lands into parcels to be allotted to tribal families as private property in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Some of those private parcels wound up in the hands of non-tribal people through sale, foreclosure, and other means by which private property changes hands. Now, more than a century later, those private parcels are owned by non-tribal families who are being blockaded.

 

[…]

 

On January 31, in a grotesque escalation, the tribe blockaded the four artery roads with concrete blocks and wire. About 60 homes are sealed off from the outside world except for emergencies. Even then, tribal authorities must be called to open to roadblocks ahead of time. Some residents have been forced to abandon their homes entirely while others are having to use snowmobiles and sleds to cross the frozen lakes to get supplies, medical care, work, and attend school. With the spring thaw looming, they are weeks away from losing that frozen lifeline.

 

To lift the blockade, the tribe is demanding $20 million for a 15-year easement. This is an exorbitant sum for a simple easement, but the tribe seems content to hold non-tribal homeowners hostage in order to extort the sum. For comparison, the most recent offer that the tribe rejected was for about $1.1 million plus all future state gas tax revenues from the town for perpetual access.

 

The most innocent party in this whole dispute is the one suffering the most — the homeowners. They bought their properties in good faith and have been dutifully paying their taxes to maintain the schools, emergency services, and, yes, roads. Yet their property values have been obliterated, their lives are being disrupted, and their safety is being endangered.

 

The situation has reached a crisis point and real leadership will be needed to resolve it. It is unacceptable that one group of Americans should be blockading another group of Americans as a negotiating tactic in a legal dispute. This is not about sovereignty or some noble cause. It is about cold, hard, cash. If the tribe will not immediately lift the blockade and return to the negotiating table, the governor must step in to protect the homeowners from being used as hostages.

Protasiewicz Slaps the Wrist of Another Violent Criminal

by | 2010, 6 Mar 2323 | , | 0 Comments

You know when people say that a judge is soft on crime? This is what they mean.

Alton Anthony Ithier was convicted on two counts of Child Abuse-Recklessly Cause Harm, a Class I felony. A Child Abuse-Intentionally Cause Harm charge was also read in. But Protasiewicz, who has a history of soft sentences, stayed any prison time for Ithier, meaning he would not have to serve it unless he messed up again. She gave him nine months in work-release jail and probation, court records show.

 

He has already reoffended, being convicted of second-offense OWI, court records show.

 

Read the criminal complaint here: Protasiewicz 2015CF2596(1)

According to the criminal complaint, a mother reported to City of Milwaukee Police that the father of her three children struck each child with a dog leash. The children were ages 10, 8, and 5.

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