Greta Neubauer – ABOLISHmke

Episode 1: Joint Finance Funnies…

So, here’s how Marklein’s “normal legislative process” works: popular, well-crafted, bipartisan reforms get squanched by republican leadership in favor of unpopular, slip-shod, and logistically impracticable bills designed as veto-bait to rile up the party’s base with racially coded messaging. Calling that “good” is hilarious. Howard Marklein wins king of comedy in this session.

This is an audio version of the ABOLISHmke article titled Joint finance funnies: the prison budget debate that wasn’t.
Joint Finance Funnies… describes a hearing and prison related policy decisions of the WI state legislature’s joint finance committee in June 2021.

Music is from The Only Rational Response by local screamo band snag.

JFC Starts with One Big Crooked Vote

On Thursday May 7, the leaders of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) demonstrated a profound disdain for most people in Wisconsin. They removed 390 items from consideration in the budget process, including very popular measures like marijuana legalization, BadgerCare expansion, education opportunities, youth justice reform, taxing the rich, driver’s licenses for immigrants, and many many others. These were the JFC’s very first votes on the budget, and the way senator Howard Marklein and representative Mark Born ran the meeting showed their eagerness to rip off the people on behalf of their rich friends.