Teacher Tanya Lohr announces challenge against Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman

You may know Wisconsin’s Tea Party state senator Glenn Grothman from his insinuations that single-parents are abusing their kids or his lesser known proclamation that “The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.” Perhaps you know Grothman as that dude who called all the protesters from last year “slobs” or maybe you have an extra twinge of contempt for Mr. Grothman, as I do, after he authored a bill that shifts control of Milwaukee’s technical school board over to his business friends.

The list of Grothman’s political offenses is long and his appearances on Fox TV have been many – all the better to fan the flames of anger in thousands of Wisconsin women, many of whom just so happen to be assembling at the steps of Wisconsin’s Capitol building tomorrow, Saturday Apirl 28th. I’m certain we will have an opportunity to hear a few words from Tanya Lohr then. I can’t wait.

WI Unite Against the War Against Women facebook page

Rally event link on facebook

Below is a press release from Tanya Lohr’s campaign.

Tanya Lohr, town of West Bend, has announced her candidacy for the Wisconsin Senate seat currently held by Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend).

Lohr has been a teacher for 16 years, spending the past 13 years teaching global studies at West Bend West High School. She is currently Chair of the Democratic Party of Washington County and a recent graduate of Emerge, a leadership training program for Democratic women interested in running for public office. She is married to fellow teacher, Andy Kougl. Their family includes their six year old twins and Kougl’s two teenage daughters.

“I want to restore adequate funding for public education, respect for women, affordable family health care and strengthen our communities by empowering working people,” Lohr said.

Lohr helped lead both the Grothman and Walker recall drives before being elected to lead the Washington county Democrats last fall. She is also the Political Action Chair and a Building Representative for the West Bend Education Association.

“The republican agenda was imposed on Wisconsin working families and has polarized our state. It is time we corrected the imbalance,” Lohr commented.

Lohr’s campaign will reach every corner of the 20th Senate distinct, building on the work the hundreds of volunteers she led did during the recalls. “We already have a committed volunteer corps who want to reverse the failed policies recently enacted by the GOP majorities and signed by Gov. Walker,” Lohr concluded.

People interested in helping with the campaign can contact the Democratic Party of Washington County, 262-388-0990

Ms. Lohr announced her candidacy at a press conference on Friday, April 27th at 4 pm at the Democratic Party of Washington County office, 132 N. Main St., West Bend.

“Senator Grothman is no stranger to nutbaggery”

By now you’re probably aware of Glenn Grothman’s insulting proposal to formally consider  single parenthood a contributing factor to child abuse [ SB507 ]. If you haven’t heard of it, and you’re hyperventilating, then perhaps you can bring your blood pressure down a notch by immediately enjoying Jezebel’s little description of our new breed of Teapublicans:

“..they elected a bunch of, from what I can tell, taxidermied badgers holding guns to state legislature. To make matters worse, their governor seems to be an evil yet gloppy Koch puppet. And now, one state legislator has decided it’s a good idea consider being a single parent a form of child abuse. On, Wisconsin!”

Jezebel also provided the quote for my post title.

What Grothman is hoping to do with this bill is conduct an end run around a board that advises the legislature where he is “the minority” of individuals who want to tackle this, in his words, “politically incorrect” topic. His legislation forces the board to promote and distribute literature that emphasizes that “nonmarital parenthood” is a “contributing factor to child abuse and neglect”.

If one reads the literature Glenn Grothman has been putting out, one finds that his latest bill feeds nicely into fighting a vast conspiracy that Grothman has previously identified in Tea Party rallies:
“The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.”

Grothman has also identified the mission of godless reds:
“..the abolition of the family was a goal of Karl Marx and has been for atheistic socialists ever since”.

So there you have it, atheistic socialist leftists. Glenn Grothman’s got you figured out. You can read all about it at Senator Grothman’s Family Report.

You can also hear directly from Glenn Grothman:

And you can hear a succinct and eloquent opposing view from Wisconsin citizen Timothy Riley:

Lastly, check out this lovely photo of a cheesehead. A pity it appears in Jezebel’s article on one of our ugliest Wisconsinites: Glenn Grothman.

Wisconsin News: Republicans Lazich, Galloway,and Grothman want to make it harder to get an abortion in WI

“A bill pro-life advocates say is designed to protect women but opponents say throws up more roadblocks to obtaining an abortion will be up for a vote in the Senate Tuesday.

The so-called coercion and webcam abortion prevention bill, SB 306, is the latest attack on women’s health care by the current Republican administration, asserts Nicole Safar, public policy director with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.

The pro-choice group joined nine other groups, including the Wisconsin Medical Society, the Wisconsin Public Health Association and the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians, in opposing the bill. The three groups who lobbied in favor of the bill are Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro-Life Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Catholic Conference….”

3 ways the bill alters WI law:

1. “The first would require doctors to speak alone and in person with a woman seeking an abortion and to inform her of services for victims of domestic abuse if they believe she’s being coerced into seeking an abortion. ..”

2. “The bill also eliminates the possibility of what are called webcam abortions from being performed in Wisconsin by requiring doctors to examine patients in person before prescribing abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone. ..”

3.”The bill also would require a woman to return to an abortion clinic for a follow-up visit 12 to 18 days after being given the drug. ..”

Read more at Capitol Report: Bill to prevent webcam abortions up for vote in Senate 

The whole Glenn Grothman thing

I almost missed this nice interview of Al Schumacher, superintendent of Madison’s streets department.

Check out this part:

CT: How about the whole Glenn Grothman thing?
AS: Oh, Glenn Grothman doesn’t bother me. Glenn Grothman is Glenn Grothman. He’s out there. We’d like to plow Glenn Grothman’s car in on the Square. (Laughs.) No, we never retaliate like that.
CT: That’s a joke, right?
AS: That’s a joke! We do not do that. Although there was this one situation where people did complain about me in an editorial and my people came to me and said I know where that guy lives, Al, do you want me to take care of him? And I went, no, it’s not worth worrying about.
CT: You’re joking again, but I could swear sometimes your plow drivers come right after I’ve shoveled my car out and plow the snow right back around my car.

If you’re scratching your head on “the whole Glenn Grothman thing”, let’s revisit December of 2009. Glenn Grothman got a bee in his TeaPublican tricorner hat after the City of Madison did a rather poor snow removal job on 14 inches of wet snow that choked the city 12/08/09. The bee must’ve stung him repeatedly. He went so far as to actually introduce legislation to hand over Madison’s snow removal authority to Wisconsin’s state DOT.

In reply, mayoral assistant Mario Mendoza said “It’s ironic that someone who has made a career talking about local control wants to reach in and take that precisely away from us. …”

If Mr. Grothman had spoken with this resident of Madison he’d have been informed that the locals were already doing just fine going ballistic over the situation on their own — calling for Mayor Dave’s head on a platter and so on – – and we did not need ANYBODY from West Bend to wrest local control from the city and hand it to the state, let alone some proponent of keeping women pregnant and in the kitchen.

While we chuckle at Grothman’s dingbattiness, the scary thing is that he’s on the state’s most powerful committee- the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules – where he can happily help Walker provide the fairest election he can rig.

Here’s more on Grothman from the blue cheddar cheese cave:
Glenn Grothman: “The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock”

This is what SLOB-ocracy looks like: the Grothman Recall Rally

Glenn Grothman connects intimately with a protester.

And you can always visit Glenn’s own page. (I notice that he’s taken down all the snake flags he used to have up. Innnteresting.)

Glenn Grothman: “The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock”

I hope I’ll be forgiven for veering off of the topic of recalls for a moment. It’s time to revisit one of Wisconsin’s wingnut hall of fame stars: GOP senator from West Bend, Glenn Grothman.

To be fair, the headline doesn’t do Grothman justice. I had to abbreviate it. Here’s the complete quote:
“The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.”
This comes from a document Grothman has been distributing the upshot of which seems to be if you make social programs available to single moms, you ensure that they are dependent on the government and will not get married – AND it is a horrible very bad no good thing that we have single parents at all. It also has the occasional bizarre statement like, “..the abolition of the family was a goal of Karl Marx and has been for atheistic socialists ever since”.

I mean just where do I begin? Unfortunately, I started to reach for some facts, which means I got stuck on the first paragraph.

Grothman says we have “increasingly aggressive sex ed programs” and the government is spending millions to give out free birth control to “15-year-old girls and recently boys…Clearly pushing more contraceptives on high schoolers is not the answer”. First off, Grothman is trying to skew your perception of single-parenthood.

They’re usually not poor:
23.5% of custodial single-moms get food stamps
27% of all custodial single-moms are in poverty

They tried being married:
only 34.2% of single-moms have never been married – Source

But to go back and address Grothman’s B.S. about contraception and teens:

If we really do have an uptick in contraception getting to young people I’d be relieved.
In 2008 we got our first national study on abstinence ed vs. comprehensive sex ed and found out ” students who got comprehensive sex education are half as likely to become teen parents as those who got abstinence-only instruction or no sex education”

We’re fresh out of the Bush administration .The Bush administration spent $176 million a year on funding abstinence only programs across the U.S. though there was no reason to believe that throwing money at that solution would do any good.

While a Governor in Texas Bush spent $10 million on abstinence-only programs [1995-2000] and, “the state ranked last in the nation in the decline of teen birth rates among 15- to 17-year-old females”.-Union of Concerned Scientists

Next you think I’m going to say that President Obama has done a 180 degree turnaround on the matter, don’t you? Not *exactly*. Obama authorized spending $250 million on abstinence-only education 2010-2015. So spending per year on these failing abstinence programs has gone down but has not stopped completely.

I’m just addressing 1 nugget of inflammatory drivel from Grothman. I’ll be here all day if I march through all of them (not to mention get exhausted). But feel free to add your own comment reply here. Read his screed in full but first put on your high waders. It gets pretty thick in there.

"..the abolition of the family was a goal of Karl Marx and has been for atheistic socialists ever since"

Glenn Grothman is from West Bend and is a Republican senator in the 20th district.

To read more about sex education in American schools try “The birds and the bees? What’s the status of sex ed?”
For more on Grothman, try “This is what SLOB-ocracy looks like: the Grothman Recall Rally”
“Senator Grothman: Wisconsin’s Infamous Tea Party Troll”
And to find others discussing Grothman join the Recall Grothman

facebook group

Glenn Grothman connects intimately with a protester.

Senator Grothman may have been fearing some kind of physical attack from a protester ever since he called them “slobs” on TV and got severely scolded by a crowd at the Capitol

It finally happened. He received an unwelcome hug.

As Glenn Grothman walked out of M&I bank and passed a group of 100 protesters, a man “hugged Sen. Grothman. An officer reported that Grothman did not appear to enjoy the embrace, and was able to squirm away. ”

According to the police

Video & Photo: Fab 14 Democrat Senators of Wisconsin Moments Before Leaving for Illinois

This moving photo came from Senator Chris Larson. He is one of of the “Fab 14”: the Wisconsin Democratic Senators that left for Illinois rather than allow passage of Walker’s extreme power-grabbing bill. His tweet is below:

United in Solidarity: this is the picture we took just before heading to Illinois. #wiunionhttp://yfrog.com/h6sm5lfjhttp://fb.me/T7EURQju

A photo of the 14 Democrat Senators of Wisconsin taken just before they left for Illinois.

Senator Chris Larson’s article on the Budget Disrepair Bill is HERE (written 2/20).

Chris Larson was elected to his Milwaukee Senate seat November of 2010, unseating Jeff Plale.

Senator Grothman: Wisconsin’s Infamous Tea Party Troll

The always infuriating Republican State Senator Glen Grothman of Wisconsin’s 20th District talks with Dem. Representative Cory Mason on MSNBC’s The Last Word yesterday and calls protesters “slobs”.

He also uttered this bold lie: “The people that are staying overnight are making a mess of the Capitol”.  And he lied saying that a very small percentage of protesters are police officers or nurses.

[a LINK to footage at Crooks & Liars.]

We in Wisconsin are upset but not shocked.

Grab bag of blogging: Budget Czar Paul Ryan | A snowy tale of two cities | Super-sized Govmobile | MJ Sentinel suitable cage liner | Union fight or flight or …”forging”?

Paul Ryan will be able to set spending limits in the House without a vote, flying “in the face of the GOP’s promise to end backroom deals and increase transparency”.

Snowpocolypse Happens Mayor Bloomberg of New York City learns what Mayor Dave of Madison learned last Winter: clear snow or risk removal of your head. As for that Pennsylvania Gov calling everybody wussy…that’s too much armchair quarterbacking, in my opinion.

Lotta room for a bumper sticker here Still a hot story on Isthmus: Mr. Scott “thrifty” Walker is going to drive a Yukon XL in 2011. Price of leased vehicle?: $2,054.10 for the first month. Value of inevitable super-sized bumper sticker jokes? Priceless.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel forces me to consider purchasing a bird so that I might line its cage with its pages. Scott Walker is selected “person of the year” with zero mention of the high-speed rail fail. Something is rotten in the editorial board of that “paper”. I don’t know what it is, but please, somebody carry it to the curb.

Stop, drop, and roll. Fight, flee or forge… Why did I laugh when I read that WEAC, the Wisconsin teacher’s union, will try to “forge relationships” with GOP leadership in Wisconsin?

We are outta here Wisconsin state employees rush to retire in 2010. Expect some disarray in early 2011 as a result.

A shot of Glenn Grothman scolding gay marriage supporters, calling them the "hard, anti-Christian left" who were "afraid of the truth." frm Wispolitics.com

This just in: Different day, same Grothman I’ve had the great displeasure of hearing Glenn Grothman utter many asinine things. Here we go again: Grothman wants to ax kindergarten for 4-year-olds.

Not the college students of yesteryear Apathy of college students and their “self-reported narcissism” has reached new heights. Before you get bent out of shape, ask yourself if the average American still has access to college? What is the economic and racial make-up of a college student in 2010 as opposed to 2000 or earlier?

Pic links to PBS video of Soglin talking about times as a UW protester and leader

Odds are heavily weighted in favor of a Paul Soglin win for Mayor of Madison in Spring-UNLESS his heart condition flares. He’s got that street cred from being a leader on the UW campus in the 60’s, making some old-school East siders happy. And he’s got two runs as mayor under his belt that I think showed fiscal prudence …appealing to more conservative Madtowners. Time to review his blog.

Obama’s Michael Vick call I am not angered by it, and I’d like to write about why it is probably a good thing for Obama’s connection with black Americans.  But if you’re enraged and have been writing “I hate Obama” 100 times, take a deep breath and read what I think is the classiest, savviest response I’ve seen so far. It imagines the President calling the shelter that is rehabilitating some of the dogs Vick abused: Best Friends Animal Society.