We're all living now in Robin Vos's basement

And he's shouting again from the top of the stairs. 'You'll do what I say as long as you're living under my roof.'

The fresh evidence is Vos's immediate, misleading and snarky dismissal of the plan Gov. Evers announced in his State of the State speech Wednesday night to create a nonpartisan commission to draft fair redistricting maps once the 2020 census is complete.

“He can form whatever kind of fake, phony, partisan process he wants to create, but I have no doubt in the end we will do it the way we have always have, which is to follow the constitution," Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said.

Two comments:

* Note this explanation of the commission which Evers tweeted Tuesday evening is what Vos labeled "fake, phony, partisan."

The People’s Maps Commission will be comprised of folks from all across Wisconsin--not politicians, lobbyists, or high-paid consultants--real people from our state who will visit every district, hear directly from Wisconsinites, and draw The People’s Maps. #WISOTS
7:35 PM - Jan 22, 2020 

* And I said "misleading" because Vos' team used a costly, partisan, secretive map-drafting process following the previous census to create the current maps which have given Republicans a blatantly gerrymandered and disproportionate number of legislative seats relative to statewide voting: 

Despite Democrats winning every statewide office on the ballot and receiving 200,000 more total votes, Republicans lost just one seat in Wisconsin’s lower house this cycle. And that victory was by a razor-thin 153 votes. Democrats netted 1.3 million votes for Assembly, 54 percent statewide. Even so, Vos will return to the Capitol in 2019 with Republicans holding 63 of 99 seats in the Assembly, a nearly two-thirds majority.

But we have seen this arrogant, ultra self-serving GOP power-tripping before:

* In the secretive drafting of lame-duck laws that stripped power from the Democratic Governor and Attorney General after the 2018 statewide repudiation of all GOP constitutional office holders.

* In the instant rejection of any floor consideration of Evers' 2019 package of gun safety bills. Though the measures were polling at 80% approval, Vos said that even allowing debate was "playing politics."

* And, of late, in the disclosure that the Capitol staffers Vos added to Republican payrolls after the 2018 elections are now being used at his direction to keep tabs on Evers' appointees and other public employees.

Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is deploying staffers to closely monitor Gov. Tony Evers’ administration, including the social media accounts of agencies and top appointees, as part of a continued push to counterbalance the Democratic executive. 

So voters and public employees are locked into a long-term lease as unwilling tenants in Vos's basement, bound by a lease he's drafted and by rules he's determined to make permanent.

As with the permissions for authoritarianism which Vos's US Capitol counterparts are handing to Donald Trump, the GOP prescription in Wisconsin for fairness and transparency bodes badly for democracy.

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