Hi Everyone,
I’m filling your inboxes today instead of this Sunday because I believe the news I’m about to share is not only important for the Minocqua Brewing Company and for me, but also for the judicial system in Wisconsin.
If you don’t have time to read any further, the gist of this email is that my attorney, Fred Melms, discovered that my lawyers in Wisconsin’s largest defamation lawsuit in history, provided to me by my insurance company, made a grave error in my defense that currently endangers the Minocqua Brewing Company and our progressive activism in this critical presidential swing state.
Here’s the longer story.
If you’ve followed the Minocqua Brewing Company at all over the years, you’ve probably read that last October, I lost the largest defamation lawsuit in Wisconsin’s history to Gregg Walker, publisher of The Lakeland Times.
I’ve argued time and time again over the last several years that it was preposterous for a newspaper, especially a right-wing propaganda rag like the Lakeland Times, to sue a private citizen for defamation, and I’ve been saying for years that the First Amendment protected my right to criticize them.
Not only was I right, but we discovered last week that my assertion was codified in Wisconsin law, and that the legal precedent that proved my innocence was entirely missed by both the prosecution and defense during my trial last October.
The Minocqua Brewing Company and I have been represented by the Law firm Crivello, Nichols & Hall since May of 2022--a firm selected by and paid for by our insurers, West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance. Unfortunately, despite their years of experience, Crivello, Nichols & Hall failed to live up to their reputation, provided us with a terrible defense, and were unable to protect our right to speak freely.
We believe that our lawyers from Crivello, Nichols & Hall made numerous mistakes, but one mistake was particularly damning for our case. Our attorneys failed to cite Polzin v. Helmbrecht, 54 Wis. 2d 578 (Wis. 1972), a Wisconsin Supreme Court case that supports our argument that members of the media, like Gregg Walker, and newspapers like the Lakeland Times, cannot sue individuals who challenge their lies and disinformation for defamation without meeting certain criteria.
More specifically, Polzin v. Helmbrecht holds that all Americans have the First Amendment right to criticize the media, and when a news outlet or member of the media brings a defamation suit, they must prove that the alleged defamatory statements were either known to be false at the time they were made or made with reckless disregard for the truth. Had our attorneys cited this case either at summary judgment or before trial, we would likely have won, and this all would have been over with.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of effort, diligence, or interest, they failed to do so, and now we are facing a $750,000 jury verdict, which Gregg Walker is attempting to use to silence us permanently.
Last week, after reading a badly-written draft motion to appeal this verdict from Crivello, Nichols & Hall, I decided to terminate our relationship with them and handed my defense to Fred Melms, a trusted attorney who not only helped us sue to remove Trump from Wisconsin’s ballot, but successfully helped us secure a Conditional Use Permit for a long-contested beer garden while also suing the Town of Minocqua in federal court for political harassment.
I’ve been so impressed with Fred’s work that I recently created a beer in his honor called “Grateful Fred” Red Ale.
Once Fred started re-writing my motion to appeal this weekend, he immediately located Polzin v. Helmbrecht and submitted an emergency motion requesting that the Oneida County Circuit Court “stay” the enforcement of the $750,000 judgment against us during the appeal process.
It is incredibly important that we obtain this “stay,” because Walker and the Lakeland Times, through their attorney Matt Fernholz, are trying to start the collection process against us.
If Fernholz and Walker can convince Judge Stenz (the only judge in tiny Forest County, population ~9K) to refuse this “stay,” they will soon be able to have the sheriff seize our taproom, our inventory, and everything else we need to make the Minocqua Brewing Company operate.
It should be noted that Matt Fernholz is not from Northern Wisconsin, but from Milwaukee’s suburbs in Waukesha County, which is the center of Republican power in Wisconsin. He is Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ personal attorney and also the same attorney who represented Wisconsin’s Republican Party in our lawsuit to remove Trump from Wisconsin’s ballot. In my mind, Fernholz IS THE LEGAL WING of Wisconsin’s Republican Party which has directed their ire at the Minocqua Brewing Company because we’ve been a force in helping keep Wisconsin blue over the last several elections.
What's particularly disheartening about our current situation is that we shouldn’t have to worry about the judgment or collections, because we were insured against defamation claims and had been paying West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance every month to ensure they would protect us. However, after the attorneys they hired to defend us lost at trial against Walker and the Lakeland Times, West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance intervened in the case and asked Judge Stenz to relieve them of their duty to pay the judgment, but until they pay up, or we get a stay of enforcement, Gregg Walker and the Lakeland Times can use the unconstitutional judgment to shut us down.
Despite the fact that Crivello, Nichols & Hall failed to cite Polzin v. Helmbrecht, losing the case for us, and that there is conflict between us and West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance, West Bend Mutual and Society are now refusing to pay for us to retain independent counsel, even though they are legally obligated to do so.
Read that again, because this is important.
Our insurance company hired incompetent lawyers to defend us, and after we lost, they are now not only refusing to pay the claim, but they are also refusing to pay for us to replace those incompetent insurance lawyers with competent ones to protect us.
I think most every American has a story on how they’ve been screwed by an insurance company--and maybe I’m simply too close to this situation to look at it objectively--but I think this one takes the cake!
West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance have been absolutely dastardly in their bad faith handling of this claim, and because of that, we’re suing them.
So folks, here is where I ask you for some help.
Because I can no longer rely on my insurance company to pay for my defense, even though my company’s umbrella policy explicitly covers lawsuits of this nature, I have to again use Minocqua Brewing Company’s resources to fight back, and we simply don’t have this kind of money as a small little liberal brewery in Northern Wisconsin.
There’s no doubt that I’ve made the Minocqua Brewing Company a lightning rod in Wisconsin politics, and as a result, I've made my company a huge target for the Republican Party.
I swore after the insurrection on January 6th that I’d do everything in my power to never let that happen to our country again, and that I'd use the universal popularity of beer to help ensure that our crazy little dysfunctional swing state would never be manipulated again in an attempted presidential coup.
Would I have been so outspoken years ago now that I know how hard Republican's would come after my company?
Yes. A MILLION TIMES YES!
We’ve been able to do a lot of good in this state over the years, but I can’t fight this legal battle alone.
The Republican Party in Wisconsin, through Matt Fernholz and Robin Vos, is using the rural judicial system in Northern Wisconsin, and potentially even their connections at West Bend Mutual and Society Insurance, to stop me and my company’s progressive activism.
I need your help again to fight back, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because my company has become a bulwark against MAGA bullying and disinformation in the reddest part of our state.
If you can chip in to help us fight back, please donate here.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting the Minocqua Brewing Company. Our struggle is Wisconsin’s struggle. We just endure it a little more lightly because we have beer at the ready.
Thanks again for all of your help.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC.
Hi Folks,
I've got a lot of news for you today, and for once in a very long time, none of it DIRECTLY involves Wisconsin or U.S. politics.
As of Friday, we finally opened our new Tap Room in Madison, Wisconsin, which we call our "Home Away From Home," on 2927 East Washington Avenue.
This project started last July when the Town of Minocqua, a town that shares our name, tried to shut us down by selectively enforcing archaic zoning regulations.
The underlying reason for the town's unprecedented animus towards us was purely political. Minocqua is in a bright red area of Northern Wisconsin, and our Super PAC--what I call "Dark Money Meant For Good"--has become a progressive force by raising and spending over $1.5 million on measures to protect Wisconsin's Democracy, and by extension, America's Democracy, in this all-important swing state.
As we've grown and become more political, the Minocqua Brewing Company has increasingly become a target for Trump's Republican Party in Wisconsin. The party, working through the town, county, and the conservative local newspaper, hasn't given me a moment's peace over the last three years.
I decided that in order to protect the long-term viability of the brewery, I needed to build another tap room in my beer's best-selling market--Madison, Wisconsin. Madison (and surrounding Dane County) is THE progressive powerhouse that keeps Wisconsin ever-so-slightly blue with wonderfully high voter turnout rates.
We're officially opening opening our doors yesterday after having been been given a great write by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.
If opening our new tap room wasn't enough good news for the week, we did something else last Wednesday that will really help stabilize and grow the Minocqua Brewing Company. We launched a partnership with a nationwide online-only beer distributor that enables us to ship beer to 44 states.
Given our loud and proud progressive activism, we've been boycotted by traditional beer distributors in Wisconsin and shunned by distributors in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois because they've simply never seen such a politically active brand before.
This move allows us to control our own destiny by bypassing the many beer gatekeepers in every state and shipping directly to those of you who read my emails and follow us on social media.
If you'd like to buy our beer in Wisconsin or in any state other than MS, AK, AL, UT, AK, or HI, simply click on this link.
It's a brave new world for #progressivebeer.
(Don't worry, this is not a picture of me in a weird religious ceremony. It was taken long ago when I was an aspiring opera singer in NYC-- in an OFF OFF OFF Broadway production where I was cast as a chef experiencing a religious fever dream.)
Last but not least, here's a truly shameless plug for any classical music lovers living near Madison, Wisconsin.
I've been deeply immersed in classical music ever since my voice-teaching mother put me in the chorus of her studio's performance of Amahl and the Night visitors at the age of 7 (or maybe even earlier--who can remember?)
I built a little stage in the new Madison tap room as a guilty pleasure that will allow me to sing again from time to time, and will be starting what one of my friends coined "Beer Church" on Sunday afternoons semi-regularly.
While the name of this "salon series" suggests some sort of religious connection, the reality is that I want to listen to more live classical music in an intimate setting and also want to give classical musicians a space to play and honor this vanishing art form.
If you'd like to listen to me sing some really cheesy love songs in the pop-opera vein of Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban, come over to the new place today. The show starts at 2 pm.
'
Thanks for reading and thanks for supporting the Minocqua Brewing Company. I'll have more news for you next week about our Super PAC's many irons in the fire, including the anti-private school voucher lawsuit and our efforts to put billboards up around the state that link Trump's attempted presidential coup to our state's many Republican politicians who helped him try to pull it off.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Last week was a big one.
The US Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s ruling to remove Trump from its ballot, and Biden gave a strong state of the union address whilst many of Trump’s cult in Congress, including Wisconsin’s Derrick Van Orden, behaved deplorably.
The result of Colorado’s case stymied our lawsuit to remove Trump from Wisconsin’s ballot. Within hours of the decision on Monday, Dane County Judge Remington dismissed our case because SCOTUS ruled that only Congress, not individual states, could remove federal candidates for insurrection.
I believe this decision was deeply flawed, but I am merely a brewer, not a lawyer. Here is what a few lawyers had to say:
Fred Melms, who courageously took on the task of suing Trump in Wisconsin, told me something last week that stuck in my craw. He said that this SCOTUS ruling means that out of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, all enacted during the Civil War era, ONLY article 3 of the 14th amendment now requires enabling legislation by Congress to be enforced.
“It’s preposterous to think that after passing the 13th amendment which abolished slavery, the actual process to free slaves would require a second act of Congress. It makes no sense in this instance, and it shouldn’t with ANY of these Civil War era laws.”
Another lawyer, George Conway-- yes THAT guy who was married to Trump’s ridiculous advisor Kellyanne Conway—wrote something that made a lot of sense to me in a recent Atlantic article:
“…It was too much to expect this Court, at this time, in this political context, to apply the Constitution the way the Court normally should: by dispassionately looking at the constitutional text, and the historical context, and letting the chips fall where they may.”
It seems to me that for every courageous judge or politician who is willing to risk his/her career to DO THE RIGHT THING as it relates to holding Trump and his many accomplices accountable, there are seemingly more judges or politicians without that same grit, who weigh the potential negative impacts to their careers for doing the right thing more heavily than actually doing the right thing.
That’s why Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Colorado's Supreme Court will be among the many heroes our grandchildren will read about in America's future history books. These people harmed their careers to do their duty as Americans.
You know who our grandchildren won’t read about? Our current US Supreme Court, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Mitch McConnell, Wisconsin's Attorney General Josh Kaul, and every politician and judge in America and Wisconsin who amplified Trump’s lies or slow-walked justice during the most tempestuous time in America’s history since the Civil War.
Our institutions are only as strong as those who serve in them, and as we have learned time and time again since January 6th, they won’t save America in 2024.
Only we, the voters, will.
And to tell you the honest truth, I’m pretty sick and tired of the average voter, which includes me, being asked to save American Democracy every two years because our leaders and judges don’t have the courage to do their jobs.
But what I do know, because I’ve seen it firsthand in my own brewery taproom, is that there are thousands of salt-of-the-earth Wisconsinites who were forever scarred by watching the attack on our capital on January 6th, and who are just as stubborn as I am to do whatever it takes to never let that happen again.
And for these stubborn, clear-eyed, stoic Wisconsinites who are currently weary of constantly bailing out Wisconsin and America, here's a quote from one of our greatest American presidents, Teddy Roosevelt:
“Courage is not having the strength to go on: It is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
Now that we know that SCOTUS and Attorney General Josh Kaul will be of absolutely NO USE to America and Wisconsin, respectively, before the 2024 presidential election, it’s time for us to go back to work in our ever-important swing state.
I encourage everyone to start engaging with your county Democratic Party. I believe in Ben Wikler, our state's Democratic Party leader, and I know that he and the Biden campaign are beefing up their ranks of community organizers to herd all of us cats to help the effort.
As far as the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC is concerned, our first effort is to put up a bunch of billboards in Oshkosh, Wausau, Superior, and Washington County--that remind voters that Wisconsin’s Republicans leaders were part of Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election.
Why those places?
Oshkosh is the home of Senator Ron Johnson, whose text messages to Jim Troupis and Ken Chesebro, the leaders of the fraudulent elector scheme, clearly show he was neck-deep in the attempted presidential coup and is actively lying about his involvement to the American people. We hope Johnson will be indicted and forced to testify under oath about the role he played on January 6
Wausau and Superior are the largest cities in Wisconsin’s deeply red 7thCongressional District, whose Congressman is “Toxic” Tom Tiffany.
This guy was the only Wisconsin Congressman to side with Texas in their baseless lawsuit to throw out Wisconsin’s ballots-- the very same ballots that got him elected. He is arguably Wisconsin’s biggest MAGA shill, willing to parrot any lie or conspiracy theory to curry favor with his emperor.
This sign is in Washington County near Germantown, part of the WOW counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington) surrounding Milwaukee that have started becoming more progressive as suburban women reject the party that took their reproductive rights away. Parts of this area are in Scott Fitzgerald's district. He arranged for the fraudulent electors to be able to gain access to the locked capitol building and reserved a room for them to commit their crime.
We sued all three of these men in 2022, using the same 14th amendment clause that was used to kick Trump off of Colorado's ballot, only to have that case dismissed by Judge Edelman in Milwaukee's Eastern District because he said Wisconsin voters didn't have the "standing" to sue.
There is no doubt in my mind that if Donald Trump loses the presidential race in 2024, making it impossible for him to pardon himself or all of his co-conspirators, that Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany, and Scott Fitzgerald will finally be held accountable for their roles in the insurrection...
...And as long as we can keep raising enough money to put these signs up, I’ll be damned we don't keep constantly reminding Wisconsin voters that our state's leading Republican's were directly linked to Trump's attack on our country, up and until the election on November 5, 2024.
We’ve raised about $15K already to put these signs up, am I'm hoping you'll help chip in to raise another $15K to keep these up for a few more months.
We've also earmarked a sign location in Eau Claire, MAGA Congressman Derrick Van Orden's district, that we'll buy if we can raise a total of $20K after today's email.
Here’s the link to contribute to this effort.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting the Minocqua Brewing Company. Together, let's make Wisconsin Great Again by grabbing the ankles of Wisconsin's Republican insurrectionists and never letting go until they are held accountable.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
So over the last few days, we've had a few friendly folks criticize our heavy use of sarcasm and ridicule to combat ignorance, disinformation, and bullying--both online and within the MAGA movement in general.
We've gotten some "take the high roads" and a some "when they go low, you go highs," along with "I can't support a beer company that doesn't treat everyone with respect(s)..."
Of course we believe in all these "golden-ruley" cliches, and agree that they should be applied in polite society 100% of the time.
We also believe, however, that within the made-up world of social media, and within the siloed walls of the MAGA movement, there is no longer such a thing as polite society.
Society has learned that you can practically say whatever you want when anonymously typing it out on a keyboard, and Trump's cult following has learned from their leader, and from America's kid-gloved handling of him, that one is rarely held accountable when saying the most vile things imaginable or lying repeatedly on a global stage.
So at this moment in America, we live in two worlds--a world in which you have one set of rules when talking to people in person, and another set of rules when engaging with them online or when a camera is rolling.
We're quite sure that the trolls who come onto our page daily would never say the things they say to us if they actually met us in person, but alas, we also know those days are behind us.
As vile as this online world is, it is also the least expensive and most effective tool for small companies to advertise to potential customers--thus a necessary evil.
On social media, we've regressed to a place much like an elementary schoolyard, where unsupervised children are left to test power structures, see what they can get away with, and look for positive emotional feedback loops, no matter how undisciplined or "naughty."
And what you learn immediately in the schoolyard is that you have four choices when bullied:
--Run away and hide.
--Maintain your dignity by not fighting back as you get pummeled.
--Implore an adult to help stop you from getting beaten up.
--Punch back hard enough so you are left alone.
Throughout our existence as first a brewpub in Minocqua and now a beverage company distributing throughout the Midwest and the entire US through mail-order, we've tried all of the above. Here's what happens:
--When you run away and hide, you give them the power to hurt you again, and you also have to go to bed at night knowing you did nothing to stop those that are trying to hurt you and your community.
--When you maintain your dignity and let yourself get pummeled, you lose--1) because you get fake negative reviews that potential customers think are true, and 2) the algorithms on social media are designed to enhance conflict, not reward soft-spoken wisdom--thus choosing grace is also choosing to disappear from your least expensive and most effective advertising tool.
-When you ask "adults" to intervene online, like FB, IG, Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google Reviews, you're ignored.
--When you ask adults to intervene to protect Wisconsin or America from MAGA political bullies, like AG Josh Kaul or AG Merrick Garland, you quickly realize that the system that put those "adults" in power is a system that rewards ambitious politicians who care more about their careers than their duty to hold liars and traitors accountable.
So as a matter of course, we are left with the 4th option--to FIGHT BACK.
And the way to fight back on social media is to punch hard with words, to both teach online trolls that there are consequences to anonymous dickheaded-ness, and expand your audience--because boldness is rewarded through increased engagement.
And to fight back against MAGA politicians harassing us at both the local and state level, we have chosen to ridicule them for their ignorance and hypocrisy, as well as (a little less frequently) post thoughtful arguments as to why they're such wrong-headed and terrible leaders.
Now, these choices might not suit everyone, especially the faint of heart, and we're ok with that. We apologize if we've offended the more peaceful among our tribe. We do have that peaceful side but more often embrace it in person.
We also realize that until social media companies put up more guardrails to trolling, and until our society--including mainstream media--put up more guardrails to lying and deplorable behavior among MAGA politicians, there needs to be more progressive folks like us willing to roll around in the mud with these jerks.
Or maybe we're wrong and need a little more worldly experience or wisdom to help us see the light. We're willing to acknowledge that we're wrong and also acknowledge that in the heat of battle, we too have crossed a few lines we're not proud of. We hope that eventually, we can get to a place in society that negates our perceived need to brawl.
But that's not gonna happen today, nor in an America where Donald Trump still has a chance to become president again. Until then, we ain't gonna change a thing:)
Thanks for reading, and thanks for drinking our beer and humoring us while we get into "good trouble."
While the rest of the country is anxiously watching America get sucked into violence in the perpetually-violent Middle East, or watching anxiously as a conman inches closer to the Republican presidential nomination while our justice system kicks the can of accountability down the road, there’s an entirely different type of anxiety coming out of Minocqua, Wisconsin.
We've got very little snow up here, and our winter tourism economy is based entirely on snow!
As the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC waits for our lawsuit to remove Trump from Wisconsin’s ballot to work its way through court; waits for our lawyers to hammer out a revised complaint to rid Wisconsin of our parasitic private-school voucher program; and negotiates with sign companies around Wisconsin to buy more locations for billboards that you’ve helped fund that remind Wisconsinites that Trump’s attempted presidential heist involved many of our own state’s Republican politicians; I wanted to focus this week on how Minocqua’s local leaders have reacted to changes in our tourism economy caused by global warming over the last decade.
In short, they haven’t.
Fed a steady diet of anti-climate change rhetoric from our right-wing local newspaper and led by an “Old Boys Network” that keeps themselves comfortable by glad-handing instead of solving problems, Minocqua has taken the same approach to economic planning that they always have-- “hoping and praying” for lots of snow.
Those prayers have worked almost as well as they do every time there’s a mass shooting in America.
Last week, the executive director of our local tourism board, Krystal Westfahl, made statewide news by leading a delegation of 15 Northern Wisconsin economic development and tourism associations to ask for state and federal assistance to bale out our snow-less and decimated Northwoods economy.
Sounds about right.
The only people that make decent money in Wisconsin’s Northwoods are business owners in the tourism industry, and “socialism” for the well-off has always been the only palatable type of “socialism” for these folks. When it came to helping single mothers afford childcare while they bartended at snowmobile bars that used to bank money when there was snow, for example, that was going a bit too far. “These women made their beds, and now they have to lie in them.”
What if you made your bed out of climate change denial? Shouldn’t you have to lie in that as well?
In 2019, shortly after my wife passed away but before Covid hit, I invited a group of forward-thinking business owners to the upstairs lounge of our old building to brainstorm events we could hold in the off-season that would attract tourists but wouldn’t have to rely on snow, because it was no secret to anyone that our winters were getting increasingly shorter and warmer. We came up with a LOT great ideas:
Many of us left that meeting feeling excited about all these new events that would make life a lot more fun AND LUCRATIVE in the offseason.
Unfortunately, Covid struck a few months later and all of that momentum came to a screeching halt. Most of us who met that day to combat a future with less snow had to pivot to save our own businesses from bankruptcy.
But you know who still got paid whether Covid wrecked our economy or not? Our local and state politicians, along with the folks who run our regional economic development orgs and tourism boards.
If they had picked up the baton we started running with 5 years ago and led the charge to pivot away from snow-based tourism BEFORE the inevitable winter heatwave arrived, a few more businesses may have been saved this winter.
What, instead of coming up with creative ways to stimulate our winter economy, have they been doing these last 5 years?
Many of them have been trying to put the Minocqua Brewing Company--one of the first businesses you’ll find when Googling the word “Minocqua,” and one that arguably attracts more tourists to the area each summer than most others—out of business.
After collecting what must be over 70K of Minocqua’s taxpayer dollars defending Town Chairman Mark Hartzheim and others board members against our federal lawsuit accusing them of political harassment, the Town’s lawyer finally sent us a “clean” revoke-able license agreement. The first iteration of this agreement sent to us by Hartzheim two years ago was the opposite of “clean,” because it was filled with bogus regulations that would have been impossible for us to meet. If we had signed it years ago, we would have given the town a legal way to shut us down for practically any reason.
We thought that by sending us this “clean” agreement, the Town had finally seen the light, realized that harassing us was going to cost their taxpayers dearly, and decided to simply play by the rules.
It looks like I gave them too much credit.
After I signed and notarized the document, the Town’s lawyer got back to us and said that the only way the town would add their signatures to this agreement would be if we dismissed our lawsuit against them.
In other words, the Town of Minocqua, whose vendetta against us has resulted in close to a million dollars in lost revenue over the last two summers, is now threatening to withhold a highway easement that they would rubber stamp for any other business, as ransom to stop us from holding them accountable for trying to illegally shut us down.
This is like a cat burglar who you caught stealing your TV offering you a contract to NOT steal your jewelry as long as you didn't call the cops on him for breaking into your house in the first place!
Instead of thinking outside of the box and trying to keep our local economy afloat in the face of climate change, too many of our town's leaders spend their energy thinking up ways to hurt a business that HAS figured out how to thrive without snow in order to score a few political points while the rest of their economic ship is sinking.
Krystal Westfahl pictured with Republican Assemblyman Rob Swearingen, a politician who loves collecting a $50K salary, walking in parades, and doing whatever Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos tells him to do.
But surely Krystal Westphal, knowing how many tourists we bring to the area and being the person “in charge” of local tourism, would support our business and tell the town board to back off…right?
Wrong.
Westfahl, whose position supporting our tourism economy should be completely non-partisan, agreed to do an interview with one of America's most recognized conservative magazines, the National Review, and called my fight to be treated fairly in my own community “A bunch of bullshit” in that journal's hit piece against my efforts to rid Wisconsin of our parasitic private school voucher program.
It all comes down to leadership, and we’re sorely lacking leaders in deep red Northern Wisconsin. So many of those that participate in local and state politics “Up North” are people who cynically benefit from getting a first look at where their next building contract might be, or those who lazily look for an easy way to ink an extra $50K annual legislative salary by simply rubber-stamping every gerrymandered Republican bill that comes their way.
But when an actual crisis hits, all these folks who wouldn't take a meeting with climate scientists because they were too busy repeating talking points that lambasted trans kids who played sports in rural areas where there weren't any trans kids playing sports, or too busy attacking "illegals" at the border when Wisconsin doesn't share a border with another country, starts pointing fingers and asks for a bailout using the statewide government surplus provided to us by a Federal Democratic President and Congress in 2021.
On the contrary, those with a hint of idealism and mettle to tackle big problems, or those who want to build a better community for themselves and their kids, too often move away to areas that have a better track record for good government and economic growth—like liberal Madison, Wisconsin, which continues to be one of the only places in the state that keeps growing.
But what our home-grown talent wistfully leaves behind, in my opinion, is the most beautiful part of our state. They leave an area covered by beautiful lakes and forests to make money elsewhere, only to spend that money up here as tourists or second home owners down the road. Unfortunately for our town, we lose their votes when they move away. But fortunately for us, they spend their tourism dollars with businesses who appreciate and share their enlightened worldview.
As I’ve said repeatedly, while agreeing with over 70% percent of the Wisconsinites who voted for Fair Maps in local referenda over the last decade, I believe ridding ourselves of political gerrymandering will solve many of the problems facing Northern Wisconsin. With Fair Maps, we have the opportunity to elect politicians with the intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm to help solve the economic challenges brought on by climate change, who will listen to experts in their fields who have already solved these problems in other states--as opposed to putting their fingers in their ears whenever the term "climate change" is mentioned.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company. Together, we will find and nurture progressive leaders in rural Northern Wisconsin once we have Fair Maps, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
HI Folks,
If you can’t read my whole message today, here’s the short version.
As many of you have already noticed, we put up a billboard last Friday near Ron Johnson’s home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to make sure he is reminded every day that on January 7th, one day after the insurrection, Wisconsin’s largest newspaper called for his expulsion from Congress for “siding with Trump against our Republic.”
We did the same thing in Wausau, the largest city in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, but instead put a picture of their Congressman Tom Tiffany, who was cited in that same explosive Milwaukee Journal editorial for his illegal role in the insurrection.
I’m hoping to raise money to put up more of these billboards around the state, and include some in Congressman Scott Fitzgerald’s 5th district (Milwaukee’s suburbs) because of his role in opening Wisconsin’s capitol to the fraudulent electors. I'd also like to put up billboards in Congressman Derrick Van Orden’s 3rd district (LaCrosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point) because he actually took part in the capitol riots on that infamous day.
If you’d like to chip in, here’s a link to donate.
Now for the longer story.
If you are like me, you’ve been watching with anxiety as Trump continues to easily win Republican primaries while being buried in lawsuits—the last one being an $83M loss for rape and defamation cumulatively handed to him by two separate juries of his peers.
You know we’re living in a twilight zone when a guy like this is the presumptive Republican nominee, and like many of you, I feel compelled to do whatever I can to rid America of him.
It’s no secret that Wisconsin is once-again ground zero in the fight for the soul of our country, and I’m relieved that Biden and Harris both came to Superior and Waukesha, respectively, last week.
While we’ve followed the lead of Colorado and Maine by suing Trump to get him off Wisconsin's ballot, it’s more likely than not that SCOTUS will strike down those lawsuits, and we’ll have to face Trump at the ballot box.
We need to do what is necessary to help Biden win, but as I wrote last week, I think the best way to do that is to expose the rot in Wisconsin’s Republican Party that has wholly given itself over to a repulsive would-be dictator.
If we had an honest Republican senator and honest Republican congressmen, they would have told their Republican voters what they all tell each other behind closed doors--that Trump almost got away with a presidential coup and is dangerous for America. Instead, they cowardly repeat his lies and undermine our democratic institutions.
While I don’t think we can unseat all of these congressmen given how gerrymandered these districts are, I think it’s imperative to keep reminding voters that a guy like Trump wouldn’t still be around if not for the validation of his party’s leaders, who have enabled him to avoid accountability for his deception and projection.
On the contrary, too many of Wisconsin’s Republican leaders are part and parcel of the January 6th conspiracy and the continued effort to feed lies to voters.
To right Wisconsin’s ship is to clean out the MAGA movement, and that movement is led in our state by Johnson, Tiffany, Fitzgerald, and Van Orden.
The two signs we put up cost about $1K each, for two weeks in each location. The more money we can raise, the more signs we can put up in Hudson, Superior, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point, Waukesha, and Brookfield--cities represented by these MAGA insurrectionists.
I know that in a few months, Wisconsin will be deluged by money from both sides, but right now, we're relatively early in putting up billboards, so the money spent on this project will hopefully pack more of a punch and leave a longer-lasting impression on voters.
If this a strategy you can get behind, here’s a link to donate.
Thanks for reading and thanks for believing that we’ve already turned the corner towards progress in Wisconsin.
All that’s left is to remove the MAGA rot that keeps our ship from fully floating, and to make sure we don’t leave anything to chance that accidentally lets Trump back in.
Kirk Bangstad,
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Hi folks,
Now before I introduce this fabulous new beer called “Dark Brandon,” which I think is gonna be a big hit, here's the latest Super PAC news:
Since one of our new beers has to do with all three of those lawsuits, I might as well introduce you to "Grateful Fred" before we get to “Dark Brandon.”
Fred Melms has been a constant in most all of our lawsuits to fix Wisconsin. Simply put, Fred is not afraid of anything and refuses to be deterred if the goal involves demanding justice and fairness--and those are hard traits to find in lawyers these days.
On our behalf, Fred has taken on Trump, the Wisconsin Republican Party, Betsy Devos’ “school choice” lobby, and the interminably-annoying OBNOM (Old Boys Network of Minocqua).
Let’s just say we keep our "Irrepressible Ginger" pretty busy.
After Fred helped us finally win the right to build a beer garden, we decided to make him a beer and called it “Grateful Fred.” You can read the whole story on the back of the can, and here's a picture of Fred and I sipping his new Red Ale at the Madison Beer and Cheese Fest yesterday.
Talk about life imitating art!
And now I'd like to introduce one of the more fun beers we’ve made in a long time. It's called “Dark Brandon.”
This espresso stout is not only REALLY GOOD, but we laughed the whole time we were making it.
The story of what “Dark Brandon” means can be read on the back of the can, but let’s just say this moniker has become a hyper-sarcastic response to the worn-out term “Let’s Go Brandon” -- an over-used insult by MAGA folk who refuse to let us forget what the word "deplorable" looks like in real life.
The Biden campaign has seemingly embraced this ironic and humorous alter-ego, so we took the liberty of drawing our own version of what we think "Dark Brandon" looks like.
Not only is this a fun beer release that plays off of our flagship "Biden Beer--Inoffensive and Not Bitter Kolsch," but it is part and parcel of our Super PAC's 2024 election year strategy. Similar to teasing Trump's cult with Biden's alter ego, we plan to keep shining a light on every bad MAGA actor that tried to undermine Wisconsin’s democracy on and leading up to the insurrection of January 6th, 2020.
Look forward to seeing new billboards in every part of the state reminding Wisconsinites that Trump wasn’t alone when he attempted to overturn the will of our voters. On the contrary, he was joined by Senator Ron Johnson; the sedition caucus that includes Congressmen Tom Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald, and Derrick van Orden; Wisconsin wanna-be-strong-man Robin Vos; the fraudulent electors including Bob Spindell; and many, MANY others.
Once we have more news on these fronts, I’ll let you know and will probably ask for money to help fund it all.
This week, however, I’ll leave your pocketbooks alone and hopefully just tempt your tastebuds with some tasty beer pics.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
No matter how long it takes, we’ll march hand-in-hand with you to rid Wisconsin of its MAGA bad actors. All that we ask is that some of you use that free hand to hoist a few of our beers:)
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Hi friends,
For those of you reading this missive who don't live in Wisconsin, we finally got enough snow over the last week to go out and play in it, which for many of us makes Wisconsin's winters tolerable.
For me, playing in the snow means cross country skiing, which after singing and surfing (usually very badly), is my 3rd most favorite past-time.
After skiing for the last two days, I woke up this morning both happy and sore, thinking “What should I write about today?”
I could update you on what we've been doing to make our lawsuit to rid Wisconsin of its parasitic private school voucher program more bullet proof before we re-file it in circuit court.
I could tell you about the preliminary injunction we are in the process of filing against Donald Trump and the Republican Party of Wisconsin as a supplement to our 14th amendment lawsuit we filed two weeks ago to remove him from Wisconsin's ballot.
I could show you the recent post-trial motions filed against me in this interminable defamation lawsuit which suggests an unhealthy fixation on every word I write from Gregg Walker, who is arguably Wisconsin's least reputable newspaper publisher, and his lawyer Matt Fernholz, who I swear wasn't loved enough as a child.
And finally, I could write about how excited I am to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel that will hopefully reveal a completed second tap room in Madison, Wisconsin.
But I'm not going to write about any of that, because I'm going to go cross country skiing one last time this morning in Minocqua's majestic Winter Park before heading back to Madison to pick a flooring tile design for the taproom and find a used commercial glass washer because new ones are ridiculously expensive.
That means you're not gonna get any pressure from me this week to help chip in to fund all of our important work.
Instead, I'll give you a poem.
The Last Horse Race
“Who will win?” we ask each week
Who said what to change some minds?
Did he fib? Did she slip? An embarrassing gaffe?
Did our horse just start to unwind?
This race will end not soon enough
A mere three days we have to wait
Our bets are running neck and neck
But our lives are what’s at stake.
What if we focused less on horses
And took a look around our state?
We’d realize all those ads are worthless
For all too many, it’s much too late.
Our teachers who lost 10 years ago,
Retired or moved away,
Professors were mocked, their work rejected
To greener pastures they left…why stay?
Those folks who labor lost out too
Abandoned by Walker with no redress
Tricked them when they weren’t looking
Now it’s “Right to Work” for less.
Our nurses who tried to save your lives,
You cursed them for doing their jobs,
They left their stations altogether
That light inside them robbed.
And those in homes, our old and feeble,
What happened to them, you ask?
They died from Covid in their beds
Because you refused to wear your mask.
Now look what’s happened to our young women
Those bright lights we wish would stay
You’ve stripped them of their right to choose
To sanctuary states they’ll move away.
And now you’ve cheated once again
Gerrymandered away all hope of change
Intent to secure that power forever
Democracy is almost out of range
To those who lied and stole our glory
You’ve put Wisconsin through such pain
So many of our good people left
BUT JUST ENOUGH OF US STILL REMAIN.
WE, Wisconsin’s last reasonable folk
The ones who usually mind our manners
Have had enough of your hatred and lies
WE HAVE ARISEN from the tatters.
The TRUTH we demand and nothing less
Your deflection and projection will not swim.
WE WILL MARCH TO THE POLLS ON NOVEMBER 8
ALL THE WHILE SINGING OUR BATTLE HYMN
Glory Glory Halleluja
Glory, Glory Halleluja
Glory, Glory Halleluja
The TRUTH is Marching On
Glory Glory Halleluja
Glory, Glory Halleluja
Glory, Glory Halleluja
And WE go Marching ON
I wrote "The Last Horse Race" in November 2022, a week before we elected Democratic Governor Tony Evers. That election was the first step towards shoring up Wisconsin's democracy before the 2024 presidential race, which will be yet another existential election for our country and one in which our state will once-again play an outsized role.
This poem was accompanied by a video that showed many of the 17 billboards we put up, with your help, along Highway 41 from Fond du Lac to Marinette. The slogan on those billboards was "Choose Reason Over Treason,” which we hoped would convince a few conservatives in Wisconsin who were sick and tired of MAGA chaos to vote for Evers. We have a feeling those words will once again come in handy about nine months from now.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for caring about our little progressive company "Up North."
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
In our rush to augment Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from their ballots by filing our own lawsuit in Wisconsin, I decided not to write my annual memorial to Elizabeth Smith, my late wife who lost her battle with cancer on December 17, 2018, at 10:38 a.m.
I was reminded of this decision when I received an unsigned email from an obscure address this morning after getting up to write this week’s newsletter.
The level of hatred in these words took my breath away, and that’s saying a lot for a guy whose company gets trolled relentlessly on social media.
This email coincidentally was sent very soon after I touched Elizabeth’s container of ashes while cleaning out my closet last night. As is my habit when seeing that container, I told her spirit that I loved her, felt that little rush of pain from a permanently-injured heart, and internally reprimanded myself for not thinking more about her and our wonderful memories together.
This anonymous email hurt a lot. Even if the content was absurd and coarse, like all of the other hateful messages I receive daily, I was still blindsided by someone’s willingness to debase my dead wife in order to cause me pain. How dare he?
What this person probably doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to understand is that his words, although some of the most awful I’ve ever read, give me the strength to keep doing everything I can to stop the cult of personality that has consumed an entire political party in our country.
The MAGA movement IS the person who wrote that email.
They are cowardly, often-faceless, debased, uneducated, easily-manipulated sycophants whose leader reflects the worst of themselves in a distorted veneer of patriotism.
Unfortunately, because of the sheer magnitude of this group, I can’t call these people “un-American.” They ARE American. They’ve always been our neighbors but they just didn’t get any cultural oxygen because those who wrote about America’s culture refused to give them any.
Well, they’re getting a lot of oxygen in the media these days since Elon Musk let them take over Twitter, since Joe Rogan let them regurgitate their nuttiness in what can only be called faux-intelligent discourse for those who aren’t used to thinking, and since an entire conservative media-ecosystem has discovered that supporting the everlasting CON from America’s most successful CONMAN is hugely profitable.
Since these deplorables ARE getting so much media oxygen, I believe many of our top Democratic leaders have become afraid that angering them too much is more dangerous for America than holding them accountable for the crimes they committed.
In a New York Times Op-Ed, Yale Law School Professor Samuel Moyn criticized the effort to disqualify Trump from running for President using Article 3 of the 14th amendment, saying that “rejecting Mr. Trump’s candidacy could well invite a repeat of the kind of violence that led to the prohibition on insurrectionists in public life in the first place.”
Lawrence Lessig, a law school professor from Harvard, buttressed that argument by claiming that if states were able to remove presidential candidates using the 14th amendment, it would open the door for “tit for tat” retribution from other states, citing Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s threat to remove Biden from the Texas ballot as retribution for Colorado’s decision.
Do you see a pattern here?
As esteemed as these two law school professors are, their arguments basically come down to fearing what people; who have already used violence, threats, and lies to undermine our Democracy, will do if they are held accountable for using violence, threats, and lies.
In response to this fear-based tautology steeped in Stockholm Syndrome, I couldn’t say it better than David French in this New York Times Op-Ed:
“Enough. It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution to Trump’s actions and remove him from the ballot—without fear of the consequences. Republics are not maintained by cowardice.”
I sense that these law school professors belong to what Nobel Prize-winning economist and frequent New York Times opinion columnist, Paul Krugman, calls “very serious people. He used that term to "capture the way respectable opinion keeps demanding utterly foolish policies.”
These “very serious people,” or VSP, are not only Ivy League professors, but they are also Washington DC insiders, opinion columnists, coastal elites, and New York City bankers who rely on "peace" to make sure that the supply of Eucerin body lotion, which is incomprehensibly bought in bulk, for example, at the Costco in Sun Prairie, isn’t disrupted.
Even these educated and wealthy cohorts fall prey to group think, and the VSP have been seemingly immobilized by their fear of an army of trash-talking rural keyboard warriors who they don’t understand in “fly-over” country, where they’ve never lived.
Why do I think this?
Because I grew up in rural Stevens Point, currently live in rural Minocqua, but went to college with those coastal elites at Harvard and rubbed shoulders with many of those same bankers while living in New York City, the bulk of whom wouldn’t “waste their time” visiting my crucial swing state and have no shared experience with the type of people they’re so afraid of.
I know the MAGA crowd because I grew up with and currently live among them. I believe that while taking Trump off the ballot might cause a few wing-nuts to dust off their guns, I’d be willing to bet that most Wisconsin Trump supporters, after their initial anger, would forget about him long before the Milwaukee Brewers’ season opener. The MAGA crowd we see at rallies and on social media, who the VSP is so afraid of, are largely cowards like the guy who sent me that email last night. I believe they will crawl back under their rocks once Trump is held accountable--especially after the conservative media that fills them with existential dread no longer sees a profit in broadcasting a Trump-less presidential horserace.
What I believe so many of the VSP are missing is that by ripping off the band-aid NOW and disqualifying Trump from running for President a year before the election, we can remove the possibility of MUCH MORE VIOLENCE LATER when a) Trump loses the election but calls for a more organized version of the January 6th insurrection, b) Trump loses 1 or all 4 of the criminal cases pending against him before the election and becomes more of a martyr to the violent zealots than he is now, or c) Trump wins, then pardons himself and his accomplices for all of his crimes, which causes a constitutional crisis and political violence—maybe even civil war--from the left.
Unfortunately, the VSP’s fears of political violence dovetail nicely with Biden’s probable campaign strategy and with our Democratic governor’s ambitions of winning a third term.
In the former’s case, it seems obvious to me that Biden would rather run against Trump than Nikki Haley, given all of Trump’s baggage. His campaign’s refusal to support these statewide 14th amendment lawsuits suggests that they’re content to play Russian Roulette with our Democracy by allowing a vulnerable but self-avowed would-be dictator as the Republican nominee.
In Governor Evers’ case, I believe that he is once-again attempting to cement his perceived hold on Wisconsin’s non-existent swing voter in the next election by criticizing our 14th amendment effort, which allows himself to appear like a “reasonable centrist” among the “Very Serious People.”
You know who else might have been considered a “reasonable centrist?” Neville Chamberlain.
I believe the time is NOW to rip the band-aid off and say “Its’ Over” to Donald Trump and his legion of miscreants, sycophants, and political co-conspirators.
That’s why we filed our lawsuit to take Trump of Wisconsin’s ballot last Friday, and that’s why we refuse to listen to the “Very Serious People,” including our own Governor, who tell us our efforts are in vain.
If you want to help me keep funding this effort, which has now gotten national attention, please consider donating here
The good news is that we’ve raised about $40K so far with the average donation ranging around $40 per person. The challenging news is that we've already spent tens of thousands of dollars into the effort of writing, rewriting, double-checking, and filing this 60-page Wisconsin lawsuit, and I don’t want to have to shut this effort off midstream.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we simply MUST send guys like the one who sent me that email yesterday back under their rocks, so that we can once again live in a society where civility reigns. We owe it to our loved ones, those both with us and those we've said goodbye to--and we won’t be able to do that until we close the door, once and for all, on Donald Trump.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Hi Folks,
Today at 1 pm, I filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court against Donald Trump, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
Here is the livestream of what happened.
Here's a link to the actual lawsuit.
Unlike what many headlines said, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, by denying our complaint last week, actually helped our efforts to remove Trump from the ballot by a) saving us crucial time, and b) helping to ensure that our lawsuit won't be dismissed by a judge on procedural grounds.
In our lawsuit, we asked for a declaration from a judge that Trump is unqualified for running for President under Article 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because he aided and abetted the Insurrection on January 6th, 2021.
We're asking for an injunction to prevent the Wisconsin Elections Commission from distributing ballots with Trump's name on them or counting votes for Trump.
We're also asking for a declaration that states that Wisconsin's presidential electors can't vote for Trump because he is unqualified to be president.
The constitution is clear. Just like you can't run for President if you're under the age of 35 or were born in a foreign country, you can't run for President if you engaged in insurrection after swearing an oath that you'd protect our country from harm.
According to the New York Times, over 700 people have already been convicted or pleaded guilty to having committed crimes that day, 450 of them sentenced to jail time for "crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony."
furthermore they wrote that "These proceedings have helped to flesh out the story of how an angry crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters, egged on by his lies about a stolen election, stopped the democratic process, if only for several hours."
For anyone who refuses to acknowledge the truth, it is crystal clear that those who have been jailed for seditious conspiracy were part of an INSURRECTION, and that Trump's lies caused that insurrection.
If you are caught drunk driving too much, your license is taken away. No one is taking away your "choice" to drive. You forfeited that freedom by breaking the law. Similarly, no one is taking away your "choice" to vote for Trump. He forfeited his right to run by leading an insurrection.
Nowhere in the constitution does it say Trump has to be convicted of insurrection to be removed from the ballot.
That being said, the only reason Trump hasn't been convicted yet is because our federal and state Attorney's General, Merrick Garland and Josh Kaul, were too scared to a) hurt the former's chances at becoming a US Supreme Court Justice, and b) hurt the latter's chances at becoming Wisconsin's next Governor. They were simply too weak to take the bull by the horns and do the hard work of prosecuting Trump and Wisconsin accomplices Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany, and Scott Fitzgerald immediately after the they had committed their crimes.
Just like red flag laws take a person's gun away from them temporarily if they are deemed a risk to themselves or others, it makes 100% sense to restrict Trump from running for an office that if successful, he will most certainly use to pardon himself and his co-conspirators, and most certainly will then go on to use to crush our Democratic institutions.
Sure, if in 2028, Trump has been exonerated on all four of the indictments against him that relate to insurrection and election interference (which will never happen), let him run for President then. But don't put our Democracy at risk by a) creating a legal condition of conviction that isn't written in our constitution, or because b) our chief law enforcement officers in the U.S. and Wisconsin couldn't lead when we needed them to.
Yes, our case is a long-shot, but so were the successful cases in Colorado and Maine.
As I told a New York Times reporter two days ago in an article released yesterday, a "brewer from Northern Wisconsin shouldn't be the one throwing Hail Mary's to get Trump of of the ballot."
Our leaders should be doing this, both the Republicans AND the Democrats. Unfortunately for our country, the former are by-and-large complicit with seditious conspiracy, and the latter have shown they simply lack the intestinal fortitude to do hard things.
Well, no one said life was easy, and most of us who have to get up everyday and work hard to earn a living understand that sometimes you gotta do hard things. I just wish we lived in a country where politicians haven't had the courage beaten out of them by the soul-sucking need to constantly beg for campaign donations.
This is just the start of a long and righteous effort to yet again save our democracy from a would-be dictator that should have been stopped years ago. This work involves lots of lawyers, and lawyers aren't cheap. Please chip in here to help us pay these lawyers in if you are able.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Happy New Year’s Eve from the beautiful little hamlet of Minocqua, Wisconsin.
We don’t have any snow up here yet, which always makes life a little harder for the local economy because this “vacation week’ between Chistmas and New Year’s is largely dependent on snowmobile tourism.
I remember gathering a number of fellow business owners in my old brewpub a year or so before the pandemic to discuss how we were going to survive these shorter winters, given that our sales were so dependent on winter sports tourists.
“Might we need to move away from focusing on snowmobile traffic and figure out how to attract tourists in other ways—like maybe through live music, festivals, fat bike competitions, etc?" I asked.
The group I handpicked to discuss this were business leaders in town I respected. They were watching their revenues decline winter after winter as snowmobilers kept driving past us to reach snow that was more reliable in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They understood what was happening—global warming was hurting our tourism economy in little old Minocqua.
While those folks whose economic survival depended on tourist revenue were planning for a future with less snow, our local right-wing newspaper, the Lakeland Times, wrote columns downplaying global warming by quoting nutty theories, like ones from the Heritage foundation that linked warmer temperatures to solar flares, suggesting we’d get our winters back if we just waited it out.
I noted the cognitive dissonance between those who had the business sense to connect the dots between science and revenues, and others who just hoped and prayed really hard that we’d get snow by Christmas.
As I reflect on all that the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC has done since our inception on January 4th, 2021--two days before the January 6th insurrection--up until last Thursday, when we filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to take Trump off of Wisconsin’s ballot, I realize that most of our activism in those two years was steeped in this same sort of cognitive dissidence:
We raised and spent over a MILLION DOLLARS in the last two years, with over 30K donations averaging ~$43, to basically remind people that a sizable minority of our country is living in a fact-free twilight zone, and that the majority of us living in reality had to stand strong against misinformation and outright lies in order to save our country.
If I can recap the last two years of our political activism, I’d conclude that both years were largely focused on making sure Wisconsin didn’t lose our democracy. The two most pivotal ways we protected Wisconsin’s democracy was by electing Democrat Tony Evers as our governor in 2022, and Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023.
Both wins ensured that Wisconsin’s executive and judicial branches of government would be a bulwark against future attempts to overturn the will of Wisconsin voters in the 2024 presidential election.
Said another way, if Donald Trump somehow made it onto the presidential ballot in 2024 because of a gargantuan failure from our federal and state justice departments to hold him and his accomplices accountable for aiding and abetting an insurrection against the United States of America on January 6th, then AT LEAST Wisconsin’s votes in the 2024 election would be counted fairly.
I’m proud of what we did over the last two years, but I’m even more excited about what we can do in 2024, because instead of playing defense to protect our institutions from treachery, we can finally start playing offense to strengthen democracy in Wisconsin, much like our neighbors in Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan have already done (sorry Iowa, you’re even more messed up than we are).
This is what we’re going to be focused on in 2024.
Ok, that’s all I have for you. Time to get a little exercise before I pollute my liver and stay up way past my bedtime to ring in the new year.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, in 2024, we’ll beat back the twilight zone of misinformation and start delivering positive change for Wisconsin, and by extension, America--one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Hi Friends,
I just filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to bar Trump from Wisconsin's ballot. At the end of this email is the entire complaint we filed that we also sent to the press.
To watch the press conference, here is the Facebook Livestream of what happened.
Within hours of us filing, I received this email from Angela Sharpe, Staff Attorney for the Wisconsin Elections Committee, stating that the WEC refused to hear our complaint.
Here's the email:
While we didn't anticipate them refusing to even consider our complaint, we knew they would dismiss our claim in some way, because as I wrote on Christmas Eve, the WEC was created to fail by Republicans and created to deadlock in a 3 vs 3 partisan vote on any important political issue involving elections exactly like the one we presented to them today--namely banning a former president from the ballot for aiding and abetting an insurrection.
We felt that we HAD to go through this process because we were told by federal Judge Edelman in Wisconsin's Eastern district last March that any 14th amendment claims to remove Wisconsin's insurrectionists from the ballot, namely Senator Ron Johnson, and Congressmen Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, had to go through the Wisconsin Elections Commission first.
But just to be sure, I wrote back to Staff Attorney Sharpe and asked her if we had made any mistakes in our filing and if we needed to simply refile in some other way so that the WEC would consider it. She clearly explained that the "WEC no longer bars an individual (me) from commencing an action or proceeding regarding the complaint in a court of law."
Well, that email meant that the WEC just punted, like almost every other judge, attorney general, or electoral body forced to look at Trump with regards to the 14th amendment.
We feel like this decision is a win for us because it saves my team about a month of having the WEC muddy the waters, and allows us to file in Dane County Circuit court early next week.
So that's what we're going to do. File a lawsuit against the WEC, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin as soon as we can.
Now to do this, I have two immediate needs:
First, I have to expand my legal team in Wisconsin with lawyers who have some experience with Wisconsin's election laws. Trump is going to fight this every step of the way and surely outman my small current team. If you are a patriotic Wisconsin lawyer and believe you are the right person to help, please email us here .
Second, I have to pay the lawyers I'm recruiting to beef up this effort. If you are able to chip in, please do so here. I'm getting more and more familiar with how much it costs to get justice in the courts of Wisconsin, and this expense could easily reach $100K in a matter of months. BUT... I've raised this before simply with A LOT of small $40 donations. If you believe this effort is worth a try, and you were filled with hope when you read that Colorado was able to take Trump off of their ballot, then please try to help this effort.
That is all I have for now. When there's more news to report, I'll do it either here or on our Facebook page.
Thanks for reading and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we can remove insurrectionists from Wisconsin's ballot, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company.
Here's a link to the entire complaint
]]>Early next week, the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC will file a lawsuit in Wisconsin’s circuit asking a judge to declare that Donald Trump is disqualified from running for president in Wisconsin because he aided and abetted the January 6th insurrection.
And with that, I wish you a Merry Christmas!
Now before I give you my detailed rationale for how and why we’re going to do this, I will admit that most of this decision was made with my heart after receiving two unexpected Christmas presents last week: Colorado’s Supreme Court ruling that removed Trump from their state’s primary ballot and Wisconsin’s Supreme Court decision that ended Republican gerrymandering in our state.
Last Thursday, after spending a few moments of silence watching the lights twinkle on my Christmas tree and feeling my soul being stirred by that perennial holiday magic, I listened to my heart.
What it told me was that I’d be damned if Wisconsin didn’t at least take a shot at doing what Colorado just did, and that given what I saw last week, we may have just enough courageous justices in our state’s Supreme Court to do it.
Once my heart helped me make this decision, I needed my legal team’s brains to help execute it. Here’s what we’re going to do.
First, let’s look at the LAW.
I had given up thinking that judges in America had the courage to follow the U.S. constitution’s 14th Amendment, Article 3, that clearly states that if you’ve “taken an oath” as an “officer of the United States, you couldn’t “hold any office” if you “engaged in insurrection.”
Judge Adelman in Wisconsin’s Eastern District dismissed our 14th amendment case against Senator Ron Johnson and Reps Tiffany/Fitzgerald last year, and judges in Minnesota, Michigan, and host of other states also dismissed similar 14th Amendment cases against Trump very recently.
Indeed, a national reporter from NBC News called me months ago asking if our Super PAC was going to try to remove Trump from Wisconsin’s ballot, and I told her something to the effect of “It seems like there’s a lot of judges in America who have convinced themselves, probably out of a sense of career-preservation, that article 3 of the 14th amendment is somehow “less legal” than the rest of the constitution, and thus don’t have the appetite for these lawsuits.”
But here is what Colorado’s Supreme Court said:
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us.”
They also said,
“We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
God that was a refreshing statement to read. Finally, America found some judges with the guts to do the right thing!
Ok, so the Constitution is pretty clear, but how do we go about bringing this case in Wisconsin? Here’s the main obstacle and probably the reason no one else has done it: The Wisconsin Elections Commission.
In most EVERY other state that’s trying to remove Trump from the ballot, plaintiffs are suing the Secretary of State, which is generally the officer who administers elections.
In Wisconsin, that power used to belong to a bunch of nonpartisan judges who comprised the Government Accountability Board (GAB). When that board launched an investigation into Republican Governor Scott Walker for corruption, Republicans abolished the GAB and created the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The WEC was created to fail because it is comprised of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats, and designed to deadlock whenever it has to face big issues, like WHETHER OR NOT TO REMOVE A CANDIDATE FROM A BALLOT BECAUSE HE WAS INVOLVED IN AN INSURRECTION.
When Federal Judge Adelman dismissed our 14th amendment case against Ron Johnson et. al. last year, he said we didn’t have standing because we didn’t first file a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. This is his quote:
“If a voter believes that a candidate is ineligible for office, he or she may seek legal redress from election administrators.”
Here’s the problem: The Wisconsin Election Commission is incapable of handling a complaint against Trump because one of its members, Bob Spindell, was part of the fake elector scheme to overturn the will of Wisconsin’s voters and illegally hand the 2020 election to Trump.
Not only that, but the Democrats in the WEC have been put in a difficult position. They know their commission was designed to deadlock and thus be incapable of action, but they also know that they’re in charge of elections in a swing state where America’s democracy hangs in the balance.
Because of Trump’s relentless lies that elections were rigged in Wisconsin, the WEC’s Democratic wing feels compelled to show the voting public that their commission is capable of holding fair elections. This means that even though they have a traitor on their board that needs to be removed, they also have to worry about “appearing too partisan” so that they maintain the public’s confidence that they’re not doing what Trump is accusing them of.
And thus, much to the dismay of anyone who is paying attention, the Democrats on the WEC have now twice joined their Republican colleagues and dismissed complaints filed against the fake electors, the second time just last week after Spindell was ordered not to vote by a Dane County Judge.
And finally, and this might be the most important reason, the WEC, as an institution, is not COMPETENT to rule on constitutional interpretations like whether or not the 14th Amendment applies to Donald Trump. They’re a board of partisans, not judges versed in constitutional law.
So my legal team and I think we have legal grounds to BYPASS filing a complaint with the WEC, because we already know what the result will be—inaction at best, and dismissal at worst.
We will ask a judge in Dane County to declare Trump ineligible to run for office in Wisconsin, using most of the same evidence that was used in Colorado’s successful attempt to remove Trump’s name from their state's ballots.
And when Republicans try to dismiss this case on procedural grounds, arguing that we needed to first file a complaint with the WEC, we’ll argue that the WEC, for many of the reasons I just explained, are INCAPABLE of responding to our complaint-- thus we need a real judge, not a toothless commission, to provide justice in this all-important matter of constitutional law.
“The stories of past courage…can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this, each man must look into his own soul." –John F. Kennedy
As many of you read last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied my team’s petition to bypass Wisconsin’s lower courts and have them directly hear our lawsuit to end the parasitic private school voucher system in Wisconsin.
My legal team believed that there was a chance we could short circuit this process and save a LOT of time and money with an “original action” to the Supreme Court.
Why? Because Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction, a de-facto defendant in this case, has already published irrefutable evidence that the state voucher system siphons money away from our public schools and creates an unequal, an thus unconstitutional, two-tiered education system.
We knew it was a long-shot, but for reasons I analyzed a few weeks ago, there were a LOT of political headwinds that seemingly stopped this case from being fast-tracked.
In her opinion piece last Friday analyzing Wisconsin's Supreme Court decision and Governor Evers' lack of support for our lawsuit, the Wisconsin Examiner's Editor-in-chief, Ruth Conniff, wrote something that really stuck with me.
"...in the rejection of the lawsuit attempting to address the existential threat posed by Wisconsin’s metastasizing private school choice program to public schools, Democrats and progressives calculated that it’s too costly to stick up for the public interest."
Conniff's words inspired me to Google some of my favorite American leaders and look for inspiration on how THEY might have approached our case had THEY been Wisconsin's Governor or our Supreme Court Majority.
JFK's quote, "...[to find courage], each man must look into his own soul," hit the mark.
At some point in Wisconsin, our progressive leaders must find the courage to start looking at the horizon of possibility instead of too-often checking the rear-view mirror of disaster-prevention and self-preservation.
"...and if he fails," suggested Teddy Roosevelt, "at least [he] fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
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Speaking of victory, you probably haven’t heard about the two bills that were VERY RECENTLY introduced by REPUBLICAN legislators: AB688 and SB652.
If you don’t want to dive into the details, just know that I’m going to call these bills a small “victory” for our side.
This legislation would remove private voucher school funding from the public school tax levy and force Wisconsin’s private school voucher programs to be funded through “General Purpose Revenue” (GPR).
In other words, these bills would “decouple” the existing relationship between public school and voucher funding, which is essentially “robbing Peter” (public schools) to “pay Paul” (private schools).
Now don’t get me wrong, there is a LOT OF BAD STUFF that remains in these two bills:
BUT…the most sinister (and previously hidden) element of voucher school funding—robbing money from the public-school tax levy to pay for private school vouchers—would be fixed.
Why am I claiming victory when we just got bounced from the Supreme Court back to the lower courts?
These bills wouldn’t have been introduced to the Wisconsin legislature had we not filed our petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court when we did, and they may actually get voted into law before our lawsuit gets through the courts.
And why do I KNOW this legislation wouldn’t have been created were it not for our lawsuit? Because one of Wisconsin’s worst and most cynical political actors, the right-wing law firm named “Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty,” admitted it.
In their recent article explaining this legislation, they mentioned that “ this change would help to insulate the school choice program from constitutional challenges,” and said that “there is a danger that an unfriendly state Supreme Court may creatively interpret the circuitous route which funding takes as somehow interfering with the funding of public schools. Removing the connection to property taxes in the current system would remove this potential argument against the constitutionality of the program.”
Yes, the deep-pocketed voucher school lobby knows we’re marching forward with the intent to win, knows our legal arguments are viable, and are telling their Republican shills in the state legislature to change private school voucher funding laws as a result.
Now, what CAN’T happen is that we run out of money to keep pushing these Republicans to do the right thing, and maybe even make these two bills BETTER for public schools.
We’re planning to re-file our lawsuit in circuit court this January, and I believe it will now take, at a minimum, 9 months to get a decision.
This suit, because it was bounced down to a lower court, will cost a lot more money than we had hoped. I estimate that we will need to raise another $100K to keep the anti-voucher train on the tracks over the course of this next phase.
Because I can see victory on the horizon, I refuse to give up. The folks on this list have come through for Wisconsin time and time again, and I hope you can come through again for this lawsuit. Here is the link to donate.
That being said, I recognize that I might not be able to fund this thing alone simply by writing emails and posting Teddy Roosevelt quotes on social media. I think that shoring up Wisconsin's public schools is going to require more teamwork, so yesterday I ventured out of my comfort zone and emailed some institutional Democratic donors and asked them for help. Hopefully I'll have some partnerships to announce in the coming weeks that will take the pressure off of those of you who read my weekly missives.
That's all I've got for now.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we can show our progressive leaders what courage looks like, and hopefully inspire them to risk losing a few battles in order to win the war.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Kenneth Chesebro, one of the architects of the fraudulent elector scheme that attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election, apparently ran cross country at SPASH, which is the perennially-cool acronym for my alma mater and stands for Stevens Point Area Senior High.
How do I know this? One of my best friends, Kevin Hopp, is a current assistant coach for the team, and he passed this message on to me from revered head coach Donn Behnke while passing through Minocqua on his way to his family's annual camping trip.
"Did he run with us?" I asked, because I too was on that cross country team.
"No, he was older than us, but Donn remembers him. He thought you'd want to know because of your lawsuit trying to knock Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany, and Scott Fitzgerald off the ballot for aiding the insurrection."
I had this conversation with Kevin two summers ago, soon after Federal Court Judge Adelman in Wisconsin's Eastern District ruled that our plaintiffs didn't have standing to file this lawsuit. My lawyers and I always knew that bringing an article 3/14th amendment civil suit against these three political conspirators was risky, because we were merely concerned citizens, not law enforcement officers. What SHOULD have happened two years ago was that Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul SHOULD have filed a CRIMINAL (as opposed to civil) lawsuit to remove these guys from the ballot. The head law enforcement officer of Wisconsin, of course, had the "standing" that we lacked to bring these charges.
But for reasons I think I understand but will never accept, he sat on his hands.
Last Friday, The Milwaukee Journal reported that Keneth Chesebro was cooperating with a Wisconsin investigation into the fake elector scheme to illegally hand Trump the presidency, as well as with other investigations in at least four other states.
Is it possible that Attorney General Kaul is behind this investigation and FINALLY doing something to hold these insurrectionists accountable? If so, is this investigation a little too late, given that the presidential election is less than a year away and Donald Trump, being the presumptive nominee, might win that election, and with it, the power to pardon these insurrectionists before a criminal verdict can be reached?
I told the Chesebro/Stevens Point story to my mom last night during our weekly phone call, and she actually remembers a Chesebro--she thinks it was Kenneth's dad--who played in the dixieland jazz band in Steven Point's Pfiffner Park each summer.
"I think his dad might have been a lawyer as well, and I wouldn't forget a name like Chesebro."
Days before it was announced that Chesebro was cooperating with investigators, news broke that the 10 Wisconsin fake electors being sued in a civil case by the liberal lawyers at "Law Forward" settled out of court.
I know the folks at Law Forward, and while I was initially furious that it appeared that, yet again, Democrats were letting insurrectionists off the hook, I'm glad I held my tongue and didn't criticize them immediately.
Law Forward settled out of court with the 10 fraudulent electors, but they did NOT settle out of court with Chesebro and Jim Troupis, a former Dane County judge who served as legal counsel for the Trump Campaign and helped orchestrate the fake elector scheme.
I believe that these 10 electors may still face criminal prosecution in whatever "investigation" Chesebro's is cooperating with. I hope they do, because at least one of them, Bob Spindell, currently serves on the Wisconsin Election Commission that plays a large roll in ensuring that our elections are run fairly. There's NO WAY IN HELL this guy should still serve on that commission after admitting in a settlement that he, knowingly or unknowingly, assisted in an attempted presidential coup.
I've held my criticism of Law Forward at bay because the ultimate goal here should be to punish the leaders of this conspiracy, not the lemmings who helped them carry it out. I do believe these fake electors, or Republican lemmings, were merely doing what they were told to do, albeit probably a bit too willingly and gleefully.
No, any criminal case shouldn't start with these lemmings, but should really start with Wisconsin's fake elector architects, Chesebro and Troupis.
But--and this is a big BUT--a criminal case to hold Wisconsin's insurrectionists accountable should NOT STOP with them.
This investigation must go all the way to the top, and while on that elevator of justice to FINALLY HOLD TRUMP accountable, any future case must also include the Republican politicians who were part of the conspiracy to overturn the election--Senator Ron Johnson and Representatives Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany.
The Milwaukee Journal Editorial Board, employed by local newspaper destroyers Gannett Corp, who have a history of gutting journalistic benches to improve profit margins, are anything BUT courageous journalists. They aren't paid enough to be.
However, even these guys took a potentially career-ending risk and wrote an editorial on January 7th, the day after the insurrection, calling for Ron Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, and Tom Tiffany to resign or be expelled for siding with Trump against our Republic.
Why?
Because Fitzgerald and Tiffany, with no evidence of malfeasance, voted to reject the electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania, which would have overturned the election, JUST HOURS AFTER a band of rioters roused by Trump stormed the capital.
And why Johnson?
Because while he flipped his vote at the last minute just after the Jan. 6 riot, he AMPLIFIED Trump's lies that the election was rigged, which fanned the flames of violence and gave cover to those Republican lemmings that met in the Capitol and illegally forged their names as Wisconsin "Electors."
In the 80 page complaint that we filed in our failed lawsuit to remove Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Tiffany from the ballot using article 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution--a complaint that I fear very few in the news media actually read--my lawyers spelled out in agonizing detail the coordination between Chesebro and Troupis' fraudulent elector scheme and the PUBLIC EFFORTS TO AMPLIFY TRUMP'S LIES by Johnson, Tiffany, and Fitzgerald.
Here is a quote from that complaint filed on March 10 2022:
What many of you read in the papers last week concerning Chesebro and Troupis was part and parcel of our federal lawsuit filed a year ago--all which is still as true today as it was then. The difference between then and now is that in order to expel Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Tiffany, we needed a Wisconsin Attorney General or U.S. Attorney General to have enough courage to do the right thing with enough time to get it through the courts before the election in 2022 in which all 3 of these candidates were on the ballot.
Unfortunately, we didn't have individuals in those two positions with enough courage to do what was right, partially because one of them was up for re-election himself and probably didn't want to upset any potential (and probably non-existent) swing voters.
But now, without an election coming up, it seems likely that AG Kaul has at least started an investigation into the Wisconsinites who played a role in the attempted insurrection.
So what happens when you don't expel politicians who choose Trump over our republic?
You of course get the same behavior.
A little over a week ago, Fitzgerald and Tiffany voted to NOT EXPEL George Santos, whose corruption and lies were so damming that almost half of the Republicans in the House agreed with Democrats and voted for expulsion. Note that freshman Republican Congressman, Derek Van Orden, a retired Navy Seal who was pictured PARTICIPATING in the January 6 insurrection, also sided with the Wisconsin members of the sedition caucus.
Because they weren't held accountable years ago, the very same Congressmen who sided with Trump over our republic voted for power over principal.
The moral of this story is that it is abundantly clear that America has entered a new age where in order to preserve our Democratic institutions, those who lead them must have courage.
If our Democratic politicians were strong in Wisconsin and strong within the US, Trump would have been held accountable by now and those Republican politicians who helped him almost pull off a presidential coup would have been expelled from Congress.
This new perilous American age calls for political courage, and so many of our politicians on both sides of the aisle lack that basic courage needed to PUT THEIR SHOULDERS INTO IT and LEAN IN WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to do what is right at the right time to keep America on the rails.
The Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, along with our courageous plaintiffs Nancy Stencil, Dan Russler, Lisa Meuller, Cheryl Maranto, Gerry Lisi, Jim Kurz, Margaret DeMuth, Paul DeMain, Jim Botsford, and Richard Bechen, tried to cover for our politicians in March of 2022. Unfortunately, between a bunch of rural activists and a gosh darn brewery, trying to lead that lawsuit was like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. Unfortunately, sometimes politicians and judges are the only ones who can do the job of saving democracy.
But at the end of the day, we're only going to get the politicians who have the mettle to do big things if we DEMAND them. Hopefully, our collective activism and calls for courage will reach the ears of those ready to run for office and lead not with cynical self-service, but with the courage and strength that this new American age demands.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we will make Wisconsin's democracy, and by extension America's, strong again--one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Well folks,
As always, there's quite a bit happening at the intersection of Wisconsin politics and the Minocqua Brewing Company.
I could update you on our municipal harassment, school voucher, and Lakeland Times defamation lawsuits, and I'd also really love to analyze the fact that just last week, half of Wisconsin's congressional delegation unsurprisingly but still appallingly voted NOT to expel the wildly corrupt George Santos from Congress...
...But alas, for the next two months, the Minocqua Brewing Company and I need to focus on building a new Tap Room in Madison.
My partner in liberal caffeine production, Tom at Rusty Dog Coffee, put me in touch with Scott/Jerry at Madison's awesome design firm Art and Sons, and together with my secret beer-label-designing weapon Tony (I'm not linking to him, or else you'll have access to my secret weapon) and architect at Christopher Max Design , we proverbially "belched out" a hilariously-progressive museum-like drinking hole idea. Believe it or not, even my general contractor is excited to start building it.
Pictured above is just half of the space, and the other half--including thematic bathrooms--is going to be just as fun.
Now, because the Minocqua Brewing Company would not exist without your grass roots support in helping us fend off attacks from he Town of Minocqua and our local right-wing newspaper, and because everyone that makes the Minocqua Brewing Company what it is today--from my tap room staff to my brewing/sales/distribution/marketing colleagues--found me through my political activism, I obviously want to create a space with as much of "you" in it as possible.
I'd like to do that by putting your name on our "Can Wall" that spells out #lovewins. When I partnered with Equality Vines to make our CHOICE line of wines, I met their co-owner Jim Obergefell, who also happened to be the plaintiff in the SCOTUS case that gave us marriage equality, "Obergefell v Hodges." After that case, the hashtag #lovewins became a slogan for the lgbtq+ community and the name of one of the first sparkling wines Jim and his business partner Matt made. Since our partnership, we collaborated to make a "Love Wins" fruited sour ale, and I fell in love with the idea of creating a huge wall of cans that spelled out that slogan.
We figured it's going to take about 385 cans to build this wall, and I'd definitely love to put 385 of your names on each can to help personalize the wall and raise more money to pay for the overall construction of this space.
If you'd like to have us put your name on our #lovewins can wall, please "buy" it here.
Next up, when I announced that I secured a spot in Madison to open a new tap room as a protective measure after having been shut down by our county zoning department at the height of the summer tourism season, I worried that it would be a stretch to finance the new place if we weren't allowed to sell beer "Up North" in August.
As a way to finance those early architectural, demolition, and design expenses, I offered to sell customers permanent brass personalized nameplates on the backs of our bar stools or chairs for $1000. I promised that customers would not only receive a lifetime mug club membership with this purchase, but they'd forever have "priority" to sit in their own stool, and that we'd buy any customer sitting in that patron's stool before they got there a free beer if they'd move over.
13 of you took me up on the offer so far, and now that I know how many stools/chairs we're going to have, I'd like to sell the final 8 nameplates. If you'd like to buy one, please go here.
Next up, we've already sold many of you a year-long Mug Club membership to the new Madison tap room, but we thought we'd remind you about them before the holidays, because they'll make great gifts for Madison locals.
With a purchase of a $100 Mug Club membership, customer's receive:
For a $200 Mug Club membership, customers will receive all the perks seen above plus a custom made "Founding Member Madison Tap Room" t-shirt with their name on it that lets people know they helped get us across the finish line.
To round out some of the creative ways that you can help fund our new Madison tap room, we're offering exclusive fully-catered parties for all of your friends, and even an opportunity to make a beer that supports your favorite progressive cause.
Last but not least, we didn't want to leave out our friends that live outside of Madison, so we recently released a gift card that can be used in either our Madison our Minocqua locations. I think this would make a great stocking stuffer.
That's all I have for you today, folks. We'll get back into politics, activism, and our weekly Up North Podcast radio show after we open up this Madison Tap Room and make sure things are running smoothly.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your continued support.
Together (now in two different tap rooms and in liquor stores across the Midwest), we'll Make Wisconsin Great Again, One Beer at a Time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Tap Room
Hi Friends,
I promised my team that I'd use today's blog to suggest some holiday gift ideas from our online store, but last week was a doozy for our voucher school lawsuit and I think it's important to address the elephant (or more likely the donkey) in the room.
Our "original action," which means our attempt to ask Wisconsin's Supreme Court to step in and hear our lawsuit to end Wisconsin's parasitic private school voucher school system and bypass the normal process of working the lawsuit through the appellate system, wasn't supported by Wisconsin's Democratic establishment.
Democrat Evers, Republican Vos Both Argue Against Supreme Court Taking Voucher Lawsuit
Yep, somehow our lawsuit managed to put Democratic Governor Tony Evers and his Republican nemesis, State Assembly leader Robin Vos, on the same side--and both against us.
That was a hard pill to swallow.
Seemingly many rank and file Democrats also wished they could "unsee" the vision of these two new bedfellows, because within 48 hours of learning that the Evers' administration wasn't supporting our case (and hearing a deafening silence from many other establishment Democrats/orgs), progressives started sending me a string of articles related to the harm being caused by vouchers. Here are some of the pictures that popped up on my phone.
In Sheboygan and Neenah, the local cost to taxpayers for their private school voucher systems increased by 35% and 44%, respectively, despite an increase in voucher state aid signed by Evers in the last budget. These increases are unsustainable by local taxpayers, meaning that public schools will soon see further decreases in funding while taxpayers are forced to shift that money to private schools.
In Texas, rural Republican legislators are standing up to Republican Governor Gregg Abbott and voting down vouchers because they know their local public school districts won't survive a parallel voucher program.
And finally, the Democratic legislature in Illinois figured out that voucher schools were doing damage to their public school system, so they decided to sunset their voucher programs.
Unfortunately in Wisconsin last week, we didn't see the same profiles of political courage that we saw in Texas and Illinois.
Why does it take courage to stand up to voucher schools?
Because the state is giving parents free money to send their kids to private schools when 73% of those same parents would have sent them to private schools anyways on their own dime. What parent WOULDN'T want to save tens of thousands of dollars to send their kid to the same Catholic school (95% of voucher schools are religious) that their parents sent them to a generation earlier?
The problem, and why it's so hard for politicians from both sides of the aisle to find their spines on this issue, is that it takes a hell of a lot longer to explain to parents that for every kid who takes a voucher to go to a private school, the funding goes away for many more kids who attend public schools.
At the end of the day, sunsetting the voucher program in Wisconsin will cause some short term pain for parents and their ~50K kids who are currently taking vouchers to attend private schools. Parents will either have to pay for their kids to attend private schools like they've historically always had to do in Wisconsin, or they will need to move their kids back into public schools, which have and will always be free to attend.
To me, it sounds like parents and their kids would still have a "school choice."
And is being forced to send our your kid back to a public school such an awful thing?
Of course not, especially since those public schools will get a windfall of funding (your tax dollars) back from private schools if our lawsuit is successful.
While I can only speculate on the politics that have lead a lot of institutional Democrats to put their heads in the sand on this issue, here is what I think is going on. And please, this is only my opinion of what's happening and not the opinion of anyone else helping to support this voucher lawsuit.
I put this short 6 minute video at the top of this email for a reason.
I desperately want you to watch it because it is the culmination of over 10 weeks of radio shows that the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC funded to examine every angle of Wisconsin's private school voucher system and identify ALL THE WAYS that school vouchers are bad for the vast majority of Wisconsin's kids.
In this video, we show expert upon expert laying out the case that our lawsuit is exactly what is needed to protect kids' educations in Wisconsin, regardless of what the politicians say.
It doesn't really matter to me (although it is quite irksome) that our lawsuit lacks the support of the Democratic establishment looking to shield itself from political fallout or unable to imagine how to accomplish big things. That's the wonder of our judicial system--our third branch of government--that in theory is supposed to be shielded from the political whims that so often melt the spines of the other two branches.
Our Supreme Court Justices are elected for 10 year terms, and we just elected a new one that finally changed the balance of that court, meaning that there is now a majority of justices who are no longer in the pockets of Trump, Vos, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, The Bradley Foundation, the Koch's Americans For Prosperity, Besty Devos' Americans Federation for Children, nor the nefarious Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
Our lawsuit is spot on, our lawyers are top notch, and we're fighting for a righteous cause--the education of our children. If there is true justice in Wisconsin that is above politics, the Supreme Court will take up our original action because it will rule fairly on the issues presented, rather than protect an unconstitutional program in the name of Republican politics.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting the Minocqua Brewing Company and this righteous cause.
And please don't be mad when I send you a mass email tomorrow hawking our wares, because my team isn't happy that I just sent you yet another political email when we're supposed to be making hay during the holidays.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
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We lost a historic defamation case last week, and a jury in rural Oneida county awarded right-wing newspaper publisher Greg Walker $750,000 in damages largely because of the parody I wrote entitled “Scene from a Mysogynist Publisher’s Bedroom,” in which I clearly told my audience that the story they were reading was a parody.
Additionally, in other pieces that weren’t written as “parody,” I always used the word “alleged” when repeating stories that I heard from others that I couldn’t prove to be true, and I publicly retracted statements that were later proven to me to be false.
Given that the Minocqua Brewing Company isn’t a magazine nor a newspaper--both of which should seemingly be held to higher journalistic standards than a brewery--how could Hustler and the New York Times have beaten their defamation lawsuits while we lost ours in spectacular fashion?
Because Judge Leon Stenz, on loan from neighboring and tiny Forest County, WI (Pop. ~8K), inexplicably ruled that the publisher of the only two local newspapers in Oneida county was NOT A PUBLIC FIGURE.
To add insult to injury, Stenz dismissed our countersuit against Gregg Walker, filed after he referred to me as “Bagdad Bangstad” and a “Jackbooted Liberal” in two out of the 68 hit pieces published against me and my company over the last 3 years, by ruling that I, the owner of a brewery and not a media company--WAS A PUBLIC FIGURE.
Stenz’s decision was appalling, and it must be overturned on appeal—not only for my sake—but to make sure this never happens again. To let this decision stand is to invite every rich MAGA bully in Wisconsin to sue progressive activists into oblivion, assuming they live in the “right” (pun intended) part of the state.
So what do we do now?
We appeal, of course, but the path forward on exactly how to do that was a bit murky when I wrote about this decision last week.
The good thing about this case is that I discovered, after initially paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, that I was covered by insurance--meaning that my insurance company is ultimately on the hook to pay any damages awarded to Walker.
The not-so-good aspect to this case is that insurance companies aren’t necessarily incentivized to rectify terrible legal precedent stemming from bad rural court decisions. Their jobs, after losing lawsuits, are usually to attempt to settle out of court for the lowest amount possible, drop future coverage for claimants, and move on.
In my mind, this type of decision, because of the chilling effects it will have on progressive speech in bright red rural areas like Minocqua, can’t be swept under the rug in an insurance settlement.
The inevitable suppression of free speech engendered by this decision, along with Republican attempts to criminalize peaceful protests and even impeach a judge who has the power to end illegal gerrymandering, threatens to cut that final thread upon which our state’s democracy hangs.
For this reason, I’ve asked my legal team currently suing to rid Wisconsin of our parasitic private school voucher system, Brian Potts and Fred Melms, to join my insurance company’s legal team in this appeal, and to NOT settle out of court with Gregg Walker under any circumstances.
To settle is to award a bully, and that’s just not how I’m built.
So that’s the plan. I’m being told the road to appeal may last another year, and to hire additional lawyers outside of those hired by my insurance company will cost money.
If you think this decision was bad not only for me and the Minocqua Brewing Company, but also for free speech in Wisconsin, and want help make sure that legal precedent is rectified in this case, here’s a link to chip in and help us fight back.
The Minocqua Brewing Company's work to keep Wisconsin blue has made us a target in bright red Northern Wisconsin, and we certainly lost the battle last week against the right wing "Old Boy's Network" that protects its own at the expense of the rest of its inhabitants. Republican-dominated local governments in Northern Wisconsin have resulted in the lowest average wages, health outcomes, and educational attainment in the entire state.
I took my lumps last week and got served a large dose of humility by a lot of negative press, but I know that what we're fighting for is right, and the statistics bear that out.
So what else is there to do but to get up, dust oneself off, and keep fighting!
Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company. Together, we'll make a proverbial shandy out of the lemons we were dealt, and Wisconsin's justice system will ultimately be better for it.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Judge Stenz is from Forest County, one of the least populated in the state with ~8K people. 65% of the people in Forest County voted for Donald Trump, which was one of the most lopsided victories in the state. Cripes, even the local newspaper is called “The Forest Republican.” One would assume that given these demographics, if you want to win an election to become a judge, you most likely need the help of the local Republican Party, assuming that there are any other lawyers in the county that are able to run against you.
Our defense hinged entirely on the fact that Walker was a public figure. We argued that since he owns and contributes to two newspapers that attack me regularly, I should be legally entitled to “fight back.” I did that by accusing him of being a number of things, among them a “misogynist” and a “crook,” because I found that the articles published in his paper were “misogynistic “and “crooked.”
Had the judge ruled that Walker was a public figure over two years ago, he would have been forced to dismiss this case. Instead, he allowed this lawsuit to move forward and I was forced into a jury trial comprised of people who live in a county where Trump won by almost 60% of the vote and where the only local newspaper one can buy is owned by the plaintiff who has collectively published a total of 68 hit pieces against me over the last three years.
The odds of me getting a favorable jury in this county weren’t good even if the judge had turned out to be fair.
Let’s just say that when I was on the witness stand, and I defended my claim that Walker was a “crook” because he repeatedly published lies that Trump won the presidential election in Wisconsin, I saw members of the jury look at me with anger in their eyes.
And what’s worse, when Judge Stenz dismissed my countersuit against Greg for publishing articles that called me “Baghdad Bangstad” and a “Jackbooted Liberal”--ostensibly likening me to global symbols of evil--his argument was that the paper had grounds to defame me because I WAS a “Public Figure.”
Imagine the incredulous looks on my team’s faces when the judge tried to rationalize that the publisher of the local paper was NOT a public figure but the owner of the local brewery WAS, while he legally tied our arms around our backs.
Apart from a seemingly partisan judge and jury, there was one more aspect of this trial that really hurt our defense.
Many of the people we asked to be witnesses in this case refused to help us, and I think the reason was because they knew that Gregg Walker, at least at the local level, has the ability to ruin reputations. He’s done that numerous times over the last few decades, which seemingly has had a chilling effect over most local progressives.
Additionally, some of the witnesses we did try to call, not necessarily friends of mine but long-time community members that ultimately told me the stories that I used to write some of my more sharper missives against Walker, inexplicably testified “I don’t remember” when being asked under oath if they indeed told me the stories that I ultimately repeated in writing that were later added as additional defamation claims in this lawsuit.
It's hard to perjure yourself with the words "I don't remember," because who can legally tell you you're lying about your own memory?
It was like the whole town went silent when it came to any subject that might anger Gregg Walker.
This eerie quiet was unfortunately all-to-similar to the silence I got when I publicly asked the Minocqua business community to support my calls for fairness in awarding me the same parking exemptions the Town Board had given 11 other businesses to build outdoor spaces over the last two years while rejecting my request for a beer garden, and when I asked them to join me in renouncing the “selective enforcement” of zoning laws the County used to shut me down but hardly ever enforced among other businesses.
Crickets. Silence. The sounds of tumbleweed blowing through the streets.
Indeed, my motto as the “least popular place in town,” which is written on my best-selling t-shirts and on banner hung from the north side of my building, isn’t wrong. To publicly side with the Minocqua Brewing Company is to invite the wrath of the Lakeland Times.
Now. There is a flipside to this, and I won’t avoid it even though its omission would help my narrative. I will take blame where blame is due. One of the claims that Walker had against me was plausible. I did let my emotions get the best of me in one piece of writing where I drew a line between some stories I heard from reliable sources that accused him of defrauding family members to a narrative that alleged he didn't help his brother in a fatal hunting accident out of some sort of Machiavellian ambition to take over the family business. That was a pretty far reach on my part and I retracted that allegation when I heard direct evidence that it couldn’t be true.
But I agree, even though I retracted that statement, I can see how a jury could still find this one particular story to be defamation. At issue, however, is not whether I went too far in a public fight with a newspaper, but whether there should be any damages awarded to that paper's publisher when a) subscriptions to the Lakeland Times didn’t fall due to any of my accusations, and b) there was absolutely no evidence that my words caused any emotional harm to a guy who publishes outrageous things about people he doesn’t like on a regular basis.
We went into this case acknowledging we might lose on this one instance, but we were confident that legally, no damages would be awarded.
Instead, we lost on every single claim they brought, and the damages the jury awarded amounted to over $700K, even while Walker didn’t produce a single receipt for any mental health treatment he sought as a result of the “severe emotional harm” he “suffered" at my hand.
Yesterday, Fred Melms, one of the attorneys I’ve hired to get rid of Wisconsin’s parasitic voucher school system, called me up to ask me how I was feeling after being able to process this verdict for a day.
“Fred, I was taught to be proud of America’s and Wisconsin’s justice system, but after witnessing it first hand for an entire week, I can’t say I believe in it anymore. The bad guys won.”
“Kirk, this is why it’s called a judicial ‘system,’ because there are many more courts that exist exactly for this reason. What they get wrong at the county level can be appealed to higher courts where judges have more experience rectifying the things that go wrong in lower courts.”
That made me feel a lot better.
We’re going to appeal to a higher court that's not located in a county where every jurist who wants to read the local paper will eventually come across, on average about twice a month, an article that attacks me.
We're going to appeal to a higher court where a jury is not allowed to exact anger on the one person with a megaphone loud enough to remind them that their cult leader is a liar, and that he indeed lost the presidential election in Wisconsin, fair and square.
We're going to appeal to a higher court where the results of that judge's decision doesn't affect whether or not the Republican Party supports him in his next election, nor whether the paper in the neighboring county takes its revenge by endorsing his opponent.
We're going to appeal to a higher court where justice is blind, like it's supposed to be...
..and I have to trust that Wisconsin’s Judicial System--it's appellate system in particular--will ultimately be “just” in this case. I have to believe this because I still believe in America, Wisconsin, and our institutions.
And years ago, before Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News, our institutions, because they were strong and trusted by our citizens, were the envy of the world.
I won't stop fighting until we get back to that time, and after what happened last week, I'll never overlook the importance of ensuring that there are qualified and impartial judges in every Wisconsin county. Nobody deserves to be subjected to the kangaroo court I saw last week, especially someone that doesn't have the means to fight back.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, let's strive to make sure that the Wisconsin justice system works for everyone and not just for those with the most power and money, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Hi Folks,
Although I swore off writing this weekly email for a few weeks so I could take a much-needed vacation after the Minocqua tourism season, something dark happened to me on Friday that I have to write about.
My attorney told me that Matt Fernholz, the lawyer representing the Lakeland Times in their defamation lawsuit against me, was trying to “compel” me in court to answer some ridiculous questions, and in order for me to avoid being tossed in jail by a backwoods judge for “contempt of court,” I needed to respond.
Mind you I’m paraphrasing that conversation, and may have added the word “backwoods” to make the story a bit more entertaining, because I need to protect my attorney/client privilege.
Here are the three questions I have to deal with:
Think about those three questions for a minute while I remind you that this defamation lawsuit was filed almost three years ago as a result of a Facebook post I wrote that called Gregg Walker, the publisher of my local newspaper (the Lakeland Times), a “crook” and a “misogynist” for publicly berating our female county health official while trying to keep us all safe from Covid.
After using a legal option to try to find a less conservative judge than the one assigned to us in Oneida County, we rolled the dice and it didn’t go so well. We were instead assigned a judge from Forest County, the smallest and most Republican County in the entire state of Wisconsin.
This judge decided to NOT dismiss this case out-of-hand, ruling that Gregg Walker was NOT a pulblic figure, and we had to let a jury decide the outcome. This issue of “public figure” means something because the bar for public figures to win defamation lawsuits is MUCH HIGHER than the average “Joe," and Walker would certainly lose this case if he was deemed a public figure.
That judge's decision was ridiculous given that Gregg Walker owns the largest and basically the only “real” newspaper in this entire region of Northern Wisconsin. Other than the weatherman for the local NBC affiliate, WJFW in Rhinelander, there probably isn’t any other person more “public” than Gregg Walker. This guy, through his henchman and self-proclaimed “investigative reporter” Richard Moore, can and has maligned hundreds of people over the last 20 years through his bi-weekly right-wing fish-wrapper.
That awful decision almost three years ago set in motion what I can only describe as a state-wide Republican-orchestrated fishing expedition to try to hurt my reputation and drain my company of resources, so I would keep my mouth shut and stop trying to make Norther Wisconsin more progressive.
I’ve written recently out how, while being deposed for the first time, I was forced to reveal the identity of the mother and child I had out of wedlock almost 20 years ago. And since the plaintiff was the Lakeland Times, my “confession” was revealed on a zoom call to Heather Holmes, the General Manager of the newspaper.
Think about that. This rogue right-wing newspaper, which writes hit pieces about me and my company on a regular basis, was allowed to sit in on a deposition in which I was forced to reveal deeply personal issues about my past--issues that could be used for character assassination by that very same newspaper down the road.
Now that I’ve reminded you what this absolutely frivolous lawsuit is about, and how nefarious it is, I’m sure you’re equally puzzled as to how these three questions I was told to answer under oath are at all relevant to a defamation lawsuit.
Well they aren’t, and that is the reason I said something to the effect of “go @#$! yourself” to Attorney Fernholz while he deposed me for the second time in a Madison law office a few months ago.
Well Matt apparently didn’t “go #$%! himself on his way back to Waukesha, the center of Wisconsin’s MAGA movement. Instead, he filed a motion with the judge to compel me to answer these questions which have absolutely nothing to do with defamation and everything to do with a political hit job.
Before I go into the most nefarious aspect of this story that has everything to do with Robin Vos allegedly attempting to undermine the Wisconsin justice system with the help of a Republican-backed rural judge to find some dirt to impeach Janet Protasiewicz before he loses his gerrymandered super-majority, let me set the record straight on a few of these questions.
Although it “SHOULD BE ILLEGAL” for Fernholz to ask me these questions because they have NOTHING TO DO with my defamation lawsuit, I signed an affidavit last Friday swearing under oath that I’ve never spoken with any Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices about this lawsuit.
Similarly, my Super PAC files a detailed report every 6 months with the Federal Election Commission listing our donors and the amounts they’ve contributed, so this information is all public knowledge.
After rushing to find a notary public in Minocqua last Friday afternoon to sign this affidavit, I happened to click on this article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that talked about how Robin Vos assembled a secret panel of judges to discuss ways to impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she could vote on a gerrymandering case that could finally give us “Fair Maps” and diminish the stranglehold he has on our state.
While reading the first few sentences, I spotted something very alarming. Let’s see if you do too:
“Madison--An attorney for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos argued Friday that there is no "secret panel" advising the Rochester Republican on the potential impeachment of state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, as a liberal watchdog group argued any such discussions should be made public. Vos attorney Matthew Fernholz characterized the situation as a legislator speaking with people who have expertise in a particular subject, similar to what might happen in the drafting of legislation.”
Yep, you guessed it. I had NO IDEA that the very same lawyer representing Gregg Walker and the Lakeland times, Matt Fernholz, is also representing Robin Vos in matters relating to Vos’ democracy-destroying attempts to impeach Justice Protasiewicz.
At that moment, I started making a few pretty strong connections. Is it possible that Robin Vos directed Matt Fernholz to look for dirt on Janet Protasiewicz in a rural defamation lawsuit against me, a guy who raised money through his Super PAC to help Janet get elected?
Is it possible that Robin Vos leaned on a backwoods Forest County judge, who most assuredly leaned on the Republican Party to get elected, to NOT DISMISS THIS CASE almost three years ago because he could use this case to continuously depose, under oath, a guy that has raised and spent a LOT OF MONEY to try to save Wisconsin’s democracy from the likes of mini-despots like Robin Vos?
My lawyers don’t want me to write this article because they don’t want me to publicly berate the judge that’s going to decide my defamation case, and they don’t want to me write this article because it opens me up to yet another defamation lawsuit by none other than Matt Fernholz, a lawyer whose parents seemingly loved him so little that he chose the “dark side” and fell into the arms of Emperor Vos and now does his bidding to further undermine democracy from Wisconsin's "Death star" (Waukesha).
Well there’s one thing that separates me from my lawyers. Their job is to save my skin, and my self-appointed job is to exorcise the corrupt demons that have, until very recently, made Wisconsin the state where democracy goes to die.
My pen is my sword, and I’ll be damned if I can’t expose the connections between the state’s most powerful Republican, his efforts to retain power by illegally impeaching a Supreme Court Justice that won the popular vote in a landslide, a backwoods Republican judge whose recent rulings in a defamation case raise questions about his legal education and/or political motivations, and finally, a silver-spoon-fed, know-nothing MAGA bully that inherited a local newspaper from his rich father and has turned it into a Trump propaganda machine.
Folks, these allegations, if true, are a prime example of EVERYTHING WRONG with Wisconsin politics. We have a man and a party that has undermined democracy in order to gain ultimate power over our state, and will stop at nothing to retain that power--going so far as to corrupt our local justice system and potentially even corrupt local judges to implode our fairly-elected State Supreme Court before they can finally put an end to the Republican corruption that got us here in the first place.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being as incensed as I am about all of this.
Together, we MUST SHINE A LIGHT on these corrupt Republican termites before they ingest any more of our democracy, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
After serving ~11K customers this summer, being “shut down” a few times, organizing a few rallies to protest being shut down, stubbornly shutting down a “rigged” county board meeting, being given the finger at least once a day by truck-driving Neanderthals, and swatting away social media trolls every waking hour of the day, I’ve started feeling that inevitable soul-weariness that tells me it’s time to take my foot off the gas pedal.
This October, I’m going to do my best to hibernate a bit, but that wouldn’t be possible without all the wonderful people in my life that will keep the progressive ball rolling.
This week’s missive is my thanks to all of them as I tell the rest of the world that the dog is probably going to eat my newsletter for the next few weeks.
First and foremost, thanks to my team at the taproom and my beer distributor, whose work this summer will keep the lights on this winter for the whole company: Kristin, Chelsea, Dawn, Ron “the “most interesting man in the world,” and of course Emanuel, the “Beer Sherpa with a Million Dollar Smile.”
Next, my graphic designer Tony, whose art is the FACE of this company. In #progressivebeer land, he’s the Elton John to my Bernie Taupin.
My brewers, winemakers, coffee roasters, cherry soda creators, and snarky t-shirt makers—without whom I would be merely an aging white dude shaking his fist at the sky: Tim, Scott, Matt, Jim, Tom, and Mike.
All of my lawyers (you’ll love this, because how ridiculous does one’s life have to be to have this many lawyers?!)…Collin, Fred, Brian, Greg, Tim, Rich, Julie.
This team, in many amalgamations, are:
-Suing the Town of Minocqua and Oneida County for Political Harassment
-Defending me from a crazy defamation lawsuit that’s been languishing in the courts for two years. This Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) suit is the first in Wisconsin history where a newspaper (the widely-panned Lakeland Times) has sued a private individual to suppress his speech--because, you know, real newspapers would see the irony in that and not do it.
-Preparing a lawsuit to overturn the parasitic voucher school system in Wisconsin.
-Making sure I don’t run afoul of all the laws created to make it hard to sell beer. This constant and annoyingly large amount of red tape may have, in normal times, turned me into a Republican--if the Republicans weren’t currently part of a nihilistic cult of personality, of course.
Next, I must thank my building team, many of whom helped put our Minocqua Tap Room on the National Register of Historic Places. This group has recently expanded now that we are designing a new Madison Tap Room: Chris, Ken, Gretchen, John, Jeff, Jennie, and Tony.
I also must mention the folks working hard for/with the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC. This list includes political advisors, radio personalities, video editors, and those who generally grease the skids: Thad, Patti, Pat, Jerry, Tim, and Brian.
I've just listed over 30 people. Most of these folks found me because they saw, through our company’s mission, a way to “do something” to stop their once-beautiful state and country from becoming further disfigured by cynical, traitorous, power-hungry profiteers.
Why haven’t I given you their last names?
While these folks are generally stronger than most of the people I’ve met in my life, I doubt many would want to be downstream of all the horse puckey channeled my way on a regular basis. Best let these superstars stay relatively incognito so they can do what they do best without having to waste time washing off political filth.
I’d call these people my team, but we’re all just swimming upstream while trying to hold hands--a group of fighters tethered together by the bonds of patriotism (and a few paychecks of course). Along the way, we saw enough good in each other’s eyes to build the level of trust that it takes to do big things.
Thanks to you, my fellow swimmers, and thanks to all of you who care enough to stick your necks out for the common good and to fight for all of us that can't afford yachts. Together, there is no doubt in my mind that we will stabilize Wisconsin, one of the rockiest ships in our 50 vessel armada.
It’s just probably gonna take a few more beers.
Take care and we’ll see you after a few revolutions of the moon.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
There's still beauty
Someone leads and down we go
When I notice
All around
So much beauty
Hi Folks,
This week was a doozy.
Last Friday, the Minocqua Brewing Company included Oneida County in our federal lawsuit against the Town of Minocqua for political harassment. We did everything we could over the last three years to avoid what will probably be a very expensive, multi-year lawsuit involving now two local governments, but these guys simply refused to leave us alone and let us operate under the same rules that they applied to every other business around us.
Luckily, through the help of thousands of small donations from you, we raised the money to defend ourselves.
Here's a blog I wrote that goes into detail on why my team believes the county's offer of a "compromise" last month, which was the reason we didn't sue them initially, was merely empty political rhetoric intended to dilute the negative publicity they were getting statewide after trying to shut us down.
As a direct result of this local treachery that leaves our Minocqua tap room in a precarious situation, I signed a lease last Tuesday to open another tap room in a much more business-friendly city-- Madison, Wisconsin.
Our second space will be located right next to Trixies Liquor in Madison's ultra-progressive East Side.
Here's the story of what turned into a very busy August after Oneida County voted to revoke our permit to do business.
I immediately started looking for a new location because there is now a real possibility that our largest source of revenue will be shut down within a few months.
Focusing on Madison as our "safety-valve" city was a no-brainer because a) I've been spending a lot of time there due to all of our Super PAC's political activism, b) Madison is by far our largest market for #progressivebeer, and c) this city is a model for how local urban planning SHOULD work.
One of the first calls I made was to Chris Welch, the owner of Trixie's Liquor. Chris was an initial supporter of our cause-based #progressivebeer concept, and he resold a TON of our "Biden Beer" when we first launched it a few years ago.
It turned out that Chris had recently closed down the space next door to him called "Growlers to Go-Go," which was a concept he started during Covid to provide customers with to-go draft beer. Since sheltering at home is largely behind us and buying to-go growlers has become less popular, he was happy to offer that space to us.
I took a look at the space and instantly fell in love. Not only is there green space in back that we can build into a beautiful beer garden with a stage for live music, but there's AMPLE parking in front where we can offer food truck options to our customers--basically everything that the Town of Minocqua won't let me do.
I'm hoping that opening this second location will stabilize the Minocqua Brewing Company after years of spending extraordinary time and money fighting to simply exist "Up North." That being said, I will NEVER abandon our beautiful refurbished gas station in Minocqua that we were able to get listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and I will fight as long as it takes to fully realize my vision for what that location can become.
Once I secured the new Madison space, I hired many of the same members of the team that built and designed our first tap room. They're currently drawing up plans and will hopefully be able to "break ground" in the coming weeks. Given our precarious situation in Minocqua, I want to open our doors as soon possible, but I also don't want to make any promises that we'll be open before the new year.
As with all new commercial projects, my team is telling me that construction on this new space won't be cheap, and unfortunately, being forced to open a second location because our town is hellbent on punishing us for being progressive wasn't exactly part of our budget this year.
While I have no trouble asking the public to fund lawsuits to overturn the parasitic private school voucher school system, or chipping in to help us defend ourselves from out-of-control, autocratic, right-wing town/county board members, I don't think it's appropriate to ask for donations to help build our new tap room.
So instead of asking for donations, my team and I have created ways for future customers to invest in this project by buying goods and services that can be used when we open.
Here's the list of what we came up with. Some offerings are pretty grandiose, but we had to get creative to raise the money we think it's going to take to get this new Tap Room off the ground.
Presale Mug Club Membership for 2024--$100 Buy Here
We plan to open our doors by January 2024, but if we finish construction earlier, you get benefits in 2023 as well.
Membership includes:
Presale Mug Club Membership for 2024 and Customized Founding Member, Minocqua Brewing Company Madison T-shirt: $200. Buy Here
Permanent brass name plate on a chair: only 30 spots available: $1000--Buy Here
Fully-catered party including endless #Progressivebeer and Choice Wine, and a Dom Perignon Toast from Kirk: $10,000
Email info@minocquabrewingcompany.com if interested
Your own Beer Label for the progressive cause of your choice. Only 4 available: $25,000
Email info@minocquabrewingcompany.com if interested
Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping assist our company as we bring a piece of it down to the much more friendly and progressive city of Madison. We hope to get this new tap room up and running as soon as possible so that we can once again focus more intently on the issues that really matter, like restoring pride in our state's public school system.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
This weekend marks the end of the summer, and yesterday we gave our last summer beer tasting to customers visiting our Tap Room in Minocqua.
Throughout these summer tastings (affectionately referred to as the “Kirk Show” by my employees), I often wandered far afield from beer descriptions and waded into national, state, and local political issues--with an occasional German drinking song thrown in for good measure.
While tasting beer and discussing the importance of the word “Labor” in “Labor Day Weekend,” a customer from the DuPage County Democratic Party in Illinois reminded me that collective bargaining for public employees was born in Wisconsin.
I looked it up, and by golly he was right! In 1959, Wisconsin was the first state to allow its public employees the right to form organizations to represent them in negotiations with employers.
Unfortunately, while collective bargaining for state public employees was born in Wisconsin, it only survived in our state for about 50 years. Republican Governor Scott Walker, with a gerrymandered Republican-majority legislature, killed it with the passage of Act 10 in 2011.
Public school teachers comprised the largest group of these public employees who lost their right to collectively bargain, and what we saw after the passage of ACT 10 was a mass retirement of Wisconsin teachers and a mass migration of younger teachers to other states that gave them more respect.
Oh how lucky those Minnesota kids were to get so many of our great teachers.
The war against Wisconsin teachers was just one front in the war against our state’s entire public education system. The parasitic private school voucher program has been used to siphon tax dollars away from public schools for decades, and the program continues to grow. Not only are shrinking teacher contracts driving teachers away, but shrinking school budgets give those teachers that remain in Wisconsin larger classroom sizes and fewer tools to work with.
In 2023, after Governor Evers’ signed yet another budget that increased funding for school vouchers at the expense of Wisconsin’s public schools, our state is at a breaking point. I’ve spoken with leaders within the Milwaukee Public School system that tell me that unless MPS gets more funding, they will experience catastrophic breakdowns within a few years.
Luckily, we now have a way to reverse much of the damage that Scott Walker and his cronies wrought on Wisconsin 12 years ago.
With the election of Judge Janet Protasiewicz to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last April, which shifted the court’s ideological balance to the left, there is hope that we can save Wisconsin’s public schools through legal action.
Two weeks ago, I announced the legal team hired (through your donations to the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC) to bring a lawsuit against the Republican Legislature to end the parasitic private school voucher program. The team consisted of DC Lawyer Greg Lipper, Madison-based partner at Perkins Coie Brian Potts, and Fred Melms of Wausau, who has worked with the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC on prior lawsuits.
Well, I didn’t want to publicly announce the 4th member of our legal team because she was on vacation, but now that she’s back, I’m excited to introduce a long-standing fighter for Wisconsin’s public schools, Dr. Julie Underwood.
Dr. Underwood was formerly the Dean of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, and is one of Wisconsin’s foremost experts not only on the private school voucher system, but more broadly on how our state funds its public schools in general.
Through her work within many organizations, including serving as Executive Director and General Counsel for the National School Boards Association and managing the 3,000 member Council of School Attorneys, Underwood has been fighting for kids and public schools for much of her career.
Dr. Underwood joins our team as a member of Wisconsin Public Education Action, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that "supports Wisconsin student’s freedom to learn in thriving public schools."
As I write this weekly essay, Julie and the rest of the team are working hard to get this lawsuit ready to file by early October, because Wisconsin’s public schools can’t wait any longer.
In addition to introducing Dr. Underwood, I would also like to introduce a key partner in our strategy to “de-mystify” the misleading term “school choice,” and help explain how private school vouchers are terrible for public education throughout America. Her name is Patti Vasquez, and she is a rising star in progressive talk radio. Patti's home base is with WCPT, the progressive AM radio station in Chicago, but her daily program “Driving It Home with Patti Vasquez” is now being aired in Minneapolis, and hopefully soon in Wisconsin.
Patti has agreed to dedicate one hour of her show every week (Thursdays at 6 pm starting September 14), to discuss America’s “War on Public Education,” and that program will be merged with the Minocqua Brewing Company’s “Up North Podcast” throughout this fall and into the holidays.
Not only will this show be aired on Chicago and Minneapolis progressive talk radio, but it will be live-streamed on Minocqua Brewing Company’s Facebook page for our 81K followers and our "Up North Podcast" can be downloaded from Spotify/iTunes/etc or watched on YouTube. We will also post highlights of the show on our TikTok channel and through FB/IG Reels and YouTube shorts, so anyone paying attention can get the truth on how bad private schools vouchers are for public education.
The Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, as it has done for the last three years through the “Up North Podcast,” will hire the necessary producers, editors, directors, and social media managers to make sure these weekly shows are professionally created and seen by as many voters as possible.
We know that many Wisconsinites and Americans have been duped into thinking that “school choice” is a good thing, just like they were duped into freaking out whenever they heard the acronym “CRT” without really knowing what it meant.
We plan to not only win the lawsuit to end private school vouchers in the Wisconsin and US Supreme Courts, but we also plan to win in the court of public opinion. We will be talking to education experts every week to help explain how public education is purposefully being dismantled across the US for political gain and for the enrichment of those 1 percenters in the voucher school lobby.
As of today, almost 1K of you have donated on average $48 to raise approximately $47K for this effort. We’re hoping to raise $200K, which includes funding the entire lawsuit as well as the money needed to communicate our message to voters via our the aforementioned weekly radio show. If you can chip in, please donate here.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be announcing more partnerships with statewide organizations who have a vested interest in saving public schools, and we’ll invite key members of those organizations to our weekly radio program to help everyone understand why this issue is so important.
And as always, we’ll be selling beer and t-shirts to also help get the message out.
Look for our new “School House Bock” in stores throughout WI, MN, and IL, and buy our official t-shirt for this campaign, “Hot for Teachers,” by going to our online store.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we’ll bring the word “public” back into “education,” one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Forcing us to forego parking for the disabled is NOT A COMPROMISE, it's UNCONSCIONABLE.
2nd, in one of the 6 parking spot options forced upon us by the county, we had to squeeze 4 parking spaces along the disputed area we call the "pork chop" (where all required parking should go but the Town won't allow). That is a LAUGHABLE option because the only way you could situate 4 cars that way is if they were tiny little clown cars. That option was so dumb we had to force our architect to draw it up because he felt like he would be committing architectural malpractice by even putting pen to paper.
3rd, they suggested we put 2 spots in the southern side of our beer garden. Well those two spots would have to be built directly in front of the entrance off of HWY 51. It's simply NOT SAFE to force cars to back up into cars trying to come in off the highway, and since they've given over 200 parking exemptions to any bar/restaurant who wants them to build outdoor spaces over the last 2-3 years, it's simply offensive to ask us shrink our beer garden to accommodate 2 unsafe spots.
Although we've been told that unless we provide a "compromise" with 6 parking spots, our plan would get voted down, we submitted a plan with 4 parking spots-- 1 spot for disabled parking, and the other 3 along the "pork chop." This is still a dumb parking design, because it makes WAY MORE SENSE to put parking within the disputed "Pork Chop," but we offered it in the spirit of compromise so these county board members could save a little face and tell their Republican voters they didn't give away the farm.
After they delayed the vote and told us they wouldn't back down from 6 parking spots, we decided last week to sue the County as well. Next week, we will add Oneida County to our original lawsuit against the Town of Minocqua that we filed two weeks ago.
If these guys aren't willing to find their spines to vote against the town and assume responsibility for their own county zoning jurisdiction, then they need to be held accountable in court.
We sent our 4-parking space option weeks ago, but just yesterday we also submitted a "Parking Study" for the Town of Minocqua.
Over this whole 3 year parking fight, the town nor the county has ever provided a study that shows they actually need the parking they've required us to build. They've just said "there's a need for more parking," without ever proving it.
Well, since we KNOW there are two public parking lots within a few minutes walk of our building, we figured we'd do our own study.]
It turns out that in our study, we found that there are approximately 4.17 parking spaces per 1000 square feet of mixed use retail/restaurant activity.
The benchmark for developers looking to build mixed use outdoor shopping centers is 4 parking spaces per 1000 square feet.
You know what that means?
The Town of Minocqua DOES NOT NEED MORE PARKING, and thus their requirement that we add parking to our property is not only ILLEGAL (they don't have the jurisdiction), but also entirely UNNECESSARY.
We refuse to let a bunch of amateurs hurt our business any longer. Through a toxic mix of political retaliation, a lack of courage to do the right thing, and simple thick-headedness, this farce has gone on long enough.
We have no doubt a federal judge will agree with us.
We'll continue to stay open and serve beer from our stoop throughout September, 11-7pm (closed only on Tuesdays in September). After that, we plan to offer more limited hours throughout the winter.
As I was driving up from Madison to Minocqua last Friday, I reminisced about the summer of 2020 that turned me into an unlikely progressive activist.
I had lost my wife to cancer in late 2018, and subsequently had to stare down bankruptcy while trying to run a brewpub during a pandemic.
For the first time in my life, I realized how my government had a direct impact on my survival—both financially and physically—and was disgusted by how terribly they were handling things.
Not only had Trump convinced half of our population to ignore Covid altogether, but Wisconsin’s Republicans overturned our Governor’s plan to slowly re-open our economy and turned us into a Covid Wild West.
I decided I had to do something, so I ran as a Democrat in Wisconsin’s deeply conservative 34th assembly district on one issue alone—giving a shit about Covid. Losing that race was a foregone conclusion given how red our area was, but I somehow landed on front page of the New York Times because Wisconsin was under a magnifying glass and the dynamics of that race were playing out in small towns across America.
Besides learning what it felt like to get sorely beaten, that race also forced me to confront my demons. Most of you don’t know that before I moved back to Wisconsin, I was a speechwriter for Anthony Weiner’s New York City mayoral race that was engulfed in scandal. What I learned from that campaign was that if you planned to run for office, you had better get in front of any personal issues that could be used to hurt you publicly.
So I started writing a campaign blog to discuss some of the mistakes I’ve made, such as intermittent drug use throughout my adult life and the marital strife that accompanied being a caregiver to a terminally ill wife. What started out as an attempt at personal damage control turned out to become a habit. Not only has writing on Sundays become a balm for my soul, but through the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, I believe this weekly essay has, in part, helped protect Wisconsin’s democracy.
I write all of this prologue today because while reading some of my brutally honest essays from 2020, I rediscovered this beautiful version of How Great Thou Art, a Christian hymn that emphasizes my religion’s ultimate tenet—the forgiveness of sins.
While listening to this song in the car and shedding a few tears, I juxtaposed the concept of forgiveness with the fact that I’m currently leading two lawsuits—one against the Town of Minocqua for political retaliation, and the other in which I’m ultimately going to sue the state to overturn Wisconsin’s parasitic private school voucher system.
How can I reconcile both asking the public to forgive me for my past sins and also asking the public to help me sue a lot of people to punish them for their sins?
One only needs to turn to the Gospel, Matthew 18: 21-35, to learn how to reconcile forgiveness and accountability.
In the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant,” a servant who was caught defrauding the king was forgiven and his debt was erased, but that same servant refused to forgive a debt owed to him by another servant. This hypocrisy was reported back to the king, who became angry and put the “unforgiving servant” in chains.
In this story, the king both forgave the servant for his sins, but held him accountable after the servant showed that he hadn’t learned anything from the mercy shown to him.
Thinking about this parable helps me reconcile both asking the public to forgive my past mistakes while running for office AND ALSO suing to hold others accountable for their mistakes.
Will I ultimately forgive members of the Minocqua town board for trying to put me out of business? Absolutely.
Should I still hold them accountable by suing them so the town can ultimately restore its reputation as a fun tourism destination that is both welcoming to small businesses and inclusive towards all, regardless of their belief system? Absolutely.
Will I ultimately forgive members of the voucher school lobby who are getting rich off of your property tax dollars to the detriment of Wisconsin’s kids and teachers? Absolutely.
Should we still sue to rid ourselves of this vehicle they’re using to illegally enrich themselves, which is part of a larger political scheme to destroy public education in America? Absolutely.
At the end of the day, we all want life to be as simple and innocent as the scene from the mural that was painted on my southern-facing taproom wall earlier in the week.
This mural is called “Rainbow Land,” and it was painted in conjunction with the release of our new non-alcoholic soda for kids that teaches inclusiveness and love. I told the crazy story of how we came up with the idea for this soda at our official launch yesterday, and we invited representatives from the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce to say a few words about how they bring together businesses that promote inclusiveness and equality.
No one was born wanting to destroy someone else's business.
No one was born wanting to enrich themselves off of the backs of kids and teachers.
And most importantly, no one was born wanting to maintain political power through public manipulation and misinformation.
These moral shortcomings that we’re seeing from our political leaders at the local, state, and national levels are the result of being exposed to pain, fear, loss, and any number of other traumatic life experiences.
At the end of the day, we’re all flawed, we all sin, and the best we can do is to try to learn from our mistakes, be empathetic to and forgive others who make mistakes, and protect our families and communities from those who haven’t yet learned from their mistakes.
Over the last month, our Super PAC has raised an extraordinary amount of money from you to both sue the Town of Minocqua and to rid Wisconsin of its private school voucher system.
You collectively donated approximately $120K to sue Minocqua, which I believe is sufficient for the time being. And so far you’ve donated about $40K to the voucher school effort, which should be enough to talk to all the folks who have reached out to become plaintiffs, gather evidence, write a complaint, and file the actual lawsuit.
I’d like to ultimately raise $200K for this effort, which is a conservative estimate on what the lawsuit might cost in its entirety. If you can help chip in, please do so here.
While you’re donating, I’ll be working behind the scenes to partner with other organizations to not only help fund this lawsuit, but to also bring together a coalition of groups who are all opposed to the parasitic school voucher system so that we can work together towards our common goal.
In the coming weeks, I will announce those partnerships in these Sunday essays, and starting September 7th, I’ll resume my weekly “Up North Podcast” to shed a light on what happens to teachers and kids when private school voucher dollars sap their public school districts.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we can work on forgiving each other AND holding ourselves accountable, one beer (and sugary cherry soda) at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Protesters against Act 10, Governor Scott Walker's legislation that decimated Wisconsin's Public Schools in 2011.
Hello Friends,
I consider the email I’m writing today one of the most consequential things I’ve done in my life, and the start of the most important project that the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC has taken on since our inception in 2021.
Today is the beginning of our legal effort to end Wisconsin’s parasitic private-school voucher system.
With the help of your donations many months ago, the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC put together a team of lawyers who came up with a legal strategy to challenge school vouchers under the Wisconsin Constitution. In this email, I’m going to preview that strategy and introduce you to a few members of the team that will execute it.
Our first legal claim will raise the Wisconsin Constitution’s “public purpose requirement,” which says that “public funds can only be used for public purposes.”
Although legal historians will note that the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a similar challenge to Milwaukee’s voucher program in a 1992 case called Davis v. Grover, at the time the court considered the voucher program to be “experimental.” In the 30 years since that decision, the facts on the ground have changed.
Voucher programs are no longer experimental; they have ballooned and become entrenched throughout Wisconsin. As a result, our legal team believes that this decision should not serve as legal precedent to uphold the voucher programs in their current form.
A second claim will likely arise under the Wisconsin Constitution’s Uniform Taxation Clause. More than 40 years ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state can’t take one school district’s property taxes and distribute them to another school district. But state education officials have admitted that—because of the Rube Goldberg mechanism used to siphon taxpayer funds to the voucher program—it’s “as though the choice/voucher expansion is funded statewide with property taxes.”
These legal claims will be driven by a core set of facts. Some will relate to how voucher schools are sapping public schools of their resources. Others will describe how taxpayer-funded voucher schools—unlike public schools—do not have to comply with core educational standards and have virtually no obligation to provide basic services to students with disabilities.
Collectively, these facts and circumstances reinforce that Wisconsin’s voucher programs are (1) subsidizing private schools while undermining public schools, and (2) creating a two-tiered system of state-funded education—in which taxpayer-funded voucher schools are neither accountable to the state nor otherwise required to meet its basic educational goals.
Given these well-documented developments, we will argue that Wisconsin’s courts, in 2023, can no longer uphold the voucher programs under the Wisconsin Constitution.
Ok, so that’s a bird's-eye view of the strategy.
Here are the leaders of the team that will make the case to Wisconsin’s courts:
Our voucher lawsuit legal team will be led by Washington DC-based attorney Greg Lipper (a partner at Legrand Law PLLC, a litigation boutique); Madison-based attorney Brian Potts of Perkins Coie, a large national law firm; and Minocqua-based attorney Frederick Melms, currently working for the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC. Here is what they each bring to the table.
Greg Lipper (LeGrand Law PLLC)
Brian Potts (Perkins Coie)
Frederick Melms
Along with these three attorneys, we’re consulting with experts on Wisconsin schools, including the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), to ensure that we have the most up-to-date information needed to build our case.
Now this is where I ask you for money.
I believe this lawsuit, at the very least, will cost $200K. The team has told me that the suit will consist of the following initial steps, and each of these steps will cost a certain amount. Here is our near-term estimate.
Of course, litigation costs are hard to predict. $200K is a conservative estimate. Depending on how our opponents litigate the case and who else tries to get involved, the initial phase in circuit court could involve even more work and cost even more money. Because our team includes a partner at a large law firm, we’re confident that we will have enough lawyers to do all this work. But if this happens, it will blow the costs of this suit way beyond $200K. There’s really no way to tell at this point if that will happen, but I truly believe there are enough groups that care about ending the school voucher program in Wisconsin that will partner with us if we need to find more money down the road.
Now obviously, $200K is a lot of money. But there are now 110K of you on this email list, and 82K folks who follow the Minocqua Brewing Company Facebook page, and you’ve collectively donated over $1.1 million to our many other efforts over the last two years, with donations averaging ~$40. I think we can accomplish this righteous goal together as a large group of people who want what's best for our kids. If you agree with me, please donate what you can here.
As I mentioned many months ago in an essay that thanked the wonderful public school teachers I had in Stevens Point who laid the ground work for me to thrive at Harvard University and beyond, I want Wisconsin kids to have the same opportunities that I had in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Republican Governor Scott Walker decimated our publics schools by passing Act 10 in 2011, and Republican Majority Leader Robin Vos has continued to attack them ever since.
These guys don’t care about educating Wisconsin's kids. They only care about the folks who get rich off of private schools with your property tax dollars, because those are the same folks who keep them in power by filling up their campaign coffers.
Wisconsinites have never had a lot in terms of material wealth, but we used to have one of the best public education systems in the country. We had pride in our public schools and were willing to pay more in taxes so that ALL of our children could get ahead in life.
We will get there again, but it starts by ending the private school voucher system that has taken that local pride away from us. Thanks for your help in getting this lawsuit off the ground, and thanks for believing in my team to get the job done.
Together, we will get Wisconsin’s PRIDE AND JOY back, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Again, please donate what you can here to launch this lawsuit
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