Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says it’s “pretty sad” that someone mailed him a turd

Assemnly Speaker Robin Vos says it’s “pretty sad” someone mailed him a turd.

Vos shared on his Facebook page the photographic evidence of the unwanted poop. The picture show a small turd inside a manila envelope lined with bubble wrap. The sender apparently wanted the fecal matter to arrive in pristine condition.

Adding insult to insult, the mail was delivered with $1.05 worth of postage due, forcing Vos to pay for the shit.

Vos told his Facebook followers that he regrets the deep political divisions that drive people to such acts. Yet when it comes to divisiveness, there are few, if any, politicians in Wisconsin today who can top him.

“We can respectfully disagree,” he wrote. “We can argue. We can even yell on occasion. But if yelling, swearing, accusing others is your go to response, you need to seriously think about your anger and how to resolve that issue. Can we just get back to debating the issues civilly and stop the name calling?”

Was the culprit someone on the right?

Vos’ post begins by addressing right-wing critics who are frustrated with the slow pace of re-opening Wisconsin’s economy.

“Please don't turn your anger at the very people who are your allies in getting our state working again,“ he writes.

But poop seems like a tame protestation for that crowd, especially a turd so small that a chihuahua could have laid it. Vos' hard-right followers have shown repeatedly that they can do more intimidating things than mailing a turd.

For example, “Freedom” rallies at state capitol buildings in recent weeks have featured fearsome, gun-toting white supremacists, neo-Nazis, militia fanatics , and the anti-choice folks — people with a history of seriously violent acts. Timothy McVeigh, anyone?

Anti-shutdown zealots also have taken to shooting employees of businesses that require customers to wear masks and maintain social distancing. The security guard of a Dollar Store in Flint, Michigan, was killed for asking a customer to wear a mask. Another shooting wounded three employees of a McDonald’s in Oklahoma.

Doody is pretty mild compared with all that.

Besides, Vos has been pushing very hard to lift shutdown restrictions and get the economy going again. His corporate backers are eager for the return of their low-wage employees — the women and men whose work creates their wealth. Vos is even behind the lawsuit that successfully ended Wisconsin’s “safer at home” orders. That's about as friendly to the anti-lockdown fans as it's possible to get.

And Vos reportedly encouraged people to attend an anti-shutdown rally in Madison last month, although he didn't risk his own health and that of his family by actually showing up at the event himself.

Leftists are more likely to blame

Since Vos is more in line with the political right, it seems more likely that the mailer of the crap is one of his many liberal detractors, who on the whole are less violent. A little shit seems more compatible with their pacifism. Maybe they hoped he'd use it as organic fertilizer.

As Assembly Speaker working in tandem with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald — the duo is known in the Capitol as “fat man and Robin” — Vos has pursued a far-right agenda focused almost entirely on opposing every move made by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. This Mitch-McConnell-style behavior has made him as reviled among Wisconsin Democrats as former Gov. Scott Walker.

Despite denials, political observers believe that “Boss Vos” — another of his nicknames — harbors aspirations of becoming the state’s next governor. Hearing that could enrage any proponent of good-government on either side of the aisle to sling some shit his way.

Consider just a few of the extremist maneuvers Vos has been responsible for this year alone:

• Vos killed a bipartisan bill to stop the mind-boggling backlog of rape kits that piled up in the state under Walker and former Attorney General Brad Schimel. Vos attached unsavory and divisive amendments to the bill, ensuring it would never pass the Senate.

One of those amendments would have allowed the parents of a child who’d raped or sexually assaulted at school to automatically qualify for a voucher to a private school. Like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin Republicans have been trying for years to upend the state’s public education system and replace it with for-profit, privately owned schools and religious schools.

Thirty other states approved a rape-kit bill very similar to the bipartisan version adopted originally by the Assembly and the Senate, before Vos marked it up for failure.

• Like his soul brother Donald Trump, Vos began the year by harassing a Democratic state representative who’s been paralyzed from the chest down since 2010. A drunken driver smashed into the vehicle he was in, killing his parents and his brother.

Since then, Rep. Jimmy Anderson has been wheelchair-bound, and he asked to participate in some committee meetings by phone.

Vos said no.

Here’s what an editorial in the Cap Times had to say about that action, which drew international outrage:

“What Anderson proposed was accepted practice in other legislative bodies — including the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state Senate. Yet Vos opposed the request, dismissing it as ‘disruptive.’ He accused Anderson of not being serious and charged that the Democratic legislator was engaging in ‘political grandstanding.’ Those remarks stirred an international outcry, and rightly so.

“… Anyone who has an ounce of humanity in them recognizes Anderson’s story of rebuilding his life, graduating from law school, starting the nonprofit group Drive Clear, and getting elected to the state Legislature as an inspiring record of perseverance and achievement.”

• Another sadistic action by Vos also made international headlines this year. He proposed forcing Wisconsin voters to either sit out the April 7 election or to gather in long lines to vote in person — and possibly to inhale invisible droplets containing coronavirus in the breath of someone else in line. Vos scored that proposal with an able assist from the state’s servile, right-wing Supreme Court.

Wisconsin became the nation’s only state to hold an in-person election in April, when the pandemic seemed to be at its peak. Other states, even such red states as Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana, postponed theirs.

Sixty-seven people in Wisconsin potentially were infected with COVID-19 after voting in that election or volunteering at the polls.

• Due to Vos and Fitzgerald’s dereliction of duty, Wisconsin lost out on $25 million in federal funding for unemployment benefits paid during the pandemic. They failed to act fast enough to pass a coronavirus relief bill.

The state already was projected to run out of unemployment funding in October, so it could scarcely afford the hit. Maybe Vos forgot about the relief package, because he was so busy trying to keep people from voting and trying to lift the state’s safer-at-home policy before the CDC said it was safe.

There's no doubt that Vos has ostracized far more people on the political left than the right. So it's reasonable to assume that he got the crap from the liberals. He should rejoice it was only a small shard of pet shit and not an elephant dump.