So for anyone who can see clearly and whose mind hasn't been clouded by a steady diet of Fox News or alt-right AM radio, Wisconsin's Senator Ron Johnson and our Congressman in Northern Wisconsin, Tom Tiffany, sold their souls to Donald Trump a long time ago.
In June, we learned that Ron Johnson tried to hand off the fake electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before he was to begin counting electoral votes on January 6--putting him SQUARELY into the conspiracy to overthrow the presidential election.
And we must not forget that Tom Tiffany was the ONLY Wisconsin Congressman to sign onto a Texas lawsuit AGAINST HIS OWN STATE to overturn the election in Trump's favor. Taken to its logical end, Tiffany joined an effort to overturn the very same votes that got him elected--an utterly absurd scenario but no more absurd than the "Big Lie" he still champions as a willing actor in this attempted coup.
As I said, anyone who hasn't been brainwashed knows these men, at best, aren't fit to lead, and at worst, should be in prison. That being said, there are still many rich people in Northern Wisconsin that have continued to donate money to their campaigns to help get them re-elected.
Why would they do that when it's so obvious that these guys lied and would choose authoritarianism over democracy if given the chance?
Why? Because when democracy dies, the rich often get richer--it's as simple as that.
So how do you stop the rich from supporting traitors by donating to their campaigns, which allow them to buy more TV ads that spread more lies?
You hit them where it hurts--their businesses.
And that's why we're publishing the lists of the top companies who have donated to these two politicians, aggregated by the donations made by the rich individuals at those companies. It is my view that there is nothing more un-american than to continue to donate money to a politician who has aided and abetted an insurrection against his country, and I think it is incumbent upon all of us who care deeply about the health of our democracy to tell these companies that we refuse to spend another dime buying their products until they publicly denounce these two men and stop donating to their campaigns.
Why penalize a company for the actions of its management? Well, the terrible Citizens United Supreme Court case concluded that corporations were people and thus had the 1st amendment right to donate money to politicians, which flooded our country with "Dark Money" and is arguably the #1 reason the U.S. is so sick today.
If corporations are people, then the people who own those corporations and the management who decide the directions those corporations take ARE THE CORPORATION. So their individual political contributions, especially to traitors, are ABSOLUTELY FAIR GAME in making a decision to boycott the companies they lead.
So here's a bit of commentary about Johnson's graph above. We'll discuss Tiffany's next.
Trig Solberg own's Trig's Grocery Stores, and while he's been selling them off to other grocery store chains, as long as these stores are named "Trig's," they're part of the problem. Go to another grocery store to buy your food.
Uline is of course owned by the infamous Uihlein family--top donors to the insanity--and they have a warehouse in Hudson and own a lot of property in neighboring Manitowish Waters, including a restaurant called Smokies. So just know, if you buy anything from their ubiquitous catalog, or eat at Smokies, you're indirectly contributing to a "cold insurrection."
Incredible Bank made the list again because no matter what, it seems like at least one member or another of their ownership or company management continues to drink the Trump Cult Kool-Aid. This one hits close to home, because they were my bank until the Super PAC started doing this research. The president of the bank used to drink beer at my brewpub. I reached out to him privately to ask them to stop donating to Johnson/Tiffany so that I wouldn't have to put their names on this graph and keep my money in the bank. He wouldn't take my call and responded with an email full of corporate-speak.
So I pulled out all my money and put them on the graph.
The Marshfield Clinic is last on this list, meaning that at least 1 doctor working there donated to Ron Johnson. We know its tough to penalize an entire health system because of the actions of a few doctors, but just know, some of your doctors are donating to a man who told Wisconsin women needing reproductive healthcare to simply "go to Illinois" after Roe was overturned. This is also true of Aspirus, the other main healthcare system in our area. Many doctors there donated to Tom Tiffany, who just last week voted against protecting access to contraception.
County Materials, Lincoln Wood Products, Greenheck Fan, Rand's Trucking, and McMillan Electric Company are all a little harder to do anything about. They are seemingly not really consumer-facing businesses, but rather sell their products to other businesses. We encourage you to contact them nonetheless.
Next, here's our graph of the Top Ten Companies whose leaders have donated to Tom Tiffany. This group has some repeat offenders--namely Trigs and the Marshfield Clinic--but it does have a few more businesses that consumers can actually boycott.
If you're in the New Richmond area, there MUST be a few other plumbers you can take your business to instead of Bird Plumbing.
If you're going fishing or need a place to stay while vacationing in Ashland, you should avoid River Rock Inn & Bait Shop. It's pretty crazy that this owner, who depends on anglers to to make a living, supports a man who authored a bill making it easier for out-of-state mining companies to pollute our lakes and poison fish.
And those of you in Wausau who care about democracy and have a cavity--there's got to be a few other dentists out there besides Szmanda Dental who care more about their country than their pocketbooks. Time to switch over to them.
And last but not least, I was REALLY DISAPPOINTED to see Hsu's Ginseng on this list. This ginseng farm near Wausau is one of the largest in the U.S. because its product is highly regarded by Chinese and Chinese-American consumers. They obviously need political help to ease ginseng trading barriers with China, but donating to Tom Tiffany crosses a line, and we hope their ownership see's this graph and thinks about the bigger picture before donating again.
Here's our list folks. We hope it helps like-minded people who want to vote with their dollars.
As an aside, the work of compiling political donation data is quite difficult and confusing because our state and federal compliance laws are weak--on purpose. Why would politicians create laws that force them to be more transparent? The FEC.com database contains numbers reported by the campaigns themselves, and the data can be wrong unless it is challenged by outside groups. For example, many people write "retired" as their occupation, when in fact they own or have interest or influence in large companies. Similarly, people often donate through their spouses, who can write "homemaker" as an occupation even though their donations come from family company profits.
We do the best we can in compiling this data by hiring political analysts to do this with the Super PAC money that you've donated, but we are NOT investigative journalists--just a brewing company trying to make Wisconsin a more "just" and "fair" place to live. We NEED to support the real journalists and watchdog groups that do this sort of thing, not just a brewery who does this in their spare time.
That being said, we wouldn't be able to do this type of work if you weren't buying our beer, t-shirts, and donating to our Super PAC.
So please take these graphs and send them to anyone you know in Northern Wisconsin, and thanks for supporting us. We still believe we can make Wisconsin a democracy again, one beer and political graph at time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC.