Water, water everywhere, and no fluoride to drink … water, water nowhere, better flood the sink. But hold your horses if not your hose and hold on a minute, they voted it down. At least here in New Richmond last Tuesday.
So in the week since, we feel the fallout of Trump and his ilk such as RFK Jr. now falling down in failure. There still is lifegiving, if not lifesaving, fluoride to be found in the fluid that spouts from the municipal water system. The mandate-worthy referendum result was to keep teeth-building fluoride in the city supply, by a margin of many hundreds of votes, for at least another four years, or something, as reported here Wednesday morning. One-Thousand-Six-Hundred and Sixty-Six (corrosive last three digits, like the band Corrosion of Conformity) to Nine-Hundred and Forty-Two.
The consequences of such failure, man vs. man, family vs. family, block vs. block, boggle the mind. If neighbor next to neighbor would each decide differently, and uhm well, their wells would weigh in (or not) as one, would one’s water versus the other’s be considered by the other to be tainted? And if there be cross-contamination crossing through to your neighbor’s well from political or philosophical or poorly-pissing-in-the-potty implications, would such tainting be your legal fault? Or his? Or if some day, if Little Johnnie gets tooth decay …?
OK, I know that’s not the way it works. All for one or one for all, as per the ballot result. Either we vote to have fluoride in the water, or we don’t. The whole city is the same, and it does not go aldermanic district by aldermanic district, or even house by house, so don’t round up your local GOP or other civic leader. But the above paragraph illustrates how what you do at the ballot box could really piss off — sorry — the guy whose house is next to yours. Beyond what political signs you have on your lawn. Concerning what lies beneath it.
At the least, this is a mandate, politically. Trump’s wall, Jericho or as Jesus, is falling fast. Science is seen as real/Black Lives matter. “Oh black water, keep on rolling …” This may be overextending the metaphor.
While that bastion of information, AI, notes that the New Richmond referendum is among the most noteworthy among recent ones, in early 2025 the DeForest Village Board, also in Wisconsin, voted 4-3 to remove fluoride. The result was different in Rutland, VT, in 2024, and there have been a smattering of other cases of contention in the earlier 2000s. Nearly 80 Wisconsin communities have stopped fluoridation since 1995, but the New Richmond case is the most prominent, maybe even nationally, in the last year or two.
Research suggests that high fluoridation opposition areas often correlate with lower levels of community health literacy regarding the topic. Translated: The dumber you are … Didn’t we dispense with all of this bunk when the autism/vaccine correlation was debunked? Like clean with green when it comes to air and water, and make that fluoridated water even more wholesome.
But, jokingly, it turns out that RFK Jr. would even like to ban that all-American staple, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, as I’m sure even protein is on his list! (As I’m sure there are some times, by some companies, that fake protein and such is slipped in. Like that fake fatty stuff put in certain foodstuffs years earlier that caused a stir. The Story of O? PB and J, for short, XYZ’d by RFK Jr. As we add another J. Can he chew up and spit out all those words in a row? Can a corn. Haha.)
There was at least one other race locally that had state and national ramifications, in an April election short of such things. In the race for Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin, Chris Taylor had talons and handily defeated the conservative challenger, Maria Lazar, at not only the statewide level, but easily in our county that usually bleeds red. This time the lifeblood became blue, and it was even more blue in the state’s biggest urban areas, larger ones than here. The total St. Croix County vote was 12,209 to 10,280, as turnout was high in some areas of the county but spotty and not all, depending largely on if there was some other local race that drew people to the polls. This was another hit that Trump and Co. took, although not everyone blamed the loss on him, and the question of supporting him. As for the Republican takeaway on this, it was the usual blah, blah, blah and doublespeak. Truth is, other than Truth Social, nobody likes Trump anymore. One of those who did provide some meaningful analysis was former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson — how far back can you go? — who in photos run by media outlets had enough jowls to look like an older William Shatner, as he appears in his TV-pitch commercials.
The Associated Press, for which I am a longtime stringer, again had me gather results at the county government center, but passed on the town 12-precinct level this time around, as apparently this set of races was not deemed sufficient enough to warrant added consideration. Or they maybe thought it was a done deal from the get-go, as the race was called 40 minutes after polls closed. The AP did, however, for the first time I can remember, have me report the total number of write-in votes, and there were a few, 41, in the Taylor-Lazar contest. Some local judge must have stuffed the ballot box full of his name.
All this as news comes in of the latest executive order — a day cannot legally pass without one — that has the chilling effect that only 3.7 percent of the state’s population can effectively still vote in November. Just kidding. Or am I?