Minoqua is a Wisconsin town of less than 5000 residents. It is in a summer tourist area of Wisconsin. Think fishing, fresh-water lakes, cold beer. The Minoqua Brewing Company [link: https://www.minocquabrewingcompany.com/pages/about-us] is pretty typical of local breweries in Wisconsin, but for one thing. Kirk put up a Biden banner during Covid-19. Most of the other businesses in Minoqua were silent or pro-Trump. So what? Well one’s politics shouldn’t be used to adjudicate zoning issues. And in Oneida County in Wisconsin, it looks like personal politics have too much influence.

You have a progressive beer maker who talks a bit too much, and is very outspoken versus a wealthy right-wing publisher of the sole newspaper in the area fighting, but when the fight takes place in the county zoning court, that just isn’t right. You should get or not get an easement based on the same rules as all the businesses in town. Zoning hearings are not about deciding whether business owners have beliefs that you don’t like.

Something seems to be rotten in the Oneida County courts.