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Monday, February 17, 2025

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Is Penzeys Spices Racist? Why Are There No Stores in Milwaukee’s Inner City?

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Is Bill Penzey a racist? Will the BLM stickers he’s giving away allow him to sleep better at night in his million-dollar suburban home?

We’re disgusted with white pandering liberals who trash Republicans for being “racist” and present themselves as the only people who care about the black community… but then don’t walk the walk. That brings us to Bill Penzey, the blowhard, anti-Republican perpetually ranting CEO of Penzeys Spices.

In the latest absurdity, Penzeys Spices announced that it is holding a special “Republicans Are Racists Weekend!” deal.

Yes, really. It’s right on the Penzeys Spices website. Bill Penzey has been ranting against Republicans and Donald Trump for some time. He’s known for it (after the Kenosha riots, he suggested “looting” his own store).

But guess what? We decided to take a look at where Bill Penzey has his Wisconsin stores, and not a single one is located in Milwaukee’s inner city, which has the state’s largest black population.

Bill penzey
Penzeys spices wisconsin locations

If Bill Penzey cares about black lives, why does he write off the black community as consumers, especially when the black community is disproportionately challenged with transportation out to the suburban locations?

Instead, multiple of his stores target largely white, affluent suburbs (like Delafield) or even a rural Wisconsin outlet mall (Johnson Creek).

But hey, he’s giving away 10 BLM stickers with each purchase.

Bill penzey

What a complete hypocrite.

Penzeys Spices locator map shows a single Penzeys Spices store in the City of Milwaukee. But it’s located downtown in the city’s business district at 638 N. Water St. The other Penzeys Spices Wisconsin stories are in Appleton, Brookfield, Cedarburg, Greenfield, Janesville, Johnson Creek, Kenosha, Madison (2 locations), Delafield, and Wauwatosa.

Furthermore, public records show Bill Penzey owns a million-dollar Wauwatosa home. The headquarters of Penzey Spices is also located, not in the heart of Milwaukee’s black community, but in Wauwatosa.


Bill Penzey on Waukesha County Residents

Penzey once trashed Waukesha County residents as people who “fled west” because they weren’t open to diversity. Why, then, does he sell spices to people he thinks are racists? Why doesn’t he live at 27th and Burleigh? Why doesn’t he invest in Milwaukee’s inner city by opening stores there, employing people who need jobs?

Hypocrisy.

Penzeys Spices used to have a store in the inner city at 4144 N. 56th St., Milwaukee, in the midtown area. A story in the Milwaukee Courier said it opened in 2010.

But guess what? It’s closed. That location is not listed on the Penzeys Spices website store locator, and its phone number is disconnected. We called the downtown Milwaukee store on Water Street and asked if the N. 56th St. store was still open. They said no. We asked if Penzeys has any other stores in Milwaukee besides the downtown Water Street location, and they said there were stores in Greenfield and Cedarburg. Which are suburbs.

Is it fair to say that Bill Penzey fled west and south?

Bill penzey

Penzey also recently closed a Milwaukee store at 619 E. Silver Spring Drive in Whitefish Bay to move downtown. He said the Cedarburg store became more popular.

“Remember when Black Lives Matter started to have some success getting all of America to see how unfairly Black Americans are treated in this country and the importance of us all saying Black Lives Matter until Black lives start to be treated as though they do matter?” Penzey’s tirade began.

But why isn’t Bill Penzey acting like black consumers matter?

According to the site Reference for Business, it’s long been like this: “In 1987, Penzey moved his mail-order business to an 8,000 square-foot building in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and, in 1990, moved it again to a new 25,000 square-foot facility in Waukesha, Wisconsin,” the site reports.

The Penzeys Spices web page says Penzeys has declared it “Republicans Are Racists Weekend!”

“Cheese Off Racists for Free!” It reads.

There are then three spice bottles, “China Cinnamon,” and “Mexican Oregano,” and “Penzeys Curry.”

The order contains free 10 BLM stickers because they have “earned our respect!”

On Jan. 6, 2022, Penzey sent out a marketing email that “unleashed on Republican voters at large, calling them the ‘#1 threat’ to the United States,” Fox Business reported. He also funded Facebook ads calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

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U.S.-Canada Border

White House Touts Border Progress

The White House over the weekend touted its progress on the southern border as President Donald Trump completed his fourth week back in office.

"Encounters of illegal immigrants at our southern border are plummeting and migrants are starting to realize it’s fruitless to attempt to illegally cross our border," the White House said Saturday in a statement.

Upon taking office, Trump issued a series of executive orders ending Biden administration policies that allowed asylum seekers to flood into America. On his second day in office, the president sent 1,500 active-duty service members and additional air and intelligence assets.

Border crossing attempts are down more than 90% from the same time last year, according to data first obtained by the New York Post.

“Border numbers are down over 90% in three weeks,” Tom Homan, the pick by Trump called border czar, said during an interview on Fox News. “When you got 90% less people coming across the border, how many women aren’t being raped by the cartels? How many children aren’t drowning? How many women and children aren’t being sex trafficked in this country? President Trump is a gamechanger.”

Multiple media reports indicate many people headed from other countries to the United States have since changed their mind and headed back home.

The White House pointed out a Wednesday story from The Washington Times showing officials in Costa Rica and Panama are meeting to discuss how to handle the large number of people who had been waiting in Mexico to enter the United States but have since given up and are returning to South America.

The administration also linked a Thursday story from Telemundo saying "migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia and Venezuela are heading back home" instead of continuing to America. And the White House linked a Thursday story from El Cronista saying the Mexican government provided a $9.3 million contract for 140 shelters to help with people "returning to Mexico."

Policies during the Biden administration allowed 12 million people to enter the country, most given dates to appear with immigration officials much later. The volume pushed many of those appointments beyond a year and even 18 months. A surge in fentanyl accompanied the timing.

Trump, the second term Republican, has reversed the trend. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and specifically ICE Enforcement and Removal regional offices, across the country have helped move many people illegally in the country back to their native homelands.

Trump also threatened tariffs against Mexico if it did not help fix the problem. To temporarily avert the tariffs, Mexico’s president agreed to deploy thousands more troops to the southern border.

In another reversal, the Biden administration worked – including litigation – to block Texas from installing border security measures like barbed wire and buoys in the river to keep people from swimming across.

In a social media post Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote, “Texas installed more buoys into the Rio Grande the SAME day President Trump returned to office. The Biden administration tried – and FAILED – to keep Texas from using this effective border security tactic.

“Now, we have a President who is partnering with Texas to deny illegal entry.”

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Trump to Stop U.S. Production of Pennies

President Donald Trump said late Sunday that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to stop producing pennies.

Pennies famously cost more than a penny to produce, putting them in the crosshairs of Trump and DOGE’s government efficiency push.

"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," Trump wrote on TruthSocial, his social media site. "This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.

Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time," Trump added.

DOGE posted on X last month critical of the penny’s cost, hinting at its fate.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote on X. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts."

According to the U.S. Mint’s latest report, the cost of all coins is on the rise. From the Mint’s 2024 report:

"FY 2024 unit costs increased for all circulating denominations compared to last year. The penny’s unit cost increased 20.2 percent, the nickel’s unit cost increased by 19.4 percent, the dime’s unit cost increased by 8.7 percent, and the quarter-dollar’s unit cost increased by 26.2 percent. The unit cost for pennies (3.69 cents) and nickels (13.78 cents) remained above face value for the 19th consecutive fiscal year."

Lake Sturgeon Protection

Wisconsin Lawmakers Want State Exempt From Any Lake Sturgeon Protection

(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers have filed legislation to protect sturgeon spearing in the state.

The bill would exempt Wisconsin from any listing of lake sturgeon under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The group, including Republican Congressmen Glenn Grothman and Mike Gallagher filed what they called the Sturgeon Protected and Exempt from Absurd Regulations Act.

Reps. Tony Wied, Grothman and Tom Tiffany introduced the legislation on Friday.

The bill is in response to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducting a status assessment of lake sturgeon after the group was sued by an animal rights group in 2018 attempting to have lake sturgeon listed as threatened.

“Sturgeon-spearing is crucial to maintaining Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon population which is why we must take proactive steps to ensure that we are exempt from any action to list the lake sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act,” Tiffany said about the bill. “Wisconsin is a global leader in sturgeon management, and the SPEAR Act will protect this unique and long-standing tradition for years to come.”

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-118hr7037ih

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will not add the lake sturgeon to the endangered species list last year.

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2023 pointing out the impact a listing could have on Wisconsin and how the state has worked to manage the lake sturgeon population.

The letter was signed by Gallagher and Grothman along with Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil, Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald and Derrick Van Orden.

“Wisconsin does not list lake sturgeon endangered nor threatened in state waters, and has in place a sturgeon program considered a world model for effective management and recovery, and as such should be exempt from any Federal ESA listing of the species”, said Dr. Ron Bruch, former Chief of Fisheries and Leader of the statewide Sturgeon Management Team for the WI Department of Natural Resources.

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Wisconsin Republicans Call for Transparency, Fairness in School Referendums

(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin legislators are pushing for more transparency in the school referendum process in the state.

The proposal comes after 169 out of 241 school ballot referenda in 2024 elections were approved by voters at a cost of $4.4 billion to taxpayers.

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, proposed bills that would require local governments and school boards to include information on the ballot about how much the difference in taxes would for a median-valued home in the community resulting from the referendum.

“Referendums are opportunities for voters to make important decisions about how their tax dollars should be spent,” Allen said. “Good decision making requires transparency in the information provided to voters.”

A second bill would protect school districts from losing state funding when other districts go to referendum.

“It was a shock to many to learn that the massive school referendum passed in Milwaukee would take away vital state funding from over 300 other school districts,” Allen said. “It’s only fair that large referendums in one district should not negatively affect other school districts.”

A Legislative Fiscal Bureau report last year analyzed by Badger Institute showed that a $252 million Milwaukee referendum would cost Madison, Waukesha and Racine $2 million a year in state funding while Appleton and West Bend would lose more than $1 million each year.

The impact is due to tax base equalization, which means that “a school district's property tax rate does not depend on the property tax base of the district, but rather on the level of expenditures.”

The bill states that any school referendum of over $50 million dollars should be paid for by the district that votes for the referendum instead of taking away money from shared school funding.

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