Out of our minds, with guns blazing

Once again, it's hard not to write about the gun mania that has overtaken our politics. What is this about, really? What is it about this culture that has made getting as many of us armed and dangerous as possible something so essential to the feeling of cultural and ego-identity satisfaction, proclaiming rights not articulated in the Constitution as constitutional.

Let's be more honest than we are usually allowed: There really is no right to concealed or open carry of individual weapons anywhere in the Constitution - this is a figment of the fantasies of an amazingly successful and aggressive gun lobby known as the National Rifle Association.

Oh, and it is also an incredible distraction from what truly ails us as a culture. It's a way to stir up that mythical thing called 'the base,' making that 'base' feel good about themselves while all the drivers that are making life increasingly stressful and eroding its quality go unaddressed because certain people are benefiting rather lavishly from the status quo - from the increasing stress and suffering.

We cannot even have a mandatory 4 hours of training to get a concealed carry license. We cannot have this minute percentage of the hours required to drive a car in order to carry around, hidden from view, a lethal weapon that in the emotion of a bad moment could be used in very, very bad ways. Police officials are not pleased.

State Sen. Lena Taylor was the lone Democrat to join the Repubs on this one. So, Ms. Taylor, what's with that?!?!  Explain, please, because I was with you when you left the state earlier this year (bless you and the WI 14), but you have lost me now. Last June, you referred to guns as 'works of art,' and now you believe these works of art should not require actual training in how to use them. Put a paintbrush in just anyone's hands and see how many works of art actually appear. Any 'art' requires training. But let's also quit this inane NRA-pleasing hyperbole - guns are not a work of art. They are at best a form of sport, and at worst, well, you know, Gabby Giffords, for example, and then a lot of things in between.

Some progressives speculate that Taylor wants to run for state office and thinks this may be a path in that direction. If so, my heart is heavy. I suppose next will come campaign donations from the powerful NRA.

And this is what happens to our poor democracy. From the Uppity Wisconsin link above:

"In the most recent poll, done in May by a national polling firm for the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE), voters statewide opposed concealed carry by a 60%-32% margin. By almost 3 to 1 (60%-21%) they said they would feel less safe if concealed weapons were allowed in public, and by a 2 to 1 margin (48%-23%) they said they were less likely to support a candidate who backs concealed carry."

But you see, the opinions of voters and majorities like these simply do not have the same representative power in public office as the clout of special interests like the NRA - and Americans for Prosperity, and Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and Club for Growth, and the consortium of right-wing billionaires who are preparing for 2012 elections. If you care about our democracy, please read this NY Times article from the other day:

Outside Groups Eclipsing GOP as Hub of Campaigns

I try never to exaggerate, but this comprises the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy in my lifetime, and it has been brought to you in large part by our corporate bought Supreme Court justices, especially this Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas era. You see, while everyone was focused on Roe vs Wade as these guys were being considered, the real agenda just passed us by - that what the right really wanted was a court that would give absolute rights to the power of money and large corporations.

Not unlike the way the gun rights issue has just been used and abused in our state. Manipulation of people's anxieties, fears, and prejudices is a very dangerous game, and it is right now being played masterfully by the extreme right wing.

If we want our democracy, we will have to struggle mighty hard to gain it back. I, for one, am getting tired of seeing my government in the hands of those who do not have the well-being of my state and its people at heart. It will be a long slog, but it starts with getting corporate money and unlimited funds from the richest 1% out of our politics.

Repubs about to suppress voting rights, but approve dirty water

Good job, Senate Repubs!  Sometime this week you will approve a law to make it more difficult for poor people, the elderly, and students to vote - and for this you will spend millions of dollars.  Meanwhile, you just voted to overturn a DNR regulation requiring communities to disinfect their water because you do not want to create 'hardship' for local budgets. Presumably, the cost of getting sick from water contaminated with bacteria will only be paid by the one who gets sick.

Less access to voting rights; dirtier water. Sounds about right for these guys.

Me, too!

Paper this morning says the new Voter I.D. law will cost more than $7 million, much of that to cover costs of free state I.D.s for those without drivers' licenses. This measure was included because Repubs are trying to avoid a court challenge - making people pay for an I.D. in order to vote would indeed amount to a poll tax and would therefore be unconstitutional.

So they are willing to pay for this measure which will make it harder for some groups of folks to vote, but they are not willing to make communities pay to disinfect drinking water to stave off bacterial illnesses.

The priorities of these Repubs get clearer. From the JS article linked above:

"What you really want to do is suppress the vote of people who don't think like you or look like you," Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) told Republicans.

Yes. They know it; we know it. The underlying racism here is not all that hard to see. Repubs have wanted this law for a long time, but it was blocked by a Democratic governor. But the overwhelming support in this state for Barack Obama back in 2008 filled them with alarm. That support was bouyed by two groups whose access to the polls has just been made more difficult - urban African-Americans, especially the poor and unemployed, and students. The Repub victory of 2010 giving them control of both legislative houses gave them the opportunity at last to fulfill this great longing to suppress the voter turnout of those most likely to vote against them. These guys know exactly what they're doing.

Meanwhile, the fraud these Repubs are so bent on avoiding? Doesn't exist.

The measure could prevent people from voting in another's name, but not the most common form of voter fraud - felons voting while on state supervision.

The state Department of Justice and Milwaukee County district attorney's office have prosecuted 20 cases of voter fraud from the November 2008 election. None involves people voting in someone else's name at the polls.

I await the outcry from this state. I await the boisterous movement that challenges this legislation. I await the pushback, the fervent impassioned defense of the broadest possible voting rights which is the rock bottom core of our democracy.

I don't see it yet.

Vital programs, human & political rights, all lined up on the Walker/Fitzgerald chopping block - unless democracy takes the knife from their hands

What they want is to dismantle the public sector as much as possible and privatize whatever they can get their hands on. What they want is a world in which corporations are free to make as much money as they want, CEOs and shareholders, with as few constraints as possible (like freedom to pollute, to not pay taxes, to make profits in prisons and schools, freedom to pay workers as little as possible, etc.), to surrender the inner cities to poverty because there's nothing in it for them to create programs that would generate jobs, housing, good education for workers they will never need.

You get the idea. I don't usually do a blog post on Sunday but will not be at my computer in the morning, so here's my rant as this week begins. It took a whole lot of decades to make of this western industrial world something other than what is so aptly and horrifically described in a Charles Dickens novel. But that's where we're headed if the corporatist right gets its way. I wish I could say there is an effective political counter to this steamroller, but even much of the political left has been pretty ineffective in recent years.

Which is why the Madison story is so important - something emerged there that does not fit easily into anyone's attempt to stereotype the phenomenon according to the old political spectrum. What joined people together with such an amazing combination of rage and joy was the threat we all feel to our communities, our neighborhoods, to a culture in this state - flawed, yes, overly parochial, yes, tainted with all sorts of troubled history like racism and self-interest, and leave-me-alone sorts of sentiments, sure, that's all present - but a culture that in its best moments recognizes that Wisconsin is a good place to live and can be an even better place to live if we address these flaws.

Now we see a great unraveling. Look at the long list on the Walker/Fitzgerald chopping block: public education, threatened by many things, none more serious than lifting the income caps for the voucher program; voter rights, as manifested in the proposed voter I.D. law that would disenfranchise large numbers of students, poor people, legal immigrants, and elderly folks; rollback of environmental regulations and a direct threat to the Clean Air Act as enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency; lower corporate tax rates, or even the elimination of corporate taxes, despite the heavy toll they take on our resources and the services they demand (think Zoo Interchange reconstruction, as one example); intentions to privatize (out-source) more public services, meaning lower wages, no benefits, more working poor, fewer worker rights, sacrificed on the altar of defeating Dems at all costs; threatening what little public financing for elections we have now, turning them over to those with the most money to spend.

I could go on. You could each add to the list. Point is, our quality of life is under assault by the current regime, and the only counter I can see to that is the popular voice that exploded into the headlines these past couple of months. Even our Wisconsin 14 were very clear about this - they have said that they only stayed away because of the protests. They left the state not knowing what would happen, but once folks were in the streets day after day and weekend after weekend, they COULD NOT come back even though a few of them really wanted to.

Larson, Erpenbach, Taylor, Risser, and others said this - their strength came from us.

I think often of the moment when LBJ signed the civil rights legislation knowing that his Democratic Party would probably lose the South for a generation after that (prescient). But he did it because politically he had no choice; it was not only the right thing to do, it was the ONLY thing to do to save the nation from a real collapse into more chaos and violence.

The point being, it was a moment when a movement and the politics came together. The politics did not create that moment; the movement did. The movement shaped the politics and the politics had to respond. That's what happened in the weeks following the Wisconsin 14's flight to Illinois. A movement appeared, loud and raucous and energized by a feeling of popular empowerment, and the 14 determined their strategy on that basis.

And this spirit feeds the new political work - recall efforts and certainly the highest profile race for judge that we've seen in a long time, if ever; voter registration efforts; greeting the governor with protests wherever he happens to be appearing; or the record attendance at town hall meetings and community gatherings.

All of this to try to keep together what sits on the chopping block. A big knife hovers over so many programs and rules and regulations that bring quality to our lives, or at least attempt to do so, and the point is to simply take that knife from the hand that wields it.

Apathy, lethargy, lack of vigilance and participation on the part of citizens of this state are among the reasons why we are seeing our rights threatened by a state government voted in with only half of eligible voters exercising this right (and that was considered a high turnout). Now we are seeing not only what participatory democracy can do, but why it is so crucial to our well-being, to the common good and the good of the commons.

Oh, and BTW - Vote on April 5!

Photos: Margaret Swedish