Who authored the bill?

That was a question asked repeatedly at yesterday's hearing on LRB 3520, the bill designed to ease environmental protections and the permit process so that one out-of-state coal mining company can open a gaping wound in the North Woods to get iron ore to sell on the international market.

Democrats (and a whole lot of us) want to know who authored the bill and why the rush? These are begging questions, obviously, since we all pretty much know the answers. Most bills come to hearings with the author's name/s on it. The absence is a first indication that something about this bill really smells.

Thank you, Wisconsin friends

I'm taking a break from blogging until Monday. But I wanted to offer some words of gratitude here for this Thanksgiving week.

First, I want to thank all you folks out there gathering signatures on recall petitions as the weather gets colder and nastier. I want to thank especially those people standing with their clipboards amidst the crowds at Lambeau Field on Sunday. I have no doubt you received a load of grief from many fans, evidenced by the fear on the face of one young man as I approached him, and his relief when I cheered him on.

I want to thank the tens of thousands of people who showed up in Madison many times this year, including this past Saturday, for your good spirit as you reclaim space for the voices of those silenced in this repressive, divisive atmosphere created by the politics of exclusion of the current state government.

I want to thank those dedicated workers who are on the front lines dealing with the impacts on real human beings of the cuts in health care programs, education, and other essential services. I want to thank dedicated public sector workers who hang in there despite the demonization of them that is all the rage these days from the political right, including those who have been picking up our leaves and who will be plowing our snow this winter. What would we do without you?

And a special shout-out of thanks to public school teachers who these days seem to be on so many Repub dart boards. I don't get it, and this, too, shall pass. What you do is so important.

I want to thank the Occupiers who have sent a burst of energy into our movements for social justice, fairness, and decency, and for helping to make the concentration of wealth part of our national conversation - finally!!

I want to once again thank the Wisconsin 14 for their witness, for taking the drastic step that helped bring the true intentions of the Walker/Fitzgerald brothers into the light of day. You also helped reinvigorate popular democracy showing that sometimes elected officials will actually respond to, even take risks on behalf of, the people they represent.

This is a beautiful state full of good, good people. Yet, even as I give thanks here, I am aware that right in my own city there are thousands of people who are suffering from deep poverty, discrimination, and a special kind of urban hopelessness. As we give thanks, let's also remember that we have to do better than this.

While we worry about worker rights, let's also worry about poverty. While we worry about protecting wages and benefits in the public sector, let's also remember those with no wages or benefits. While we loudly defend our democratic rights, let's remember those whose voices are barely heard amidst all the noise, who are most likely to be shoved farther to the margins by the current regime.

Let's remember that our struggle is not a just one if we are only defending our own interests and the interests of our particular sector, union, or interest group. Our struggle is only just if it has at its foundation a concern for the well-being of all, for the common good and the good of the commons.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Need for serious recall

So the campaign to recall Scott Walker is now underway, and there will be others yet to come, making for a wild political year. It's Recall Season in Wisconsin. Some of my friends and colleagues know I have at times expressed a certain skepticism - not because I don't think Walker needs recalling - he played politics of deception to get elected and politics of exclusion once in office, and the trail of money supporting him over the years has yet to be fully explored - but because of concerns about its prospects for success.

If this does not succeed, please, Wisconsin friends, do not become demoralized. This is a hard thing to do when even many Walker opponents are uncertain about using recall as an expression of political disagreement, however profound. He was elected, the wisdom goes, so let him serve his term and oust him in the next election.

But then others say, but just look at all the damage after only one year in office...

So we'll see how this goes. Most news pundits continue to focus their coverage on the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers and the undermining of the union recertification process itself. We do have a fiercely anti-union politics in this country right now, and this really ought to have surprised no one. Follow the path from Reagan to now. The politics of the corporate right has been taking over our national politics from the bottom up and using slick media tools to ramp up this anti-labor sentiment - along with bogus emotional issues like gun rights, abortion rights, and gay marriage, great tools of manipulation that hide the real agenda of the corporate right.

But if this remains the heart of the public debate, I fear this will not only not succeed but erode the politics of the state further. Because what is really needed is a politics of solidarity that centers on the situation of our state's most threatened populations - the poor, the discriminated against, the disabled, the elderly, immigrants, students, and all sorts of 'marginal' populations (only marginal because our culture puts them on the margins - not only Repubs do this). The advocacy work of the unions themselves needs to be about this solidarity, not only about protecting the interests of their members. The more labor joins with others in that solidarity, the more positive impact this campaign might have on Wisconsin's political culture.

Let's remember, please, that most public sector workers actually work on behalf of these very populations. That's why their demands matter. It's a question of putting the interests of those they serve at the top of their publicly expressed concerns. Many people think of these workers as spoiled or over-compensated, rather than providing vital services that meet the needs of the populations that, you know, have those needs.

The problems this state faces are abundant and frightening. Our state is in the hands of people who have little regard for the majority of us, especially workers and poor people, or for the lands, forests, and waters that make up the beauty and wonder that is Wisconsin. Collective bargaining rights may be the least of our worries if we allow mining companies, developers, and corporate polluters like Georgia-Pacific and immense industrial dairy farmers, to run our state politics, to write our laws and then hand them to the Fitzgerald brothers for passage in the statehouse. Think about the clash between environmental groups and unions over the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline extension. Unions want jobs for their members. Ecologists and climate scientists see the pyrrhic nature of this demand, knowing how the oil tar sands pose a threat to the planet whose consequences are beyond imagining - though we are beginning to imagine it.

There won't be any good union jobs in a world facing ecological collapse.

Or, closer to home, think iron ore mine in the Hurley area - unions also see good jobs while the Bad River Band and environmentalists see the imminent ruin of land and forest, and grave threats to a watershed relied on by many for drinking water.

We need a serious recall - a recalling of values and principles, a recalling of a social contract that understood that inequity and injustice is built into the capitalist system and therefore a strong publicly funded social safety net is required to keep those injustices from tipping into social unraveling and chaos.

We need a recall of the interrelationship between humans and their eco-communities, and how if you unravel those communities, if you ruin and toxify them, you threaten the future of the human as well.

I hope this campaign will focus on the corruption of our politics by billionaires like the Koch brothers who use Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and their vast wealth as tools of deception and manipulation of our people. I hope the campaign helps people realize that all this passionate focus on issues like gun rights have been part of that manipulation, great distractions that keep the public focus away from the concentration of wealth and erosion of democracy itself that is what is really at stake here (I get to carry my gun in my belt, who cares if my water is giving me and my children cancer?).

I hope the recall is a recall of what democracy really is and that it will promote a renewal of democratic culture by helping people realize what is really happening here, and how Wisconsin has become a political center for the most anti-democratic tendencies in the country, a testing ground, if you will, for how far these people can go.

I hope it is a recall of the value of dialogue, mutual respect, cooperation and compromise, the supremacy of the right to human well-being within healthy eco-communities over the right to wealth generation and corporate profit-making, the importance of neighborhood and community if we are to return to a social and cultural sanity that is being lost amidst the noise being fomented by these rightists to keep us from caring about one another.

Yes, we need a recall - a really profound one.

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All photos: Margaret Swedish

Courage, Scott? Really?

Sometimes when the gov is quoted, I just cringe. Really, it can be quite embarrassing.

Here's Walker speaking at the annual Repub convention about the coming recall elections: "I'm convinced this isn't just about the (Republican) majority in the state Senate. This isn't just about where the Legislature is headed in the state of Wisconsin. This is ultimately about courage."

Oh please, get a grip. This is no more about courage than it was to bust unions and open the state for business. Being a tool of the corporate right hardly takes courage. Standing up to them - and to you Repubs who are their tools - that does take courage in the face of the relentless money and media assault against those trying to mount opposition to your anti-democratic agenda.

The word 'courage' is reserved for those working in the face of extraordinary odds to provide a life of dignity for their families as you rip apart their social safety nets, their plans for retirement, their good-paying jobs, and replace them with, well, poor-paying jobs, as you make a fierce full-out assault on public education, mass transit, environmental regulations and a whole host of programs that have to do with our quality of life.

Courage is what it will take to win back the civil and political rights (including the right to vote) that you have put under assault with your mania to achieve power for the corporate right over our government.

When your Repubs in the legislature take away rights, close down debate on legislation, attempt quick votes sometimes in the dead of night, yell at your opposition and try to stifle their voices - what you show is cowardice, not courage. And you know what it's really about, gov? It's not about courage, it's about the Repub majority in the state Senate. It's about politics, gov. You know it, and we know it. It's about where power will rest in this state, in the hands of the corporate right and their paid-for politicians, or in the people who are the rock bottom foundation of any real democracy.

Stifling broad democratic participation reveals fear and cowardice, reveals awareness that what you are trying to do cannot face up to broad democratic participation. Courage - that's what it will take to win back the rights taken away by the fearmongers and those with dubious or hidden agendas.

Once again, the only way to win back what is being taken by the right not only in Wisconsin but around the country is by way of a new civil rights movement with an umbrella big enough to embrace all the vulnerable populations that are being marginalized, impoverished, and disenfranchised under the current regime.

The assault on our public life goes on - comes down to what kind of world we want, and for whom

It's hard to keep up. They come at us fast and furious, as if trying to overwhelm by the sheer volume of the assaults on our Wisconsin democracy and culture, such as it is in these days of the great polarizing divide. I believe that divide has been beautifully manufactured and manipulated by those with enormous financial resources and rightist courts that allow them to use those resources to purchase our political system - those who stand to benefit from the great divide.

We have family members, friends, neighbors that don't talk to each other anymore, while these guys continue to make off with our wealth, the wealth of the common good and the good of the commons. Trust me, people like Hannity, Beck, and Karl Rove love it when we don't get along. Political paralysis and unraveling of democracy suits them fine.

Anyway, a couple of stories raise these basic questions again of what kind of society we want. Competing visions are at work here, and one of them has a fierce hatred of the 'masses,' the 'common,' workers, the poor, the vulnerable and marginalized. And many of them don't like African-American presidents either, if we are honest about it.

Revealing, this unnecessary anti-Obama rant from one of Scott Walker's campaign donors, the now-infamous David Koch, who supports the gov on things like dismantling union rights and environmental protections in our state. Sarah Owen of New York magazine approached Koch at a fundraiser in Manhattan and he said he didn't understand why Prez Obama was getting so much credit for the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

"He just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is...The real hard work was done by the intelligence and the SEALs."

Um, David, that's what presidents do. They set policy goals, in this case catching up with the 9/11 guy. They are given the options presented by the professionals who work for them and then they weigh those options and make a decision. Then they live with the consequences of those decisions. Takes a lot of guts, something you may not appreciate, protected as you are by your billions, your walled mansions, your many minions.

But the real attitude is barely hidden in this outburst.  From New York magazine: 

Obama is "a hardcore socialist," Koch told us, "and he’s marvelous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He’s scary to me."

Scary, scary Obama. 'Uppity' of him to take so much credit, right?  C'mon, we all know what's going on here. The Koch family background with its roots in the John Birch Society, their funding of rightist, anti-democratic groups with clear racist tendencies (like the Tea Party birthers), makes this obvious.

Okay, that's my long aside. The real issue of this post has to do with the Wisconsin we want. On a smaller but culturally significant scale is Walker's assault on the arts. His budget calls for a 66% cut in the Wisconsin Arts Board budget.  I leave it you to read the details and consequences of this, well spelled out in a column today by the Journal Sentinel's art critic, Mary Louise Schumacher.

I want to emphasize one of her key points:  "Can you think of any great nation or civilization that did not support the arts in some way?" But, sadly, there are people who don't think of art and culture as public 'goods' to be fostered and developed for the good of all.

Again, what kind of society do we want?

Or this, about job creation. Now, creating jobs is not a project that submits itself to a single recipe, for instance: lower taxes on business, allow them freedom to use and exploit labor and resources free of government constraint, focus on projects that build roads and use of lots of fossil fuels, things that wreak havoc on nature, and, according to the gospel of these industries and Scott Walker, you carve a sure path to lower unemployment and greater prosperity. And if you don't do these things, we will not create jobs.

Really? Actually, creating work opportunities is another way of envisioning the world we want. You can create jobs that jeopardize the future, enrich the few, do more damage to the earth, guarantee lower wages, consign more people to low-wage work (like the 62,000 MacDonalds jobs that we are supposed to be celebrating as 'progress'), and in that process create one kind of society.

Or you can begin to create new work opportunities by addressing some of our key challenges. For example - how to move people around in a world growing more congested and more addicted to oil with every passing day. You can grow the congestion, you can pave over more of our Wisconsin countryside, or you can move to other cleaner forms of transportation.

So, here you go - just announced this morning: thanks to Walker's hostility towards federal money for high-speed rail, we have just been cut out of funds to upgrade the Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha.

We can create jobs making Highway 41 into a freeway, building more roads to satisfy the road-building lobby that backs Walker, or we can create jobs that will develop clean high speed rail. Jobs are also about the vision of the world we want. One path is sustainable and the other is not.

Another example: the headline in today's local section: Walker, GOP reversing green initiatives. You can create jobs by making the world dirtier, adding more and more toxic chemicals and other poisons into our air, water, and soil, make more of us sick (which helps grow the private health care systems), and jeopardize the future of our kids and their kids. Or, you can create jobs by building the new clean more locally based sustainable economies. You can create jobs in the effort to clean up the environment, to create the technologies for clean renewable fuels, for greater efficiency in how we use energy, etc., etc.  Lots of dynamism in that kind of economy, as other nations have already experienced - and we used to, or at least had hoped to.

This state and the current regime are bent on old technologies and economic development models that will be dying out this century as the world moves through this tumultuous time, the era in which the whole industrial/technological project begins to reach its limits. Sadly, this state is moving in a direction that will leave us ill-prepared.

What kind of world do we want? I don't like the direction this current state government is turning towards. It's getting uglier, less empowering, less human, less creative, more toxic physically and spiritually. It is bringing out the worst in us, not the best - racist sentiments on the surface, folks eager to carry more guns around, unwarranted fears being stirred up to set us against one another.

Or we can try something else, set a different course with a different vision of what our world could look like - if we could lay down the fears and realize that we are all in this together. Together in animosity and resentment in a diminished environment bent on our fierce individualism - that is one possibility.

I am looking for ways to create another...

So, is destroying government a lot of fun?

I mean, as Scott Walker, the Koch brothers, the Greater Milwaukee Committee, the Bradley Foundation, the Fitzgerald brothers, plot the end of Wisconsin state government except as a service to business, the presence of federal programs in the state, the evisceration of municipal government through takeover schemes - are they having fun?  Do they sit around tables in dark rooms having a good laugh knowing the chaos and suffering to come?

Really - what are these people made of?

One example, the privatization of the food stamp program, a for-profit private business deciding who gets them and who does not, therefore, in many cases, who eats and who does not. This would also mean the disappearance of federal funds for the program. It would mean, really, the end of the program - which is what they want ultimately, the end of government programs, the demise of the public sector, the one accountable to you and me.

Second example, the evisceration of the public school system, including yet another transfer of tax dollars to wealthy families, this time to use for vouchers in the 'choice' program. They do this by eliminating the income cap for the program. Here we go again, another scheme to transfer more of our public wealth from the 'masses' to the rich. It is also a way of further abandoning Milwaukee, with well over a quarter of its population living in poverty.  Why waste potential profit-making dollars on the poor?

Third example, the evisceration of public transit, a vital element of any city's hopes to create employment options for the poorest among us. They have to get to work. They have to get to job interviews. They have to get to job training programs. A waste of money!  Poor people needing to get to work?! Business is moving out of the city's core and apparently doesn't care about the neighborhoods and the people who are being abandoned.

They don't care.

Fourth example, in secret they have been preparing a plan that would allow Walker to take over municipal governments whose financial practices do not meet Walker's standards (not his because he is not that smart, but the standards being written for him). They won't do this because they love our city. They will do this rubbing their hands with glee to finally pick on the city that picked on Walker, or that Koch and their ilk see as a drain on the economy and on potential investment income.

Oh, and they want to completely disband and eliminate county government as well, you know, while they're at it.

Friends, Walker & Co. are seeking to hand over our state government and its services to the private sector, to corporations - for profit. Not for you and me, not to deliver services, but to make a profit. What they are talking about is a massive transfer of our public wealth and resources to private business.

If this is allowed to happen, if it does not meet fierce resistance, then don't even worry about their assaults on voter rights and their voter suppression measures - because there won't be much left to vote for.  Once these services are privatized, another election won't reverse that process. You know, all those contracts that will have been signed. Once you eliminate government agencies and programs, getting them back is a monumental challenge, one that could take another generation.

Once again, I only wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to stir things up. I would sleep better at night if that was the case. The real battle for the future of Wisconsin has been engaged, as Sen. Mark Miller so famously said upon the triumphant return of the Wisconsin 14. Are we up to this battle?

This is getting crazy - the latest assault on democracy from Walker & Co.

Really, folks, you think these people would at least pretend that they honor democratic government, the three co-equal branches of government, the laws and rules of the political process.

But when they don't get their way, they just steamroll right over democracy itself. Even when a court slows them down, they go on as if courts, as if the judicial branch of government, is a mere annoyance, something to get out of their way.

They, of course, being the corporate-run and increasingly dominant wing of the Republican Party, the one trying not to govern our state but to rule it.

The latest trick is pretty enraging. A judge issues a restraining order prohibiting publication by the Sec. of State of a proposed law to take away collective bargaining rights from public workers, and so they publish it anyway - somewhere else.

Read all about it here. Now, the Walker/Fitzgerald administration is playing cute with the law, saying the order only mentions publication by the Sec. of St. in the Wisconsin State Journal and so now that it is published somewhere else, the law is now in effect. But here is what the order actually states:

“I do, therefore, restrain and enjoin the further implementation of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10. The next step in implementation of that law would be the publication of that law by the secretary of state. He is restrained and enjoined from such publication until further order of this court.”

Okay, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi who issued the order back on March 18 does stop the 'next step' in implementation of the law, publication of it by the Sec. of State - because that would be the next step. But the first sentence tells you everything you need to know about the intent of the order.

Meanwhile, Republicans are also trying to chill speech. The other day, as you know, Professor William Cronon of UW-Madison wrote an Opinion essay for the NY Times that rather unflatteringly compared the political style of Scott Walker to Joe McCarthy, in the sense that his tactics are causing profound polarization and demonizing of his opponents. He accuses Walker of making a radical break with our state's 'core values.'

In his recent research into the sudden emergence of similar and very well organized legislative campaigns in a number of states, Cronon had delved into the key role being played by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-sponsored, secretive organization that is behind much of the agenda of gutting state government, slashing corporate taxes, busting unions, and privatizing public services that is all the rage in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Florida...

You see, there is a plan afoot here, one that has been funded and pushed for decades and which now is having real impact on our local and state governments, not to mention that Tea Party crowd that worked their way into the House of Representatives with the intent to shut down government and create chaos.

From SourceWatch, an excellent resource if you are looking for background into all sorts of organizations, their sponsors, funders, and agendas:

"The organization [ALEC] has been semi-secretive (makes knowing its members difficult information to find), has been highly influential, has operated quietly in the United States for decades, and received remarkably little scrutiny from journalists, media or members of the public during that time. Superficially, ALEC’s membership is mostly made up of thousands of state legislators, each of whom pays a nominal membership fee to attend ALEC's retreats and receive model legislation. ALEC’s corporate contributors pay far more to gain access to legislators and distribute to them corporate-crafted legislation. Thus, while ALEC's membership appears to be mostly from the public sector, the groups funding is almost entirely private sector. In reality, ALEC's public-sector membership dues account for only around one percent of ALEC’s annual revenues. 81.7% of ALEC's income comes from corporations, while just 1.3% comes from legislator dues.

"ALEC claims to be nonpartisan, but its free-market and pro-business goals are clear. The result of ALEC's efforts has been a consistent pipeline of special interest legislation being funneled into state capitols across the United States... One of ALEC's primary funders are the trusts associated with the controversial Koch family, that includes David Koch, a billionaire and one of the leaders of one of the richest privately held corporations in the world, Koch Industries."

Anyone still think the real agenda here is about deficits and balancing budgets?  Anyone think that Walker really believes the state is 'broke' and there's nothing we can do about it except to gut government, pull the rug out from under the middle class, give our natural resources away, pollute our environment, and throw more of our people into poverty?

I urge anyone who reads this to click on the link to the SourceWatch page on the ALEC and then pass it on to your friends. It is vital that we know this - otherwise, we will be waging the wrong struggle.

As I have written before, the only way to effectively counter this kind of corporate power over the body politic is by mass democracy, cross-sector solidarity, a coming together of mutual interests across class and economic lines, a sense that we are all in this together, all threatened by the same forces, all united in our desire for a decent and democratic state government which priority is the well-being of all our citizens, with the broadest participation, especially of the poor and marginalized among us, those most endangered by the policies these budget bills seek to put in place.

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BTW - Cronon has a terrific study guide on the ALEC and similar groups on his new blog. Click here.  And you may be interested to know that since the controversy lit up after his piece in the Times, his blog has had more than TWO MILLION visits. The ALEC is trying to tamp down the attention. In attacking Cronon and seeking to chill his speech and others who dare expose these things, the sun is shining brighter and brighter on their intentions.

The Struggle in Wisconsin - "We will not lose our love for each other..."

Thanks to one of my Facebook friends for posting this video (below). It is sad, angering, disturbing, eloquent, fervent, and resounding with hope by its end.

Friends, we are in danger of losing something very special about this state. What this video does is list some of these potential losses, threats to our people and our state from Governor Walker's proposed budget cuts and radical changes to our tax structures. But what it also affirms is what can help us overcome this moment of real danger to the quality of our lives and our communities - a commitment to join together in a greater solidarity bound by the values expressed in this film, not least of which is love for one another.

I don't minimize the real chasms among us.  There remains racism and ethnic discrimination, there remains divides among classes and cultures, there remains a strain of individualism that resists seeing that we are all connected by the ecological, economic, and social relationships within which we live, there are tensions between rural and urban communities, and more. But there is also something that binds us, especially in moments of crisis and danger, our love for Wisconsin, our love for our families, our communities, and the state's magnificent natural beauty.

What many of us have experienced in the streets of Madison and among so many friends, family members, and neighbors impacted or threatened by the policies that Walker and rightist Republicans are trying to impose on this state, is a sense that we are all in this together - and that the only way to engage in this struggle is, therefore, together.

So maybe this difficult time will become a very special time in the State of Wisconsin. If what is communicated in this video remains the spirit of a new solidarity movement, if we keep this a work of the heart, then something special can be reborn here - out of crisis, a new beginning.

For those who receive this by email, if you don't see the video, click here for the video.

Messiah complex

It's just never good when a politician has a Messiah complex. Things get scary because the motivation for certain decisions become impervious to exigencies like responding to actual needs, cries, crises, or the voices of the people one is elected to serve. Religion compromises politics for a reason.  And these days within the US political culture, religion is playing one terrifying role, being used to justify assaults on basic human and political rights, to set folks against one another, to excuse even lying and manipulation in the name of God's purpose as one defines that.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Religion sets people apart, fosters certain identities around a set of beliefs. Government needs to bring together, to represent all the people and to serve their needs. Democratic government must not discriminate among religious beliefs, or to argue about who has a hold on religious, dogmatic, 'truth.' It cannot 'rule' based on religious beliefs if it is to remain democracy. Rather, in a democracy, government must struggle to hold a balance of competing interests for the sake of the common good. When a person governing claims an exclusive mission from God, danger sets in, hubris, arrogance, intransigence.

And so our governor, Scott Walker.  I had been wondering about this for a while now, about his personal motivations for setting himself apart from the people he is supposed to serve, then came upon these recent stories which reveal that this guy really does believe he is serving God by his intransigent political positions. Worse, he believes he was chosen for this - and that is the scariest thing of all.

Check out this story, Why Walker won't back down from the Wisconsin State Journal.  An excerpt:

The governor gave a hint at how he looks at the world, and his place in it, in a speech he gave to the Christian Businessmen's Committee in 2009. Talking about his first, unsuccessful run for governor, Walker summed up his approach to life as "trust and obey" God.

Walker, the son of a Baptist minister, relayed to the crowd two anecdotes that he credits with giving him political perspective.

One involved the story of Jesus and Peter. In the story, Peter walked on water with Jesus' help, until he lost faith and sank into the water.

The other story involved two sailors, one of whom made the mistake of watching the waves break against the boat. Seeing his colleague was getting seasick, the other sailor advised the man to ignore the water and focus at a point on the horizon. That, he said, would help him ride out the storm.

"Keep looking out at the horizon, to the path Christ is calling you to follow," Walker told the crowd. "Don't focus on the waves, and choppy water."

When people start making personal comparisons like this, the way they see their role in this world, well, let's just say this attitude is not democracy-friendly; it does not respond to the mere presence of throngs in the streets trying to get their grievances addressed. Once a person believes 'God is making me do this,' that they can walk on water, how can they make a decision to let God down?

There's a reason a healthy democracy, especially one as diverse as this one, separates church and state, seeks to avoid imposition of religious belief over the body politic.

This, too, from The Progressive, Scott Walker Believes He's Following Orders From the Lord.  I had no idea God was so involved in balancing public budgets. I mean, if Walker was trying to rule the world or command armies, but really, gov...

"Walker said that God has told him what to do every step of the way, including about what jobs to take, whom to marry, and when to run for governor."

Oh God help us. Really. This is all way too small for God, don't you think?

What is NOT small is the suffering this causes, real human suffering, to God's children, if you will. It is interesting to me that in these protestations of obedience to 'the Lord,' pretty much all of the Gospel is left out. Don't hear much of anything from Luke, for instance, often called the 'Gospel of the Poor.'

But there are stories like this - that Walker's budget proposals will kick thousands of elderly folks in our state off SeniorCare prescription drug benefits and force them into Medicare Part D plans, raising their costs exponentially. Really, I can see God now going after the most vulnerable among us, saying, 'Woe to you poor who want the rich to pay their fair share for the common good; but blessed are you rich for finding ways to avoid taxes and other social responsibilities.' I can hear God saying, 'Let the rich get richer, for that is the way to enter the Kingdom of God.'

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Now here's the thing: Walker says this change will save the state $15 million.  $15 million.  That's it. The Koch brothers, his benefactors, have a personal worth of some $43 billion. They could write a check for $15 million and it would be pocket change for them.  But they get tax breaks and an easing of regulations for operating polluting businesses here instead.

This religion stuff is offensive and dangerous.  So I await some prophetic voices from the faith community to speak on these things, loudly.

Meanwhile, another article to make one take pause about what is going on now in the governor's house: Has Walker Become Unrecognizable?

Something is going on here, friends, that is deeply disturbing.

Scott Fitzgerald spills the beans on Fox

If I said this, many folks would get mad at me, tell me I'm making reckless accusations. But there it was on Fox - Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald telling Fox News that the union busting measures just passed in the Wisconsin legislature and signed by Gov Walker are really about politics, about defeating Obama in 2012.  Ain't got nothin' to do with the welfare of our people here, or balancing budgets.



Now let's couple this budget debate facade with one of the other things going on here - an attempt by the Republicans in the two houses to suppress the vote. These guys are prepared to pass legislation that would impose the strictest restrictions on voter rights in the nation. The proposed voter ID law would impact groups like elderly, students, and the urban poor (tend to vote Democrat). It would end same-day voter registration, an initiative that has increased voter participation.

Here is how one reporter, DeWayne Wickham in USA Today, describes this campaign to crush voter participation:

Walker's bill is a shoot-the-wounded assault on the Democratic Party's base, which when combined with a voter ID law that's also being pushed through Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Legislature, could put the Badger State firmly in GOP hands for decades.

The proposed ID law would restrict the right to vote to people with military IDs, driver's licenses and a state-issued ID card. Passports and photo ID cards issued to college students (even those from state universities) would not be acceptable.

College students and public unions are pillars of the Democratic base. Wisconsin's ID law would suppress voter participation among students. A 2005 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute study found that 82% of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds did not have a driver's license in the ZIP codes for neighborhoods near Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The study also showed that statewide, the majority of college-age blacks and Hispanics lacked driver's licenses.

What Fitzgerald admits to Fox News ought to wake up anyone still sleeping in this state. The Koch brothers, the Karl Rove-funded gov and Fitzgerald brothers, are using anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional means to suppress voter participation at the same time as they attempt to gut the organized power of workers via their unions. It shouldn't matter whether or not you like public sector unions or what party you belong to; what ought to matter to all of us is this attempt to buy, manipulate, and undermine our democracy, even our elections, which ought to be held sacred, by Republicans in the state house and legislature beholden to the corporate interests that fund them, that make their political careers.

Wisconsin, do not let these people steal our democracy from us!

See you in Madison!

Let's name what this really is - racism and plutocracy

Okay, let's start with Jon Stewart's 'Moment of Zen' from last night's show:

The Daily Show - Moment of Zen - Ronald Reagan Supports Unions
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

That's for starters. Be careful who you claim to emulate - can come back to bite you. If Ronald Reagan is your hero, gov, how' bout you quote this? Guess you prefer what he did to PATCO. Sad history, really. Still reverbates.

So let's move on to this article from the Journal Sentinel local section today:

Bus system, county services threatened

If you want to destroy the city of Milwaukee, if you want to erode it's life, send it further into poverty, this is certainly the path to take - and Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers certainly do seem to want to do that.

The times are too urgent to try to avoid the blunt reality of what is going on here. 82% of kids in Milwaukee's public schools live in poverty. They are also overwhelmingly African-American kids.

Another way to accelerate the city's demise - get rid of residency rules for cops, firefighters, and teachers, also on the Walker/Fitzgerald legislative wish-list. This one got a big boost from Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir whose district includes Wauwatosa, the suburb where Walker lives (the one in which I also grew up, so I know of what I write here). As city life deteriorates amidst poverty and gutting of public services, losing more of the middle class to the suburbs will cost the city more in its tax base and a considerable constituency with a stake in the city's welfare.

The urgency of the times means naming this for what it is.  Here's a big part of that story:

From this article in the morning paper:  "...for the first time in the city of Milwaukee, blacks now outnumber whites, and minorities outnumber whites by roughly 2 to 1."

This is my hometown, friends. I know it really, really well. I grew up on Joe McCarthy and Martin Luther King being a scary communist and, when a mixed family dared look at a house for sale across the alley (man from the short-lived nation of Biafra, wife US Caucasian Montessori school teacher, kids beautifully brown), neighbors whispering in the backyards about what they could do to stop them from buying it. (They failed, and for a long time my Mother was one of the few on the block who talked to them).

I know it well. White flight has been going on in my town for a very long time.

And as life in the city deteriorates, what commitment will middle class folks have to rebuild hope in this community?

Let's name it for what it is: the father of the Koch brothers, that would be Fred, was on the governing board of the far, far, far, anti-communist fascist, anti-democratic John Birch Society. Frank Rich described the Koch family background in a column last year. Even if you are not a Rich fan, his facts are, well, facts.

Read more. Learn more - because we must if we are to save our democracy, not just here in Wisconsin, but in our nation. These guys are trying to buy it and bend it to their will. I try not to be extreme.  On the other hand, check out this blog post by a journalist in Florida:

http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/08/the-koch-brothers-the-2010-election-and-the-return-of-the-john-birch-society/

Why is Scott Walker prepared to abandon the state's public schools? Okay, he's being bankrolled in part by the Koch brothers, and as we reported earlier, once he was inaugurated, Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison.  Now read this, from the link above to a blog called, The Reid Report:

When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. 

Where does the Walker/Fitzgerald agenda come from? Follow the research on the Koch brothers.

For those who don't know what the John Birch Society is, check out this link. You will learn here that the Society opposes income taxes and wants to repeal civil rights legislation (in case you still aren't sure what this is really about).  I am sad to say that the Society's home is in my state, home of both Joe McCarthy and progressive populist, Fighting Bob Lafollette. That is our cultural bifurcation - been there a long, long time.

We used to be slightly more civil about it - but it always seethed under the surface. The Kochs, Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are now trying to rule this state. And, friends, that is why the stakes here are so high.

As we just witnessed in the past 48 hours, they will use whatever means they think they can get away with to do to this state what they want to do. They are banking on our becoming riven, demoralized, frustrated, violent - they will try as they can to discredit us. We have only one weapon that can defeat this kind of power grab -

...democracy, our government taken back by the people - of them and for them. This will take great maturity and strength, a refusal to fall for their propaganda, trying to set private sector workers against public, unemployed v. employed, the poor against one another - as they continue to enrich themselves at our expense.

I have a proposal for balancing our budget, keeping government services at a high level, maintaining an experienced public work force, and supporting creation of jobs in local communities for local communities - tax these people who want to steal our state from us - tax them exorbitantly.  And if that means they decide to leave, wave good bye.

Winning an election is not the same thing as conquering the world

Let's be clear about what happened last night, what it indicates about who is in charge of the governor's house and the state legislature right now, not to mention the Senator elected last November to replace Russ Feingold.

This is a takeover of our state government by people who do not believe in democracy of, by, and for the people.  They are people who believe in the superiority of corporate executives, of billionaire-power brokers, who believe that the money empires they control ought to make laws, decide the fate of the nation, render organized expressions of workers and the poor mute or ineffective, and when opposed, simply run over us.

Senator Ron Johnson is famously a fan of Ayn Rand* whose philosophy is about exactly that, and how the elite power-brokers ought to run the world, that the masses are not smart enough to have a valid say in how business or government is run, that the elite rise to the top and ought to rule the world. Even our state and federal courts are being reshaped to reflect this view.

Just one example, Antonin Scalia, the most conservative and ideologically rigid Supreme Court justice, is highly suspicious of popular democracy. Meanwhile, he has also been wined and dined by billionaires like the Koch brothers, and you see how all this points to a particular nexus of folks around a common theme of rule by the elites.

Now throw into this corporate and cultural ideology of elitism the vasts amount of money at their disposal to control the media message, to form mystery 'interest groups' that can buy endless ads to shape a message, the creation of Fox News as a fully owned and operated tool for the dissemination of false and misleading information, yes, but mostly to stoke the flames of the racism and resentment that remain hidden deep within the heart of this political culture, then add the Supreme Court decisions that allow corporate money to flow into our political campaigns, that give corporations 'rights to personhood' under the Constitution - when you put all this together, you begin to see the larger picture here and what is really at stake in Wisconsin's political moment.

Then add this to the mix: the combination of all this corporate money wedded to a right-wing religiosity that, though calling itself Christian, bears no resemblance to the gospel of the Beatitudes, woe to you rich, Matthew 25, the story of the rich young man, or of Dives and Lazarus, much less sacrifice for the sake of others, and you have a scary grandiosity that believes what we just saw in Madison last night is the will of God, and, me, Scott Walker, the man doing this, God's wonderful instrument.

The Koch brothers and Karl Rove don't care about God or the gospel or religious belief, but they are perfectly happy to use folks who have these beliefs in the service of their cause. And that may be one of the sadder aspects of the deterioration of the nation's political discourse over the past 30 years.

Add all this together and you have a very scary era in U.S. politics. Thanks to The Progressive magazine, we now know the religious zeal that inspires our crash-and-burn governor, Scott Walker. When folks are motivated by religious zeal, feeding a sense of their own grandiose role as servant of God, look out - what happens will not be pretty. No room for compassion, compromise, or even thoughtfulness.  Lives are being tossed around, shaken up, damaged, all in the name of God, and the corporate powers smile at it all because it also means that more money will flow out of public schools to private, from the impoverished city to the affluent suburbs, from mass transit to roads and individual cars, from saving our precious natural resources to giving them away for profit, from government as service to privatization of government services also for profit.

When the Koch brothers and Karl Rove win an election, they don't believe they have won the opportunity to serve the people in the way they think will do this best. They believe they have conquered. The victory is not about service, it is about smug conquest over those they perceive as enemies, as if we are all the target of their need to get back at someone for their own deep wounds and resentments, some unhealed deep grievances of their own life stories.

A prayer from the streets

And so I strive for compassion even now because I also know we are charged not to hate our enemies, to pray for our persecutors. In this case, we need to do that in the streets, in the offices of our legislators and in the Capitol rotunda, in the recall campaigns, and in our faith communities and neighborhoods. Part of this 'prayer' is our voices raised against the injustices being perpetrated in our state and bearing witness to a different kind of society than the one these folks have in mind.

We have seen what that other society might look like in the throngs in the streets and the state Capitol in Madison these past three weeks. We've seen it in the free food, the pizzas ordered from around the world, the angry but respectful crowds, the solidarity among workers and students of all kinds, in the diversity represented there.

This is a long post. Needed to vent this on this inglorious morning in my state. Come join us in the streets of Madison on Saturday.

-------------------- 

*From a paper by Ayn Rand:

"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."

I don't want to live in a world run by people who believe this.

Photos: Margaret Swedish

Republican assault on democracy - and workers

I understand about having a 2-party system, with fairly big tents joining together folks around a certain orientation across widely divergent viewpoints. I understand the need for respect for the opponent, for decorum, for rules that allow for open debate on legislation, even when we get frustrated with the process. I appreciate that when you reduce democracy to a 2-party system, those large tents are bound to fail some of their constituents most of the time.

But when one party, frankly, begins to undermine democracy itself, this becomes extremely worrisome. When one party dispenses with laws, rules, and procedures to rule by ambush and subterfuge, seeking to brush the competing party aside as so much detritus, things have gone seriously wrong. Then we are not talking about democracy, we are talking about power grab.

This is happening in Wisconsin right now - as has been happening with the power of big money nationally, the Supreme Court vote on Citizens United, the unseemly money plays of Karl Rove, the influence of Goldman Sachs contributions on Barack Obama, or the decisive influence of Koch Industries money on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

But what happened tonight in the Wisconsin legislature is without precedent - a blatantly illegal move on the part of Republican leaders that busts the unions of public sector workers.

What happened a few hours ago is this: violating the Open Meetings law of the state, Republican Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald pulls a power play to take a vote on a bill unseen by Democrats, not clearly understood, and for which notice was not properly given. All it does is destroy 50 years of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers under Wisconsin law. What they did was take out the controversial union-busting language from the budget repair bill and pass it as a separate piece of legislation. Having argued previously that eliminating collective bargaining rights for public sector workers was definitely a fiscal issue, therefore requiring a quorum of 20 senators, suddenly Republicans said it was not a fiscal issue at all and a simple majority will do.

You 14 Democrats who left the state to prevent the quorum they once said was necessary to pass fiscal-related bills? Stay in Illinois as long as you like; we just busted the unions.  And guess what? that's what we wanted to do all along - just like you said.

If this stands, if the state attorney general and the state's courts do not block this vote from taking force, democracy in my state is in big, big trouble.

Check out the video of this hostile anti-procedure:

http://wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3885

Are all legislators subject to the laws, or just not Fitzgerald, Scott Walker, and the others who work for corporate interests? Have we really arrived at a point where one party in the majority can violate rules and laws and then prevail?

Protesters began pouring in to the Capitol as this atrocity took place. If you are anywhere near Madison this weekend, especially Saturday, join the masses in the streets.

Democracy is collapsing under the weight of this much wealth concentration

400 people in this country have more wealth and assets than half our population; that is, more wealth than 154,000,000 people COMBINED.

That is just one of the 'factoids' Michael Moore mentioned in his surprise appearance, and stirring speech, at Madison's Capitol on Saturday (see below). 

Read it again.  It is a breathtaking fact.  It goes with the graph I posted previously, and will again.

Is this really the country we want?  While wealth has been flowing to the top 1%, wages have been slipping, jobs have been disappearing, benefits are disappearing, and so is the middle class, and more and more people, including working people, are slipping into poverty.

This is the socio-economic context, that backdrop, for what is occurring in Wisconsin right now. And Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are proposing policies and budgets that will exacerbate this growing divide, an economic restructuring of this country that is turning it into a nation for the elite, run by the elite, at the service of their business interests.

For the rest of us? - only hurt is in these proposals.

We did not come to this all of a sudden. Some of us have been trying to talk about this, to shout into the wilderness, since the Reagan days when the assault on working people and the poor really began. That's what makes this graph so dramatic - this has been happening inexorably as the Republican Party became the party of corporate America, and the Democrats did their best to keep up.

Part of what makes the struggle in my state so crucial is that, thanks to the Wisconsin 14 (thanks again especially to my guy, State Sen. Chris Larson) and to the indefatigable protesters in Madison, precious time has been given us to discover things we needed to know a couple of decades ago - things they didn't want you to know. The Koch brothers did not want the notoriety they have now; they would rather work under the radar.  Too bad, guys, the curtain has been pulled away and we see now who is behind it.

Not the 'invisible hand' of a free market, but billionaires taking control of our economy, our politicians, our tax laws - and not just here, but in board rooms across the world, or in gatherings like the World Economic Forum, or in the World Trade Organization where global trade rules are written by the world political leaders and the billionaires.

Here is what becomes essential if we are to restore our democracy, to take government away from people whose interest is to privatize everything so that they have control of everything, to take our resources if they can earn profit from it, to gut the livelihoods of workers if that helps the bottom line. The sleeping giant awakened in Madison has to begin to get seriously organized for the long haul. It must build a movement. Public sector workers who have seen so much solidarity in the past 3 weeks must now give their time and energy unselfishly in return to hurting private sector workers and unemployed and those living in poverty. Without that solidarity, this glorious moment in Wisconsin will ultimately fail; without solidarity that supercedes the narrower interests of particular sectors of workers, and without a solidarity that gets voters out in huge numbers in 2012 - or in recall elections should we have them later this year - this energy will dissipate.

I think of the days of the real robber barons.  I think of how horrible the world was before workers got organized, of the days of companies savagely exploiting workers - 7 day work weeks, filthy and dangerous conditions, company towns, and more.

Some fabulously wealthy would be happy to return to such a world.  I don't want to.

Our understanding of democracy has seriously eroded

So, back from a 4-day work trip and, well, things haven't improved much in my disgruntled state, have they?  I saw Walker on the news last night and was appalled at his intransigent, nasty tone.  Seems like the guy just can't get over the fact that becoming governor does not mean he can rule by fiat - even with his party in the majority in the legislature.

What we have here is a failed education in the meaning of democracy, so let me try to explain.  We have heard slogans shouted at protesters - "You lost, get over it." We've heard Walker say that the absent Democrats are not doing their jobs, which would be to come to the Senate chamber to hand him his big victory, that their job is to vote on bills.

Okay, yes, that is part of their job, and, yes, thanks to the woeful voter turnout last November and other factors, Democrats took it on the chin, to be sure. But here's the thing about democracy: it does not end at the ballot box (some of the world's most oppressive governments have elections, after all, and in those places it does stop there) and for legislators it does not rest solely in their votes on bills. Democracy is something you engage in, and sometimes have to defend, as part of what it means to live in a democracy at all.

So democracy is also advocacy and organizing and lobbying and protesting and writing news articles and sending out updates on Facebook and ordering pizzas for folks in the streets of Madison. It means that when you see injustice or an immoral or corrupt power play, you counter with whatever democratic tools you have. And for a minority party, it can mean using perfectly legitimate means to stop a majority from becoming tyrannical, from trying to ram through legislation no one has had time to read or digest or lobby about or debate or organize for or against - in other words time to apply democracy to that proposed legislation.

Sometimes, to stop a tyrannical move, a bunch of either placid or energized politicians, not having invited such a moment in their lives, must take a drastic step in defense of democracy - like denying a legislative chamber a quorum.

It is amazing to me how nasty, ugly, bully-ish, Walker and senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald have been in the face of an action that falls well within the bounds of this democracy. One of the more dramatic such actions was that of Abraham Lincoln who leaped out a window of the Illinois state legislature to avoid a quorum. Now his action didn't last long as he was returned to the chamber. Perhaps the Wisconsin 14 learned this valuable lesson - get out of town fast - from the tactic used by this old Republican.

My Sen. Chris Larson, one of the WI 14

Here's another valuable forgotten lesson about our version of democracy. At the federal level the founders established a republic in part to avoid the potential threat of "tyranny of the majority." For that reason, minorities are given tools to fight back when threatened by this kind of tyranny. The Wisconsin 14 have done a great service to the cause of democracy by staying out long enough for us to find out what is really going on, what Walker's agenda really is, who he actually represents, who funds his campaigns, whose interests he seeks to serve. If not for this, a budget repair bill would have been imposed, not legislated, and that is not how democracy works. In a democracy, information, access to information and knowledge, is everything.

And in that knowledge come the tools the citizens of my state need in order to exercise their rights, to assert their voices before draconian changes in Wisconsin's politics and its way of life, to express their hopes and desires, to take a position on Scott Walker's budget repair bill - and right now, it just so happens that their voices have become one considerable majority in this state.

According to a poll conducted by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute just mentioned on CNN, Walker's unfavorable rating has gone from 35% last November to a whopping 53% now. It has gone up by more than 10% in just the last 3 weeks. More to the point, 65% of those polled want Walker to "negotiate with Democrats and public employee's unions in order to find a compromise solution." See this article.

Why the growing distaste for our young gov? Because in this democracy we have a governor who refuses to negotiate with his opponents, to take into consideration the voices of the tens of thousands in the streets - the people he was elected to serve - and he has treated his elected opponents as so much detritus to try to brush out of his way. A real governor learns the art of negotiation, learns how to cut deals, to make compromises, because governance is always about the balancing of competing interests represented by elected politicians, interest groups, popular organizations of all kinds, etc. etc.

Right now, across the country, and here in Wisconsin, we have lost that balance because of the power of corporate money. Organized labor, people out in the streets, folks out getting signatures for recall efforts, lawyers getting ready to take Walker to court for his alleged violations of labor laws and possible ethics violations (see prank call from the faux David Koch) - these are all tools of a democracy available to the people to try to blunt the power of money or any other form of tyranny over the majority.

Lessons in democracy. We are learning them in abundance in my state right now. The Wisconsin 14 and the folks in the streets have done more to teach us these lessons than anyone in this state in a very long time.

Power play - a nasty one

Oh goodness, Republican state senators are charging the 'Wisconsin 14' with contempt of the Senate. They're prepared to drag 'em back in handcuffs. Force is allowed 'if necessary.'

This isn't helpful.

Of course, with a threat like this, how likely is it that the Democrats will come back any time soon?

This is absurd. The unreasonableness of one side, the unwillingness to negotiate and compromise (the art of governing) when a deal is offered - we accept the budget cuts in the budget repair bill if you separate out the provision that would crush collective bargaining rights - compared to protesters chanting things like, "Let us in, please."

But what punitive measures like this do is further poison the political atmosphere. They make it harder and harder to imagine this state legislature ever working together with its current membership. Next up are law suits and recall efforts in several Senate districts targeting both Democrats and Senators.

Thus has the Scott Walker power play rendered politics in my state uglier than it has ever been.  Friends, may we not respond in kind.

[I will be unable to post again until next Tuesday.]

Walker in violation of court order

This morning a Wisconsin court issued an injunction against the police shut-down of the Capitol. Police, under orders, are refusing to allow people to enter the building.  Parties are arguing in court for the order to be enforced and for the injunction to be made permanent.

The court undoubtedly ruled this way because keeping people from entering the State Capitol is a violation of the Wisconsin State Constitution, which reads:

Our house

Article I, §4 – ANNOT. The legislature cannot prohibit an individual from entering the capitol or its grounds. 59 Atty. Gen. 8.

Pretty simple. A fairly straightforward statement that citizens must have access to the building in which their government meets, deliberates, and legislates.

What is it about these supposed 'law and order' rightist politicians who violate the law whenever it serves their interests? In this case, the interest is quite personal. Walker is trying to save himself from the embarrassment of vocal critics in the rotunda as he delivers his proposed budget, a plan to gut this state's social services and destroy government - the plan of the right wing and their corporate sponsors.

My guy, Sen. Chris Larson, took time today to thank me for my emails - not the formal response, the quick one from a mobile phone.  31 years old. Can't wait to vote for him again.

Meanwhile, my brother is outside one of the Capitol entrances, waiting with a bunch of social workers, cops out of uniform and others to get in as soon as possible. Life is good. When people are awake and engaged in the cause of justice, life is good.

Catholic Social Teaching rendered with eloquence

Rev. Bryan Massingale has always been eloquent and inspiring when he presents the best of Catholic Social Teaching, and so he was again in this morning's paper:

Catholic social teaching and Judeo-Christian values insist that workers must have an effective voice in ensuring safe working conditions, just wages and reasonable benefits. These basic principles honor the dignity of work and promote economic fairness. These gains were not easily won and must be protected today.

History is stained with the sweat and blood of those who struggled to win labor rights many of us now take for granted. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - to name just a few - all were inspired by their faith to stand with workers demanding living wages and working conditions consistent with human dignity...

...when the governor offers huge corporate tax breaks to some, yet refuses to even negotiate with tax-paying workers, this violates the principles of shared sacrifice and fiscal common sense. It's both immoral and fiscally irresponsible to ask those who teach our children, protect our communities and care for our sick loved ones to bear the greatest burden and give up basic rights that have provided economic opportunity for generations.

Read more here

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Big day in Madison. Gov Walker is clearly unsettled by the sleeping giant he has awakened. So they are trying to shut down the citizens' house in Madison to keep protesters from embarrassing him with chants and drumming during his speech this afternoon (4 CST) during which he will deliver a budget that will gut the well-being of all but the richest of this state, that is likely going to destroy school systems, collapse social services, rip to shreds health programs for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens - among other things.

Expect the sleeping giant to roar when these numbers come out.

We all know now this is not about balancing budgets; this is about collapsing government by de-funding it then balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and middle class. The budget can be balanced with the simplest of remedies - raising revenues by taxing the wealthiest and the big corporations (like the Koch brothers) who right now are on the state dole, a dole Walker intends to increase. This isn't about balancing budgets; it's about the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to wealthy corporate financiers and private sector contractors.

When one looks at this battle through that lens, everything suddenly makes sense.

Many public workers heading for the door

It is becoming obvious that one of the immediate impacts of the Scott Walker power move against unions is that the state is about to lose the skills and experience of thousands of its most veteran public sector workers. Many of them face a decision to retire right now in order to get the full benefits of the pensions promised them over the course of their careers.  If they wait to see what happens to the budget debate over the next months, they could end up losing big money for their retirement.

But even this won't guarantee that pension funds won't be raided over time, as the Alternet article linked here indicates. And as Walker & Co. (like the groups funded by the Koch brothers who are stoking anti-union sentiments all across the country) continue their media assault on labor, the flames of resentment among private sector workers who have lost jobs or seen wages and benefits fall as a result of corporate power plays (you know, the take-it-or-leave-it approach to labor negotiations - take what we offer as we gut your livelihood or we'll move to Oklahoma or Mexico) are bound to rise. Folks like the Kochs and their Club for Growth buddies will be happy to fan those flames because it works so well...

...as you can see today if you read the 'letters to the editors' page in the seemingly anti-union Journal Sentinel.

Doesn't matter if you say that these angry folks going on and on about communists and socialists (say what?!?!?) and privileged lazy public workers have got it all wrong, that they don't know who the real 'enemy' is or why, really, their standard of living is sinking into the burgeoning class of working poor. The corporate guys with all the money and power are very happy to see us turn on one another in a blame game that has no good outcome.

You know, you can let Walker try to rule like that - or not.

But my challenge to public sector workers and their unions is this: taxpayers do indeed pay your salaries and finance your benefits, and private sector workers, especially those without college degrees, are getting hurt in a global economy that has less and less room for them - and no concern for them at all. If you want to maintain and build support for the cause of worker rights, it is crucial that you begin active, persistent, constructive solidarity with private sector workers. They are not up against elected officials that we voters can turn out of office. They are up against companies that operate solely for the bottom line and have no democracy at all, only a commitment to quarterly profit reports for their stockholders.

It is time for a massive reeducation in this state in regard to labor history and the decades-long struggle for worker rights, of why collective bargaining is crucial in a democracy. What it does is balance the power of corporate money with the power of organized labor. Without that, each worker is at the mercy of these powerful bosses.

Solidarity is the only way out of this mess. Many of us who are not public sector workers have been out in support of the folks in the rotunda and on the streets of Madison. The support must go both ways, otherwise this struggle for worker rights cannot be won.

Photos: Margaret Swedish