Writing from what you know

I mean, is there anything more toxic within the culture these days than all those people who speak from what they don't know? Watch Sean Hannity for a great example. Of course, a lot of TV news and punditry is just personalities reading scripts on a teleprompter written for them.

They are saying things they do not know.

Or listen to those Sunday morning political shows (I don't anymore, can't, my soul finally rebelled). My Ayn Rand Sen. Ron Johnson is a great example, too. I can still be stunned by someone who apparently has no real understanding of economics trying to yell down a Pulitzer Prize winning economist like Paul Krugman. You don't have to agree with Krugman all the time in order to appreciate how smart he is, but if you are going to engage him in debate, at least know your stuff, right?

Yup, few things more toxic than listening to people speak like confident, strident, experts on things about which they know so little. Wayne LaPierre of the NRA is another great example. Sometimes I gasp at the factually errant things he declares with such practiced righteous anger. What's worse: that he does this, or that the political culture takes his point of view seriously, as part of the "balance" in the debate?

Climate change - don't even get me started on that one.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by this article in the NY Times yesterday: Outside the Citadel, Social Practice Art Is Intended to Nurture. It's about a rising expression in the art world in which art is deeply engaged in the world - not just art for the sake of art, but art embedded in the struggles of humans for dignity, expression, social change, and social transformation, often at a fiercely local level (though with potential repercussions far beyond).

"Known primarily as social practice, its practitioners freely blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism, creating a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system. And in so doing, they push an old question — 'Why is it art?' — as close to the breaking point as contemporary art ever has."

Part of the answer to that question, why is it art, is simple - it is art because it is art: that's the answer. It emerges from the human experience like food from organic gardening, like dreams in the night that simply appear, like air in our lungs or blood in our veins. It is something we need to do to live.

A glance at Scott Walker's Wisconsin

In Scott Walker's world, the elderly can no longer afford their medication, taxpayer money will go to vouchers for middle class folks to send their kids to private school, at risk kids will no longer have special programs available to them to keep them in school and help them survive the harshness of urban poverty, and folks on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder will have less and less transportation available to them for things like getting to work or to a job interview because bus routes will disappear and, of course, there will be no rail of any kind, not light, not commuter, not high-speed.

There will be plenty of money for road construction (road-building lobbies contributed to his campaign, of course), dirty industries will get anti-pollution regulations weakened or eliminated (payback for the Koch brothers and WI's new Senator, plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson), the wealthy who already don't pay taxes will still not have to pay taxes though the heavy weight of their industries and privileges will cost the taxpayer dearly, and wages will continue their trend downward, another boon for employers like Harley-Davidson and Mercury Marine and Kohler, but bad news for working families.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Lots of folks will be kicked off BadgerCare rolls in an effort to 'save money,' which means more people will go to emergency rooms already very sick, which is a far more expensive way to get health care, and then we will all pay for that in higher insurance premiums for our private sector health insurance policies.

Also gone: any sense of, or commitment to, the common good and the good of the commons, to government at the service of its people whom it is supposed to represent and serve, any sense that to provide the services needed by all our people, we must all contribute our fair share of taxes to make this possible.

We are moving deeper into a time of vast inequities and unfairness in our society, a time in which the enrichment of the few will come at the expense of the most vulnerable populations and the growing number of struggling workers and their families.

Do we see where this goes?  Do we understand what is happening? Is this the Wisconsin we want?

Government by cruelty

"It is a hostile corporate takeover of the state of Wisconsin." Senator Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton)

I try to use reasonable language, right? not to use extremes or hyperbole, even when emotions run high. But I stand by my headline. If Gov Scott Walker's budget became real in my dear state of Wisconsin, it would amount to government by cruelty - cruelty towards the most vulnerable of our populations, a taking of money from the poor and struggling and using it to subsidize the affluent and the millionaire and billionaire business people so favored by this poor example of a 'governor,' as in, one who governs for the welfare, rights, and interests of all.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

My dear Wisconsin voters, what have we done? So many of us, fueled by anger and resentment by our deteriorating quality of life, took out our frustrations in the polling booth not knowing what was really being prepared for this state. So many who have seen wages fall, home values plummet, jobs and benefits lost, who are falling between the widening cracks of a dysfunctional economy more and more at the service of the richest 1% of the population, who are angry and resentful, voted for this guy because they thought he cared about them.

He has just handed back to you a disastrous budget that will gut the quality of life in this state and do exactly what Sen. Erpenbach said yesterday - hand over the state to the Koch brothers and Heritage Foundation folks who helped write this budget (trust me, Walker was not capable of that) in a hostile bid to put this state into the hands of polluters, of people who want to increase their profits by vastly reducing their production costs - like labor and environmental costs.  They want your labor and our forests, waterways, air and other resources for free - or as close to free as they can get.

Here's a budget that would help them do that - if it passes.

For example, capital gains taxes will be cut or eliminated for the Koch brothers whose personal fortune approaches $100 billion. Meanwhile, this proposal would eliminate caps on the school voucher program, meaning that people who can afford to pay tuition for private schools could use them - meaning our tax dollars would subsidize the affluent to send their kids to private schools - another transfer of funds from the poor to the wealthy.

Another example: the elimination of recycling requirements all across the state. Oh, you can just see how folks like the Koch brothers and our new Senator, plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson, wanted that provision thrown in!! If you contribute to Walker's campaign, amazingly, tax breaks and lax regulations for your businesses do seem to follow. Public workers, inner city families with kids in public schools, poor folks in the BadgerCare system? Not so much.

What in the world is going on here? This is NOT about balancing budgets because there are other ways to do this - to balance a budget and keep vital services - for one thing, by increasing revenue from those who can well afford it.

But I can tell you what this budget proposal will do - it will divide this state further, it will throw fuel onto the seething fires of our growing resentments as more and more people suffer the effects of this most dangerous state and nationwide trend - the concentration of wealth in the top 1% of our population, the old champagne glass model of the economy where wealth bubbles up from below to the top, stealing from people's labor, our resources, our schools, our quality of life all the way up.

Friends, sadly, this budget was more than a shout-out from the extreme right; it is, indeed, a bold attempt at a hostile corporate takeover of our state.  And it must be stopped.

What are the possibilities that all that good will and energy that has occupied and surrounded our state capitol for the past 2 1/2 weeks can become a broad movement to reclaim our progressive values in this state? Because the answer to that question will decide whether this cruel budget, god forbid, ever becomes the program of our state government.


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To learn more about what is in Walker's budget proposal:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117212348.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117192683.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117193763.html
http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/search_news.php?keys={mad}