End of the year exhaustion

Hi friends - it's been hard to keep up this blog as the year ends and there is so much to do. I think this dark time of the year is supposed to be restful. Funny, right?

But listen, we have one heck of a year ahead of us here in Wisconsin. We really do all need the rest. And I have to think about what I want to do with this blog, if anything.

My eclectic meditation table

Anyway, I could be blogging lots of news. We've got more Gableman scandal and it seems we will always have Gableman scandal as long as he sits on the bench. His record keeps revealing to me that he does not deserve to be there. But neither does Prosser. Yet there they sit, making crucial decisions for our state.

The right to protest - if you can pay for it

I wish these guys would quit proving me right - that I don't think they believe in inclusive, vibrant democracy. Now the headlines screaming from the front page: Walker & Co. want protesters to pay to exercise one of the most fundamental rights of democracy, the right to free speech when that right is exercised as protest.

What could be more basic to our constitutional system of governance. We were founded on protest, for crying out loud!! The rights in our constitution are not commodities for sale to those who can pay.

I know these guys don't believe in democracy when it counters their intentions to remake government of, by, and for their corporate backers and billionaire donors. But still, let me give this a try, a lesson in what it means to be a governor.

Now, Scott, you proudly say, ad nauseum, that you are a budget-cutter. You think that a proud statement, rather than an empty statement. It means nothing at all until you put content into it - and your content is hurting the people who are suffering most from the recession, from poverty, from the concentration of wealth in this state and nation.  You also are proud of your slogan, "Open for Business," as if that means anything on its own. It is also empty - until you put content into it. And your content is eroding worker rights and well-being, putting yet more downward pressure on wages, compromising the health and education of our kids, threatening more and more of our environment, our quality of water, soil, food, forests, wetlands, and more.

And here's the other thing about being a 'governor,' as in one who governs (different from one who dictates or uses power to hurt people rather than enhance their lives and participation in the decisions that impact their lives): governors have to create budgets, this is true. Governors also have to defend democracy itself, not try to stifle it. In a real democracy, you would be happy to provide protection for the rights to vibrant protest, opposition, and debate. You would keep the spaces for democracy open. You would understand that providing protection and defense for all the rights contained in the federal and state Constitutions is your absolute mandate.

And if you believed your policies to be broadly in the interests of the majority of your constituents, you would not fear those constituents, their voices, their protests, their recall petitions, their presence in Madison.

That's my lesson on democracy for the morning.

Democracy is breaking out...

I don't know, I hear all this stuff from Walker supporters about how the recall effort is somehow undemocratic because it is an effort to negate the will of voters in the last election. Yes, yes, elections matter; they matter hugely! They are at the heart of democratic governance, for sure.

But what do you do when the outcome is a state government that is less than democratic, not respectful of the will of a majority of its people, is running government itself in a way that stifles democracy, or worse, as in the voter I.D. laws, tries to suppress it? Do you wait until the next election, when even more harm has been done?

For an idea about the potential for more harm, I recommend looking at what the Repubs are doing with regard to redistricting. They have already used their unilateral power to redraw district lines to favor their party, and to remove political competition (i.e., democracy) from those districts. But now they want to change the rules they themselves wrote by moving up the changes for the recall elections. If they do this, they would also have to redefine the meaning of recalls altogether. After all, the point is that voters have the power to recall the people they elected when they feel need to do so - as hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters apparently feel need to do.

The Journal Sentinel made that point in an editorial this morning. For me, it does not exactly go unnoticed that the rightists of the Repub Party, once holding the reins of power, are not thrilled about putting themselves up before the democratic process. What Wisconsin Repubs, Walker, the Fitzgerald brothers, Vos, Darling, and so many others have been passing in the legislature and signing into law are patently unpopular policies - from education cuts to concealed carry. They have been defying their own constituencies in this state and harming the most vulnerable of our people with their cuts, and threatened cuts, to public health programs, public schools, senior care, voter and worker rights, and more.

Why would they be anxious to put themselves before the voters who are right now signing recall petitions all over the state? Surely they are lacking confidence that they can stave off political disaster. Surely they are feeling threatened for a reason.

Now we hear that the petition folks are saying they have already gathered more than 300,000 signatures! Is Walker losing any sleep at night? His approval rating now stands at 47%, which is an improvement over the past few months - it had plummeted below 40% earlier this year. He also has a narrow lead over any potential challenger, except for Russ Feingold, but that fantasy contest has also narrowed. The October report from Public Policy Polling also indicates the possibility of a 'recall backlash,' many independents who may not like Walker but don't like the recall either.

Of course, the recall initiative was always a high-risk venture. A successful recall would send a powerful message to state Repubs about their aggressive drive to turn the political culture of Wisconsin in a radically new direction, something not at all indicated by the 2010 election results. Many people who are signing the petition are fearful of our future, for good reason.

On the other hand, given how divided the state remains, and how close Walker's approval/disapproval ratings are - within a couple or few percentage points - the political hurdles that must be overcome to achieve a new state government are daunting, to say the least.

However, what is inspiring about the campaign is the exercise itself. Democracy has been breaking out in this state ever since this government took office at the beginning of the year. Complacency and inertia are on the wane, a very good sign for our future. What we are seeing is a resurgence of interest in government and the democratic process because we are also experiencing in our daily lives how government actually impacts us, our families and our communities, even how we feel about one another, how we talk to one another. This government came in with a whole lot of nasty rhetoric and bears great responsibility for the ugliness of our recent political discourse. Of this, they ought to be ashamed. Government by bullying and demonizing has never brought about admirable results!

By contrast, the energy of the recallers has been heartening, positive, and even full of good cheer. These are citizens taking responsibility for their government; they are being citizens in the best sense.

We saw this in the streets of Madison last winter and spring, again week before last, and we are seeing it now again on street corners and sidewalks, in parking lots on Black Friday - citizens who are engaged not a little, but a lot - and with enthusiasm.

Whatever the result, I hope this year's breakout of grassroots democracy will create the ground for a long haul struggle to reclaim government from the narrow interests of the corporate right and put it back where it belongs. And let us remember always that democracy depends less on elections themselves (remember, elections take place even in many dictatorships) than on what happens between them. Elections are not democratic if the system in which they take place is not democratic. Exercising rights of speech, press, assembly, etc., are the most essential ingredients of any democracy, the ones that make elections meaningful.

And it's that part in between that is being corrupted by the power of corporate money, special interests, secret private donors, and manipulative campaign ads paid for by the same. And that's what I mean when I say that I hope this breakout of democracy can become a true outbreak.

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!

Worried about civility

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is worried about civility in this state as our political discourse sharpens. I understand. We worry about that, too. We also would like to invite all those engaged in Wisconsin's popular democracy efforts right now to act like adults, to be the political culture we would like to be.

But let's also be clear about what is creating this acrimony. When parties representing one set of narrow interests uses cudgels of power to beat down the rights of others, those latter folks get upset. That upset ought not be equated with the atmosphere created by those with the cudgel.

And those with the cudgels need to take responsibility for the hatred, racism, and resentment that often gets unleashed in the spaces created by their politics of arrogant exclusion. When your policies increase the suffering of the suffering, when they squeeze more from those who have less and less to be squeezed, when they take rights that empower workers, students, poor people, and elderly to participate in democracy away from them, or make it harder to exercise them, they create fear, frustration, and growing feelings of powerlessness.

The Walker recall campaign did not create this acrimony, but acrimony from the right and the cudgel being used by the Walker/Fitzgerald regime helped mightily to create the recall campaign. People didn't take to the streets and shopping malls and Lambeau Field and their own front yards to gather signatures because they don't like Scott Walker or just for fun or because they are Democrats or because they don't like Repubs and on and on. And despite what the governor says, they aren't doing this because 'big unions made me do it!' They are doing it because of concrete tangible grievances having to do with the politics of deception of the Walker 2010 campaign, because of anti-democratic policies that have passed the state house and been signed by the gov. They are doing it because of the threats they feel to their livelihoods and well-being. They are doing it because it has become abundantly transparent that this current government exists to promote the narrow interests of its corporate and other rightist backers, not the interests of the public it is meant to serve.

Just want to make note of yesterday's front page article on the Bradley Foundation. The writers note that while we have focused so much attention on the Koch brothers, this Foundation has helped put Walker in the governor's mansion and been architect of many of his policies.

I didn't vote the Bradley Foundation into office, nor the Koch brothers and their offspring, Americans for Prosperity.

Yup, it's true; elections have results, as Walker's supporters love to tell us. Democracy is built upon them, but not on them alone. Some of the most important aspects of democratic participation are what happens between elections. The recall 'tool' (Walker loves to use that term, so we will, too) exists for a reason - to provide a mechanism through which the people can reverse an election when the outcome is undemocratic, a threat to democratic rights (like worker rights), or when it is discovered that a government is at the service of interests that are at odds with the common good.

I won't hold my breath, but maybe we could allow this recall process to unfold the way we do an election. They are both written into democracy here in Wisconsin. Sadly, elections themselves have become subject to the culture of nastiness that has emerged in our difficult times.

So what I do ask here is that all of us who care about these things raise ourselves to a different level. Even when that guy roared passed me with his car the other day when I signed the petition, I found myself wondering what his story is, his particular fear and anxiety. What is it that makes him feel such threat, as if his world is somehow rocked by my signing the recall petition.

Maybe if we could realize that most rage, resentment, and fear is based in pain and suffering, we could approach even the angry and resentful with the necessary compassion required to tamp down the fiery, volatile tones of this political era.

It's not as if life is going to get easier - not for a long while. But it can become kinder if we can figure out how to get to the point of realizing we are all in this together. We can go up in flames together, or we can figure out how to get through the hard times with a better world than this one, so full of injustice, violence, anger, and ecological unraveling. We can figure out how to re-knit the human community into one that has compassion at its heart and the well-being of all of us and the generations to come after us at the top of its priority list.

Needing protection

This was one of those eye-popping stories from today's paper:

Protection costs for Walker, Kleefisch more than double

I mean, I would love to have the info to know if they face more credible death threats than Gov. Doyle did, who was not exactly well liked by many Wisconsites. I would like to know how much of this is real, how much is paranoia, and whether or not Walker & Kleefisch feel at all that any of the vitriol of their supporters, or the policies that they have rammed through our state politics without popular support, have anything to do with creating this level of threat.  There are, after all, other styles of governing that do not leave people feeling so frustrated, powerless, and angry.

This is not to excuse a single credible threat. Sadly, these are part of our political culture now. I know what it means to be Barack Obama, for example. Being the first African-American president means you, your wife, and your 2 children are the subject of daily credible death threats because there are still white people who resent your mere presence on their TV screens. I am aware of this from my long time doing political work in DC. Members of Congress, too, get freaked out by the steady volume of threats that have increased exponentially in the past decade or so.

So, on the one hand, this makes me very sad. On the other hand, it reveals the consequences of a politics of rage and hate, resentment and division, and enormous frustration when those who now 'govern' (or try to 'rule') have often been part of that kind of politics, or even benefited from it.

I mean, listen to a little Charlie Sykes or Rush Limbaugh - these people are not innocent of creating the culture that gives rise to this kind of rage and resentment. They stoke it. They empower it.

There is no excuse for this on any side of the political and cultural divides; but, still, I would like to know more. I would like to know who is making these threats and why. I would like to know what leads law enforcement officials to be this concerned, and whether or not this level of protection is about something real or feared, often perhaps with good reason.

But here's the other thing that makes me crazy: Walker & Kleefisch, who are the targets of these threats, have just approved one of the nation's most permissive concealed carry laws in the nation!! People can now walk armed right into the Capitol!!

So this is my crazy-maker for this day: WI Repubs and Lena Taylor have just made our society less secure and a whole lot more frightening, and the result is more insecurity and more fear, and then more armed guards and more tax money to pay for more armed guards. We allow our people nearly unlimited access to guns, including high-powered handguns. And then we ramp up security.

And one day, we will wonder where our democracy went. Maybe that's what the NRA wants - a nation of scared people cowering behind walls and moats defending their property and their lives with guns (or 'works of art,' as Sen. Taylor calls them) against enemies, real or not, a statewide and nationwide O.K. Corral.  Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

I guess this story was for me yet another sad commentary on the state of the political culture. It will take a long time to repair these breaches of distrust. But let's remember where they came from - they came from a backlash against the broad social contract constructed over decades that included things like worker rights, civil rights, voting rights, affirmative action, Social Security, Medicare, more cultural inclusion of gays and lesbians, immigrants and people of other cultures, fair housing acts, more stringent environmental protections, and a tax structure that once helped prevent the kind of concentration of wealth we're seeing now, leading to the impoverishment of the middle class, a progressive tax structure that was one of the hallmarks of our relatively stable society.

Check out the list: virtually every one of these things is under attack right now, and the rollback began 10-20 years ago. It has been very successful, and it has torn the cover off of old animosities and prejudices, helping to re-create the politics of resentment that has brought our democracy to the edge of collapse.

So I hope nobody tries to commit violence against any of our elected politicians. It would be beyond tragic. It would actually pose a grave threat to our state's democracy. And I hope we can use this story as yet another stark warning: we need to start healing these breaches so that the social contract can be restored and a culture of tolerance and inclusion reborn.

"Our past is usable today."

Well, friends, as we move soon into the new fiscal year and the budget debate comes to a dismal end, I have to decide what to do with this blog.  It's been a great 'vent' for me and a way to connect with folks feeling as morally outraged as I am by the corporate, rightist, takeover of our state government.  I can't keep up this pace, but I welcome any thoughts about whether or how to continue.

Meanwhile, I will post now and again some longer-range reflections on Wisconsin and our predicament. The headline is a quote from one of the Upper Midwest's finest writers, Meridel Le Sueur, in her marvelous book, North Star Country. Just finished it and highly recommend it. As insightfully as any Midwest writer I have read, she captures something of the long history of the pioneers, the Indian massacres, the rape and pillage of the land, the horrible exploitation of immigrants and workers by corporate bosses over generations, the struggle for the dignity of workers, the bloody costs of fighting for the right to form unions - the right to not be savagely exploited, manipulated, robbed, and abused.

The struggle has been a  long one, and as I learned from a recent exchange with someone in my family, we forget or neglect these roots at our peril.

From Le Sueur's book:

The growth of corporations and absentee ownership of natural resources brought a change in human relationships, shifts of group allegiances, a new pattern. Pioneer days were marked by thrift, economy, and simplicity. But now mutual co-operative aid and the simple relationships of an expanding democracy were shattered. A new pattern was forged, a separation of interests; groups fell into those who possessed natural resources and tools of production, and those who, on the other hand, sold their labor.

"The pattern sharpened by the further impoverishment of the land, depletion of forests, erosion, and destruction, so that the land also began to fall into the hands of financiers; there was the vanishing of old ways to make a living, marked by ghosts towns, dead areas, loss of farms, migration of whole sections and there was even a partial exhaustion of high-grade ores. The development of aluminum alloys, the refinement of steel, sharpened the conflict of the big dinosaurs.

That was written just after World War II. Could it be more relevant today! The roots of the struggle between the corporate big bosses and the workers, farmers, and middle class, is as old as the struggle to define what it is to be 'American.' We have arrived at another of those defining moments when we must determine who will decide what our future looks like, what kind of world we want this one to be.

What kind of Wisconsin...

Then this final thought from Meridal Le Sueur:

The North Star Country's long cradling of democratic institutions, the peculiar largeness and boldness of its structure has always demanded new techniques and laws of common and individual rights, suggesting always the necessity of broader forms of democracy.

"Our future stands in real and sunlit shapes in all the gloom...

To truly understand what is going on in our state right now, it helps to know its cultural roots, and thus today's headline. Those roots are deep and abiding, they are tangled and source of great conflicts of interests and values. It will not help to sling insults at one another, but rather to understand this history and to begin coming together around some common purpose and vision for a future threatened on many fronts by the power of capital, the destruction of our natural environment, the individualistic lifestyles that have fragmented us, and the moral righteousness that has come to pervade so much of politics, culture, and religion.

To move forward, we must try to peer into the future to see the 'real and sunlit shapes.' We must pull those shapes out of the gloom that surrounds us now and begin to make them real, and, by necessity, through 'broader forms of democracy.'

------------------------ 

To order North Star Country from Amazon.com, click on this link.

Tough morning

Well, friends of Wisconsin, I know we're all feeling pretty down this morning - and undoubtedly frightened about our future here. Discouraged, sad, angry - all that. It is a helpless feeling to see authoritarians make off with one's democracy and feel like there is nothing you can do to stop this steamroller.

It has to play itself out. It will.  It will be ugly.  It will not be permanent.

But we do need to learn some lessons - urgently. One is that we must promise never again to become complacent about staying engaged with the democratic process. I worked on Central America human rights issues for more than 25 years in Washingon DC and it was always moving to tears to see poor people claiming their rights, organizing, forming political organizations, voting, when any of those things could get you killed (or worse, like tortured first). Voter turnout was always in the 80-90% range.

We are a complacent, spoiled people in many ways. We don't remember what it cost people over generations to win the rights we take for granted. I live in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee and I am reminded every time I drive to the Hoan Bridge what that cost was in the lives of people who carved the path for us - the memorial to workers massacred by state militia, under a governor's orders, while holding a peaceful march to demand an 8-hour work day.

Or the police dogs and hoses in Birmingham.

Now most of us don't even bother to vote, much less engage the process in between elections, until one day we find our rights are threatened, and then suppressed - then we get all upset.

Lately I find myself pondering daily about how my state is the home of Fighting Bob La Follette and Joe McCarthy, the birthplace of AFSCME and of the Republican Party. I recall that that Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party and that now, in my state and others, it is trying to suppress the vote of African-Americans and is fueled by resentment that a black man is our president. I reflect on my own family roots - pro-union Democrats (except for my father, Republican but also a union member) harboring deep racist attitudes.

In the birthplace of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, we have just busted their collective bargaining rights - which is the whole point of having a union.

This is my bipolar state, and the rightist Repubs now in power are using their authoritarian bent to drive a wedge right through that divide. I have it in my own family, as does just about everyone I know, growing lists of things we can no longer talk about because disagreement now is not the beginning of conversation or even argument, but of no discussion at all.

It hasn't yet, but it's a nice thought.

We will have to pull out of this not by turning to old ways of thinking and organizing and running organizations and institutions; those old 'paradigms' failed to anticipate fully what was coming or to mobilize a broad and effective solidarity - not because they are bad but because the world has changed and is changing all around us rapidly. I think we fail to understand what this power grab is really about and what these people have in mind for our nation.

It is not time to regroup, it is time to reinvent. So while many are out in districts working on the recall elections, they and all of us need to take time to read, learn, discuss, and think again about how one builds a movement appropriate and relevant to the real shift in power that has taken place in this state, and which is proceeding across the nation.

This will be a time of great demoralization or it will become a time of great creativity. And that choice is completely up to us.

When corporate money owns the government

This is what comes of electing judges rather than appointing them, running them through a vigorous confirmation process that examines who they are, their record, their potential conflicts of interests, etc.  They end up serving the same interests as elected politicians, but with more at stake.

If it is true, and this stands, that a majority of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices do not have judicial authority to hold the actions of the legislature to constitional tests, then we really are moving towards one-party rule in this state.  And that party has been bought by the rightist money that is trying to do the same throughout the country.

From Karl Rove and his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS (those groups funded by a handful of millioniaires), to the Koch brothers -funded Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth, to direct compaign donations flowing into the coffers of the Repub's most rightist politicians, we are seeing a kind of power grab that spells real trouble for the people of this state and this country.

Why do we hate the very unions who brought us a worker rights laws, decent wages (which tended to raise wages for everyone, not only union members), and some organized defense against the overwhelming power of corporations? The US Chambers of Commerce is incredibley organized and their members are now spending huge millions of dollars to lobby for business interests - but unions are losing their collective bargaining rights in state after state. First private sector unions were gutted as business threatened time and again to leave states in which workers did not agree to tear up contracts and accept their new terms.

Now the State of Wisconsin has devastated those rights in the public worker sector.

Scott Walker's Wisconsin is 'open for business' and closed to the well-being of its citizens and our precious environment.

But let's be clear about what the corporate right has been able to take advantage of - the apathy and disinterest of the citzenry, the lack of interest in government, understanding how it works (more than a third of people polled do not know the three branches of government and even fewer know what their responsibilities are - like checking the power of the legislature when it acts unconstitutionally), and being incredibly susceptible to manipulation by those interests who use God and guns and abortion and gay rights to mobilize people to support their corporate right agenda.

Watch wages fall.  Watch the downward trend in the quality of life for more and more people in this state, many of whom really believe that somehow this is a gleeful moment - "Yea, we've undermined the power of unions!"

What in the world is wrong with us?

This will have to play itself out. And what I can say about it this morning is that we are moving into unprecedented times. And if what folks try to do is recover what has been lost, try to move back in time to an old framework now being dstroyed, we will not get through this. These other guys have recognized better than most of us that times have changed, the global economy has changed, power bases are shifting, the old political divides don't describe anything real anymore, they just serve the interests of the conquer-and-divide rightists whose tactics have worked so well.

If times are unprecedented then the response must also be unprecedented. First is understanding how power is shifting in response to a new phase of global capital, one that is fiercely anti-democratic and anti-popular, and beginning to operate out of a narrative that does not describe what has been lost so much as how to move forward in that reality.

The week that will change Wisconsin

Debate on the budget begins this morning and by the end of the week Wisconsin becomes, well, something else. Using their 'tyranny of the majority' powers, their anti-democratic maneuvers (because they know what they are doing is fiercely unpopular), and intransigence and stubbornness which they think virtuous, the state Repubs are about to implement blow after blow to Wisconsin's citizens as they pass the biennium budget.

We are not being governed; we are being ruled by Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers and, folks, there is nothing at all democratic about that. This is a handful of rightist politicians who are trying to gleefully rule the state for the benefit of a narrow constituency of affluent white business types who want to open my state even more than it already is to their narrow interests. They and their followers are social conservatives for whom it is not enough to hold socially conservative beliefs but who believe that government's role is to empower social conservative 'values' while closing democratic spaces and political rights for those who disagree with them.

What will happen this week: voting rights will be narrowed and made difficult for the poor, elderly, students; social safety net programs will be slashed and thousands of people left unserved and vulnerable; lower taxes will be replaced by higher fees (which sounds like raising taxes to me, whatever you call them); university tuition will be raised putting higher education even more out of reach for poor and working families than it already is; more public money will be transferred into the hands of corporations; government will become less transparent as legislators try to hide some of the business connections that affect how they vote; public education will take extreme hits lowering the quality of the classroom experience for our kids; good paying public sector jobs will become less so as these white business guys (Ron Johnson, too, and Paul Ryan) commit to gutting this source of middle class stability as their business guys have already done in the private sector, destroying unions, ripping up contracts, driving down wages and benefits.

Oh, and, watch for it: using an unprecedented 'extraordinary session' to pass a budget (see yesterday's post), look to see the gutting of collective bargaining rights language restored to the bill at the last minute. They are not waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on something of such high priority in their rightist agenda.

And the protests - fervent, passionate, an awakening much needed in this state - will not affect the outcome.

The week that will change Wisconsin.  We are losing a lot. Adding to the loss is that these guys, not just here but all around the country, use divisive, polarizing language and strategies to try to render us even less effective in struggling for our rights. By intention, they raise the emotion in the divide and hope like crazy that we will not be able to talk to each other, to reach across the divide to reclaim a political culture of democracy. That is in their interest, too.

The week that will change Wisconsin.

But - and it is a big 'but' - sometime movements are built on what is lost. Sometimes they are built on what brings people together. What the protests have done - not only in Madison, but all across the state - is wake up my people, or at least more of us. The US is sadly known for the extent of political disengagement of its citizens, low participation in democracy, which has opened a space ripe for the Karl Rove big money types to move in and take it over.

This week will change Wisconsin not only because of what Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are imposing on this state, but because of what happened in the streets in response, a popular democracy resurgence that could, if nurtured right, become a real force for progressive politics in this state.

That is where we need to rest our hopes. But this also depends on what we have insisted on here over and over again - a movement that is not about different sectors trying to protect their own rights and way of life, but about a solidarity that is broad and deep - public sector workers with private sector workers, threatened middle class folks with the poor of our cities, African-Americans especially loathed by these guys with, well, all the rest of us, immigrants doing our hard labor with, again, the rest of us, suburban social progressives with urban communities struggling for survival.

If that is born out of this political debacle, then what these rightist people are doing will be painful but short-lived. The best payback will not be screaming in their faces or going home demoralized after the losses we are about to endure, but defeating them by way of democracy, over the long haul. The best payback would be a rejuvenated citizenry reclaiming its place in democratic governance.

Ayn Rand, states rights, and Wisconsin politics

I just want to put a bit more context to what I wrote yesterday. While the struggle goes on over various specifics of the Walker regime's policies, and thousands begin to get focused on senate recall campaigns this summer, it is important for us to appreciate the context of this swift rightist turn in our state's politics.

While for many, the extremes of the Walker/Fitzgerald agenda has taken by surprise, what is going on here is part of a billionaire-funded, corporate right strategy underway for decades - since the civil rights era broadened voting rights, since a succession of federal governments broadened social programs and safety nets (very bipartisan, from FDR and LBJ to Eisenhower and Nixon, right up until it crashed into the rightist Reagan wall in the 80s), really heating up in 2008 when we had the temerity to elect an African-American president.

We have to keep insisting on this - many rightist billionaires and their minions do not think African-Americans equal to them, and additionally even those who do are happy to manipulate the nation's latent racism to get their people elected to office or sitting on state and federal courts. Things changed when Obama was elected - they changed a lot!

Billionaire funders through folks like the rightist true believer Karl Rove, with his enormously powerful Crossroads GPS funded by, you know, a handful of billionaires, are manipulating our political system beyond recognition in a very short time. Over the past couple of decades, corporate money has helped get people like Scott Walker or John Kasich (OH) elected into office not because of their smarts or because they represent a vast grassroots constituency, but by the power of their money, building campaign treasure troves, funding experts in messaging (you know, stuff like, "Wisconsin is open for business," or "we're broke," while you finance big tax giveaways to the corporate sector), buying controlling interests in cable news stations, investing enormous funds in TV and internet ads that pop into our attention spans on a daily basis.

And they have a philosophy of demonizing and bankrupting government, then steering newly freed up public funds to the corporate sector, as we have written repeatedly here. They scorn the 'masses' and think they should rule without the cumbersome workings of a democracy. They are states rights people bent on finally winning the Civil War 150 years after it began.

We have to know what motivates them, what they want, in order to know what we are up against. To understand Paul Ryan, and the lie he tells when he insists he cares about health care for the elderly, it is important to understand what motivates him, what philosophical beliefs shape his political career. If he says reading Ayn Rand inspired him to get into politics, and if he insists that all his staff read her stuff, then we best understand who she is and what she believes - and that should put a chill down the spines of all who care about the well-being of our families, communities, the state, and the nation.

So, here's some more reading for your reflection:

about the billionaires' class war against the rest of us, with reference to Ryan and Rand, from Robert Parry at Alternet, an excerpt:

The conflict is now over the Right’s determination to concentrate even more money and power in the hands of the rich by hobbling any government capability to protect the people’s general welfare.

If the Right wins, individual Americans will be left essentially defenseless in the face of unbridled corporate power...

Lately, Ryan has been trying to torture a connection between his philosophical beliefs and his Roman Catholic background. Whatever one thinks of the institution these days with all it scandals and such, it has a very progressive social teaching that contradicts much of what he proposes for the US budget. One ordained minister, Rev. Jennifer Butler, reflected on the Christian-Rand contradiction for Huffington Post. Read it here.

Finally, we are approaching the edge of the states' rights precipice in our federal Supreme Court. The NY Times wrote about this most serious threat to our democracy a few days ago, and, trust me, this really is a more significant news story than Palin's self-promoting, self-aggrandizing bus tour or Rep. Weiner's, um, Twitter problem. Seems Chief Justice Roberts is prepared to rule that states have sovereign authority and are not subject to federal law.

The principle at stake dates back to a 1908 case, Ex parte Young, in which the Supreme Court held that federal courts have a paramount role in stopping a state from violating federal law. Despite the 11th Amendment’s protection of a state from being sued in federal court, all state officials must comply with federal law, which the Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land.” 

Think for a moment about what it would mean to live in this country if states could decide not to abide by environmental laws, or civil rights laws, or labor laws, or child protection laws, and on and on, without danger of federal enforcement.

So while Palin and Weiner absorb hours and hour of the air waves, we are being denied crucial information on who is taking control of our politics and for what reason. If Roberts gets his way, we won't recognize this nation a few years down the road.

I think we ought to make Wisconsin an example of how citizens come together to reclaim a democratic culture - broad and inclusive - and a mission for government that has to do with the defense and promotion of the well-being of all its citizens, the common good, and the good of the commons.

A lesson for Repubs on democracy and the three branches of government

It would be helpful if state Repubs would remember that courts exist for a reason - not to please them, but often as a crucial last resort when either the executive or legislative branches of government overstep constitutional boundaries, threatening our rights.

The judiciary is a third and co-equal branch of government. It does not exist to serve the interests of the other branches but to protect and defend the Constitution and to correct proposed laws and the process itself as needed when they are not consistent with democratic rights and responsibilities.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi's ruling striking down the Walker/Fitzgerald union busting bill is not a partisan decision on policy, on the content of the law; it is a legal ruling that what the Repubs did in order to pass that bill was a violation of our state Constitution. It violated the open meetings law by not giving proper public notice of the meeting in which the vote so hastily took place.

Judge Sumi, appointed by Republican Gov Tommy Thompson, is now being called an 'activist' judge and friend of the unions by our much-farther-to-the-right current Repubs.  Amazing how they demonize a Repub-appointee as soon as she dares to use constitutional law to put roadblocks in front of their steamroller.

Okay, Repubs, and especially you, Scott Fitzgerald, a lesson in democracy and the role of the three branches of government. In response to the ruling, Fitzgerald said this: "There's still a much larger separation-of-powers issue: whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government."

Um, Mr. Fitzgerald, yes she can. That is one of the crucial roles of the circuit court, to stand in the way when the legislature does something unconstitutional. That is precisely why we have 3 branches, a blessing from those founding 'fathers' at the federal level taken up by the states so long ago. This is what prevents that threat to democracy called 'tyranny of the majority,' because democracy is not represented by winners of elections doing whatever they want, but by how well the democratic rights of all citizens are protected and defended by whomever is elected.

Courts exist to ensure those rights. The most terrible thing would be having courts at the service of a political party and their agenda - a growing threat from the right in this country. As more and more judges get elected, more and more judges are being bought the same way politicians are bought by corporate campaign money.

Now, in contrast to Mr. Fitzgerald's erroneous understanding of democratic government, here's what Judge Sumi said in her ruling:

"The court must consider the potential damage to public trust and confidence in government if the Legislature is not held to the same rules of transparency that it has created for other governmental bodies. Our form of government depends on citizens' trust and confidence in the process by which our elected officials make laws, at all levels of government."

Now I ask you which statement better reflects the principles and values of a democracy? Which of the two, Fitzgerald or Sumi, can best be trusted to uphold the Constitution? Which one reveals the most basic understanding of the workings of our democratic system of government?

Friends, as we move into this Memorial Day weekend, one of those patriotic moments when we acknowledge those who fought in our wars, most with the motivation of defending our freedom, maybe we could pause a moment to reflect on the privilege of living in a democracy. Maybe we could give pause a moment to think about how under threat it is right now.  And maybe you could pass on this lesson to those legislators and governors who seem in urgent need of it.

Guns and fossil fuels - Wisconsin takes a few more steps backwards

What a sad front page. These two headlines: Guns in the Capitol? and, Advocates say wind projects in jeopardy.

One can get depressed reading the paper these days. Thanks to the 'rugged individual' element of the Wisconsin culture, fed and manipulated by the corporate interests that own the Repub Party right now, combined with low voter turnout - lots of folks who just don't care - we watch as step after step our state moves backwards into the 19th century.

Robber barons buying politicians and paying for legislation, gunslingers ready for the shootout at the O.K. Corral, dirty fuels fouling our air and our water - which means also our lungs, our bodies, increasing our contribution to the greenhouse gases that are heating up the atmosphere and causing climate change.

Add the N.R.A. to the list of groups running our state government right now, sitting at the table with Koch Industries, Club for Growth, Rove's billionaire-funded Crossroads GPS - oh, and Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers.

Guns in the Capitol? People unlicensed, unregistered, and untrained? Can you imagine - in this contentious political climate?

Guns and fossil fuel dependence - looking backward for our future. The rightist wave against the tide of necessary change, against the tide of 'real' world realities (if you will), puts Wisconsin on a track that will lead to more decline in our quality of life, a bit more tragedy (the fantasy of pulling out a gun to save the day against the bad guys comes up against the reality that most deaths and injuries from these guns happen to families, loved ones, accidents in the home, etc.), and a lot more political and cultural animosity.

Well, friends, it will take a lot more creativity, passion, and commitment to light the fires under the depressed, demoralized, resigned, or disinterested citizens among us. And it will take years to turn this rightist, anti-democratic, rugged individual, gun-slinging culture back around to something more humane, compassionate, just, forward thinking, innovative, and inclusive.

"Forward" is our state motto. Maybe the Fitzgerald/Walker regime should try to change that, too.

As Sen. Miller said at the rally that welcomed back the Wisconsin 14, the battle for Wisconsin has been engaged. Yes. And more of us best get engaged before this becomes a permanent trajectory. The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to turn it back around.

Not a good time

Friends, sorry not to post yesterday, and struggling with time today.  I will get something together later, but just wanted to vent my fear and frustration. Voters last year put our state government in the hands of a solid majority of mostly rightist Repubs who can pretty much do what they want (because 14 State Senators really can't keep running off to Illinois, bless them all!!)  The biennium budget is a disaster for this state, as are the measures being passed to consolidate power in the office of our gov who sees himself as a servant of God in gutting our quality of life and increasing the suffering and disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable among us.

So why write this: please, don't give up!!  Because this bad time in our history is a bad time in our history and another time can be created. We can use this bad time to feel overwhelmed, depressed and defeated - or to get really angry and focused and motivated about what we care about, and to work for that in our lives, our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our various community groups.

The way to defend our rights is by defending our rights - and the rights of those around us. It's the old adage about a threat to one being a threat to all. The only way to turn this back around is to make sure we don't get consumed by defending our own sector interests, but that we become part of the broad solidarity required to take back from the anti-democratic right-wing the values, hopes, and dreams of our democracy.

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.

Assembly Committee Repubs approve voter suppression legislation

The dismantling of Wisconsin's government and broad democracy continued yesterday in the Repub-dominated Assembly Committee on Elections and Campaign Reform. With Sen. Alberta Darling leading the way, the committee approved the new voter ID law intended to suppress voting rights, targeting students, elderly, and the poor, populations most likely to vote for Democrats.

This follows a national pattern in several states intended to bolster the power of Repubs at the cost of their opposing party and democracy itself.

Let's be clear: this is not about voter fraud, the great faux issue the Repubs say they are addressing. Voter fraud in this state is a problem being invented, one that barely registers on the 'dangers-to-democracy' radar. The real threat to democracy is coming from the right, funded by corporations and the groups they support, like Karl Rove's GPS Crossroads, the Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party and Club for Growth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

For years, these groups have been trying to get a hold on the electoral system itself to manipulate it to their benefit. I need to remind myself over and over again that the Repub Party they are using as their tool, in this state, in Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere, is not the Repub Party of my parents' generation. This is a party that has been taken over by billionaires (Rove's group is funded almost entirely by billionaires' money), rightist corporations like Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil, for the purpose of reshaping our country to something that ressembles the days of the robber barons and Tammany Hall, back to the days when powerful white business groups ran corrupt political machines and controlled political parties and local and state governments without the restrictions of things like human and civil rights, labor unions, environmental laws, or broad-based popular democracy.

Again, as I wrote yesterday, I wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to get attention.

So, we were all in the streets over collective bargaining rights for public workers and the assault on the middle class. Will these same people be willing to go into the streets to defend the right to vote for poor people, inner city neighborhoods, African-Americans, students, and the elderly? I am just not feeling the same urgency that came with the assault on collective bargaining - and you can be sure they are counting on that.  It has been a long time since the people of this country went into the streets to defend the right to vote - and that came from the disenfranchised by way of the civil rights movement some 50 years ago now.

Source: New World Encyclopedia

Recall our history: most expansions of the right to vote - women's suffrage and the civil rights movement as our preeminent examples - came from persistent struggle, came from movements and protests. We had to struggle at every turn to broaden democracy to the point where it became that - democracy, not rule by the elite.

According to the morning paper, Darling and Leibham of Sheboygan were insistent on banning all forms of student IDs. They don't want students - with rights as profound and inalienable as theirs or yours or mine - to be able to exercise their right to vote. What they want, my friends, is the ability to dismantle government and hand the public sector over to the corporate sector without pushback or the inconvenience of organized political opposition.

Example? The other thing they did yesterday - the budget committee voted to repeal the regional transit authorities that were created to promote and build commuter rail from Milwaukee to Kenosha. They want them to go away. The road-building lobby which lavished funds on Walker's campaign want more cement poured, more traffic congestion, more neighborhoods and habitats destroyed, for their profit.

...while gas prices are approaching all-time records.

I can't say this strongly enough - our Wisconsin political system and much of the quality of life in our state is under threat from this regime. And I guess we are about to find out just how much we care about those things.

Okay, but is this true?

None of this stuff has become law - yet.  But we are running out of time. While all this anti-Walker regime energy gets focused on the recalls, the vote on Walker's biennium budget will take place before those elections. In fact, the Repubs will use every legal maneuver available to them to keep those elections from happening before the vote on the budget.  Sure would be nice to see some of the energy go where it needs to go now.  Sure would be good to see folks called back to the Capitol to reclaim our rights and our democracy.

Republicans appear worried, but we best be as well

Little signs here and there seem to reveal that Republican state legislators are a bit worried about the political fallout from the Walker/Ryan bold plans for America and our state. Folks are getting a little feisty out there, shouting down the great deficit hero, refusing to allow the deceptions and obfuscations to go unchallenged. He came to lecture, and often got lectured.

Seems these bold plans to address the deficit not by returning tax rates to something more sane (like those of the 60s and 70s, or even just before the budget-busting Bush tax cuts), not by cutting defense and getting out of 2-3 wars loathed by the vast majority of the population and taking an enormous toll on soldiers and their families, not by cutting subsidies for ethanol and fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, but by attacking social programs that impact the most vulnerable populations - seems these plans are not exactly popular.  Medicare?  Yikes, Repubs, you must be reeling at the poll numbers!!!

Check this out from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post:

You know what’s not popular? Reforming Medicare such that beneficiaries “receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy.” According to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 65 percent of Americans oppose the idea -- about the same number who dismissed it in 1995. And if they’re told that the cost of private insurance for seniors is projected to outpace the cost of Medicare insurance for seniors -- which is exactly what CBO projects -- more than 80 percent of Americans oppose the plan.

...Cutting Medicare polls poorly even if you leave out the details. Almost 80 percent of Americans oppose Medicare cuts in the abstract, while 70 percent oppose Medicaid cuts.

Paul Ryan just received a lesson in democracy from a lot of older folks and many conservatives whom he forgot still read newspapers, follow politics, and are well-informed.  They can spy the intention to destroy Medicare when they see it, even if Ryan and others think they can pull one over on them.

Photo: Swedish

That and the successful recall efforts against 6 Repub State Senators who voted to bust public sector unions have some Repubs looking for a little negotiating room with their governor on some elements of his crash-and-burn biennium budget proposal.

Like mandating recycling but cutting funds to pay for it. Like intentions to turn the UW-Madison campus into an elite private-public institutions that only the rich can afford (and without the annoyance of union representation for the faculty and staff, but that's another issue).

Meanwhile, those outside agitators, the folks from the American Recall Coalition in Utah, have not had much success against the Wisconsin 14. Imagine thinking they could get enough petitions to recall Sen. Lena Taylor or the revered State Sen. Risser!! A little miscalculation there, doncha' think?  Should make for a fun summer.

Meanwhile, Repubs continue their assault on the most basic right of any democracy - the right to vote. In their proposed voter ID law, the intent to suppress the vote was already apparent. Now they have new proposals to put in place difficult hurdles for voter registration efforts and to move the primary election from September to August - when folks are on vacation and students have not yet arrived at university campuses.

My favorite line in the article is this one: "A hearing on the bill is slated for 10 a.m. Wednesday, and Republicans who run the Assembly will meet in private later in the day to discuss any changes to the measure." So many private meetings on so many essential things. Transparency is not a characteristic of the current character of our Repub legislators.

Interestingly, the guy pushing these proposals is Repub Rep. Jeff Stone who just lost decisively to Chris Abele in the election for County Executive, one of the local elections considered to be a mandate on the Walker regime. Didn't go well for him, and actually a number of Repubs could face difficult elections next year - so best to get measures in place now to make it harder for poor people, students, and the elderly to vote. Best to get measures in place now to make it more difficult to vote absentee or to carry out voter registration drives.

It's about their future

It's too easy to say it's just about a sore loser. In fact, once again, there are efforts to do similar things in several states, and, once again, you get that feeling that something else is going, like coordinated efforts to create one-party rule wherever possible. At stake are issues as basic as whether or not our democracy will survive these rightist assaults, whether there is intent to co-opt, manipulate, and control state and local elections to attain dominance for one political party.

I try not to get all hyperbolic about these things, but I've been involved in grassroots political work and advocacy all my life and I have never seen anything quite so threatening to our democracy as these recent efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Maine, and elsewhere to take away the right to vote from more and more people, the populations whose votes Repub governors and legislators cannot count on to keep them in power for their true agenda - to gut government, privatize as much of the public sector as they can, and make off with our future.

For more, I highly recommend you take the time to view this video, if you have not yet seen it. This is stuff we need to know - because it looks more and more possible that it is democracy itself that is at stake here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Karl Rove, the ultimate outside agitator, shows up in Milwaukee

You know, when I hear the gov, Scott Walker, or others of the extreme right talk about outside agitators coming into the state to stir things up, union thugs and all that, I scratch my head because these guys would be nothing without outside agitators and their money. We know, for instance, that recalls of some of the Wisconsin 14 are being organized by a secretive right-wing group in Utah, the American Recall Coalition. We know that Walker received big contributions from the Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries is based in Wichita.  We know that the Koch-founded and funded Americans for Prosperity brought outside agitator Sarah Palin and organizers into the state to try to drum up some passionless reaction to the massive protests of February and March.

Karl Rove. Master outside agitator with lots of money to throw around. Spoke last night at UWM. This guy loves to stir things up. It's a voice we don't really need here in Wisconsin right now in a state where honesty, integrity, truthfulness, compassion, a toning down of nasty rhetoric, a calming of emotions, and all that, are needed if we are to carve a path through our political crisis - one brought to you by subterfuge, less-than-honest campaigns, ideological rigidity and hidden agendas, TV ads intended to stir things up and keep us from talking to each other.

Union thugs, one of his favorite terms for organized public sector workers. You gotta be kidding me. Show me the thugs, Karl!!! Rove loves to show images of these dangerous people. His organization, Crossroads GPS, sponsors ads on TV showing you these made-up thugs. Here's how the Journal Sentinel article describes these ads:

Crossroads GPS...launched a $750,000 national cable television ad campaign that portrays government unions as self-serving bullies collecting mandatory dues to influence liberals such as President Barack Obama.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Wow! friends, what an accusation! I just didn't know that all those families and teachers and firefighters and students and farmers in the streets of Madison were such lackeys of these bully unions. I didn't know they were forced so jubilently into the streets by their oppressive union masters!! I didn't know that my fellow yoga student who works at UW-Waukesha, or my friend of 40 years who is a social worker at a public middle school, were such agitators of social disruption!!!

Good God, do people really believe this stuff?  Karl Rove need only look in the mirror to find a perfect example of the political bully, who deceives and lies and manipulates, and throws around millions and millions of dollars, to effect the strategy of the far right wing that has a great distaste for popular democracy. His version does indeed harken back to our founding days when democracy belonged to rich white landowners.

He defended Walker as "courageous" for busting unions. What in the world is courageous about using your power, achieved by misleading voters, to crush public sector unions?! Courage is what happens when 14 State Senators, not able to live with their consciences if they don't do something about this assault on worker rights, take off for Illinois having no idea what happens next, but putting their fate in the hands of the people.  That's real political courage.

And when, oh when, did 'agitating' for liberal policies become a matter of thuggishness, or come to have this taint of illegitimacy, while agitating for rightwing policies is somehow permissible and patriotic? That alone represents very well the kind of destructive, negative, nasty political discourse that Rove fosters.

Rove has become a multi-multi-millionaire doing this stuff, and that should speak volumes about how far to trust his politics. We know who he represents, and it ain't you and me.

Those in the cheerleading section for Scott Walker tell you a lot about what he has in store for this state.

Learn more about Crossroads GPS from the link in the JS quote above, and from here.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

The sad thing about having Rove and his operations, along with Koch Industries lobbyists, Ams for Prosperity, and their ilk coming into our state is that it bodes ill for the future of our politics. Look for election campaigns to get uglier and nastier, for discourse to break down even more (they intend this as part of their strategy since polarization serves their interests) - unless we reject these groups and their efforts to divide and conquer us for the sake of their corporate backers.

Oh, for a really smart, inventive, creative, non-ideological governor who is not also self-serving!

My headline is my op-ed, I guess. The more Gov Scott Walker is given a national platform the more he speaks and writes, the more we learn about his thinking and his approach, the more I worry for my state.

Of course, it has become clear that the guy has national ambitions, which is incredible for the small amount he has accomplished in terms of governance or financial smarts. He appears to me to be one of those creations of the right - like Michelle Bachman, or Sarah Palin, or Rep Paul Ryan, whose big draconian budget bill passed by the House the other week doesn't really balance the budget, but tries to play with the synapses of our brains to make us believe you can cut taxes on the rich even more and pay for them by cutting the tiny percent of the budget that pays for vital programs in our social safety net, things like unemployment insurance and food stamps. Meanwhile, the plan would eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid, threaten Social Security, and more.

The right is into magical thinking.

Top of the page in this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Daniel Bice's column, 'No Quarter,' taking issue with Walker's claim to have created jobs that had already been announced by his predecessor, Gov. Jim Doyle, last Dec. Really, the hubris of this guy is something. I suppose he will take credit for those Dunkin' Donut jobs, too, but not for the thousands of jobs the state lost when he turned down $810 million of federal money to build high-speed rail - along with the jobs that economic development along the route would have created.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

Walker promised that his administration would create 250,000 jobs. Great. Only 249,875 to go. But will he continue using funny numbers and false claims? We have to assume that means 250,000 jobs more than now exist in the state.  Will he count the jobs lost under his administration, especially the good-paying ones, you know, like in the public sector which he intends to cut drastically?

More magical thinking: the NY Times gave the guy a platform over the weekend. Why I don't know. This time the issue was Medicaid and how he would like to see it 'reformed' along the lines of how TV networks dealt with "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Get Smart" (wish I was making that up). But there is nothing original in his plan; it has been a right-wing approach on lots of federal programs - replace today's Medicaid with block grants and let the states decide how to run their own programs.

This does not make me feel good about the fate of the poor in so many states that don't like the poor very much. Or even working families who have lost health care benefits at their jobs or are seeing their wages and benefits fall, the value of their homes slide or become stagnant, who are having trouble making it and must turn to Medicaid and other public health assistance programs for their medical needs.

The CapTimes ran an Op-Ed responding to the NY Times piece.

...the Times did Walker no favors by publishing his Medicaid screed.  There is no question that Medicare and Medicaid can be improved. But abandoning the values that underpin them improves nothing.

I agree. I also found the most illuminating part of Walker's 'screed' to come towards the end of his NY Times  op-ed. It's the part where we see what the real agenda is, the ideological framework of these right-wing Repubs as they seek to remake the meaning of government in this country. If it seems to harken back to something like the Confederacy, nullification, states' rights, and all that, well...

States are not merely “laboratories of democracy,” but also sovereign governments under our system of federalism. Unfortunately, the encroachment of the federal government in Medicaid threatens to reduce states to mere agents. 

This is the kind of language that reveals the real agenda here - to remove states as much as possible from the federal government's authority. We are back to the Federalists v. Anti-Federalists argument that goes back to our founding days, fueled the Civil War (which is being fought once again), and emerges every time the federal government recognizes new rights and responsibilities that states rights folks deplore (abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights legislation of the 60s, rights to access to health care, public education, worker rights, environmental protections, as just a few examples).

Well, Mr. Walker, Wisconsin is indeed a laboratory of democracy, one in which we see the reemergence of a debate over the role of government in defending and fostering the rights, dignity, and well-being of its citizens. We think those rights are broad and inclusive; we think they include everyone. We even think it is our responsibility as taxpayers and citizens to contribute our fair share for the common good of all. And we are bold enough to believe that the feds have a crucial role in ensuring that states do not encroach upon these rights, and that when those rights are in jeopardy at the state or local level, it is the role of the feds to enforce its authority over those levels of government.

And we think our state needs some better leadership than this, something more forward-thinking, more in tune with the challenges of these times in which we live, less ideological, less exclusive, less dismissive of workers, more committed to the quality of life of our people and the natural communities in which we live.

We think we need a bigger heart at the helm, and a more compassionate state government.