Americans for Prosperity's successful campaign to create party of climate change deniers

Just this quick note today. Why is it so hard to get Repubs to say one intelligent thing about global warming and climate change? This was not always true. What happened?

This article explains: Americans for Prosperity Takes Credit for Bullying GOP Lawmakers Into Climate Denial.

Read that headline again, then just sit a moment and take it in. Think about what this means. AFP, founded by the Koch brothers, founders and funders of the Tea Party, have bullied their paid-for politicians into denying, obfuscating, ridiculing one of the gravest threats to humanity - ever!

Take it in on ethical and moral grounds. Take in what this means in terms of the common good, the good of the commons, and the prospects for a decent future for our descendents. Think about what these people are doing for the sake of their short-term interests, for profits and power.

Then, if you are a citizen of Wisconsin, think about the power these people have over our [s]elected officials. Remember that AFP and other Koch-funded groups put enormous amounts of money into influencing campaigns, running ads that do not tell the truth or outright lie, that manipulate people with conservative beliefs to deny what is actually occurring all around them. Think of the role of the propagandists, from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to our own Charlie Sykes.

Think about this. And if you are still looking for any motivator to get involved in citizen efforts to restore government with integrity, government that serves the real interests of its citizens, here is a really, really good one.

Then while you're at it, read this, from those wild liberal radicals at the journal, Nature.

Climate change in Wisconsin

Some of my readers here know that in my work life I am focused on the many ecological challenges facing our world right now, trying to raise awareness, trying to encourage people to engage these realities, trying to help articulate with others how we are going to live through some difficult times as ecosystems come under increasing stress from our industrial civilization. Among those stresses is the accelerated warming of our atmosphere caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Right now in our state political culture, we are dominated by two sides of a bad coin: business people and politicians who are global warming deniers or who know it's happening but don't want to do anything about it; and then the way-too-many of our citizens here who are incredulous, skeptical, getting their info from political pundits like Charlie Sykes, as if he has read even one authoritative study on the issue.

I was with one such skeptic over the weekend and, really, it is amazing to hear deniers speak with such authority when they are not acquainted with the science, haven't read the experts, have had only one conduit of noise on the topic from the political right. I mean, I tried to mention the research I've read, the studies, the workshops by scientists that I've attended... Doesn't matter. Runs into the mental brick wall of all that punditry that confirms a world view, whether or not it is accurate.

And isn't that, after all, a central aspect of our dysfunctional political culture right now?

Despite all that, climate change resulting from human-induced global warming is impacting Wisconsin already, and these impacts are going to become increasingly severe with rising temperatures in the atmosphere.

So it's best to arm ourselves with good info. I recommend a great resource to you from the UW-system, Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.  You will find some really good visuals and video that lay out the challenges and what to expect over the course of this century. Fair warning: it is more than a bit unsettling. These are not changes we can take back. We will have to learn to live in a new reality, which will mean many upheavals in all our lives.

At the same time, we have to decide how bad things are going to get - and that's about policy choices and lifestyle choices. We're all in this one together and so none of us can escape the impacts. But if we continue putting in office people who dismiss, disdain, obfuscate, or deny this reality, we only ensure that things are going to get a whole lot worse for our kids and grandkids.

This should not be a partisan issue, nor should it be in the hands of corporate lobbyists who profit from the very industries that are changing our climate. This is about simply being a human being, a species that, like all others, needs a habitat in which it can survive and thrive.

Wisconsin really needs some leadership on this stuff, and that has to come from all of us.

Milwaukee has a racism problem

Ya think?  Of course, saying that can get you into a lot of trouble, a lot of rage directed at you. "We're not racists! We just don't like those people! We don't want to live near them. They are all drug addicts and lazy, living off the government dole!And we are terribly afraid of 'them.' Their neighborhoods are full of crime and they don't have morals like we nice people with nice houses and neat lawns."

But we are not racists...

I've heard it so often growing up here. We pretend that our de facto segregation, disdain for poor people in the 'inner city,' our disdain for MPS, etc., is about something else. We know what it's about.

Yesterday's front page story saddened me: Racial gaps found in traffic stops in Milwaukee. Again, people can say what they want, from Police Chief Ed Flynn on down, but we all know what it's about. The stats show that it is not even explained by crime rates. Read the article and you will see that. And, yet again, Milwaukee has among the highest rates of racial and ethnic disparities in this business of arbitrary traffic stops, or pedestrian stops, than other cities keeping track of such things. Why are we always so high on these lists?

I grew up in Wauwatosa. I remember what happened if an African-American walked down my street. I remember as a young person how shocked I was by long-time neighbors when a mixed-race couple dared to look at a house for sale across the alley and then actually bought it - a man from Biafra married to a white Montessori school teacher, two young daughters. I remember how embarrassed I was that my Mother was one of the few long-standing residents on that block who would actually greet them and do some neighborly chat. She thought they were really nice people with adorable children.

It's not that nothing has changed, it's that the change has not been nearly enough. Laws changed, civil rights were enshrined on paper, but this is one of those realities not truly addressed until the attitudes deep within are addressed.

Sandra and I became dear friends for reasons beautiful and always-to-be-cherished. She had raised her kids in a tough neighborhood holding a 3-generation household together. She told me about her son, how hard he worked, going to school, taking part-time jobs. He saved money so that he could buy a used SUV and a gold chain. What did he get for this? He was stopped repeatedly by police and ordered to go spread-eagle while they searched his vehicle. His mother pleaded with him not to react. Of course, the consequences if he had tried to defend himself or even say something out of understandable anger could get him in a whole lot of trouble. This was about who had power, not who had rights.

He eventually got rid of the SUV and stopped wearing the gold chain.

Can Flynn or Mayor Barrett or my old neighbors even imagine what it is like living with that sort of thing every day of your life - that sense of vulnerability and powerlessness, the fear and rage that would simmer inside, that awareness of the message the world is giving to you about who you are and how you are thought of by society? I can't; Flynn can't; none of us who grew up in privilege can. And then we wonder at the results that come from growing up at the other end of racist attitudes. We wonder at the suspicion and anger. We wonder why kids feeling this in every part of their lives don't perform better on school tests, or feel they have any shot at a decent future.

And here's the other thing: what happened to Sandra's son and to those cases mentioned in this article also violate the Constitution. The ban on unreasonable search and seizure does not end at the color line or neighborhood boundaries. And one of the most disturbing trends in the culture right now is that so many people are willing to see the Constitution gutted for the sake of some ephemeral sense of security.

I met someone over the weekend who said this clearly, this time in relation to the threat of terrorism in the US - to save the Bill of Rights, sometimes you have to violate the Bill of Rights - that old 'destroy the village in order to save the village' metaphor that we learned from the Vietnam War.

What really are we trying to save when we do this? Because it's not the Constitution and it's not democracy. It is the dominance of one class of people over another. We want our rights protected, our property rights, our privilege, the racial and class identity of our neighborhoods. And, well, shucks, if you have to trample on the rights of others for that preservation, so be it.

We are a long way from the kind of vibrant racial, ethnic, cultural diversity and inclusion that is essential to vibrant, inclusive democracy. We ought not be accepting routine, even mundane, violations of the Bill of Rights for any of our citizens. This article makes clear that there is not much connection between this kind of arbitrary police action and crime rates. Crime rates tend to go down when neighborhoods do not fear or suspect the police, when a relationship of trust is established, when neighborhoods pull together and form community bonds that open up and protect safe spaces.

In this article, Flynn says: "Yes, of course we are going to stop lots of innocent people. The point is, do folks understand what their role is as a cooperative citizen in having a safe environment...That level of inconvenience, if it's coupled with respectful treatment, is something communities will accept to be safe. If the price of me walking down my neighborhood in safety is once a month (a police officer stops me), people are going to say 'That's OK with me, it's about time we saw the cops here.' "

You can't dismiss violations of rights this way, violating civil rights as a matter of acceptable inconvenience. Sure, in high crime neighborhoods, lots of residents love seeing the police around. But what are they doing while in their streets? What are they demonstrating? What attitudes do they communicate?

Yes, work with neighborhoods. Get people talking about what's going on, passing important information, getting to know one another, counting on the police to come when called, to take them and their concerns seriously. Absolutely! Have block meetings, invite the officers, build trust. Yes, and yes. But don't cross the line to racial profiling. Don't cross the line when it comes to civil rights - because that undermines the very trust you are trying to build.

And don't make it fearful for African-Americans to walk down the streets of white neighborhoods by giving in to the race-based fears of some residents. Work with them, too, so that we can overcome the fears and deep-seated old attitudes and build understanding across the barriers of racial fears until those fears are dissolved by recognition and incipient trust. Milwaukee can boast some great work in this regard over the years; we need to deepen it, do more of it.

To say racism is not at work in what is described in this article is defying reality. We know it is at work. A lot of good community policing is being done in Milwaukee now, especially compared with some really bad old days under chiefs like Harold Breier. Crimes rates are down. Applause, please; this is very encouraging. Kudos to the police department for their role in creating this trend, along with all the neighborhood groups, community organizations, churches, and others who are working together to help make our neighborhoods safer.

But we have to stop being afraid to talk about how much racism itself sets a trap for a whole lot of young people who get the message early on that white privileged society has no place for them except in their own neighborhoods where those harboring these fears so hope that they will remain, out of sight, out of mind. Now there's an incubator for some troubling behavior if ever there was one.

But let's be clear about who is responsible for it. We all are. And that means that overcoming this history buried deep inside our psyches is also the work of all of us. Let's create a city where everyone feels included and respected, and where everyone's rights are honored at the same standards set in the Constitution.

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Photos: Margaret Swedish

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.

Wisconsin's political struggles must address growing poverty

Yesterday's Journal Sentinel was very distressing, no? Front page headline - more than 4 out of 10 kids in Milwaukee living in poverty. This is a moral scandal of huge proportions.

You know, when I read about the need for testing standards and teacher evaluations in our public schools, I try to imagine what it's like dealing with over-crowded classrooms in which so many kids are hungry. When I read demands that parents must be more involved in their kids' education, I wonder if those making those demands can even imagine what it's like to be a family living in poverty, trying to scrape by on whatever work you can get, if you can get any.

Sometimes it feels like a complete failure of imagination - and compassion. So many privileged people feel they are privileged only by virtue of their cleverness and ingenuity, not by benefit of their class or race background.

But we're not supposed to talk about race, right? The unmentionable skeleton in the closet, along with gaps between rich and poor, the mere mention of which is considered 'class warfare' - by the rich.

Here's another mark of our shame: more children in this country are getting health insurance, an increase of a million from 2008-2010. Guess what? Obama's health insurance reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act, is a major reason for this increase. In many states, eligibility has been expanded through Medicaid programs and the process simplified.

Our peculiar shame? Thirty-four states had a significant increase in the number of children covered. We are one of the few states (including Kansas and Minnesota) that saw an increase in the number of uninsured children.

Good job, Scott Walker and all you Repubs in the state legislature! I guess I would say that your failure of imagination - and compassion - is more than grave. You are jeopardizing the health and lives of our state's children.

So, once again, my friends, I just want to say this: this struggle for democracy in Wisconsin, for a decent political culture and a government responsive to the needs of our citizens, has to expand to put poverty at the top of the agenda. If solidarity with the poor, the unemployed, the most marginal of our people is not at the heart of recall campaigns and occupations and protests in Madison, we will be failing this same moral test.

These two stories yesterday present us with stark reality that is simply not acceptable, not in a state or a country that is only suffering like this because of skewed priorities and the shredding of the social contract. We are suffering budget squeezes not because we lack the resources to provide necessary social services, but because of an insidious spirit that has come to corrupt our politics over the past two decades, one in which so many of the wealthy, the powerful, and secure feel no sense of social responsibility for the larger community of which they are a part - whether they like it or not. Extreme individualism has becomes the most corrosive influence on the political culture right now and its results are not pretty. Actually, they are pretty nasty.

Meanwhile, on the other end is real human suffering which these stats show is also getting worse.

A moral crisis is most definitely what this is, especially if you have the courage to actually put a face to it, especially if those faces belong to our children.