Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Mark Belling: Milwaukee's White American

Mark Belling is not "Standing Up for Milwaukee."

In a column on Wednesday, Millions can’t solve moral bankruptcy in central city, Belling launched into a two pronged attack attacking the city's black community and ridiculing Joseph Zilber's $50 million gift to strengthen Milwaukee neighborhoods.

For starters, the right wing commentator notes money already spent combating poverty and crime in the inner city:

How many billions in welfare, charitable programs and "investment" have been poured into predominantly black neighborhoods?

Then comes this gem:

Most blacks have tuned out white America...

Belling has a Milwaukee view, or perhaps a world view that makes him incapable of understanding the problems of poverty and crime and how to fix them.

For starters he knows nothing about Zilber's gift. An examination of the announcement reveals that the approach is significantly different than traditional efforts to institute change. It is community base building, not welfare.  It is economic development, not handouts.

Secondly, while Belling realizes that moral leadership is essential to improving Milwaukee, he has no clue as to how economic and social justice play a critical role in shaping community standards in Milwaukee or any other city around the world.

Zilber's gift is a challenge to Milwaukee leadership to add additional funds to a well crafted effort.

Milwaukee business leaders have a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to the city. They can sit on the sidelines with Belling, or they can learn about the fundamental principles underlying Zilber's commitment and open their own wallets.

As for Belling, he might want to tell us what he means by his "white America."

Zilber's Gift: It Is More Than The Money

When it was announced that Milwaukee business and civic leader, Joseph Zilber, was giving $50 million to fund neighborhood initiatives the response, as expected, expressed gratitude and hope.

Zilber gives $50 million Philanthropist hopes to revive low-income areas in city, encourage others to give

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett called the action "an unbelievably generous gift from Joe Zilber to this city."

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article focused on something just as important as the size of the gift, it's scope:

The Zilber Neighborhood Initiative, as the effort will be called, will work with local organizations to support specific efforts to improve the quality of life in up to 10 neighborhoods...

...A key early step will be creating or selecting a "central intermediary," an organization to oversee the effort and make decisions on where money should go, while giving neighborhood organizations and representatives a strong voice in what goes on.

The gift to the people of Milwaukee measured in dollars is obvious.  Not so obvious is the thought and planning that went into the structure of the gift. As Zilber noted:

...There are a great many individuals and foundations prepared to invest resources to strengthen our community. For months I have worked behind the scenes with these entities. My mission is to mobilize them with good ideas, strong proposals and the promise that our shared commitment to our great city will yield positive results...

Joseph Zilber and his advisers gave careful thought to the structure of neighborhoods, how neighborhoods change, and the importance of building upon neighborhood assets:

We can (and must) act quickly and decisively to support programs that work, replace those that don't, bring proven and promising solutions to scale, sustain them long enough to gain traction and provide them with sufficient resources to get the job done.

The selection of Susan E. Lloyd of the Program on Human and Community Development to direct the effort is just one more indicator that this is a well planned gift. The money is important, but the context makes it even more valuable.

Brittany Zimmerman Phoned - Reach Out And Touch Someone

Before Brittany Zimmerman died, her last effort was a telephone call. Brittany tried to reach out and touch someone.

The most important domestic function of government is to safeguard the innocent: those who need assistance when they cannot protect themselves. To establish justice and promote the general welfare.

Society tries to prevent crime. When it cannot, it offers assistance in many forms, including 911 services which we all pay for, in part, through taxes and special fees.

I cannot imagine a more poignant example of a 911 call than a person, life at risk, dialing for help, dialing for that life.

It is the very instant where they manage to dial the number but cannot speak out that we are expected to listen and respond. It makes for gripping stories and haunting movies.

For Brittany Zimmerman it was a cold, lonely reality.

Now comes the blame. First there is the dispatcher who became too busy and moved on to other calls and forgot about Brittany. Them comes the director of the 911 Call Center who did not help his agency's stature by implying there was no reason to apologize.

The fault is more complicated than that. There are a lot of capable 911 dispatchers who could fail under the same circumstances.  It is reminiscent of the constant reminders of problems in our nation's skies. Air traffic control: Safety concerns on the nation's radar: As controllers keep their eyes on the skies, mistakes and cover-ups are surfacing.

The system did not function:

• an overworked dispatcher.
• a policy that police only automatically respond to a silent 911 call from a land line, not a cell phone.
• a lousy system for linking cell phones to their location - with all of the telephone company/government spying, you would think that emergency dispatch centers could have the primary address of every cell phone number.
• underfunded critical government services (the 911 center is just one of many).
• a desire for simple solutions like blaming the dispatcher.
• and do not forget the morons who deliberately call 911 unnecessarily.

Government failed Brittany Zimmerman. Government failed all of us. In turn, the time consuming, boring task of making systems work, focusing on public management and administration does not appeal to either politicians or the public. 

In 2004 Dane County conducted a study of the dispatch center and the 911 system.  That study predicted significant failures if reforms were not instituted. That study is one of thousands floating around city and county halls, state capitols, and Washington D.C.

They still float.

We all failed Brittany Zimmerman.

Another Wisconsin Chart Topper: Drunk Drivers

The story is no surprise to those of us who have experience in dealing with the problems of Wisconsin drunks - drivers or not.

Wisconsin, Upper Midwest, Leads U.S.in Drunk Drivers

Wisconsin leads the way. The federal government estimates more than a quarter of the state’s adult drivers had driven under the influence. Rounding out the worst five are North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

The most important point of the story is:

Eric Goplerud, research professor at George Washington University Medical Center, said cultural and demographic issues probably have a role in the higher rates of driving under the influence in certain states.

During the fourteen years I served as mayor it was evident that our state's culture was a significant contributor to the problem, especially among young people. I recall a sexual assault witnessed by a dozen students. There was no prosecution since the dozen witnesses and the victim were too drunk to account for the events.  Or the police raid on a party where two very attractive coeds, miles from their dorm, were too drunk to find their way home.  (And they were not very attractive under the circumstances.)  The only question was whether the young men who had plied them with liquor or the women were better candidates for the detox unit.

The right of passage to adulthood is paved with excessive alcohol consumption at an early age. The cultural mores erroneously convey to teenagers that it is admirable to consume large quantities of alcohol, and that there is a correlation between sexual virility, prowess, and performance and acting stupid while under the influence.

We can continue to pass legislation protecting all of us from drunk drivers and enforce that legislation.  Real change will come, however, when we change the culture: high school parties, football games, and Saturday nights too drunk to have a good time in bed.

The Real Reasons to Buy A Supreme Court

When Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) and its cohorts, the Club for Growth Wisconsin and the Coalition for America's Families, spent an estimated $3-4 million to buy their second seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the message was crime.

The advertisements focused on distortions and falsehoods about the record of Justice Louis Butler in an effort to entice voters to select a new justice, Michael Gableman, who would follow their right-wing agenda.

The conventional wisdom was that the real issue was so-called tort reform.

Wrong.

While there are a small minority of WMC members, concerned about their liability in tort cases, that issue was of minimum concern to the coalition established to control the Supreme Court.

One need go no further than WMC's own surveys of its members to see the irrelevance of tort reform. In its 2006 survey of its members, when asked, "What is the top business concern facing your company?" the  lowest response polled was lawsuit abuse with a measly response of 1.23%.

One look no further than the legislative agenda of these three organization (WMC, WCFG, CAF ) to get a real understanding of why they want to own a Supreme Court:

• Health Insurance. Health care is the single, most significant cost facing employers, if it is part of benefit packages. The standard for coverage is set by labor unions, particularly public employee and teachers unions. When buying a court, WMC and its friends are trying to gain favorable rulings against labor agreements in general, and and legislation in specific, that might require them to pay a fair share of the cost of health care.
• Unions. Because of their bargaining power in the marketplace, WMC needs a court that will weaken the power of unions. Unions are an impediment to exporting jobs overseas, hiring immigrant workers with H-1-B visas, outsourcing, and lowering safety standards.
• The Environment. As the public becomes more conscious of global warming, the significant monetary value of fresh water, calls for clean air and water, increase. This results in more regulations, particularly on manufacturers, who subsequently need a Supreme Court that will take an activist position and overturn progressive legislation designed to ensure the publics health and safety.
• Education. Long ago, convinced that public schools produce a liberal and progressive citizenry, these reactionary organizations want to get more and more children into private and religious schools where they can be indoctrinated into conservative values. To do this, public monies are needed. The problem is that there are serious constitutional problems in funneling money into private schools, particularly if they teach religion. These right wing extremists need a Supreme Court that will open the door for public money to be used for private education.
• Privatizing government. These right wing organizations do not want to stop public services, they just want to be able to make a profit offering them. Whether it is outsourcing wars to Blackwater and Halliburton or having private companies provide fire departments and water, the idea is to crush the local governments and their public employees as a first step towards a feudal system of governance. Note that when no-bid contracts, landed with fraud and mismanagement, are offered to the private sector, these organizations never protest or complain.

Over the past year, I have met with dozens of business leaders who I would describe as moderate and thoughtful in their approach to government and public policy. When asked what are the most important issues facing their companies and the state, they respond, "A trained and educated workforce, as well as a satisfactory resolution to the health care problem."

As you might expect, these business leaders are not comfortable with many left leaning Democrats.  But they are just as uncomfortable with the kind of Republicans that presently control the Wisconsin Assembly. These business leaders are going to play a critical role in solving Wisconsin's problems if they can wrest control of the public policy discussion from WMC and its collaborators, and then fashion solutions with organized labor.

Reflections Before the Election

Before I enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in 1962 I knew something of the state's political lore. My parents subscribed to The Progressive magazine. I knew of McCarthyism, I knew that Governor Nelson now served in the United State Senate along with a maverick William Proxmire.

This state underwent many transformations. The most significant and long lasting began early in the twentieth century by Robert La Follette.  Fighting Bob's domination of state politics  was so strong that even the FDR elections in the 1930's left the Democrats without any influence until after World War II.

Finally, the efforts to revitalize the Democratic Party  lead to the elections of Nelson, Proxmire, Governor Lucey, and thousands of others from the city halls to the state legislature.  In the meantime, the Republican Party produced elected officials as varied as Warren Knowles and Tommy Thompson, and Ody Fish and John Walter Chilsen.

Wisconsin politics charged in the 1990's. The undercurrent was previously there, but the nasty forces that worked into organizations like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce  (WMC) were unleashed in the new century when Governor Thompson went to Washington and the extreme right-wing took over the Republican Party and its front organizations. And where there were no clandestine operations, they created new ones.

We know the outcome. The readers of Waxing America need only go through previous posts to see the documentation of sinister groups that lie and ruin the reputations of people and institutions in their effort to destroy government and create a corporate socialism that sucks the life out of public education, city hall, and the courthouse.

I do not know what will happen in Tuesday's election but I am sure of this: Wisconsin knows WMC.

What Did Gableman Know and When Did He Know It?

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), The Club for Growth, and The Coalition for America's Families are the three main organizations funding the effort to elect Michael Gableman to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

While average Wisconsinites write out checks for ten and twenty dollars to support the candidate of their choice, these three groups, be the end of March, may have spent over $5 million.

Questions for Michael Gableman, or anyone else who knows the answers and is willing to stand up and tell the truth:

• Who are the people from these organizations that met with you or met with your intermediaries?
  
• When you were stunned to learn how much money they would raise for you, and you asked,"Where will the money come from?" what did they tell you?
• Do the names of companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and the international pharmaceutical companies come up?
• Did anyone suggest that the money could be routed through the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Institute for Legal Reform so it would be hard to discover the source?
• If you are the winner in the Supreme Court race can you promise that you will not hear any case involving a a party that funneled money through any of the named organizations in this post?
  • Before hearing every case, will you promise to examine the financial records of these shadowy organizations to make sure they have not bought you?

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Peddling Junk...To Own Members

For some time Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) peddled junk to the people of Wisconsin. With no regard for an accurate portrayal, WMC unloaded reams of press releases with misleading claims that did not fairly portray government revenues and spending, the desires of the Wisconsin business community, and now, the decisions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The problem with peddling junk, be it junk science or junk economics, is that you may start to believe it yourself. Even more severe are the consequences if your friends discover you mislead them.

Trust is everything. Poison the environment with dishonesty and misleading information, and there is no trust. Without trust people cannot work together.

For a month WMC touted a series of workshops around the state designed to undermine the candidacy of Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler. This traveling road show started in Madison and moved to Wausau, Green Bay, Milwaukee, and made its fifth of six appearances in La Crosse Wednesday morning.

There was a problem along the way. WMC leadership assured its members there was little downside to their participation in trying to buy another Supreme Court seat.  After all, the Annette Ziegler triumph last April over Linda Clifford was simply smashing.

Only WMC's name appeared on the ads. Member businesses who were responsible for raising the money, purchasing the ads and the content of the ads would never be seen.

This was very important to WMC members who sell to consumers.

Something went wrong along the way. Three weeks ago pickets showed up as part of the WMC Watch* program for which I am paid. Pickets appeared at the WMC office in Madison; in other cities it was a chamber of commerce office and a hotel.

This week the workshop was scheduled for the Onalaska clinic site for Gundersen Lutheran.

Suddenly Gundersen bailed. There were quick and frantic phone calls. The bottom line is that the workshop would not be held at Gundersen no matter what.

The last thing they needed was pickets showing up. That meant questions - questions from physicians who were partners in the clinic, questions from staff, and certainly questions from patients.

Gundersen Lutheran in many ways is a progressive organization. I admire their CEO who sits on the WMC board, but he was sucked into the WMC program to get rid of Justice Louis Butler.   

The WMC staff  are the ones who violated the members' trust in both style and substance. The CEO from Gundersen and every other business have a right to know why they were misled as to the consequences and the importance of attempting to buy the Supreme Court.

So does the rest of Wisconsin.

In the coming weeks Waxing America will slowly and carefully peel back the skin of the onion. We will focus on statements and reports from WMC which may even in some ways be factual, but which distort and misinform.

*Another organization is about to use the name WMC Watch. For that reason I am going to modify the name of the program I created. I have yet to select a new name. Stay tuned.

Margaret Farrow Tramples Constitution on Behalf of Gableman. Candidate Silent.

Margaret Farrow who introduces herself, "as a former Republican Lt. Governor and member of the Wisconsin State Legislature," wrote a fund raising letter on February 1, 2008 on behalf of Mike Gableman who is challenging distinguished jurist, Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler.

Farrow, who wants to "bring law and order back to the Supreme Court," asserts:

When it comes to Louis Butler's record on crime, he has voted to give criminals more rights.

• Louis Butler voted against allowing bloody clothing to be used as key evidence in a murder case. (State v. Knapp)

That statement is legally incorrect, it is misleading, and it is an affront to our heritage.

What Gableman and Farrow ignore is that our criminal justice system starts with a very simple premise. It is what separates us from the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans.

Every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The rights in question are those of all citizens, not criminals.  These are the rights of defendants in criminal cases.

Tragically as we have learned over the years, many people are wrongfully charged, and there are others who were convicted who were innocent. Some of them are your friends, neighbors, and family.

This is the kind if incendiary rhetoric we can expect from the opponents of Louis Butler in the coming month. This what you can expect in television ads from special interest groups who do not disclose the source of their money. This is what you can expect from organizations that take significant sums of money from out-of-state interests who refuse to reveal their identities.

In the meantime, the Gableman cabal assumes you are a criminal if you stand beside the United States Constitution.

This is the same Gableman who signed the following clean campaign pledge, which he authored:

Publicly repudiate dishonest negative ads made by independent groups against our opponent.

I guess the pledge does not apply to any dishonesty authored by the candidate's own organization.

And none of this addresses the Farrow-Gableman assertion that a Butler decision, "...provided the deciding vote to overturn a sexual predator decision by a circuit court, resulting in the release of the predator into Milwaukee County.”

The predator was never released.

Go figure what will come next from candidate Gableman who claims to be committed to honesty and fairness.

Why Not Free Rent for All Public Employees?

Today the Wisconsin State Journal published an editorial, Let cops live free on Allied suggesting that the public benefits of encouraging police officers to live 'rent free' in high crime areas like Madison's Allied Drive were worth the cost:

Just one or two cops living in this high-crime area on the city's Southwest Side could act as a deterrent and add to the mix of residents with different backgrounds and incomes.

The premise is sound, and the logic goes far beyond Allied Drive, police officers, and crime. The principle is known as residency. There was a time when all of the union contracts covering city of Madison employees and most other municipal workers in Wisconsin required that local employees live in the community they served.

It was one of the few areas where I parted ways with my friends in the public employee unions. It should be understood that while everyone has a right to live where they please, there is no right to a public job. As a condition of employment, it was required that you live in the city. The benefits were obvious:

• The city pays your check; you should live with the people who hired you and spend that money you earned locally.
• The heart of the city is the middle class and there is no one more 'middle class' than public employees.
• In an emergency, the employee is close to work, whether it be a fire, a flood or a water main break.
• The presence of the middle class, particularly pubic safety employees such as firefighters and police officers, stabilized communities. As the article noted: "Many neighborhood residents, tired of drug-dealing and violent crime on Allied Drive, would undoubtedly welcome such neighbors."

The end of Madison residency requirements came after the bus drivers strike in 1980. At that time all city employees had a residency requirement and the bus drivers were not city employees - they were technically employees of a management company. As part of the new contract settlement, the Skornicka administration made them city employees.

The police union contract had a "me too" provision. If any other city employees were allowed to live outside the city, so could the police. With the bus drivers under a city contract, the police officers could now move out of the city.  And they did.

Over the years, residency disappeared from one contract after another.  My guess is that today less than half of all city employees live in the city of Madison.

Keeping residency was not made any easier as state legislators offered bills to outlaw municipal residency requirements. That was too bad. Last I looked there were some financial incentives for employees to remain in the city. In any case, the matter is subject to bargaining.