Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Wisconsin Bloggers: Individually and Collectively Inept, Inattentive, Incompetent

With one of the greatest blogging stories sitting right under their collective noses, Wisconsin bloggers sat on their collective behinds and allowed the mainstream media, the CBS Evening news with Katie Couric, to scoop them on the biggest stories of the departing year, the Shawano -SIST story of international intrigue:

Alleged Murder-For-Hire Rattles Small Town:Placid Midwest Town Turned Upside Down By Alleged Hit List And Secretive Group

All a reaction to news of an alleged hit list and claims by a so-called hit man, now telling his story for the first time.

"And I said, 'you want me to kill 60 people? You want me to kill the whole town of Shawano?" said Canadian businessman Bob Cameron.

Keteyian asked: "They were hiring you as a hit man?"

"Yes, they were," Cameron said.

"You're talking about the mayor, the city administrator, the city treasurer, the city attorney, the police chief, judges, investigators, fire commissioners," Keteyian asked.

"Uh huh," Cameron assented

Cameron says in late October he received $175,000 in wire transfers from people known to be part of a secretive group long run out of a house near Shawano called SIST.

Its is a story that could never be fabricated. The cast of characters are from the next great movie, a combined effort of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

The mayor (Kathy Bates) tops the list of sixty potential local victims. The Canadian hitman (Martin Short) was trying to do no more than collect some unpaid bills from the local cult when asked to wipe out half the town. The cult leader (Samuel L. Jackson in a reprise of his role of Jules in Pulp Fiction) is responsible for the investment of over $15 million in local real estate.

The real estate holdings fail and the county treasurer (Johnny Depp) is now foreclosing. The sheriff (Ben Stiller) and his deputy (Owen Wilson) manage to keep the town on edge as they tail two SIST members (Mike -Wayne-Meyers and Dana -Garth- Carvey), who prowl the city streets with a camcorder filming anyone they suspect is in cahoots with the town leaders.

SIST spokesman and attorney (Johnny Depp or should that be Robert Downey Jr.?) manages to bring some semblance of reality to the entire story claiming this was all a misunderstanding.

Sanity is maintained. The FBI agent (Brad Pitt) brings calm and peace to Shawano.(Pronounced Shawn-o as in Shauno of the Dead).

All this going on in plain view. Badger bloggers are writing about Republican committee assignments in the legislature, the performing arts, and Lake Michigan.

Phooey.

                

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.

Turkeys, Cougars: Chicago Makes Badgers Look Like Mice

Having a fondness for cats, wild and not, I was deeply saddened to learn of the Chicago police shooting the cougar. As the Boston Herald reported, Cougar killed in Chicago may have journeyed from South Dakota,

Mayor Richard Daley supported the police use of lethal force in a news conference Tuesday morning.

"Now, I just want to tell you, if the cougar attacked a child, they’d sue the city because the police officer didn’t do their job," Daley said. "I didn’t see a neighbor run out and grab it and say, ‘Oh I love you’ and bring it in the house."

Phooey. Or as Daley's father might have said, "Balderdash."

But on the heels of the turkey attacks on Madison area postal workers it does not make us look good. Which led the Wisconsin State Journal's Doug Moe to enter the fray, Gloves come off in turkey fight in his own combat with Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass:

John Kass, a Chicago Tribune columnist of my acquaintance, has written a column questioning the courage of Madison postal workers.

On Wednesday, Kass mocked the mail carriers who have been attacked by wild turkeys while trying to deliver mail on Madison's West Side...

Kass responded Wisconsin comes up short in cougar-sexy turkey bout

What's tougher? A slinky cougar in Chicago? Or a gang of sexually addicted gobblers desirous of the bare, hairy legs of Madison mail carriers? Must I even answer that question?
...So I have no sympathy for such beasts. Meanwhile, the Madison turkeys have committed acts so heinous that their behavior has wreaked havoc with the mail and caused widespread turkey-sexual panic among shorts-wearing Wisconsin men.

Wisconsin, you don't need some confused turkey lovers. You need a few Chicago cops.

Doug Moe has made an honorable and noble attempt to defend our honor. But face it, Kass and the Chicagoans have us. It is a losing battle.

None of this would have happened if someone had simply blown away the turkeys.

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?

WISC-TV Reality Check Less Than Flattering to Gableman Effort

The Club for Growth shrunk last night. Here is what WISC-TV Channel 3 found when they ran a Reality Check: Third Party Ad In Supreme Court Race:

• "Criminals threaten our communities. Oddly enough, so do some judges who return them to the street," the ad says. "But not Judge Michael Gableman. He's a former prosecutor who has gone toe to toe with the arsonists, sexual predators, domestic abusers and white-collar criminals who belong in jail."
  • But: A closer look at Gableman's record shows limited experience in these types of cases. Gableman was the district attorney in Ashland County from 1999 to 2002. He only prosecuted one arson case, which was ordered an acquittal. In 19 felony child abuse cases, three were dismissed, 13 pleaded out to misdemeanor crimes, two were found not guilty at trial and only one was sentenced to prison time. In felony sexual assault of children cases, Gableman got 11 convictions out of 31 cases, and 15 cases were pleaded to misdemeanors.

• "That's why 70 percent of Wisconsin's sheriffs and countless police chiefs consider Gableman their ally in the war on crime," the ad said
  • WISC-TV found this claim to be true. Of the state's 72 county sheriffs, 51 have endorsed Gableman. As for "countless" police chiefs, 21 have endorsed Gableman. WISC-TV found that the tone of the ad and the images of crime and criminal cases used in it are misleading. The focus on criminal cases in the ad mischaracterizes the job of a Supreme Court justice. The Supreme Court decides constitutional questions, and it doesn't hand out sentences like a Circuit Court. In fact, usually less than a third of the cases accepted for review are even criminal, WISC-TV reported.

Of course, emphasis is added.

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.

Milwaukee Leaders on Crime

On Friday the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provided community leaders the opportunity to discuss crime and provide advice to the new police chief, Violent Crime: What impact does it have on Milwaukee? What must we do?

It is lengthy and worth reading.

Mayor Tom Barrett:...and we will continue to have a sense of urgency on this issue because it does affect families, it affects companies and businesses in this city, and it affects the quality of life for everyone who's in Milwaukee.

The Mayor is correct. No one escapes the scourge of crime. It impacts everyone from the resident of the safest to the least safe neighborhood. It affects the downtown based financial institutions and the manufacturing plant in the suburbs.

Capt. Michael Young: There is no acceptable level of violent crime to be had in any city, particularly Milwaukee...But to think that the police or MPS or the courts are by themselves going to impact violent crime - make it go away - that's not going to happen. We need families to start taking more active involvement with their children.

Right off the bat the Captain nails it.  There must be a culture developed that no level of crime is acceptable - that violence is not tolerated from the youngest member of the community to the oldest. This message needs to be marketed and repeated from every community leader no matter how large their audience. Like others in the panel Captain Young notes the role of parents and families. The parents must take the lead.  But so many of the households are dysfunctional. Waiting for some of the parents to better raise their children without community support is like waiting for the Braves to return from Atlanta.

Tom Schneider, executive director, COA Youth & Family Centers: One of the things that sticks out very clearly to me is that the community shouldn't be making a choice between tough enforcement and crime prevention, because all of the evidence establishes that only a combination of both enforcement and prevention working together actually reduces crime.

Not much to add here. Comprehensive, complete, accurate. Tom was always brighter than the average bear. How you doing, buddy?

Sheriff David Clarke: I'm not one of those that believe that poverty causes crime. I just don't believe that. I think that underclass values contribute toward a life of poverty...We've seen an emergence of the underclass and their twisted values, because with this exodus out of the city of middle class families, which contribute positively toward a sense of community, that void by their leaving has been filled by the underclass.

Oh my. Too bad Sheriff Clarke does not see a connection between his "underclass" and poverty. Half of what Clarke is saying is straight from the respected academic, William Julius Wilson. The problem is Clarke ignores the recommendations of Wilson while he borrows from the analysis.  Wilson wrote in his excellent book, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and the Public Policy  that the flight of the middle class to the suburbs created a vacuum in the inner city that was filled by gang and drug culture. Wilson would be horrified to learn that Clarke does not see the economic connections.*

Rev. Harold Moore:I think that until we begin to deal with this whole issue of poverty and accept the fact that it is poverty and things connected to it that really drives the crime factor.

If Clarke does not want to heed Wilson, perhaps he will hear Reverend Moore. Reverend Moore gets it. he should, for this following observation is one of the most noteworthy contributions from the panelists: "Well, in order for parents to properly raise their children, they need jobs, jobs that are going to support and sustain a family."

Kit Murphy McNally:  There's a really great study out now that you take a middle class child and put him in a really dysfunctional poor environment and he begins to show the behaviors of those around him and you take a child out of there . . . and that child can change dramatically.

The executive director of the Benedict Center knows and understands.  Potential donors should ask her what agencies to fund and they will spend their money wisely.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm: For the first time, you're starting to see people coming together again at the neighborhood level and starting to share these resources and share the information that allows us to try to solve these problems.

Another thoughtful observation, and this from the prosecutor who is normally worried only about incarceration. Chisholm gets it. Everyone in the world can add resources to fighting crime and poverty, but sucess is built on the  neighborhood and the community.

Father Jose Moreno: Getting to know the community. Getting to know the real problems of the community, the fears, the hopes, if there's any hopes, like really understanding who we are, how we live, what struggles and problems we have on the south side.

A fitting summation. Those providing resources form the outside need to know the community if they are going to assist in making change.

*Here is more on Wilson and Milwaukee - a post from last May, as part of an dialog with Rick Esenberg: Urban Poverty. A portion follows:

I believe that urban violence is driven by poverty and a culture of despair. Eliminating poverty will go along way to change that culture, which will in turn, motivates others to move beyond poverty.

In Part 4, Esenberg writes:

• Gurda (echoing a common refrain of the Journal Sentinel editorial board) refers to the drop in "good" (commonly meant to refer to manufacturing) jobs. I think that the degree to which people were paid large amounts of money for low-skill labor in the past has been overstated but, in any event, the decline in manufacturing employment has been going on for 30 years.
  
  There is not, as Gurda writes, a shortage of good jobs. There is a shortage of good jobs that require little education and nominal work skills. The problem for the "the able-bodied young men gathered on the street at midday" is not that they are ready for opportunities that society has failed to provide for them, but that the cultural milieu in which they have been raised has left them unprepared for the opportunities that exist.

                              Rick:  we must really look at The Truly Disadvantaged, especially the sections where Wilson argues precisely that point. There is the challenge: we must either raise the level of education and/or raise the level of all the qualities that fall under the category of 'job readiness.'

UW Milwaukee Armed Robberies and Shootings: Whaddawedonow?

One of the quickest ways to ruin a university is to convince parents that it is not a safe place to send their children. Drugs, liquor and unprotected sex are always a concern. But the top of the list is violent crime.

Now the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee campus has experienced two violent attacks in two days. UWM student shot twice in apparent robbery. Sunday three suspects attacked two victims with a pistol.  Monday a 21 year old student was shot twice in what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel refers to as an "apparent robbery."

If UW-M is going to remain viable and become an important element in stimulating the revival of Milwaukee, it is an understatement to say that crime, all crime, not just campus area crime, must be reduced.

As the parent of a UW-M student I will continue to watch the unfolding debate. Milwaukee has many choices: 

• The city can follow the Mark Belling strategy, which is to blame the immoral, drug-addicted parents and call for a massive police response, which has never worked.
• The city can follow the Charlie Sykes strategy which is to explain to the kids that life is like dodge-ball and call for a massive police response which relies on a misunderstanding of what happened in New York City in the 1990's.
• The city can follow a rational, proven strategy of using intensive community policing and investment in workforce development and education, child care, and family enhancement programs for effective results.

Just when UW-M Chancellor Carlos Santiago is elevating the school academically and finding ways to integrate it more fully into Milwaukee's economy, it is sad that these efforts are thwarted by a city and county paralyzed by ideological tyrants who are more concerned about their self importance and advancing a right-wing agenda than building the community.

A suggestion: major Milwaukee business leaders must step in and say, "Enough," to the demagogues. They must get behind real solutions that cover everything from law enforcement to public education.

McAdams: The Final Word on Locking Up Black Wisconsinites?

As we feel the reverberations of the 'study' by 'Professor' John McAdams Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks?, it seems that Rick Esenberg still takes exception to my analysis.  Rick: Still confused about facts

But, as Professor McAdams suggests, if the problem is, for example, racial disparities in the poverty rate leading to racial disparities in the crime rate leading to racial disparities in the incarceration rate, focusing on the last element in the chain won't eliminate poverty and may make it worse.

Allow me to try one more time. Let us assume Rick's position, that McAdams is simply using data about who is involved in the commission of crime to determine if Wisconsin is incarcerating too many blacks.

If that is the case, someone wasted a whole lot of money on McAdams. By 1959, when I was 14 years old, I knew that blacks were incarcerated at higher rates than whites and that it was linked to the commission of more crimes in low income areas. We, all of us who lived in the city of Chicago, knew that the solution was to eliminate poverty.

So here we are almost fifty years later, and someone spent good money for McAdams to tell us that we are not locking up too many blacks.

Rick does not like my analysis (or the Governor's Task Force) of working backwards: looking at the incarceration rate, looking at who commits the crime, looking at the underlying poverty, and suggesting that we do something about it.

O.K. I will start at the beginning. Let's eliminate poverty.  That suggestion is free.

For the thousands of dollars paid for his study, McAdams offers nothing except to keep locking up blacks.

Update: 11:06 am.

A blogger purporting to be John McAdams posted the following at Marquette Warrior (My sympathies to the institution, Black Incarceration in Wisconsin: More

Some leftist moonbat bloggers have taken a swing at it, and mostly proved they have no idea about the issues involved.

That would be moi.

Then he goes on to say:

Some of those proposed ideas for reducing black crime sound good to us (strengthen families and reintegrate fathers into communities, bringing people to God), and some sound like more of the same things that have failed (more spending on education, jobs programs).

To my friend Rick Esenberg: my sympathies to you. If this is where you and McAdams are coming from, there is little hope. The above statement by McAdams is so contrary to all of the evidence and research. Spending money on education, particularly, early childhood development provides extraordinary, tangible results.  And most of the work to strengthen families, the family enhancement programs are the very programs that McAdams suggests is "that warm fuzzy-sounding liberal program."

The next time some conservative brings up the name of University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill or University of Wisconsin Professor Kevin Barrett, not only will I repudiate them as not being part of the Left, but I will remind them that McAdams is one of theirs.

For those interested in one of the most comprehensive studies that demonstrate the benefits of family enhancement, health, and child development programs resulting in greater educational attainment and reduced incidents of criminal  activity, see:

Effects of a School-Based, Early Childhood Intervention on Adult Health and Well-being

A total of 1539 low-income participants who enrolled in the Child-Parent Center program in 20 sites or in an alternative kindergarten intervention...

...For preschool participation, by age 24 years, the preschool group relative to the comparison group had significantly lower rates of felony arrest (16.5% vs 21.1%, respectively; P = .02; a 22% reduction) and incarceration (20.6% vs 25.6%, respectively; P = .03; a 20% reduction). They also were less likely than the comparison group to be found guilty of a crime both overall and for a felony (15.8% vs 19.9%, respectively; P = .03; a 21% reduction)...

... That the impacts of intervention extend beyond educational performance is not surprising given the well-documented links between education outcomes and adult health, mental health, and social behavior.^{25-26,36-38 ..}

^{...This study provides evidence that established early educational interventions can positively influence the adult life course in several domains of functioning. The scope and magnitude of intervention effects reveal not only the benefits to participants in fundamental indicators of health and well-being but also the potential returns to society for investments in early educational programs.} 

And please contact Jessica McBride. This study reveals what health has to do with criminal behavior.

How to Improve the Prospects for Madison and Milwaukee

Let us focus on one tool already available. Public employees of the city and the county organized into Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRT).

Traditionally government agencies are organized by function. The individual has a specific task and reports to their agency. While that classic alignment is maintained, NRT members cover a specific geographic area and meet on a regular basis.

To learn about the city of Madison NRT's, check out the Neighborhood Resource Team (NRT) website:

In 1992, the Neighborhood Resource Teams were established by then-Mayor Paul Soglin as a way to better coordinate City services within 10 smaller areas of the City. These Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRTs) were intended to be a resource to residents, not a substitute for neighborhood initiatives and leadership. Each team consisted of a city staff person from major City agencies operating in the area, such as Police, Fire, Building Inspection, Public Health, Office of Community Services, and Community Development Block Grant Office. After the teams had been in operation, the Mayor established a Guidance Team of managers and supervisors* to help better coordinate team activities and serve as a basis for their support and guidance

*Note: the origianl Guidance Teams were not just managers and supervisors.

Librarians, EOC representatives and others were added after the initial formulation.

So far so good, then:

In the fall of 2000, Mayor Susan J. M. Bauman created an initiative to make the benefits of these cross-functional teams available to all areas of the City...the teams begin to operate in larger geographical areas containing approximately 20,000 to 25,000 people.

Not good; 20,000-25,000 people are not a neighborhood. It defeats the entire purpose of the team. It saves money; it slaps a label on a program so everyone in the city can have an NRT, but it creates service areas that are not neighborhoods.

When an NRT convenes it has to know its purpose. It is torturous to assemble a team for the first time and pose this fabulous question to them: "Why are you working for the city (or county) and what are you trying to accomplish." There is a struggle but they eventually come up with the answer. The beautiful thing about it is that they realize they are not isolated; they have co-workers with different functions to share in accomplishing a difficult task.

The police officer working with neighbors can make a referral to a pubic health nurse, who in turn, may know a child who the librarian can help. The most important thing is that after a year or so, the neighborhood and the team see positive change and that energizes them.

Some reminders about the Madison NRT program:

• The NRT is a resource to serve the neighborhood, not to run it.
• The program has lost its essence. NRTs now cover populations and neighborhoods twenty to thirty times the size times they should. The one-on-one contact is no longer there. This is undoubtedly a 'cost saving' measure. Sorry, this is an expensive program, with high return when done right.
• The Guidance Team is critical. The Guidance Team would make recommendations for the next year's budget. Each year several, if not all, of their top recommendations were included in my executive budget.

It did go through my review, but the recommendations did not require departmental approval. The reasoning was simple. These were the people on the ground, the workers we expected to make hands-on change. If we were to trust them, we had to assume that their deliberation process was sound and that they were recommending services that were needed.

• Some staff may serve on more than one NRT.

It saddens me that Madison defeated the purpose of the NRTs. The concept is there, but the present structure does not work.

We used to have close to a dozen teams serving no more than 20,000 people. Now there are eight teams serving a population of 210,000.

The inspiration for creating the teams came the works of J. Edward Demings, the private sector expert  on Total Quality, which the city adapted to public service, the work of John L. McKnight, colleague of organizer Saul Alinksy, and author with John P. Kretzmann of Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, the teachings of Madisonian Peter Scholtes, author of The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done , and my own belief that communities are built by people with the will to prevail.  Tom Mosgaller , then patiently working for the city, helped in challenging and reviewing the concept.

I stole from the best. The concept was simple. If comunity policing was a good idea, then have other public services community based, and have the functions coordinated.