Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Soglin On Judge Sumi's Order Halting Walker's Budget "Repair" Bill

Statement by Paul Soglin on Judge Sumi’s Decision Granting a Temporary Restraining Order to Stop Implementation of the Walker Budget Repair Bill:

Dane County District Attorney Ish Ozanne did terrific legal work on behalf of all Wisconsin residents in winning a temporary restraining order that will block publication or other actions to implement the Budget Repair Bill. There is, of course, the possibility that the legislature will convene again, this time lawfully, and pass this bill. We must continue to do all we can to fix this legislation. As it stands, it would have terrible, negative consequences for Madison and the State of Wisconsin.

 

No General Strike in Wisconsin

The chanting of 'general strike' filled the Capitol last night and evoked romantic notions of the Paris Commune, Egypt or nineteenth century United States.

That is not what Wisconsin needs. We need to expand the arena of conflict with Governor Walker and his Senate Republicans. We need to send a more subtle, contained message to his key supporters, the ones that are concerned about Wisconsin and their own businesses. 

Selective informational picketing of a few Wisconsin companies that do business with the working people of our great state is what is required. It is a simple message, an eloquent message:

"You elected Scott Walker, you put him in office, you are responsible for the union busting. It is incumbent upon you to tell Walker to cease this destructive behavior and not to continue in your name."

They can claim that their support of Walker was on other issues. That is not important. They must take responsibly for the great power Walker has and they must firmly and publicly tell him:

"Not now, not ever. We support collective bargaining; we support hard working public employees. Do not destroy the high quality schools. public services, and local governments in our state."

Happy happy, joy joy, Yankees close out season in defeat to modest Texas Rangers

It is no secret how I feel about the New York Yankees.

It was not enjoyable watching the Yankees head towards the American League playoffs as the season closed out, though I did take comfort in their poor September performance. After the Bronx entry in the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs crushed the Minnesota Twins, the prospects of another Yankee appearance in the World Series loomed large.

My hope for Yankee elimination dimmed when the Rangers blew a 5-1 lead in the first game of the American League championship Series.

Thankfully the Rangers got it together and not only defeated the Yankees, but humiliated them in the process.

The Rangers opening day payroll was 27th at $55,250,545, the SF Giants were 10th at $97,828,833.

The Yankees were tops of course at $206,333,389, almost 50% more than  the payroll of the 3rd ranked Chicago Cubs, who cannot win no matter what they try.

There is justice.

Dollars spent per regular season win:

Yankees $2,172,000

Rangers:  $614,000

Cubs: $1,958,000 (sorry Zweifel)

I Will Serve Steven Slater's Prison Sentence. Righteous Dude.

Steven Slater, the angry Jet Blue flight attendant knows that it is often the circumstances that make the hero.

As President Calvin Coolidge said, "Heroism is not only the man, but in the occasion," or perhaps better put by Gerald W. Johnson, "Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials."

In any case, I volunteer to serve a one tenth share of any prison sentence he receives for doing the right thing. I am sure there are enough of us to fill all of the prisons in this nation for the next decade.

Slater spoke volumes when he said he did it for all of us poor, abused travelers who follow the rules.

In these trying times we should heed the words of Mahatma Gandhi, though he probably did not have obnoxious airline passengers, or the people who run the airlines in mind, "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good."

Highland Park High School - Not Quite as Rich, White, and now Fighting for Justice.

I was raised in Hyde Park and the summer of my fifteenth year we moved to Highland Park, Illinois. How we ended up there was most curious.

I loved Hyde Park. We moved to the Woodlawn-Hyde Park neighborhoods when I was four in 1949. We had everything a kid could want. Parks to play baseball and tennis. The Museum of Science of Industry and the awesome University of Chicago (UC). The hotels that housed the White Sox and the visiting American League teams. My friends and I went to the beaches in the summer, hung out at The Point, and peered into the coffee houses on 57th Street looking at real beatniks.

At Hyde Park High School about 85% of my classmates were black.

In 1960 my mother was pregnant and it was time to buy a house. My parents decided on Evanston. It was on Lake Michigan, and while Northwestern University was not the UC, it did provide an intellectual atmosphere and it was the most integrated of the suburbs.  

In June an offer was accepted on a small house three or four blocks from Lake Michigan. Two weeks later the sellers found a reason not to sell to us, though the realtor explained that it was because we were Jewish.

My parents were desperate. Debbie and I had to be in a school, the baby (Ari) was due in less than three months.

On the Fourth of July Dad opened up the paper and found a listing in Highland Park two blocks from the beach and three blocks from the downtown. That was important since my mother did not drive.

He and I hopped into the car, made the 25 mile trip, inspected the house, returned to Hyde Park to pick up my mother and Debbie, toured the house again and had an accepted offer in a matter of days.

I knew a little about Highland Park and what differentiated it from the other North Shore suburbs. In terms of religion, it was more diverse than the others. (In celebration of the 1960 Olympics we had our own Jewish-Italian Olympics - golf, swimming, poker, and bowling,) It was more liberal, though you could not tell from the faces of my high school classmates - there was one black student in Highland Park High School (HPHS).

Our companion suburb, Deerfield was somewhat notorious for halting a subdivision where the developer intended to sell to both blacks and whites. But Not Next Door

In 1965 the North Shore changed forever. From Rich Samuels, who produced  Civil Rights on the Northshore: Bringing the Movement Home:

Along the way, North Shore residents answered Dr. King's call, demonstrating and volunteering in the South and then bringing the struggle to their own neighborhoods where they sought open housing in previously all-white communities.

What motivated residents of one of the nation's most affluent communities to reach out to the disadvantaged? Why, after roughly four decades, has their drive for racial diversity on the North Shore achieved such limited results?

Those are the questions I raise in the documentary. But I don't answer them -- because I want to renew the debate sparked years ago by the North Shore activists.

A lot has changed over the years. While still not reflective of the demographics of this nation, these suburbs are more  economically, racially and culturally integrated.

Now Highland Park High School decided that its outstanding girls basketball team should not travel to Arizona. The point being, that it would not be responsible to take these teenagers to a state where some could be detained and unable to return home.

Go Giants.

 

Refighting the Civil War - It Was Treasonous, Not Romantic

When Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell declared April 'Confederate History Month' and overlooked slavery in his proclamation, a well deserved firestorm ensued. As an elementary school student I was taught that the Civil War was fought over slavery. By time I reached college, I learned about more complicated issues involving regional economics, foreign trade policy, and industrialization.

When it was all said and done, the Civil War was over slavery. No slavery, no war.

In his proclamation, McDonnell wrote that Virginians should "understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War."

Writing in the Nation, Melissa Harris-Lacewell eloquently expressed the feelings of the millions of descendants of slaves:

As I child I lived in the shadow of Monticello. As a teen I lived on Jefferson Davis Highway, and there I discovered the other Virginia history. This is the Virginia history that is etched in the stony faces of confederate traitors who line Monument Avenue in Richmond. This narrative of Virginia laments the end of slavery, romanticizes traitorous action against the state and memorializes sedition. This history is built on a false and romantic notion of an imagined Confederate past that refuses to acknowledged the ways that slavery degraded not only black labor, but white labor; how it destroyed the land; and how it starved the region of innovation.

Going back to my own youth, I found that the romantic portrayal of the ante-bellum south to be a gross distortion of the truth. As Harris-Lacewell notes, little has changed for many Americans in the past fifty years.

Growing Poverty In Madison - Part I

Last week Mike Ivey of The Capital Times reported Poor flock to city of Madison, not the 'burbs'

(nationally)....The number of poor grew by 25 percent in suburbs from 2000 to 2008-almost five times the growth rate in primary cities-making the suburbs home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.

But the Madison metropolitan area bucked the trend. The poverty rate showed a significant increase in the city and no change in the suburbs over this time period.

The Brookings Institute report "The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008" only goes back to 2000, but this is a trend that began in the early 1980's, as poorer urban families searched for better homes, first in small to medium size cities like Madison, Albany and Harrisburg, PA, as well as the suburbs. The Promised Land, published in 1992, tells the story of black migration in America since the 1940's.

Their goal was not much different than that of their fellow middle and upper income migrants - seeking neighborhoods with employment, good schools and safe streets.

With this pattern of migration came problems. Many communities were unprepared for the increase in poverty. Housing designed for young 27 year old professionals could not accommodate the needs of low income families with children. School systems with limited budgets were challenged to educate kids with little or no pre-school guidance. Housing, counseling, and family enhancement programs were short staffed and underfunded.

Frankly, when you look at the challenge, it is surprising that Madison has done as well as it has. TThe challenge is that political ideology, ignorance, and funding issues all contribute to the problem:

• Liberals refuse to acknowledge that gangsters, extortionists, and drug dealers follow the impoverished families to Madison and a law enforcement response is required.
• Conservatives refuse to acknowledge that law enforcement is just one tool in combating crime and that without programming that empowers families, crime will prevail no matter how many police officers are sent to a neighborhood.
• Housing advocates refuse to acknowledge that no one is helped by continually adding to the supply of more low income housing if employment, child care, transportation, health care, and family enhancement programs are not developed at a comparable rate as the housing stock.
• The employment, child care, transportation, health care, and family enhancement programs are not effective if understaffed, poorly funded and uncoordinated.
• No matter how sincere the commitment, none of this works without government revenues and private sector participation. That means a tax base of businesses, particularly office buildings and retail, must be continually developed to provide the resources to fund effective programming.

Right Wing Radical Extremists Legislate from U.S. Supreme Court Bench

With the decision to throw out the legislated ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns, the fanatical right wing U.S. Court majority tore up the Constitution and legislated from the bench.

As any school child knows, the freedom of speech is not absolute. You cannot shout "Fire" in a crowded theater intending to create a panic or disturbance. Two mobsters cannot discuss the execution of their boss and get away with it, even if they do not kill him.  And you cannot go up to a stranger in a convincing manner and threaten to punch out his lights.

Every protected freedom has to pass a balancing test.

For over a century, from state houses to the U.S. Congress, there were laws limiting contributions to political campaigns, particularly by corporations.

In this one instance the five justices rewrote over a hundred years of legislation and prior judicial decisions, and with judicial activism that would make the Warren Court blush, plunged our nation into political chaos.

If there is a sliver lining in this dreary cloud, it will be the right wing pundits rationalizing that this is not conservative activism as regarding a  decision that even moderate Republicans despair.

The decision drips with hypocrisy.

Rush Limbaugh Proud to be Medical Idiot

Rush Limbaugh is carted into a Hawaii hospital with chest pains and is discharged two days later, physicians declaring that there is nothing wrong with his heart.

Limbaugh then declares his health is fine - and so is the nation's health care system,

Turning from his health to politics, Limbaugh declared Friday he got the best health treatment in the world "right here in the United States of America."

"I don't think there's one thing wrong with the United States health system," Limbaugh said.

Limbaugh comes to this conclusion based on one instance of medical treatment.

That Limbaugh is deficient in the logic department is well documented, but that he does not understand the health care system is what makes his conclusions so dangerous.

Limbaugh, who has access to the best health care system, is privileged. He has the resources and the access to the best health care system in the world.

The problem is that there are tens of millions of Americans, some with health insurance, who do not have that kind of access.

In 1983 the President's Commission of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research submitted their report to President Ronald Reagan.

In the accompanying cover letter of transmittal they noted:

In examining the special nature of health care, we discern in our country’s traditional

commitment to fairness, an ethical obligation on the part of society to ensure that all

Americans have access to an adequate level of care without the imposition of excessive burdens. This obligation does not require that everyone receive all health care that he or she may want or even all that could conceivably be of benefit. Instead, it is a moral responsibility to see that adequate care is accessible, a commitment that recognizes the competing claims on available resources of other worthwhile social goals.

 

The obligation we have described is one of all to all not a special standard that

applies only to the poor. This does not mean, however, that the Federal government need be involved in the health are of all Americans. Most people rely on their own resources and insurance for health care; and charitable institutions and state and local programs contribute to making the benefits of health care widely available. Thus, in practical terms, the responsibility that ultimately rests with the Federal government is to make sure that those who otherwise could not obtain adequate care are able to do so and that the costs of care are shared equitably.

 

Veterans Day

As I spent the day in Madison, I saw numerous veterans. Some served in wars, some did not.

I wondered when will those who send them to war make sure that the veterans' medical needs -physical and emotional - are respected when they return.