Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Charles Pierce on Obama in Wisconsin

"The Cynic and Senator Obama" - Struggling to find a reason to believe, Charles Pierce channels Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson in Esquire as he follows Obama campaigning through the worst winter Wisconsin has seen in a hundred years. Calling himself "the cynic," Pierce sees Obama as ignoring the fundamental ways we have sold out:

The cynic will admit that it’s all great politics. Tell America that it is a great country that simply has lost its way for a spell. Tell the American people that they are a great people who are better than those hucksters who come to divide us. It has a marvelous anesthetic appeal. Swirl down through the clouds of memory and forget that the country allowed itself to follow George Bush over the cliff not merely because it was shocked by the attacks of September 11, 2001, but because it was too pissing-down-the-shoes scared to do anything else. Forget about how eagerly the American people cheered the brutish and the nasty, how simple it was to sell raw animal vengeance dressed up as geopolitical wisdom, and how dumbly everyone followed until well after it was revealed that the people selling it didn’t know enough about the world to throw to a cat. This was the era of complicity. Can Obama end it, thought the cynic, without admitting it ever existed?

...We are not an honest and decent people in our politics, in the way we deal with one another as a political commonwealth. We will trade away our most precious rights in exchange for a bag of magic charms, and even when we find out that these include the black prison, the waterboard, and the secret microphone, we’ll think we got the better of the deal. We’ll swap our obligation to intelligent self-government for any huckster’s trick that makes us laugh or keeps us entertained in our cars for the evening drive-time shift. We hold this truth to be self-evident -- that all men are out to get what’s ours.

There's lots of this sort of reflection.  The writing snaps like a live power line downed by lightning.  Read it for yourself.

Here's one more taste:

The cynic decides that politics is better on the radio, the same way baseball is, where you have to construct the scene in your own head. Radio is for dreamers. Television is for hucksters, and it has leached from American politics all of its creative imagination.

-Barry Orton

U.S. Supreme Court Engages in Activism: Ask Scalia

One of the phoniest, opportunistic ploys in recent years is the conservative assault on an independent judiciary calling for "judicial restraint" and attacking liberal or progressive justices as "judicial activists."

Rick Esenberg of the Federalist Society, takes this up in a paper used by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce in the last judicial race, A Court Unbound? The Recent Jurisprudence of the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

Judges who seek to exercise restraint will tend to adopt techniques of construction that confine, rather than expand, their discretion...Judges practicing restraint will exhibit a sensitivity for the role of other branches of government....

Someone better get Esenberg's paper into the hands of the justices serving on the United States Supreme Court, starting with Anthony Scalia who Esenberg fondly quotes: "[a] text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means."

Scalia, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. are having a difficult time following their own admonitions when it comes time to the "Millionaire's Amendment" to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.

The issue is simple enough. Under the law individuals can contribute a maximum of $2,300 to a campaign. The candidate can spend as much as they like. If a wealthy candidate contributes over $350,000 of her own money, then the individual contributors of the opponent can go as high as $6,900.

Simple enough.

Now enter the reactionary justices on the Supreme Court. Hearing a case challenging the act, these conservative justices are wallowing in judicial activism.

Justices Assail 'Millionaires' Amendment'

"The campaign finance regimes we've approved up to now, the significant limitations, have had an anti-corruption rationale," Scalia said. "The only purpose of this is to level the playing field. And I am deeply suspicious of allowing elections to be conducted under a regime whereby Congress levels the playing field. That seems to be very dangerous."

and

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he found it "a particular vice" of the amendment that it allows the opponent of a self-financing candidate to have greater ties and to receive more money from his political party. "It puts this statute in the position of preferring one kind of speech over another. And we simply do not do that," Kennedy said.

Obviously these justices are substituting their own judgment for that of the legislative body, the United States Congress.

I am waiting for the critics of Louis Butler and Shirley Abrahamson to assail Scalia and Roberts for this exercise in judicial activism.

You can hear the crickets chirping.

Madison Native Bill Foster: The "Newest and Unlikeliest Congressman"

Doug Moe's column in the Wisconsin State Journal today profiles Rep. Bill Foster, who won former Speaker Dennis "Coach" Hastert's old seat in Illinois' 14th District south and west of Chicago.  As a UW undergraduate,  Foster and his brother Fred started what became Middleton's Electronic Theater Controls (ETC), now a "global leader in the field of entertainment and architectural lighting. They light Broadway shows and Disney theme parks, Las Vegas hotels and the set of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Rep. Foster was a world-level physicist at Illinois' Fermilab for many years before he decided to get involved in politics.

On Saturday, March 8, in a result the New York Times called "stunning, " Bill Foster won a special election for the Illinois congressional seat opened by Hastert 's midterm resignation. Foster won 53 percent of the vote to Republican James D. Oberweis ' 47 percent.

Moe's column nicely connects the story to Foster's father's life.

In a very real sense, partial credit for Foster 's victory should go to his late father, G.W. "Bill " Foster. He showed his son it was OK to switch careers and follow your heart.

The elder Foster was a beloved figure at the UW-Madison Law School. When he died in 2002, at 82, the faculty passed a memorial resolution praising his work for civil rights and the desegregation of public schools around the country.

...But he had originally been trained as a chemist, a field he had second thoughts about after seeing the spread of chemical weapons during wartime.

The faculty resolution praising Foster noted that he once explained his change of course (he got a law degree at Georgetown) by saying: "It 's my personal conviction that the central problem of our time is political -- the job of folks getting along with other folks by argument and compromise instead of by A-bombs and rampant bacteria. Teaching is one of the better ways to egg people into thinking politically -- and being in politics is the only practical way to participate in working this thing out. "

This week, explaining his decision to enter politics at 50 years of age, Bill Foster said: "My father had a similar trajectory. "

This is the kind of Madison-centric column that nobody in town does better, and it shows how smart the State Journal was to hire Doug Moe and to build p. 2 around him five days a week.

One little quibble with Doug: Illinois' 14th District is hardly "the leafy suburbs west of Chicago."  Only a bit of the 14th fits that description. Its major city is Aurora, Illinois' gritty second-largest city, and the District stretches through conservative farmland almost to Iowa, as redistricting made it even more Republican for "Coach" over the years. It includes Dixon, the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan.

One bigger quibble with the State Journal:  After reading the column in my morning paper, I decided to link it. One problem: No mention of the column or Doug Moe on the State Journal's web frontpage, nor was it visible on the "columnists" page.  Had to find it using the Google.  Maybe they're keeping Doug an online secret for some marketing reason I yet don't understand.

UPDATE:  They've made a web home for Doug, and his columns are now on the frontpage as they are filed, so we can read them the evening before they hit the hard copy paper.

 

- Barry Orton

Stanley Kutler: Where's FDR When You Need Him?

Waxing America's favorite Emeritus Professor in the entire galaxy, the esteemed University of Wisconsin Constitutional scholar Stanley Kutler is at it again: Where's FDR When You Need Him? Bush's 'Trickle-Down' Economic Policies Useless For Those at the Bottom

Despite his detractors, then and now, Roosevelt energized popular government—and American democracy emerged stronger with his presidency. New Deal programs, combining relief, recovery and reform, and, ultimately aided by World War II and the Cold War, revitalized capitalism, launching an era of unprecedented prosperity. FDR’s Inaugural Address opened on an auspicious note: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
...

...In 1932, Walter Lippmann, the prominent public philosopher, described FDR as merely “a pleasant young man,” without any particular qualifications, who very much wanted to be president of the United States. Indeed, FDR had little in his record that the public could have anticipated a president worthy of the company of Washington and Lincoln. A week after the inauguration, Lippmann – certainly no stranger to changing his mind – praised the new president: “In one week the nation, which had lost confidence in everything and everybody, has regained confidence in the government and itself."...

Kutler is not the only one thinking of FDR during this nomination process. The following is from a post I started but never finished last week:

Barack Obama and the Legacy of FDR

Americans who supported both John Kennedy and Bill Clinton in their respective presidential campaigns were optimistic that a new better day was in store for Americans.

But not since FDR inaguration has there been such a need for the infusion of fairness into our institutions. Just as small, but significant changes, allowed the Bush Administration to create the foundation for an oligarchy, small changes will allow new opportunities for all Americans.

There is no doubt in my mind that after four years of an Obama administration this nation will be freer and safer.

There will be demand in some quarters for more rapid change. No doubt it will take at least two years for Americans to begin to see changes implemented, as it will take near heroic efforts to alter the course of the enormous ship of government that is rife with payoffs, handouts, and greed.

Frankly, I will feel far safer with Obama answering the phone no matter who is calling: a tin horn dictator or foreign minister, a Senator, a corporate executive, or a paid lobbyist.

Doug Moe on the First Visit to Cuba

Today, in The Capital Times, Doug Moe wrote a wonderful column about our first visit to Cuba. With great skill he retells the tension and the fun we had in preparing to for the July, 1975 trip to Havana. The characters in Madison alone are worth the read.

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/columns/273595

Huckabee Death March Hits Madison

This morning the doomed presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee stopped off in Madison, half-filling the Concourse Hotel ballroom with home-schoolers, evangelicals, anti-taxers, anti-abortion activists, and true believer conservatives who really agree with Ann Coulter that John McCain is to the left of Hillary Clinton. And, of course, the press, both local and national.

Huckabee gives a damn good political speech. He knew enough to pay homage to the Wisconsin state religion by telling an elaborate story of how he sang the national anthem on the fifty-yard line of Lambeau Field. He even called the place a "shrine."

He also did effective right-wing political schtick, ripping up a 1040 form to demonstrate his goal of abolishing the IRS, since his "Fair Tax" national sales tax would eliminate income taxes. That way, Huckabee argues, "the underground economy disappears, and all those people you're paying taxes for, the drug dealers, the pimps, the prostitutes, the gamblers and...the 'illegals,' they'll have to pay the same taxes you pay." A quick segue later, he was talking about losing jobs and capital overseas, and then about securing our borders. It was effective and ugly.

Jesse Russell at Dane 101 has got video of both of these Huckabee highlights. The Lambeau Field segment is priceless.

Nathan Comp at thedailypage has got a good capsulation of Huckabee's "tepid reception," coming as it does at the tail end of a losing campaign.

Tomorrow, Huckabee suspends campaigning and flies to Grand Cayman Island to deliver a paid speech to the Young Caymanian Leadership Awards banquet. Asked about it at a press avail after the rally, Huckabee said he needed the money to pay his bills, and claimed not to know how much he was getting: "an agency handles all that." He'll stay in the Caribbean resort through Sunday, and then plans to come back to Wisconsin Monday for one last day of campaigning before Tuesday's primary. The forecast for Monday is for temperatures below zero and snow continuing from Sunday.  If Huckabee's smart, he'll stay on Grand Cayman Island an extra day or two, then fly back to Arkansas and pull the plug.

- Barry Orton

Milwaukee County Worse Than Private Contractor in Records Row

While the furor continues over a private contractor releasing social security numbers while working for Wisconsin, it seem that Milwaukee County has managed to give great comfort to those who claim government performs worse than the private sector.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Records released in error , county officials provided confidential records that:

...detail payments for tests and other costs linked to mental competency, paternity and guardianship cases...

While the release of social security numbers can plague a citizen for some time, the damage can be rectified. There are mechanisms for the federal government, the credit rating agencies, the financial services community, and the wronged individual to undo the damage.

For the individual or family, inadvertently outed by the release of records of everything from psychiatric to medical examinations, there is no way of reversing the damage. As noted in the article:

Clerk of Circuit Court John Barrett said he was thunderstruck...

..."I was dumbfounded by the breadth of information they gave out that was confidential," he said. Doing so violated the trust placed in the county to protect vulnerable individuals, he said...

To date those clamoring for heads to roll in state government  are not focusing on Milwaukee County and its executive.

Gableman: The Exception Who Proves the Rule. How Sad.

Last week Waxing America posted about the excellence of the judiciary in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin's Outstanding Judiciary I noted the expeditious handling of cases, the high ranking for Wisconsin in studies done by the National Center for State Courts, and the relatively low number of complaints filed against judges and justices.

There was that nasty matter involving Annette Ziegler, but since Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) paid for the assault on her election opponent, I figured it did not reflect badly on the people of our state.

Now comes Cory Liebmann, at One Wisconsin Now, with the devastating report, New Year, Same Problem for Gableman. It seems that Gableman, the WMC candidate for the Supreme Court in April's statewide election, is one of the most appealed judges in the state. Not only do attorneys file appeals of his rulings frequently, but it appears they are often right and Gableman is wrong.  Gableman is one of the most reversed judges in the state:

Gableman was affirmed at the Court of Appeals only 67 percent of the time. When using the same criteria, even the average judge was affirmed 81 percent of the time. After 2007, Gableman still found himself in the bottom 15 percent. Already this early in 2008, Gableman continues on the wrong track at the Court of Appeals.

On January 8, the State Court of Appeals reversed yet another Gableman decision...

One would think that if WMC is going to try to buy the election of Supreme Court judges, they would at least get the candidates who are neither ethically or judicially challenged.

WMC and their candidates are too frequently becoming the exception that proves the rule.

Hillary Clinton is Not Entitled to the Democratic Presidential Nomination

It may come as a shock to Hillary and Bill Clinton, but the New York Senator is not entitled to a free pass at the Democratic Party nomination for President. 

In fact she is not entitled to it at all.  She has to earn it and that means, in a fair and civil way, she must defeat other Democratic contenders.

One of the disturbing trends on the part of both Clinton supporters and the supporters of at least one of her opponents is the mini generational war. The older edge of the Baby Boomers confront the youngest of the Baby Boomers.  It is not good and it is not right.

Critics of Clinton have suggested she 'get out of the way.' Sorry, her age has nothing to do with her ability to be President. Some of her supporters have suggested that younger candidates sit on the sidelines until the Clintons are ready to step aside.  Sorry, that kind of seniority does not cut it.

In any case, the Clinton attitude that Obama never should have had the nerve to challenge Hillary is inexcusable.

Belling and Jagler's Small Business Times: Milwaukee Has A Choice

Once in a while you encounter a debate that is so one sided, so unfair, that you have to wonder when the referee will stop the fight.

In the corner on the left we have Steve Jagler, the executive editor of the Small Business Times. Last week Jagler wrote a blog post for OnMilwaukee.com,  Our Own Worst Enemy, "Five of the Milwaukee area's most prominent chief executive officers were featured in a panel discussion on "Global Wooing" Thursday by the Public Policy Forum. The five CEOs took turns ripping Milwaukee as a terrible place to do business."

In the opposite corner, we have Mark Belling, who proclaimed that,  "If this Steve Jagler wanted to do some good, he'd join the rest of us and try to improve the business environment in Wisconsin by fixing the problems, rather than saying we all ought to run around like the bluebird of happiness, acting like this is the most business-friendly region in America. It's not."

The problem is this. Jagler is not the bluebird of happiness. He is a thoughtful and contemplative writer who actually has a clue as to what needs to be done to improve Milwaukee. He is not perfect (none of us are), but up against Belling (who is convinced he is the Renaissance man) it is not a fair fight.

Jagler reports the news about Milwaukee business, how to develop the local economy, and how to build a strong workforce.

Belling berates just about everyone and everything, and while he has noticed that many Milwaukee black households are well below the poverty line, and the education of students in Milwaukee Public schools is wanting, no one call recall a single realistic recommendation from Belling that works.

Identifying the problem is one thing; finding a workable solution is another.