Paul Soglin: Waxing America

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.

Book Report: "Sundown Towns"

Maureen Dowd cogently argued that Representative Joe Wilson's (R - Old Dixie) outburst at President Obama had a significant component of racism, and then nailed the House's reaction: a party-line spanking.

When House Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, reprimanded the congressman on Tuesday evening for refusing to apologize to his colleagues for breaking the rules, it was quite a wonderful way to improve America.

It was a rare triumph for civility in a country that seems to have lost all sense of it — from music arenas to tennis courts to political gatherings to hallowed halls — and a ratification of an institution that has relied on strict codes of conduct for two centuries to prevent a breakdown of order.

“When you look at the various incidents of misbehavior all across the spectrum,” Representative James Clyburn, the highest ranking black lawmaker in Congress who had pushed for the reprimand, told me afterward, “the one place we ought to be able to say that such conduct is not acceptable and just cannot be tolerated is in America’s classroom, as I call Congress. Students are looking at us, and they ought not to be able to ever feel that such bad behavior would be condoned.”

...Former President Jimmy Carter weighed in with Brian Williams of NBC News on Tuesday: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.” He said he felt that was true in the South and elsewhere.

Racism "elsewhere" is the prime focus of James Loewen's "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of Racism." Lynchings, firebombings, murder, torture and other tools of domestic terrorism are related to the extreme patterns of housing segregation that developed in the twentieth century in most parts of the US with the enforcement of "sundown towns."

From Maine to California, thousands of communities kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities are sometimes called "sundown towns" because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, "N****r, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___." Some towns are still all white on purpose. Their chilling stories have been joined more recently by the many elite (and some not so elite) suburbs like Grosse Pointe, MI, or Edina, MN, that have excluded nonwhites by "kinder gentler means." When I began this research, I expected to find about 10 sundown towns in Illinois (my home state) and perhaps 50 across the country. Instead, I have found more than 440 in Illinois and thousands across the United States. This is their story; it is the first book ever written on the topic.

Based on census data, local histories, newspaper accounts, and a wealth of other data, Loewen's book concentrates on such non-Southern states as Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Oregon. Loewen's comprehensive website allows a reader to search any state for suspected "sundown towns and has many resources beyond those in the book.

One typical example from Wisconsin: Loewen asks readers of the web page on Fond du Lac:

My question: why did the black population of so many WI towns decline drastically beginning around 1890 or thereafter? In Fond du Lac, for example, 178 blacks in 1880 decline to 112 in 1890, 47 in 1910, 16 in 1930, and just 5 in 1940. Why? Green Bay shows a similar decline, beginning in 1910, from 45 down to 10 in 1940.
Appleton never had many but fell from 18 in 1900 to 0 by 1930.

Loewen dismisses such factors as unavailability of work, natural population decline, and non-violent social shunning, and zeros in on racially-based terrorism, which he calls "violent expulsion."

In many Illinois towns, whites expelled blacks violently or more quietly convinced them to leave, then passed formal ordinances or reached informal understandings that the community or neighborhood would be "all white."

It's a long, hard slog through some often unpleasant facts, but "Sundown Towns" is well worth reading as a backdrop to the "intensely demonstrated animosity"  that President Obama is drawing from some portions of America's populace. 

Loewen also wrote the iconic book "Lies my Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong," which also has a great interactive website.

- Barry Orton

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - The Generational Batttle for Gay Justice

When the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voted to allow gay clergy, a new chapter was written in the battle to bring justice to all Americans.

Conservatives react after Lutherans lift gay ban

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Even though the Rev. Mark Chavez believes the leaders of his church made a decision in direct contradiction of the Bible by lifting a ban on sexually active, monogamous gays and lesbians as clergy, he said he's staying with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

"I'm not leaving," Chavez said Friday night, promising an effort to keep the church from moving even further toward what he sees as an embrace of behavior condemned by Scripture...

...The change to gay clergy policy passed with the support of 68 percent of about 1,000 delegates at the ELCA's national assembly. It makes the group, with about 4.7 million members in the U.S., one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported in 2006 that there was growing support for equal rights for gay Americans. The surveys showed a widening generational gap on the issue.

As younger Americans, more tolerant, fairer, and more knowedgable, command greater influence in national and state affairs, the tide will turn, eventually the laws will change, and the constitutional amendments adopted in states like Wisconsin will be repealed.

The question is, why did this generation become the one to become more demanding that gays receive equal treatment under the law?

My small, and uniformed opinion is the gay community itself and the decision by so many after Stonewall to come out. Unlike my generation and those older, our children grew up with openly gay classmates, openly gay co-workers, and openly gay teammates. That is good: it breaks down biases and sterotypes.

What is sad is that so many parents and grandparents will not heed the good advice of their children and reject opinions based on ignorance or a flawed biblical interpretation, or both.

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Unusual Silliness from the New Yorker - Gladwell Needs A Sense of Humor

For the better part of the past fifty years, I have read The New Yorker with regularity. Never has it presented anything as silly as Malcolm Gladwell's The Courthouse Ring - Atticus Fitch and the limits of Southern Liberalism.

Gladwell contends that Scout's dad, Atticus Fitch, "sought to humanize Jim Crow, not challenge it." When Fitch learns the fate of Tom Robinson, he reacts calmly, and Gladwell argues:

        If Fitch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict.

Perhaps it was an isolated childhood, or too many cartoons, but clearly Gladwell was deprived of the opportunity to understand the complex reactions to change experienced by so many Americans confronted by the changing times of the 1950's and 1960's by both the civil rights movement and the response to the war in Vietnam.

I need not tear through the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, but only to make two points.

First, many of the most committed and dedicated attorneys of the period were moderate Republicans fully committed to the First Amendment, sober in tone and demeanor, but as passionate as William Kunstler (who represented me in 1967-68) when it came to civil rights and civil liberties. These were men who wore suits as conservative as their politics and were as committed to the civil rights movement and free speech as any freedom rider.

Secondly, it was impossible to gauge the militancy of any American during this period until they were directly confronted with one of the string of horrors that was to unfold on a regular basis on the new medium of television. Whether it was fire hoses and murders, or campus beatings and bombings, you did not really know your neighbor until you saw their response to the brutality and the carnage. They did not know themselves.

Gladwell noted that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee's story told through the eyes of a child about her Daddy. Clearly he wishes to capitalize on that. He receives the attention he craves, but adds nothing to the brilliant conversation started by a seven year old.

As for the comparisons of Tom Robinson's trial with the prospects of a Boo Radley trial, clearly Gladwell needs a sense of humor. Boo Radley would never go to trial - he committed no crime.

The Difference Between the Fine Art of Heckling and The Mob

Sean Hannity is running down the well-worn streets of Berlin in the 1930's. His call to his followers to "Become a part of the mob!" is Hannity at his best.

There is nothing wrong with a little disrespect and an occasional taunt for some stuffed shirt on a podium. Asking some apologist for LBJ's or Nixon's administration about their lies from the Gulf Of Tonkin to Cambodia was well deserved.

After the fun and the tasteful display of wit runs its course, there comes a time to get down to the business of the day, ensure that the public agenda is followed, and that the discourse is civil.

As we learned on the left forty years ago, next to changing public policy, the toughest challenge for a political movement is keeping its crazies in check. Now the extreme right is determined to encourage not discourage their own 'crazies.' 

When Gustav Le Bon wrote in 1895 The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind, he was not writing about the millions of Europeans or Americans who attend the thousands of political rallies and speeches held in our countries every year, but he was thinking of the right-wing disruptive thugs who are populating the town hall meetings on heath care. He was writing about the mob:

Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence,the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly...

...Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian -- that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images -- which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd -- and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.

The Real Problem Caperton v. Massey poses to WMC and the Right Wing Fronts

Some are missing the point when it comes to understanding the implications of Caperton v. Massey. This is the recent United States Supreme Court case where the majority ruled that campaign contributions cannot undermine the impartiality of the courts.

As those who follow our successful WMC Watch program know, we focused not so much on Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce inserting itself into judicial races as much as the fact that the public does not know who is paying or who is authorizing the "Willie Horton" style ads that are the characteristic of WMC and its clones.

Writing at Shark and Shepard, Rick Esenberg notes, "WMC rarely has a personal stake in a case and, putting that aside, there were very few cases pending or imminent at the time of the election in which it could be said to have a more general interest."

True, Rick. And very little of the $2-3 million that went into the Ziegler or Gableman judicial races came from WMC, or for that matter its WIsconsin members.

But the money came from somewhere. It came from some big players. For the U.S. Supreme Court decision to have any meaning, there must be disclosure as to the source of the funds. WMC, All Children Matter, Americans for Prosperity, all will have to reveal the funders.

Reflections on the Election

Shirley Abrahamson's re-election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was rewarding:

• She proved that you do not have to run from your core beliefs to win a state wide election to the court. Neither Louis Butler or Linda Clifford ran from their core beliefs but they both lost.
• Among the WMC, All Children Matter crowd, those who called for a full all-out negative television campaign against Abrahamson and successful Superintendent of Pubic Instruction candidate, Tony Evers, were vindicated. Clearly the anonymous bundled millions of dollars that were used by the issue committees in the fall 2008 and the previous two Supreme Court races in 2007 and 2008 was effective. The absence of these funds in this election was obvious. Expect WMC and its surrogates to come to the next gunfight well armed.
• Look for Randy Koschnick to return for another Supreme Court race. WMC and the Americans for Prosperity left him out on a limb, having encouraged him to run, promising money, and then sitting out the election. They will repay him if Dave Prosser does not seek reelection in 2011 with a full press, state wide effort.
• Shirley Abrahamson  proved that a non-partisan progressive candidate can put together a solid functioning campaign. Credit goes to  Heather Colburn, Rick Phelps, and the rest of the crew that managed and strategized the victory.

I was quite pleased that Bridget Maniaci won the Madison second aldermanic district race over incumbent Brenda Konkel. I was surprised, upon hearing the results, that I felt sad for Brenda in her defeat.

Other thoughts:

• Kathleen Falk, re-elected as Dane County Executive, proved she is mortal. While no longer the Teflon candidate, now measured by normal standards, her victory over Nancy Mistle was convincing and impressive.
• Biggest winner in Madison who was not running: Mayor Dave Cieslewicz. He got victories in the two most critical city council races where he made endorsements.
• Losers who deserve better and we hope to hear more from them: Hamilton Arendsen who lost in Madison's fifth aldermanic district to Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, and Stephen Ehlke, who was defeated by Julie Genovese for Circuit Court Judge, Branch 13. Congratulations to both of the victors.
• Sly, the morning maverick at WTDY AM, 1670, reminded us that in a discussion with Charlie Sykes he suggested that maybe right-wing Milwaukee radio, not Madison, is the 70 square miles surrounded by reality. He may have something there.

WMC And the Manufactured Tort Hell

As reported yesterday on Waxing America, two members of the University of Wisconsin Law School  faculty, Marc Galanter and Susan Steingass, published a report, Civil Justice in Wisconsin: A Fact Book, Commentary.  

To sum up just a few of their relevant findings, Wisconsin does not have an excessive number of tort filings and any increases in civil litigation are either in the area of small claims or businesses suing one another over contract disputes.

There are two astonishing items about the report. First, there is the modest introduction the authors bring to their work:

It is our hope that this account of the facts will not only help citizens to understand the performance of their civil justice system, but it will enable them to assess the validity and seriousness of the criticisms leveled by its detractors and the defenses raised by its proponents. The goal of this understanding is not to provide answers but to dispel illusions about the system in favor of a realistic, if necessarily incomplete, picture of what is actually out there.

The second, and more explosive, is the reaction from Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce. Keep in mind that WMC beat the drum of tort reform for several years relying on the most bizarre of studies to 'substantiate' their case.

Without time to read the report or consider how his response might reflect on WMC, media director Jim Pugh told Todd Finkelmeyer of The Capital Times, UW report: WMC Claims of excessive litigation in state are bogus,

It should come as a surprise to no one that the UW Law School is trying to say that we don't have enough litigation in Wisconsin," said Pugh. "They have a vested interest in trying to graduate as many future lawyers as they can accommodate. So they have an interest in expressing that point of view."

This from an outfit that based its claims that Wisconsin was in need of 'tort reform' using a poll from the Institute for Legal reform. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Lies About Wisconsin "Tort Reform", Waxing America, April 11, 2006:

Here is all you need to know about the non-partisan, Harris Interactive poll that found Wisconsin in such bad shape:

• Of course the poll is non-partisan.  That is because they did not ask the participants their political party affiliation.
• Yes, it is a poll conducted by Harris Interactive. They will poll anyone on any subject for a price and put their name on it. 
• Harris takes responsibility for the honesty of the polling; they take no responsibility of the use of the poll by their customer in misleading the public.
• The respondents in this non-partisan poll were : a sample of 1,456 in-house general counsel or other senior litigators at companies with annual revenues over $100 million.  Now there is a nice fair, unbiased group of rich,white, males who all represent defendants in tort litigation.  Yes, we are reassured that this is a non-partisan survey but it is certainly not unbiased.  It is fixed, dishonest, and deceptive. Did I say not unbiased?

As we noted April 14, 2008. The real Reason to Buy A 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%.

I'll take the work of two honest scholarly Wisconsin researchers over a survey of 1456 corporate lawyers any day of the week.

Nothing has changed on East Washington Avenue.

Randy Koschnick Campaign Goes After Annette Ziegler

Just when the commentators credited Randy Koschnick as superior when compared to his two right wing predecessor candidates, Annette Ziegler in 2007, and Michael Gableman in 2008, the Jefferson County Circuit Judge smacked the entire state with a dose of reality.

It turns out that while Koschnick may be brighter, more articulate, and more honest about his conservatism than Ziegler and Gableman, he is just as capable of selective standards, not an admirable quality in a jurist.

As I watched his latest television advertisement, I paused to reflect about the nature of its offense. The content is not significantly different than the TV spots purchased on behalf of the Ziegler and Gableman campaigns:

• Abrahamson is a liberal
• She is an activist judge
• She takes campaign contributions from attorneys who appear before the Supreme Court
• She 'votes' to release sexual predators.

What is so curious about the Koschnick campaign effort is his torpedoing his conservative friends on the Supreme Court.

Annette Ziegler is the poster child for taking contributions from individuals with business before the Supreme Court. She took $42,296 from lawyers and lobbyists. 

When you exclude her own money, the combination of funds she received from the financial service sector (banking, insurance, securities industry) and litigators represented over 20% of her campaign finances.

None of that include the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that was funded through Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce (WMC) on her behalf.

One has to wonder if Koschnick would like to join the millions of his fellow Wisconsinites in calling upon Ziegler to step down because of her tainted campaign contributions.