Blue Tides Rising

Voters Speaking Up.

Cooperation and Compromise are Key

With each GOP governing blunder that comes to light, we see Democrats stepping forward to run and win in special elections across the land. The political pendulum often rebounds in off year elections as voters see first hand that one-party rule does not work so well. Between now and next November, we will see a much more pronounced pushback primarily due to the continuously outrageous conduct of our president and his cohorts.

Congressional republicans were unable to pass any significant healthcare reforms because they refused to work with Democrats to earn enough votes to secure passage of even modest changes. Tax reform, now being used as a stealth weapon to repeal Obamacare, appears headed down that same road. Republicans in the Senate can only lose two votes on their tax reform proposal and the inclusion of Obamacare repeal will most certainly cost them the support of more than two of their moderate members. Rebellion from the right and left flanks will further stall any meaningful legislative activity before the mid-term elections next fall.

Elections across the country for state legislative seats and local municipal positions are already showing clear signs of voter discontent about GOP inabilities to get anything done on the important issues like infrastructure repair, clean elections, tax inequality and government giveaways to the wealthy who need them the least.

Here in Wisconsin we are beginning to see voter push back against the backroom secret deals like Foxconn that will punish middle class taxpayers for most of the rest of their working lives. Couple the bad Foxconn deal with the bumbling leaders in the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation who cannot enforce any of their own lax rules and we will have an economic disaster that will take decades to fix. Wisconsin still lags far behind in job growth and business development even with massive corporate tax reductions and the lifting of regulatory burdens.

Wisconsin voters are also standing up for their local public schools. Over 70% of the public school referenda passed in the last cycle. These communities have had enough of GOP control from Madison telling them they cannot raise local taxes to support their schools. They are demanding return of local control to their elected school boards so they can provide the resources their educators need to prepare the next generation.

People are rejecting those who would impose outmoded religious beliefs upon their constituents through unconstitutional bathroom bills and gay discrimination laws by electing openly transgendered citizens who care more about fixing roads than which bathroom people use.  They are turning against those who would use their positions of power to sexually harass and assault those less powerful. Respect for women and protection of children are gaining political currency once more. Misogyny is on the way out.

As President Trump and his family continue to loot the treasury, his campaign staffers face federal indictments and industry insiders take control of the regulatory agencies that once kept them in check, voters are telling elected officials who support the Washington rulers that they made the wrong choice.

It is not about one’s political party; it is about the country and what America stands for around the world. With Trump supporting Putin and dictators in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, American voters are demanding a return to measured diplomacy with our enemies and unwavering support for our friends. We cannot have a president who threatens nuclear war with North Korea in early morning tweets and cuddles up to Chinese leaders in hopes they will reign in North Korean nuclear ambitions. An America floundering about on the world stage with little apparent purpose does little to calm a jittery world already reeling from our withdrawal from climate change accords and trade pacts that stabilize international markets.

Average Americans who cannot reach out to their elected officials in any meaningful way to express their displeasure can only turn to the ballot box. In almost every one of those opportunities, we see rejection of the current status quo. Red seats are turning blue across the land. As the GOP digs in its heels and clings to it’s “my way or the highway, take no prisoners” approach to governing, the blue tide will continue to rise.

Look for leaders who will listen and ask, “what do you think?” These are the ones who can and will work across the ideas that appear to divide us to find solutions to the common problems we all face. These are the leaders and elected officials of our future, if we are to have one.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.

Women March to Protect and Improve

Watch Women March

They will change the world

The largest worldwide demonstration in history took place a week ago. Women, multiple millions strong, organized and marched with their allies from across the gender spectrum on every continent to tell the world that the new era of authoritarian populism is unacceptable and will be resisted at every turn.

Reminiscent of marches for civil rights, women's' rights and demands for the end to the unjust war in Viet Nam in years gone by, this march clearly trumped Trump's feebly attended inaugural the day before and sent a message that women will not go back, not one step, to the male dominated days of the past.

Tone deaf Trump answered in a room full of old white males the next day by signing an Executive Order banning federal funding for any group any where on the planet that even offers information about abortion. This was followed by a press conference that declared war on journalists critical of Trump and his policies.

The battle is joined.

Women have stepped up and into the leadership of the new progressive movement. They have proclaimed enough of patriarchal patronage and greedy politics of convenience. We will gladly follow into a more empathetic, principled and practical movement that will work for true equality across the gender spectrum, respect for the inherent rights we all possess as human inhabitants of this planet to clean air and water, safe food, universal healthcare, universal suffrage and an end to violence as a path to conflict resolution.

The transition from marching to movement building will not be easy or smooth. But the path is clear and the goals are attainable as we focus on what we stand for, not merely rising up in opposition to what we do not like.

Watching the signage, listening to the speakers and seeing the colors of change evident in the marches, the unity of purpose was clear. We won't give up, we will be heard and we will protect what we have gained over the past eight years.

Trump's minions continue to play right into their own ultimate failure. Executive Orders may change certain policies, but they cannot create the "alternative" reality they so fervently desire. The early Orders, setting the stage for obliterating Obamacare, approving in principle the Keystone and DAPL pipelines, removing helpful information for veterans and LBGTQ Americans from the White House website, shutting down public comment White House phone lines, gagging staffers at agencies disfavored by the administration, building the wall, excluding some Muslim refugees and attacking journalists hell bent on holding Trump accountable all feed into public distrust of the new regime and help create whole new subset of people willing to rise up and resist.

It is not surprising that many of those who marched across the planet were first timers. Trump’s intolerance has created a whole new army of people who have reached the tipping point. They are now willing to put other parts of their lives on hold while they make calls to their members of congress and state legislators, sign up to work on local issues like saving public schools and local libraries, making sure people do not go hungry and have a place to sleep and stay warm, writing letters to the editor, attending town halls, voting and even running for public office.

As one who has been keeping the progressive fire burning for awhile in anticipation of the larger spark that gets people off their couches and away from their TVs, I am thrilled at the prospect of the new wave of enthusiasm the marches have engendered. I am proud of all of my sisters and their allies who stopped what they were doing to march and be seen with signs and tattoos and multi-colored hair while hugging each other with shared joy at their strength.

Yes, Trump has brought us a whole new world. He will temporarily
dismantle, disrupt and disarm some of what is good about America. It will not stand for long in the face of millions and millions of women and their allies who will be working tirelessly to challenge Trump's destruction and later to rebuild a better world from the ashes he leaves behind.

My favorite sign from the march proclaimed, "You know things are messed up when librarians march." So watch out Trump. I would not want to be the man who pissed off so many women.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and vice-chair of the Democratic Party of Washington County.

It's not about the bathroom

My take on the which bathroom should "they" use issue.

It is not about the bathroom

Just like it was not about the bubbler. 

When a group of people gains the same rights the rest of us enjoy, it does not mean our group has less rights. Rights are not finite in number. Rights belong to all in equal measure under our system of government. 

It has not always been so. We started with rights just for white male protestant landowners. Slowly, we white male protestant landowners begrudgingly recognized that others were just as entitled, but we did not give up easily. 

We constructed arguments that the “others” were somehow intellectually and genetically inferior. Because the “others” were obviously criminals, we insisted that our “safety” was endangered with the new inclusion. We proclaimed that we were “protecting” our women and children. We proclaimed that “they” did not share in our religious beliefs. In the end, each time, we were proven wrong, that the differences did not matter, and the pool of those with whom we had to share grew larger. 

The vestiges of our past discriminatory ventures remain. Even though we fought a civil war to settle the states’ rights argument and end slavery, many still deny equality to people whose skin has a different pigment. Women, who fought and died for the right to vote and equality in the workplace and the home, still are paid less than men for equal work and do not have control over their own bodies. Immigrants from non-protestant denominations ultimately found success, but faced religious purity tests when running for high public office. Gays and lesbians, now free to marry those they love, still face discrimination in the workplace because they can be fired based just on who they married. 

The newest group seeking entrance into the “rights” club are those born with gender dysphoria. They are “transgendered” in common parlance and “trans” for short. 

Many, still reeling from having to recognize same-sex marriage and Gay-Straight Alliances in local schools, raise the same tired arguments to oppose trans people entrance to the equal rights club.

Leading the fight are the same white male protestant landowners who seem least likely to embrace change that most others have already accepted. Recognizing they cannot win on the science, gender dysphoria is real just like evolution, they raise many of the same hackneyed objections used in past battles. As the flawed premises have been debunked, they have retreated to the last bastion of hope, the bathroom.

The argument, embodied perfectly in laws being passed with lightning speed in Deep South states North Carolina and Tennessee, is “we are just protecting our women and children.” Our own state representative Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) tried to jump on this train during the last session with the help of the infamous religious freedom crusaders Juliane Appling and West Bend’s own former book burner Ginny Maziarka of Wisconsin Family Action. After his bill did not even make it out of committee in the last session, he recently vowed to bring it up again in the next.

The trans bathroom bills start with the flawed premise that the transgendered are sexual predators who will use bathrooms to prey upon defenseless women and children. Forget the fact that there are no reported valid cases where a transgendered person sexually assaulted anybody in a public bathroom. Forget all of the cases where white male political leaders made unwanted sexual advances in public bathrooms. Forget the idea that anyone can walk into any public bathroom dressed as the gender they appear to be and commit whatever crime they choose by just ignoring the sign on the door. Forget about designing a mechanism to enforce bathroom use by those with the “correct” genitals that does not embarrass the daylights of those we are trying to “protect.” The bills are merely solutions in search of a non-existent problem.

The opposition to these bills has been swift. Many large businesses already have inclusive bathroom policies for their employees and customers. When the retail giant Target announced their employees and customers could use whichever bathroom they wanted based upon their chosen gender identity, the anti-trans folks went ballistic threatening a national boycott. The boycott rapidly lost steam when the long list of the businesses with similar policies came to light. Many large business, sports leagues, and entertainers have taken their business to more inclusive venues in other states, costing them millions.

Legal consequences soon followed. The U.S. Department of Justice just announced that North Carolina’s law, HB2, violated federal civil rights laws and would cost the state and its federal education support additional millions in lost revenue, not to mention the costs they will incur to defend the litigation. Rep. Kremer just sees this as another example of President Obama’s left-wing agenda. 

Changing one’s beliefs about the “others” is hard. Sometimes it takes generations to erase the hatred engrained by mistaken belief and a misplaced sense of entitlement. Accepting the change and moving on is the healthier alternative.