Mask Mandates are Constitutional

My column in today’s West Bend Daily News.

Government mask mandates don’t violate constitutional rights

Many on the conservative side of the political spectrum claim that government mandates to wear a mask violate their individual constitutional rights.

A not-so-shining example of these claims was evident at the recent meeting of the Washington County Board of Supervisors, where all the members of the board met in a small room, sitting in their usual close-to-each-other seats with not one wearing a mask. In that clearly unsafe setting, the board debated Resolution 17 that reminded the members of the oath they took to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and Wisconsin. Much of the debate centered around their claimed duty to protect our citizens from overreaching state mandates requiring masks because they violate an individual’s constitutional right to “liberty.” The so-called “sanctuary” resolution passed unanimously.

Claims that the Constitution prohibits requiring individuals to wear a mask are ridiculous and wrong.

Many of these so-called constitutional arguments are based on a misunderstanding of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and the similar provisions of Wisconsin’s Constitution. These provisions generally prohibit government from passing laws impinging on freedom of speech, press, petition, assembly and religion. A mask does not keep you from expressing yourself. It may limit where and how you can speak, but these “time and place” restrictions are not prohibited unless they discriminate based upon the content of the speech. You cannot campaign within certain distance of a polling location is a perfect example.

First Amendment liberties are not absolute. All constitutional rights are subject to the government’s authority to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public according to the Supreme Court in cases like Prince v. Massachusetts.

Similarly, claims that mask mandates violate the “right to liberty” are just as ill-conceived. The right to liberty is really an embodiment of the principle of individual autonomy summarized succinctly in the phrase, “my body, my choice.”

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts puts the argument that only you can control your body in the scrap heap. The court ruled that the state could require smallpox vaccinations without violating Jacobsen’s right to personal liberty or “the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best.”

The court continued, “There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members.” State courts have also ruled that an individual with active tuberculosis could be forcibly detained in a hospital for appropriate medical treatment.

This “police power” doctrine commands that all constitutional rights, including liberty, speech, assembly, freedom of movement or autonomy are held on condition that they do not endanger others or the public welfare.

A general pandemic, like the one in which we currently live where a deadly communicable disease can be transmitted by those who show no symptoms, justifies a wide range of reasonable restrictions on our liberties. Believing otherwise turns the Constitution into a suicide pact.

The government can force you to wear a mask to protect others, just like it can ban smoking in public or make you use the seat belt in your car. Doing so does not violate your constitutional rights. 

States, under the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, retain broad powers to protect the health and safety of their citizens, even if the federal government cannot or does not act.

Businesses that require masks for their employees and customers do not violate individual rights either as long as the requirements are applied in a manner that does not discriminate against a protected class. Think about it as “no shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service.”

Those who continue to believe that wearing a mask is just a personal choice have no respect and do not care about their fellow citizens. They should stop claiming a mantle of constitutional right to justify their selfishness.My column in today’s West Bend Daily News.

Government mask mandates don’t violate constitutional rights

Many on the conservative side of the political spectrum claim that government mandates to wear a mask violate their individual constitutional rights.

A not-so-shining example of these claims was evident at the recent meeting of the Washington County Board of Supervisors, where all the members of the board met in a small room, sitting in their usual close-to-each-other seats with not one wearing a mask. In that clearly unsafe setting, the board debated Resolution 17 that reminded the members of the oath they took to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and Wisconsin. Much of the debate centered around their claimed duty to protect our citizens from overreaching state mandates requiring masks because they violate an individual’s constitutional right to “liberty.” The so-called “sanctuary” resolution passed unanimously.

Claims that the Constitution prohibits requiring individuals to wear a mask are ridiculous and wrong.

Many of these so-called constitutional arguments are based on a misunderstanding of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and the similar provisions of Wisconsin’s Constitution. These provisions generally prohibit government from passing laws impinging on freedom of speech, press, petition, assembly and religion. A mask does not keep you from expressing yourself. It may limit where and how you can speak, but these “time and place” restrictions are not prohibited unless they discriminate based upon the content of the speech. You cannot campaign within certain distance of a polling location is a perfect example.

First Amendment liberties are not absolute. All constitutional rights are subject to the government’s authority to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public according to the Supreme Court in cases like Prince v. Massachusetts.

Similarly, claims that mask mandates violate the “right to liberty” are just as ill-conceived. The right to liberty is really an embodiment of the principle of individual autonomy summarized succinctly in the phrase, “my body, my choice.”

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts puts the argument that only you can control your body in the scrap heap. The court ruled that the state could require smallpox vaccinations without violating Jacobsen’s right to personal liberty or “the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best.”

The court continued, “There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members.” State courts have also ruled that an individual with active tuberculosis could be forcibly detained in a hospital for appropriate medical treatment.

This “police power” doctrine commands that all constitutional rights, including liberty, speech, assembly, freedom of movement or autonomy are held on condition that they do not endanger others or the public welfare.

A general pandemic, like the one in which we currently live where a deadly communicable disease can be transmitted by those who show no symptoms, justifies a wide range of reasonable restrictions on our liberties. Believing otherwise turns the Constitution into a suicide pact.

The government can force you to wear a mask to protect others, just like it can ban smoking in public or make you use the seat belt in your car. Doing so does not violate your constitutional rights. 

States, under the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, retain broad powers to protect the health and safety of their citizens, even if the federal government cannot or does not act.

Businesses that require masks for their employees and customers do not violate individual rights either as long as the requirements are applied in a manner that does not discriminate against a protected class. Think about it as “no shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service.”

Those who continue to believe that wearing a mask is just a personal choice have no respect and do not care about their fellow citizens. They should stop claiming a mantle of constitutional right to justify their selfishness.

Supporting Biden

This Bernie Sanders Supporter is voting for Biden

The overriding goal is to oust Trump

My political views have shifted significantly over seven decades. I was raised in southern California by parents who wholeheartedly supported the Republican Party. My mother told me the only Democrat she ever voted for was FDR. My dad believed his business depended on Republicans being in control. As a child and into high school, this was what I knew.

Unable to handle what they had raised, I was sent off to the very progressive high school my dad’s brother ran in western Massachusetts. At Buxton, I met students and faculty with very different political and social views. Instead of the Big Bands, we listened to classical music, the Weavers and Woody Guthrie. I learned union songs, about my family’s history in progressive education and their support for unions and civil rights. My mother cried when I came home for the summer in my sophomore year with hair longer than my usual buzz cut. My dad was furious when I questioned the wisdom of building nuclear arms to win the cold war. 

After high school and a short stint at an ivy league college, I dropped out and joined VISTA. I spent five years in the south organizing voter registration drives, marches on local school boards demanding an end to segregated schools and challenging the entrenched power systems oppressing poor people of color. I supported the War on Poverty launched by Lyndon Johnson and watched it be co-opted by Republicans and Southern Democrats.

I finished college in Madison and went to the UW Law School to learn how to change the system using the rules written by those in power. I marched to end the war, in support of civil rights and for women’s’ equality. I found my passion for justice in criminal law courses and knew I wanted to defend the defenseless from the might of the government. I spent 37 years making law enforcement follow their own rules.

Along the way, I also picked up a passion for the environment and learned of the social injustices imposed on native tribes in northern Wisconsin. That led me from working on the fringes of the Democratic party into a decade of working as a Green. I helped form the Wisconsin Greens and was active with the Milwaukee Greens in the 1990s. I found a home in the Green Ten Key Values. I worked with the national Green Committees of Correspondence and helped draft position papers adding flesh to a political platform rooted in grassroots activism. I fought against the early calls for the formation of a national Green Party because I thought it too early to run national candidates when local offices were more important to advancing the Green agenda. I still hold to that belief. 

I came back to the Democratic Party when I was elected Chair of the Wisconsin Bar’s Criminal Law Section and it took a stand against re-introduction of the death penalty being floated in the Wisconsin Legislature. I recognized that in our two-party system, the only way to defeat state sponsored killing was to support the Democrats that opposed it. 

I did not become actively involved as a local Democrat until the first Obama campaign. In Barack Obama, I saw a leader with a vision of grass roots power and a willingness to embrace and champion many of the issues I hold dear. I worked hard to get him and Joe Biden elected to the White House. I took to heart the campaign’s message that grass roots activism needed to continue after the election to support the issues raised during the campaign. 

We formed a series of local progressive groups to take on local issues with our public schools and others. We were independent of the local Dems, but many of their members were active with us. 

When Scott Walker got elected and Act 10 passed in the middle of the night, the war was on. Our independent progressive groups saw the need to unify progressive independents with the local Dems. We organized, put forward a slate and won the election for the leadership of the Washington County Democratic Party. We opened an office on West Bend’s Main Street and began to organize. We are still at it. Our office and its model of progressive community grass roots activism has been emulated in many other Wisconsin counties.

We, like other Democrats, split between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016. When Clinton won the nomination, I tried to rally other Bernie supporters to her campaign knowing that a Trump presidency was not going to be good for our democracy. We did not bring enough progressives on board to carry the state.

I supported Bernie Sanders in the current campaign too because his platform is more sweeping and progressive than Joe Biden’s. Bernie chose to end his campaign and threw his support behind Biden when it became clear that he could not prevail at the Democratic Convention. Bernie understands clearly that the overriding issue in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and rid our government of his enablers. After that happens, we can work to enact a more progressive agenda that Biden is beginning to embrace.

Now is not the time to ride the horse of political purity. We cannot survive another four years of the misogynistic Trump oligarchy and its pervasive corruption. We cannot allow Russia and other foreign interests to continue to hold power over our leaders. We must restore American leadership in a world facing a pandemic. We need to unite around the rule of law and equal justice for all.

We need to unify and work to elect Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.

About Safety

Wisconsin is losing 

What will it take for us to be safe?

Contrary to President Trump’s claims that the coronavirus is under control, we are seeing increasing numbers of both positive tests and hospitalizations, especially in the states that opened up their economies early.

As the cases continue to increase in 29 states, including Wisconsin, some other states chose the wiser course of following the almost universal recommendations from the experts in infectious diseases to require all who venture into public spaces to wear a face covering.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order on June 18, requiring a mask in public indoor spaces, including while shopping, riding public transportation or seeking medical care. The order also requires masks in outdoor public spaces where social distancing is not an option. He recently increased the mask requirement to include everyone in public.

On April 17, Connecticut mandated masks for all people over the age of 2 in a public space where social distancing is not possible, including public transportation, taxies and ride shares. Employees at essential businesses must wear masks while at work. Customers over the age of 2 are also required to mask up.

Delaware’s governor issued an order in April requiring people to wear masks while in public including inside stores and on public transportation.

As of May 16, the District of Columbia ordered the use of masks when conducting essential business or travel when social distancing is not possible. They are required in grocery stores, pharmacies, take out restaurants and on public transportation.

As of April 20, Hawaii has ordered both customers and employees of essential businesses to mask up.

Illinois Governor Pritzker ordered everyone stepping outside of their house to wear a mask on May 1.

As of May 11, Kentucky Governor Beshear ordered all state residents to wear a mask in public and gave businesses the ability to turn away unmasked customers.

Maine’s Governor Mills issued an order as of May 1 requiring masks for anyone over 2 in indoor public spaces like markets, stores, pharmacies and doctor’s offices.

On April 15th, Maryland’s governor ordered masks in both indoor and outdoor spaces where social distancing is not possible. Employees and customers of essential businesses over the age of nine must wear a mask.

On May 6, Massachusetts Governor Baker required masks for everyone in all public indoor and outdoor spaces where social distancing is not possible.

Michigan requires all residents to wear masks in all public settings. Business are allowed to refuse entry to those refusing to wear a mask.

Nevada required anyone in a public space to wear a mask as of Friday. This includes public transportation, public work environments or shopping.

New Jersey started requiring customers and employees to wear masks at essential businesses as of April 8. Businesses must supply them to employees and deny entry to anyone refusing to wear one.

As of May 16, New Mexico required adults to wear masks in all public settings except while eating, drinking or for medical reasons.

New York’s Governor Cuomo issued an order requiring masks in public for everyone

on April 17.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Health issued an order effective April 19 requiring employees and customers at essential businesses to wear masks. Customers who refuse must be denied entry.

Rhode Island issued an order effective May 8 requiring all residents over 2 to wear a mask in public settings, indoors or out.

On Tuesday, Washington’s Governor Inslee issued an order for all residents to wear masks starting Friday while in public spaces.

All of these orders are backed by solid public health science showing that the use of masks helps significantly reduce transmission of the airborne particles responsible for the spread of the deadly virus.

With significant spikes in infections and hospitalizations in Texas, Arizona, California, Florida and several other states, governors in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut just imposed a 14-day quarantine requirement for all those traveling to their states from known virus hotspots. The European Union is seriously considering banning international travel from the United States to their member nations because of our increasing numbers.

Wisconsin continues to see increases in the numbers of people who test positive for the virus and in hospitalizations of seriously ill people who have contracted the virus. Wednesday and Thursday of this week saw the largest increases since the pandemic began.

Governor Evers and his health department tried to contain the virus’ spread through reasonable regulations and orders, but found his hands tied by the conservative majority of the state Supreme Court who sided with the “local control” leaders of the state Legislature and struck down his orders.

We now are experiencing a public in denial about the serious public health threats this virus is bringing into our communities. Masks are not common for most folks I see in public, except in some businesses. Only a few are requiring customers to mask up before entry.

I fear it will only be a matter of a short time before we become the next Texas, Arizona or Florida whose hospitals are almost over capacity with critically ill virus infected people. Until an effective vaccine is developed and shows results, I’m staying at home as much as I possibly can.

End Racism

Racial Justice Starts at Home

Learn from History

In 1965 and again in 1967, American cities erupted in flames from rioting by Black and Brown Americans. The response was a brutal crackdown by police and the National Guard. Many died as a result. Those were not the first times that peoples of color took to the streets to protest because their voices were not being heard and they were not the last. 

In 1968, then President Lyndon Johnson appointed a blue-ribbon commission headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to figure out why the unrest took place and what could be done to keep them from taking place in the future. The Kerner Commission went into the racial ghettos and interviewed thousands impacted by the violence. 

The Commission’s report issued at the end of the study blamed institutional and systemic racism, poverty and inadequate housing, unemployment and underfunded schools in communities of color, inadequate police training, a flawed justice system, discriminatory credit practices and voter suppression as the major causative factors of the unrest and violence. The Kerner Commission report was followed by an in-depth article published by Newsweek that reached many of the same conclusions. Both the Commission and Newsweek proposed massive government programs to address the racial inequities and discriminatory practices they found. Nobody listened.

President Johnson wanted outside agitators blamed for the unrest and a report that did not address racism. He ignored the findings and the recommendations and Richard Nixon was elected President later that year after running on a “law and order” campaign. Sound familiar?

Now we are faced with similar, but less violent, protests by people of color and their allies demanding an end to police violence against them and of the institutional racism that still permeates American society. More and more white Americans are joining these calls and taking to the streets to demand change.

Institutional changes in how police agencies interact with people of color or those deemed outside the mainstream of society are coming. As more people of color reach leadership positions in law enforcement, they bring a different vision of how the rank and file needs to behave. These changes will be slow to emerge as institutional changes take place slowly. 

More important to the wave of change is how we Caucasian Americans look inward to discover and root our own biases against those who look different than we do. This introspection will be critical to the long-term success of the movement to end racism. It is not enough for the military and NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag, for the military to remove Confederate names from military installations or for Confederate statutes and memorials to be removed. We white people all need to stop reacting negatively, even subtly, to people who appear to be different from us.

Humans are not born to see race or to hate those with different skin tones. We are taught by those like us to make distinctions based on this perceived difference and impose the assumptions of inferiority that follow.

White adults need to look inward, recognize these learned behaviors and figure out how to put them aside and adopt a new way of perceiving and reacting to fellow humans who look different to white people.

For those who can’t figure out how, here are some resources that might help.

https://egbertowillies.com/2020/06/11/here-is-how-i-overcame-my-own-prejudice-white-people-must-do-this-and/?fbclid=IwAR2cpeOvXOkDJpaSwV7sWnTgNGhkYmqVNaLUmfHOA-xSxBFmEZziLekAymU

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/parenting/kids-books-racism-protest.html

http://www.resourcesharingproject.org/anti-racism-resource-collection

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/06/871023438/this-list-of-books-films-and-podcasts-about-racism-is-a-start-not-a-panacea

https://www.racialequitytools.org/act/strategies/training-and-popular-education

https://fortune.com/2020/06/05/antiracist-books-donations-black-owned-businesses-resources/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/talking-to-kids-about-racism.html

https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea

The Underground Railroad by Olson Whitehead

So you want to talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in an American City (Milwaukee) by Matthew Desmond

It is up to each and every one of us to change what is in our heads and hearts about people of color and seek out ways to live together peacefully. 

Racial justice starts at home.

Masks Weaponized

Wearing a face mask is not a weapon

Not wearing one is

My wife and I are in our late 70s with health conditions making us high-risk to have a bad, if not fatal, reaction should we catch the COVID-19 virus. We have been self-isolating since early March and wearing masks and gloves if we had to leave home. We had groceries delivered, stopped seeing friends and family, stopped going to the Y, only did curbside or take out from our favorite restaurants and waited to see what would happen.

We felt reasonably comfortable with Governor Evers’ stay-at-home orders and his Badger Bounce Back plan to reopen. Then the conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of the GOP legislative leadership who sued challenging Evers’ orders. Not having a plan of their own, the GOP leadership refused to work with Evers to craft new rules to help keep us safe. They just told Wisconsin counties and municipalities that you are on your own when it came to public safety during the pandemic even as the numbers of dead and infected continued to rise. It is no surprise that Washington County is now seeing a significant increase of positive COVID tests and deaths.

The predictable result is the wild, wild Midwest where there are no uniform rules, just suggestions that come from the Centers from Disease Control and other experts on how we should act in public passed on through suggestions from local leaders to follow some of them or just those you like or find convenient.

Recently, we have started to venture out of our home to see how the new normal looks and to try and measure how safe we feel being around our neighbors. I have to say, it is really scary out there. We still wear our masks when we go places. The businesses we have gone into in Kewaskum and West Bend have adopted some stay safe practices, but they are far from uniform. Here’s a sample of what we’ve experienced.

 Our Kewaskum Piggly Wiggly grocery store is the best of the bunch. They have Plexiglas barriers between customer and cashier, 6-foot distances marked on the floor in lanes leading to the checkouts, and all staff are masked. The store offers same- or next-day curbside pickup of online orders and limited delivery.

Some West Bend grocery stores present a different picture. One offers all of the same precautions and adds sanitizing carts after each use. Another has some of the same precautions, but staff masks are spotty and often worn below the nose.

One local hardware store is a hot mess. They have barriers between cashier and customer, but the lane up to checkout is right in the middle of the path customers must use to enter the store. There are 6-foot marks on the floor around the checkout. None of the staff wears masks.

The most significant problem we experienced in all of these businesses was with other customers. Many more came in without any face coverings than those with masks. Physical distancing, except in check-out lanes, was pretty much nonexistent. There were no limits on the numbers allowed inside. Unmasked staff came right up to unmasked customers and carried on conversations before moving on to help others.

While we have not had a personal experience with mask shaming, some of our friends have been challenged in public places for wearing face coverings. The choice to ridicule or shame someone for wearing a mask boggles my mind.

We wear masks because the sound science tells us that it is the best way, short of staying home, to prevent the spread of the virus by an asymptomatic or infected carrier. Even though I have taken more-than-reasonable precautions to keep myself safe, I may be a carrier who shows no symptoms. My mask helps you by keeping the droplets in my breath from reaching you should we interact. Why on earth would any rational or sane person take issue with efforts I make to keep them safe?

It appears that mask shaming is part of our larger political divide where those who care about others and the safety of our family and neighbors are thought to be inferior because we subscribe to a work for the greater good philosophy. Our rugged individualistic neighbors are feeling invincible because our president tells them they are on the right path and are better than us. After all, he refuses to wear a mask, so why should they?

Those who refuse to mask up, fearing a governmental obliteration of their liberties, put not only themselves at risk, but their elderly family members and friends as well. Even if they don’t get sick, they are more likely to become a virus carrier by not wearing one.

As we top 100,000 dead nationwide from the virus, it is time to listen to those who actually know what they are talking about because they have studied the science and learned from experience and history.

Stop weaponizing masks and put one on in public while keeping your distance. It may just save a life.

Barr Must Go

US Justice Dept. is a political weapon
William Barr must resign

While most of us were consumed or distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of Justice took a nearly unprecedented action that signals the end of the rule of law, the bedrock of our democracy. 

It is rare when the government asks the court to dismiss a criminal case. When it does happen, it is usually at the beginning stages of a case when new and exonerating evidence comes to light. In almost 40 years of federal criminal law practice in federal courts, I have never heard of the government asking to dismiss a case after the defendant has pled guilty to the offense charged and admitted to the court, under oath, that he committed the offense charged knowing that it was a crime at the time. 

That is exactly what happened in the case of a Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to President Trump. Flynn was charged with lying to FBI agents who interviewed him about his contacts with Russians during then candidate Trump’s 2016 campaign to become President of the United States. The agents were investigating whether Russia was involved in activities aimed at influencing the outcome of the presidential election which is a crime under federal law. 

In order to constitute a crime, Flynn’s lies about contacts with Russians about the election had to be “material” to that investigation. Flynn was known to have financial and other ties to Russia and other foreign governments at the time. During his FBI interview, Flynn denied having telephone conversations with a Russian diplomat during the campaign. Flynn not only had those conversations, but in the conversations, Flynn asked the Russians not to react too strongly to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration. The Russians knew Flynn had those conversations, making him subject to later blackmail should he be needed to advance Russian interests. His lies were clearly “material” to the agents’ investigation.

Trump’s second hand-picked Attorney General, William Barr, directed the case against Flynn be dismissed based upon a non-sensical claim that Flynn’s statements to the FBI were not “material” to their investigation. Barr believed the Flynn interview never should have taken place because the FBI was prepared to close the Russia investigation when the Flynn telephone contacts with the Russian ambassador became known.

Barr’s position is a perversion of the law and the process. Flynn twice swore under oath that he lied to the FBI agents about the conversations with the Russian ambassador when he pled guilty. His lawyers acknowledged that he committed the acts required for the offense before he pled guilty. Flynn agreed that he knew his lies were important when he made them.  Both Vice-President Pence and President Trump believed Flynn’s lies were important. They both said so and Trump fired Flynn for lying to Pence.

Since the government’s request that the case against Flynn be dismissed, there has been outrage from former career justice department prosecutors about the blatant politicization of this case in order to protect a presidential crony. Legal scholars have weighed in on how Attorney General Barr is turning the Justice Department into a weapon to be used against Trump’s enemies and a shield to protect Trump’s friends. Former Watergate prosecutors have urged the judge in Flynn’s case to deny the government’s request to dismiss the case and proceed to sentence Flynn. 

Under the Rules of Federal Criminal Procedure, the presiding judge has the power to grant or deny the government’s request to dismiss and gets to make the final determination whether the dismissal would be “in the interest of justice.” Usually when the prosecution and defense appear in court, both sides of the issues are fully aired and discussed. Here, those adversaries are united. Both want Flynn to walk out of court a free man. 

Judge Sullivan has taken the unusual step of appointing an independent lawyer to present arguments on the government’s request. He chose a retired federal judge and former federal prosecutor to provide the rest of the story by presenting evidence and legal arguments. He has also been asked to advise the court whether Flynn should be charged further with perjury for lying to the court when he admitted to commission of the crime when he pled guilty. It appears that Flynn cannot avoid that one given his current argument that he did not commit that crime after admitting under oath that he did in two earlier court hearings.

Whether Flynn walks free or goes to prison, the damage to the reputation of the United States Department of Justice that is tasked with seeking justice will take a huge hit. William Barr should heed the call of over 2,000 former federal career prosecutors and resign from his post before the damage from his politicization of the Department becomes permanent.

No time for partisan privilege

No time for privileged partisanship

Virus threatens us all, regardless of where partisan lines lie

Once again, we see the partisan divide rear its nasty head. This time it is about how we should confront the pandemic, but the underlying arguments are the same as they have always been. They boil down to local versus broader geographical control and white privilege.

Starting at the local level, moving on up to counties and then states and then countries, we hear leaders say they are best equipped to deal with the crisis, especially when it comes to allowing businesses to reopen.

I understand the arguments from individuals wanting to go back to work in order to feed themselves and their families. I understand the need of small-business owners to do the same. When I see the “reopen now” protesters’ signs and listen to them, their arguments seem to center not on their individual need to make a living, but on their desire for others to provide services to them such as a haircut or the ability to go shopping as they please. When I dig into large business arguments, I see the need for corporate profit. What we have is a worldwide problem. In our global community with its global economy and ease of international travel, what happens in one place will eventually have an impact every place. It is not as simple as closing national borders; we are too dependent on foreign supply chains for that to be a reality. That leaves us with the need for national leadership to address the problems within our national borders. Unfortunately, our president and his team have not been up to the task.

President Trump has used the pandemic to create his reelection campaign events. Where he could have enlisted the aid of scientists who understand the problem and are the best equipped to solve it, he delivered inconsistent and even conflicting messages that were sometimes life-threatening. Where he could have coordinated a national response to the shortages of personal protective gear for health care workers and first responders, he seized orders for the gear placed by states for a federal stockpile his son-in-law thought was for the federal government to have, not the states. When he could have implemented plans to reopen the economy that protected workers in essential and other endeavors, he left it to employers to look out for the welfare of their employees.

With the failure of our national leadership, each state has been left to its leaders elected to manage the crisis within their respective borders. In states with single-party control in at least two branches of government, responses have been comparatively effective to the extent that those plans have relied upon the advice of scientists and health care providers. Governors Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Larry Hogan, RMd., have all shown what effective and responsible leadership looks like and brought some measure of control to the spread of the virus in their states. States with responsible leaders are forming regional alliances in the West, Northeast and Midwest to coordinate uniform responses to help contain the spread of the virus.

In those states where governors and legislatures have been led by business interests and not science and health care, the virus continues to spread.

Within states like Wisconsin with divided government and a strong partisan divide, the problem becomes much clearer. We have a state where the virus is just about everywhere, but the numbers of people infected and the numbers of deaths are far greater in urban communities of color and places where hourly wage earners work shoulder to shoulder, like meat processors.

Those who live outside of these hotspots have not seen the impacts up close and personal, except on the news or if a friend or relative got sick. In this space of privilege, leaders feel comfortable opposing state-level controls and demanding local or regional control efforts more closely tailored to the needs and desires of their constituent populations.

Here in Kewaskum, our village president rails against outside control because our numbers are zero. He conveniently ignores Highway 45 that leads directly from urban Milwaukee through our village and those who will commute to the city if and when it reopens for business. We have county leaders who have penned their own blueprint for reopening and joined the lawsuit against Governor Evers’ statewide orders aimed at containing the spread. Their arguments are similar, noting our county’s numbers of those infected and those who have died are low so we should be allowed to move faster than other places to reopen for business. They, too, ignore the reality that what happens in Milwaukee or Kenosha or Jefferson or Brown or Dane County will eventually impact us here.

This is not a time for local, much less individual, control of the response to the virus. We are all in this together and unless we all work together to contain the spread, the virus will spread to all our communities, infecting and killing even those privileged to live in what are now relatively safe places.