Nightmares End

The Nightmares End

2021 Brings New Beginnings

 

The start to the end of the long COVID-19 nightmare is here. With the widespread distribution of safe and effective vaccines, we all hope to see a return to some degrees of normalcy in the coming year.

 

My wife and I have been in lockdown mode far too long. We have not been able to see and hug our children or grandkids since early 2020. We have only seen a very few, similarly isolated friends in that time as well. I used to engage in friendly conversations with people I bumped into when I shopped. That too stopped as social distancing became the new temporary norm. Shopping for food is now masked and distanced and finished as soon as I can. I used to attend meetings of like-minded folks where energy and ideas flowed freely and replenished the spirit. I hope to shed the fear being in close contact with strangers, not knowing if they were infected or not.

 

In years past, the year-end holidays were usually celebrated at the home of one of our children and their families. Sometimes our other kids would make the trek as well for a semi-family reunion. This year it will happen over Zoom. Virtual hugs and laughter over an audio-visual connection are just not the same. This time next year, we hope to do it in person once again. 

 

My work has continued, but has been severely limited because I could not visit face to face with the people I work with due to COVID restrictions. As more staff and those living in long term care get their shots, the new year will see facilities begin to reopen to family and other non-essential outside visitors. I know it has been very hard on those who could not see their ageing relatives and hug them due to the virus. I look forward to seeing my wards and being able to gauge their condition for myself. 

 

The only bright spot in the COVID winter is the realization that what we used to take for granted, seeing those we love and care for in person, can be taken away by forces beyond our control. Once we get that privilege back, we will need to make the most of it. Our human connections keep us going and give us purpose. 

 

Our body politic will heal as well. Maybe not as quickly as we will from the virus’ grip but heal it will. We will see a return to more bipartisan efforts, a return to civil discourse as we work out our differences, a government that takes care of all its people instead of the privileged few and more even-handed justice for those too long oppressed. Hopefully, we will have learned how easily we can be lead down the path of hatred and division and will not fall for the con in the future. 

 

2021 will be a year of healing and rejuvenation, but only if we work together to make them happen. We have the opportunity to safely see family and loved ones again around a table of good, safe food. We have the opportunity to safely work together to solve common problems and make our shared home, Mother Earth, a much better place for generations to come. We have the opportunity to safely make our nation a place where all are welcome and have an equal shot at the American Dream. We have the opportunity to safely move about our communities without fear of becoming infected with a virus that can kill us. 

 

All these are possible, now that we awaken from the nightmares and work to regain our lives. 

 

As we enter 2021, it does well to remember that we are all in this together. 

 

Get the Shots

 Get Vaccinated

It Will Save Lives

 

Mixed in with the fervent anti-mask rhetoric so prevalent in our fair county amidst the skyrocketing number of those who test positive for COVID-19 and the staggering number of those being hospitalized with the disease lurks another COVID public health disaster. 

 

COVID vaccines have been developed, studied by the experts for both effectiveness and safety, and will soon be approved for use and generally available. According to those who have studied such things, we will need to see a 75% vaccination rate in the general public with a vaccine that is at least 70-85% effective, if we are to see a return to pre-COVID normalcy. 

 

A recent poll shows that only 50% of Americans are willing to get vaccinated, once vaccines become available. This shows significant resistance to acceptance of the COVID vaccines and widespread rejection of the notion that vaccination will help. If the polling is correct, then 25% of the population will have to be “forced” to get the shots if we are to get back to some degree of normalcy. 

 

This resistance is a direct consequence of “decades-long attacks on science by Republicans at all levels of government,” according to State Senator Chris Larson. Larson continues, “once Dr. Fauci and Wisconsin’s DHS signs off on a vaccine, I would urge all of you to take it. The thing about science is it’s true whether you believe in it or not.” Gov. Tony Evers and many other national and state officials have joined together to say they too will get the vaccine when it is their turn. 

 

The government will make the vaccines available as quickly as they are approved and can be manufactured. As with masks, social distancing, hand washing and other virus mitigation measures, the government will not be able to force people to get vaccinated, as good an idea as that may be. Governments can constitutionally require vaccination, but “forcing” vaccination is something else.

 

We will see public education campaigns about the benefits and safety of getting vaccinated and hear testimonials from those who got the shot with only mild side effects. All of that will fall on deaf ears on the heads of those who think they know better than the expert scientists.

 

Maybe, the next level of authority will have a greater impact on increasing the vaccination rate. Employers, many of whom have been complaining about not being able to keep their workforces intact due to COVID illness or exposure, can take the step of requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of new or continued employment.

 

If saving the economy is truly what people want, mandatory employee vaccination may be the key.

 

Many employers are already planning what to do when the vaccines become generally available in 2021. There is no present law, regulation or government guidance that directly addresses the issue. That being said, the notion of mandatory vaccination requirements is not new.

 

One example is found in the requirement for healthcare workers to receive certain vaccinations before they are hired. Both the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have set out mandatory flu vaccination policies in the past. Both agencies approved mandatory flu shots as a permitted employer mandate during the H1N1 epidemic in 2009. The only caveats are that employers have to give consideration to employee requests for exemption based upon disability or religious beliefs. Even when these objections are raised, employers can deny them if the failure to vaccinate would cause undue hardship.

 

The religious exemption argument has gained some popularity after the Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby contraception case. More on point is a case out of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Fallon v. Mercy Catholic Medical Center of Southeastern Pennsylvania, where the Court upheld Fallon’s termination for refusing to get a flu shot. Fallon’s religious claim was that the shot “would do more harm than good.” The Court rejected Fallon’s claim noting his reason was not a sincerely held religious belief. There are cases on both sides of the religious exemption issue so employers will need to be prepared for legal challenges to terminations or hiring refusals where they are involved. 

 

Public schools, technical colleges and universities can also have an impact on the vaccination rate by requiring COVID vaccination of both students and faculty as a pre-condition to participation in in-person learning. One of the benefits of the development of remote learning technologies is that they limit the ability of students or staff to refuse to get the shots. We already have mandatory vaccination rules in schools for a host of other diseases, so adding the COVID vaccines to the list should not be difficult. If you want schools to reopen, get the shots.

 

We are all in this together and my getting the two shots will help keep you healthy. The same is true for you. Roll up your sleeve when your turn comes. 

 

Giving Thanks

Giving Thanks

We Are All In This Together

As we pause to give thanks this time of year, we remember the stories of our Pilgrim ancestors about how they were helped by those who lived here before they arrived on their shores. Some of the stories have morphed into visions of long tables filled with turkeys and all the trimmings where both newcomers and native peoples sat together and enjoyed the shared bounty. 

 

We know now that these visions bore little resemblance to the truths that followed those first encounters. Our ancestors survived their first winters with help from native peoples in what became known later as New England. As more arrived and they all had children, our ancestors forgot that early generosity. They took native lands, the water and the bounty and called it their own. 

 

The subsequent history of our relations with native peoples followed the path of Manifest Destiny, the Indian Wars, the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee to forced relocation to impoverished reservations, just to name but a few.

 

Some take solace in a different view of our shared past through Indian mascots for public schools. They just perpetuate the myths and the obliteration of native cultures. 

 

Native wisdoms still survive, despite all the attempts to eradicate their culture and oral histories. We are reminded of some of those each year when the Thanksgiving stories re-emerge. We also hear them when the Water Protectors rise up to oppose fossil fuel pipelines that threaten and the foul the water. We also hear them when Water and Air Protectors rise up to oppose mining operations that threaten and then pollute the water and air. Native peoples know that we need the water and air in order to survive. We need to protect our shared Earth so all can share in nature’s bounty. We need to live together and protect the land, water and aid in order that we all may live. 

 

Wisconsin Bands celebrate our shared connections to Mother Earth with Honor the Earth pow wows where meals are shared, elders honored, and dancers and drum songs tell the stories, so the children learn, and warriors do not forget. Elders carry the history and tell the stories when memories need to be refreshed. 

 

The People, Anishnabe, as the Ojibwe call themselves, pass along seven teachings we can all adopt without fear of appropriation. 

Wisdom, Humility, Love, Bravery, Honesty, Truth and Respect form a core.

 

Respect is given to you and you give it to others.

 

Humility allows us to learn about ourselves.

 

To deal with Truth and Honesty, we must be truthful and honest in all our affairs.

 

Wisdom is to know the difference between Right and Wrong.

 

We must have the ability to Love ourselves.

 

All of these teachings require Bravery so they may be embraced. 

 

These teaching have become all the more important in this time of pandemic and division. None of us are immune and all are at risk. Embracing these will help lead the way to a shared protection of Mother Earth and those who live on her.

 

We are all in this together. 

 

 

Majority Rules

 Historic Election Must Stand

Legal Challenges Must Fail

We just witnessed history being made. More Americans voted in this presidential election than ever before. Former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris received more votes than any other presidential ticket in American history. They currently have more than a five million vote lead over President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. 

The Biden-Harris ticket is projected to receive 279 Electoral College votes and have slim leads to capture even more once Arizona and Georgia complete their tallies. Should they win both states, their Electoral College tally will exceed 300 votes, far more than the 270 required to win the White House.

Against these substantial, some say insurmountable, numbers, Trump and his ever-dwindling number of supporters continue to make baseless claims that Democrats stole the election. Social media is rife with conspiracy theories and false claims of wide spread voter fraud and election procedural irregularities in several of the states Biden won. 

To further stir the pot and try to convince us Trump actually won the election, his legal team filed lawsuits seeking to overturn the results in several battleground states while administration officials refuse to start the legislatively required transition process giving access to the Biden-Harris transition team.

Funny thing about going to court, you have to bring provable facts supported by legally admissible evidence coupled with sound legal theories in order to obtain relief. So far, Trump’s team has failed to convince a single judge to grant relief that might lead to changing the result of the election.

Legal observers tell us that Trump’s claims of sweeping voter fraud have only been supported by anecdotal reports by individual voters or poll observers in scattered voting locations. 

During a Pennsylvania court hearing reported by the Associated Press, the judge asked a Trump campaign lawyer of he found any signs of fraud in the 592 ballots being challenged. The answer was, “no.” In Michigan, one of Trump’s lawsuits was dismissed because it contained “inadmissible hearsay within hearsay.” Trump’s appeal from that decision was dismissed because the appeal was “defective.” 

Trump’s team gave up in Nevada when it asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss their appeal seeking to stop mail ballots from being counted. A Federal lawsuit seeking to stop the counting of mail-in ballots in Las Vegas failed to convince the judge to immediately issue an order to stop the counting. 

Trump’s team won one case in Pennsylvania. They convinced a judge to disqualify a small number of ballots where the voters failed to confirm their identification by November 9th. The number of ballots disqualified was not enough to change the result of the election which Biden won by more than 53,000 votes. They won another challenge and were allowed to move their observers closer to those processing mail-in ballots. 

Litigation in Georgia raised a new theory that the use of Sharpie pens, whose ink can leak through the ballot paper and onto the reverse side, caused ballots to be illegally rejected. Unfortunately, the Trump team could only produce affidavits from a few voters who saw their marks bleed onto the back side of their ballot. None established that their ballots were rejected and election officials testified that voters would be allowed to case new ballots if their original ballot was rejected by the machine used to count their votes. Trump legal actions in Georgia alleging that ballots were received after the voting deadline were dismissed by the court when his lawyers could not produce proof of their claims. 

The New York Times contacted election officials in all 50 states seeking evidence of fraud in the presidential election. Not one offered any evidence of wide-spread voter fraud and most indicated the elections in their state was fair and the process transparent.

Trump has failed to produce any credible evidence to back up his claims of voter fraud. None of those lawsuits, if successful, would produce results that would change the outcome of that state’s election. Trump’s most sweeping arguments against elections that allow voters to choose between mail-in and vote-in-person methods for casting a ballot run counter to established voting rules passed in most jurisdictions. 

It is interesting to note that Trump’s team is only challenging election results in states that he lost. There were similar surges in mail-in balloting in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Montana which Trump won, yet we see no claims of voter fraud in any of them, even though Republican candidates down ballot lost in several elections. 

Trump has been able to raise a lot of money from those unwilling to accept his defeat. The fine print in GOP solicitations for these defense funds notes that significant portions of donations will be used to retire campaign debt.  These efforts are also seen as an attempt to stroke Trump’s ego and allow him cover to resist efforts towards a transition of power. 

An even more serious threat is found in the efforts to convince legislators in Republican controlled states to direct their state’s Electoral College votes to Trump even though he lost the popular vote there. Our own State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo from New Berlin publicly announced support for nullifying Wisconsin election results or requiring our Electoral College electors to cast Wisconsin’s votes for Trump, a blatantly illegal move disavowed by his GOP committee chair.

I have always believed we live in a democracy where elections are decided by a majority of the votes cast by eligible voters. I hope that remains true and that Trump and his enablers’ attempts to maintain their power illegally are rejected.

We Won't Be Intimidated

No Intimidation Allowed at Polls

Private Militias are Illegal.

 

I have worked as a poll worker in the Town of Barton and Village of Kewaskum. Before that I served as the county election protection supervisor for the Democratic party for every election from 2007 through 2017. I have closely followed election security issues locally, throughout Wisconsin and across the nation for many years. Even with questions about the integrity of electronic voting machines and network security in how votes are tallied and transmitted, I remain confident that our system for accepting and counting ballots leaves no doubt that all legitimate votes are counted and those few fraudulent ones are discarded. This view is generally accepted by election experts in and out of government and in both major political parties. 

 

Notwithstanding these views, there are a few extremists on the right and left ends of the political spectrum who continue to predict that the outcome of the upcoming election will not be legitimate and, for some, a reason for armed insurrection against the government formed after the vote tallies are announced.

 

Recent studies by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and Center for Strategic Studies all indicate that alt-right white supremacist groups are responsible for most of the recent terrorist plots and violence. Homeland Security officials see white supremacists as the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.”

 

Some fear that these groups, emboldened by comments from certain national leaders, will appear in armed cadres at polling locations to intimidate voters seeking to suppress or change their votes. 

 

Wisconsin has a long history of so-called militia groups who have tried to influence politics through fear and intimidation. The Posse Commitatus was active in the 1970s, until law enforcement cracked down and their public leaders were incarcerated on various charges.

 

Wisconsin is among five states noted to be at the highest risk of increased militia activity before and after the election, depending on the outcome. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), which receives government funding, indicates the trends they identify “raise significant concerns for the security of the election period, how seriously the election results will be taken and the response to whichever winner is selected.”

 

The militia type groups identified as most problematic here and across the country include Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, Boogaloo Bois and Three Percenters. 

 

The fascinating aspect of most of these groups is their claim to legitimacy under the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms and the First Amendment’s protection of the right to Free Speech and Assembly. Unfortunately, the courts and most legal scholars and analysts disagree. 

 

The US Constitution affords no protection to private armed militia groups that are unconnected to or outside the authority of the government.  All fifty states prohibit and restrict private militia activity with different kinds of laws, including provisions in state constitutions. 

 

The United States Supreme Court has directly ruled in two different cases, District of Columbia v. Heller and Presser v. Illinois, that while the Second Amendment protects an individuals’ right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, it does not protect militia-type activity or prohibit state restrictions on it. 

 

The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School released an analysis of Wisconsin anti-militia laws. It concluded that a private militia that attempts to activate itself for duty is illegal. Wisconsin’s constitution forbids private military units from operating outside state authority in Article 1, Section 20. Wisconsin statutes prohibit falsely assuming functions of a public officer with felony penalties. Wis. Stat. §946.69.

 

Notwithstanding these provisions, we saw militia type activities in the plot to kidnap and try Michigan Governor, Gretchen Witmer, that involved para-military training in rural Cambria, Wisconsin and in the para-military actions in Kenosha during the unrest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake that resulted in the deaths of two protesters at the hands of Kyle Rittenhouse.

 

With Tuesday’s election looming, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has also warned those who might try to influence the outcome through an armed presence at polling locations that they will face prosecution and incarceration under Wisconsin election protection laws as well. There is no First Amendment right to strike fear in others to influence the exercise of the franchise.

 

Citizens must be allowed to cast their votes for candidates of their own choosing without intimidation from armed para-military groups or individuals. If militias or armed individuals are allowed to invade our polling locations, then the results will indeed not be legitimate.

  

Smaller Government

 Smaller Government is Not the Answer

 

Republicans usually believe in smaller government and less governmental intrusion into people’s lives. Unfortunately, that philosophy has taken the GOP controlled Wisconsin legislature to an extremely unproductive and dangerous place. Wisconsin’s legislature is now considered the least active full-time state legislature in the nation since the Covid-19 pandemic started and Wisconsin has become one of the worst states in the nation for virus spread.

 

A review by WisPolitics, a Wisconsin based news service that covers state politics, shows that our legislators have met 18 times less frequently that the other states with full time legislatures since March 12 when Gov. Evers declared the first public health emergency. 

 

With Covid cases increasing at rates faster than most other states, our hospital intensive care beds being filled to capacity and virus deaths topping 1500, our legislature has refused calls to convene in extra ordinary session to address the pandemic. 

 

Gov. Evers has tried to stem the spread of the virus with mandates for Wisconsinites to mask up and orders limiting capacity in public places where people gather only to find legislative leaders and representatives of the Tavern League take his orders to court challenging his authority. He has had to set up a large field hospital at State Fair Park to ease the burden on state hospital intensive care wards. 

 

Assembly Leader Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald have ignored the governor’s call to work with him to formulate a plan to deal with the virus and hospital system overloads. They have continued to assert that only the legislature has the power to approve public health emergency orders without doing so or offering any other alternative plans to deal with the crisis. They reject the need for state wide uniform action, leaving the decisions to local health departments and county units of government. 

 

This legislative abdication of responsibility has led to a hodgepodge of local orders limited to city or county boundaries. We now have cities with mask mandates and public space limitations right next door to other municipalities with none. Literally, we find streets where masks are required on one side, but not the other. Unfortunately, the virus does not honor geopolitical boundaries.

 

Washington county has been hit especially hard. Our health department notes that our communities are carrying a very high burden of virus case increases with an upward trending trajectory for new cases and a very high case status. All these point to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths in our future. Our county leadership counts itself among the GOP far right where decisions about wearing masks, gathering in large groups with little physical distancing and other precautionary measures are matters of “individual responsibility” even when the numbers show far too many do not take that “responsibility” seriously, if at all. 

 

When the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Evers’ first order in response to the legislature’s lawsuit, lawmakers claimed in their arguments to the Court that they were “ready willing, and able to work with DHS and at the same time craft legislation (which it is drafting even now) to respond to the pandemic in a comprehensive and balanced fashion and guided by federal recommendations.” Since that was submitted to the Court back in April, nothing of the sort has emerged from the Legislature.

 

Clearly, calls for people to voluntarily follow federal CDC and local health department recommendations have not worked to slow the spread of this deadly virus. Legislative inaction and court intervention have certainly contributed to virus spread and more deaths. 

 

It is time for new leadership that takes the current pandemic for what it is, an indiscriminate killer, and responds with what the epidemiologists and other infectious disease experts tell us are the steps necessary to get it under control. Only when these measures are required and enforced at every level will we see the economy start to rebound, schools open safely for children and staff and the health of the nation recover. 

 

We’ve done it before and can do it again. It just takes courage.

 

Trump's Very Bad Week

Trump’s Very Bad Week

There were two very notable revelations about Donald Trump this week that should lead decent people who support him to reconsider and withdraw that support for his re-election. 

 

One came during the raucous presidential candidate debate on Tuesday night watched by over 73 million Americans. Even if you put Trump’s bullying interruptions and personal attacks aside, his repeated refusal to condemn white supremacists exposed what many have long thought. Donald Trump is a full blown racist and depends upon white nationalist racists to secure his re-election. This man clearly does not understand, much less embrace, that we are a pluralistic society with a legal commitment to racial equality that is enshrined in the constitution. 

 

Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy was compounded by his instructions to the fascist and violent Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Proud Boy leadership immediately seized upon Trump’s instructions vowing to mobilize and to wait for further instruction from their leader. Reports following the debate show Proud Boy membership increasing as more flock to their banners of hate and violent extremism. Trump’s words were almost immediately turned into a shoulder patch for their body armor.

 

Trump tried to deflect the discussion about violence to “Antifa” as he repeated unfounded claims that those who identify as anti-fascist are more violent than alt-right white supremacists. Trump does not understand that we fought a world war against fascism where many of our relatives paid the ultimate price to secure our liberty. We, as a nation, are committed anti-fascists and will go to war again should it become more than a fringe element of our society. People of good conscience are anti-fascist. 

 

Trump’s reliance on this large part of his political base is even causing staunch congressional GOP supporters to distance themselves from Trump. Perhaps they are beginning to see that after the upcoming election what remains of the Republican party will be blowing tattered in the wind and they need to create some plausible deniability if they want to survive politically.

 

The other revelation that should give those pause who continue supporting Trump is the reporting by the New York Times about their review of Trump’s federal income tax data. The review finally exposes Trump for the con man he is. For many years, his businesses lost substantial amounts of money and he was only rescued by his earnings from the unreality TV show, The Apprentice, and loans which he personally guaranteed. His casinos, golf courses, office buildings and many other endeavors are a falling house of cards. Instead of the successful billionaire business tycoon he claims to be, we now know Trump is hanging on by a thread supported by what amounts to taxpayer bailouts as the secret service follows him to Trump owned properties, renting space and golf carts to protect him.

 

The disclosure of outstanding loans of more than $400 million dollars that Trump personally guaranteed raise serious national security concerns. It appears that most of those loans will come due while Trump is president should he be re-elected to a second four-year term. It is suspected, given the bragging by his sons Eric and Don Jr., that much of that debt is held by Russian banks or individuals. Should that be the case, Trump will be very vulnerable to conditions on deferred repayment agreements by a hostile foreign government. 

 

The tax data exposed many questionable, if not outright illegal, tax avoidance schemes such as his payments to his daughter, Ivanka, of over $600,000 for consulting services all while she was also his employee. The Times reported that the IRS is looking into a multi-million-dollar refund Trump received by advancing claims of business losses. For many of the years covered by the tax data, Trump paid not one cent in federal income taxes through his creative accounting. In 2016 and 2017, he paid just $750 in each of those years in federal income taxes. Those reading this probably paid significantly more than Trump did in federal taxes. I know I did.

 

Trump denies the Times’ reporting, claiming it is just more “fake news.” He claims to have paid millions in federal taxes. All he has to do to show the Times was wrong is to disclose the signature pages of his Forms 1040 that show the amounts of taxes paid in each of the years he filed. I bet he will not produce even those single pages to prove the Times wrong.

 

Nobody likes paying taxes. We do so to support government services determined by our elected representatives to be in the overall public interest. We know that the tax code is weighted in favor of the wealthy and Trump’s tax cuts have put the thumb on that scale pushing it even further in that direction. Even with its imperfections, most of us want a tax code where everyone pays their fair share of the tax burden. Trump’s tax revelations show he took tax avoidance to a whole new level. He has played us all for suckers and losers. There will be some to come to his defense, praising his business acumen in avoiding taxes, but that will not include millions who pay their taxes because it is the right thing to do.

 

I hope that the Commission on Presidential Debates modifies its rules to give the next moderator a mute button so we can have a serious discussion of each candidate’s vision for the future of America without bullying and interruptions. Maybe then Donald Trump will be fully exposed as the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain who just blows smoke.