False Freedom

Don’t Follow False Freedom

Stay the Course

Once again Wisconsin Republicans have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by convincing their conservative friends on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to strike down Governor Tony Evers common sense, science-based approach to slowing the spread of COVID-19 in Wisconsin. More Wisconsin citizens will undoubtedly die needlessly as a result. One’s personal liberty should not be allowed to create conditions where others are more likely to become seriously ill or die.

 

Governor Evers issued a series of executive orders declaring public health emergencies in response to the spread of the virus in Wisconsin. His orders required people to wear masks in public, observe social distances between you and others whenever possible and other simple steps like washing your hands, all shown convincingly to slow the spread of the virus. These steps, coupled with a robust vaccine rollout, cut the numbers of new infections and deaths from the virus dramatically. 

 

As new virus variants have evolved from the original strains and been fueled by people and businesses which refused to follow the rules, we are starting to see new infection rates and deaths creep back up. It was in this environment, that a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to throw out Evers’ emergency declarations along with the mandates they imposed. This left Wisconsin citizens free to stop wearing masks, stop social distancing and enables them to ignore the science and go back to how they lived in January 2020 before COVID was recognized as the killer it turned out to be. Washington County “freedom lovers” must be thrilled. 

 

Unfortunately, this is no April Fools joke. 

 

Wisconsin Republicans, stung by the defeat of their champion, the former occupant of the White House, have doubled down on their politicization of the pandemic. Casting it in lighthearted terms and minimizing its ability to spread and kill, the GOP has used it to whip up a false frenzy over governmental overreach. Unfortunately, a majority of our Supreme Court drank that Kool Aid.

 

Some issues transcend politics. Public health and safety should be at the top of that list. They were until the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 where white supremacist mobs battled and killed Capitol Police officers and defaced the seat of government. Now public health and safety have been relegated to the dumpster and anti-government personal liberty has become ascendant. 

 

Imagine if that had been the case when parents in the 1950s faced a polio epidemic or when earlier generations faced death at the hands of countless diseases made avoidable by new childhood vaccinations. Those generations of parents lined up, lined their children up and rolled up their collective sleeves to get the shots. There was no talk of government overreach when laws were passed to combat these plagues. People were glad to have the chance to continue living.

 

Millions in my generation, the Boomers and older, have gotten both shots. We feel like a weight has been lifted as we cautiously venture out to visit grandchildren and eat once more in safely laid out restaurants. We still wear our masks in public because we do not want to help spread the new variants, much less contract an infection from one. We still practice social distancing in stores, wash our hands and applaud those businesses which have not succumbed to the false freedom frenzy.

 

Most doctors and public health professionals supported Governor Evers’ emergency declarations and their mandates and have spoken out against the Court’s decision to trash them. Try to go into a clinic or doctor’s office without a mask. They recognize that voluntary compliance with suggestions from the Centers for Disease Control and local public health agencies has not worked, especially in counties like ours where local officials have jumped on the false freedom bandwagon with both feet. 

 

We are close to beating COVID, just like we did with polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and other very infectious afflictions. It is lunacy to roll back restrictions and embrace the false freedom flags when we are so close. 

Second Shots

Got Our Second Shots

There is Light at the End of the Tunnel

 

My wife and I received our second Moderna COVID vaccine shots two and a half weeks ago and feel like we’ve emerged from a long hibernation. 

 

COVID turned us into hermits. We stayed home, worked from home, only going out to get groceries, meds and curbside pickups. We stopped visiting with friends and going out to eat. We stopped going to the library and into stores to shop. We stopped traveling to visit family and friends. Amazon became our one stop shopping source. It was terribly isolating, and we are lucky to still like each other’s company. We have a stack of completed1000 piece puzzles to show how we spent our leisure time together. 

 

While we are not immune from catching the virus, we are now less likely to get it and much less likely to get really sick or die from it  if we do. It is such a relief to know that we can now visit our children and grandchildren and give them hugs. We look forward to having dinner with others, similarly vaccinated, and getting our lives back to some degree of normalcy.

 

While we tried to stay safe and uninfected, we watched with dismay at those who went about their usual lives, unmasked and not socially distanced. Each night, we saw the COVID infections and death rates on TV and understood that those who ignored the scientist’s warnings were the main contributors to the thousands who got infected and died.

 

With the change in presidential leadership and control of Congress, hope for relief was rewarded with the recently passed rescue legislation that will put money in bank accounts and vaccine shots in arms faster than we might have imagined before the last election. The new package will help small businesses survive the remaining months of the pandemic, help states, and local governments deal with vaccine administration and pump millions into the economy. 

 

We are not out of danger just yet. COVID variants pose threats to the unvaccinated and Spring Break antics threaten to super spread them into new surges as the breakers return home. 

 

Anti-vaxxers still peddle nonsense that drives down the numbers of folks willing to roll up their sleeves to get the shots. False freedom states like Texas and others are lifting mask mandates and other restrictions meant solely to keep infections down will contribute to new surges, hospitalizations and unnecessary deaths. Why they do that while failing to speed up vaccinations is a mystery to me. 

 

We need to continue to heed the calls from Dr. Faucci and Dr. Walensky, the new Director of the Centers for Disease Control, to get the vaccine shots as soon as they become available, to continue to wear our masks when going out of our homes, and to maintain respectful social distancing. Those simple measures, when coupled with the accelerating distribution of approved vaccines are our only hope to beat the virus beast. 

 

Even with the moderate side effects I had from the second shot, including chills, aches and a day of super low energy, I will gladly take a booster shot if recommended next year to maintain the protections vaccine science has given me. I will continue to wear my masks when going out and will continue to keep respectful distance from others. I expect that to be part of my new normal for the foreseeable future. 

 

Hopefully, more and more of our citizens will see that these measures work to protect them as well as me and adopt them. One side effect we noticed was that, in this normal, neither of us caught our usual cold or mild version of the flu this winter. Flu infection rates and infant deaths from the flu were the lowest in decades. 

 

I am glad to see that the travel industry is stepping up as well. Cruise lines are adopting mandatory vaccination and negative COVID test results before boarding rules. Federal regulations now require masks on all forms of public transportation. I expect airlines may well give preferential treatment to the vaccinated and will continue to require masks.

 

We are close to 25% of the population having received at least one shot of the vaccine. We need to reach 60 to 70 percent of the population having both shots before herd immunity will kick in. With accelerated manufacturing, distribution and administration of the shots, we can get there by the end of the Summer. 

 

Think then of the possibilities. 

Enough Ron Johnson

 Enough Ron Johnson

 

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson continues to embarrass himself and ignore the needs of his constituents. As he keeps tracking further and further to the right, he will no doubt just spin in a circle until he implodes.

 

Johnson was always the former president’s biggest fan and fell all over himself defending and praising the former occupant of the White House. Whatever the administration wanted, Johnson delivered. 

 

Towards the end of the former administration’s hold on power, even after the debate over who won the last election was over, Johnson continued to peddle conspiracy theories of stolen elections, fraudulent voting rules, lost ballots and rigged outcomes. He paid no heed to state election officials, courts, the FBI and the credible investigations that all concluded that the last presidential election was free and fair and without fraudulent interference.

 

Even though he was present and witnessed first-hand the violent insurrection at our Capitol on January 6^th, he continues to maintain that it was not all that bad. It was certainly not an armed insurrection in his judgement, all of the violent acts towards the Capitol Police with poles, bats, fire extinguishers and bear spray caught on video and broadcast live across the nation notwithstanding. He refuses to believe the FBI Director who testified that the insurrectionists were white supremacist supporters of the former president and not members of Antifa or Black Lives Matter. He fails to see the irony in proclaiming that leftist agent provocateurs would storm the Capitol to prevent the certification of an election won by a Democrat.

 

Now that the election debate is finally over and President Biden is clearly recognized as our new President, Johnson cannot bear the thought of actually working with the new administration to address the COVID-19 pandemic that still grips the nation, killing its citizens and crippling the economy. 

 

President Biden put up a COVID relief bill that takes aim at those areas needing the most immediate attention. It will send money to state and local governments to make up for lost revenue. it will spend money to increase vaccine production and speed its distribution. It will provide economic assistance to small and medium sized businesses to help them survive the remainder of the pandemic. It will make direct payments to most Americans to make up for their lost incomes.

 

National polling tells us that a majority of Americans support President Biden’s package. A substantial number of Republicans also are on board, bringing support into the 60% range nationwide.

 

The House of Representatives passed the President’s bill quickly and sent it on to the U.S. Senate where it is poised for passage sending relief to millions of Americans. 

 

Our Ron Johnson went to the air waves this week, proclaiming his intention to resist passage of this bill offering the hypocritical justification that it is just too costly. Johnson conveniently forgets that he rejected just such a claim from Democrats as a GOP controlled Congress passed the largest tax give away to corporations and the wealthy, including Johnson, in our nation’s history. 

 

Making good on his word, Johnson invoked a parliamentary trick to keep the bill from being debated by demanding that the entire 600-700 page bill be read aloud by the Clerk of the Senate before debate could begin. He earned a delay of a whole 10 hours in the process of making a fool of himself on national television once more. 

 

Senate majority leader Charles Schumer actually applauded Johnson’s move which enables any American who wants to know the details of the bill to listen on CSpan as the Clerk reads it into the record. 

 

Wisconsin no longer needs Ron Johnson’s representation in the United States Senate. When he ran, he promised he would only serve two terms. His second term ends in 2022. He has not yet announced if he will run again.

 

If he does go back on his word and does run again, he will have one big backer for sure. The current resident of a country club in Mara Largo, Florida. Given the results of the last statewide election in Wisconsin, that support will not carry the day over whomever emerges from what looks to be an interesting Democratic primary contest. 

 

Ron Johnson’s days in the United States Senate are numbered. We can only hope that he does not embarrass us further with stunts, gimmicks and conspiracies. 

Thanks Act 10

Thanks for Act 10

Ten Years Out

 

Ten years ago, Wisconsin politics were transformed for the worse when the Republicans who then controlled both houses of the state legislature, urged by then Governor Scott Walker, introduced a bill that would eventually become the infamous Act 10.

 

The proposed legislation, which was not mentioned during the previous year’s election campaigns, sought to dismantle a foundation of Wisconsin’s progressive partnership with labor, the ability of public sector workers to collectively bargain. The GOP goal was to eliminate the power of the Wisconsin Education Association Council to negotiate the terms of public school teacher contracts with local school boards and WEAC’s political power in statewide elections. It was indeed “The Bomb” Scott Walker dropped on Wisconsin. 

 

Labor unions, both public and private, immediately saw where the new law would take the body politic and galvanized their members to protest the quick introduction and likely prompt passage of the bill. There were massive daily protests at the capitol in Madison and in communities throughout Wisconsin during February and into March of 2011.

 

We even had a protest march here in West Bend on February 27, 2011. About 200 gathered on the corner of Paradise and Main streets to show our outrage at what was about to take place. We were joined by union Teamsters, Electricians, Carpenters, Teachers, Firefighters, Municipal Employees, Nurses and other members of organized labor, their families and supporters. The protest pictures are stored on Facebook’s West Benders for Fairness.

 

As we marched on that cold February afternoon, passers by honked and waived in support. City police were on hand to direct traffic and many of them privately expressed their support for our action even though their union was exempted from the bill due to the support from the Milwaukee Police Association for Scott Walker’s bid for Governor. GOP legislators also feared that police would fail to protect the capitol from the expected backlash should their collective bargaining rights be extinguished. 

 

Our then state Senator, Glenn Grothman, got wind of our protest and came down to see for himself. He was surrounded by about 25 of the marchers in a parking lot across the street and got an earful from those whose rights were about to be eliminated. 

 

Passage of the bill was slowed when 14 Democratic state senators fled to Illinois in order to deprive the Senate of the quorum needed to hold the inevitable vote. Their brave actions gave us time to mobilize and build public opposition to the bill.

 

The GOP majorities ultimately rammed the bill through and then Governor Walker signed it. Opposition to what had been passed continued with recall petitions for Walker and eight of the state senators, including Grothman, who were part of the leadership responsible for passage of the bill. 

 

WEAC’s power and influence waned and bent but was not extinguished over the next decade. Teachers continued to organize and found new ways to exercise their influence over their working conditions in their classrooms. They found ways to mobilize public opinion about public education and helped elect solid candidates to lead the state Department of Public Instruction. One of those leaders, Tony Evers, ultimately became Wisconsin’s Governor.

 

The lessons learned by organized labor and those who supported it during the Act 10 protests helped galvanize a new breed of progressive political leaders and energized efforts to combat the regressive politics of the new alt-right. 

 

Women started running for political office in greater numbers. Teachers became radicalized and started continuing dialogs with their students on what democracy means for their future. New coalitions between labor, environmentalists, educators, and other people centered movements were created to advance progressive ideas like raising the minimum wage, legalizing recreational and medical marijuana, protecting Social Security, passing universal health care, fully funding public education, ending systemic racism and income inequality. That work continues even through the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

Governor Evers, hamstrung by GOP majorities protected by gerrymandered legislative districts, is advancing a progressive budget that includes many of these very popular initiatives. He is daring the legislature to turn him down and to incur the wrath of their more moderate constituents who support them and already angered by GOP leadership support of the insurrectionist former president. 

 

Act 10, for all it’s evil shortcomings, has been a gift that keeps on giving. It created a whole new generation of political activists who will continue to transform Wisconsin politics and help return it to its progressive roots. 

 

First Dose

The First Dose

 

My wife and I received our first dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine last Saturday at the Froedert West Bend Health Center and saw several friends in our age group there to get their shots as well. Other than a slight soreness in the arms where we got the shots, neither of us had any side effects. We will get our second dose at the end of February and, hopefully, be able to visit our family by mid-March. We feel like we can see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. It has been a hard year in lock down and terrible not feeling safe out.

 

Our fear of catching the virus is due in no small part to our Legislature which has done little to nothing to slow the virus spread. Safely gerrymandered GOP legislative leaders resist common sense measures favored by a majority of their constituents and recommended by the Centers of Disease Control including mask mandates and social distance requirements. They object to Governor Evers’ public health emergency declarations implementing these popular measures, not because they are wrong or not based upon sound science, but because they imposed upon unfounded notions of personal liberty from governmental over-reach.

 

GOP objections to public health measures led our legislature to do nothing at all to combat the disease that has killed over 5,500 of our citizens and infected more than 500,000. 

 

This head in the sand response to the greatest public health crisis in decades shows just how far the failed “smaller government, less taxes” approach to government has devolved. It puts in stark relief just how irrelevant the modern Republican Party has become.

 

Coupled with the failure of the Trump presidency and the refusal to confront white supremacy and conspiracy theories now holding sway throughout their ranks, it is not surprising that the GOP is in full meltdown mode. 

 

Moderate republicans don’t have the ability or the moral fortitude to wrest control of the party back from the precipice. They stand idly by as GOP minorities in both houses of Congress are powerless to stop implementation of the Biden-Harris legislative agenda. 

 

Passage of President Biden’s COVID relief bill by budget reconciliation to avoid a Senate filibuster is all but assured. Biden has already undone a lot of the damage done under the previous administration by executive order and that too will continue without serious challenge. 

 

A majority of the American people want a government that cares about them more than it cares about the privileged few and the hallmarks of our racist past. President Biden is bypassing the GOP in Congress and seeking unity with the American people directly by putting forward policies and actions that the majority supports. 

 

GOP leaders in Congress struggle to find a way out. They failed to meaningfully censure Rep. Marjory Taylor Green, the former QAnon supporter from Georgia, to prove they can police their own. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent trip to see the previous president shows he believes that impeached twice president still commands respect and leads the party. They cannot continue to fail to disavow QAnon, white supremacy, insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists and maintain any claim to legitimacy.

 

Until both state and national republican leaders find a way to advance conservative values and policies without failing to separate themselves from white supremacy and conspiracy theories to secure an electoral majority, the GOP will remain no more than a marginal influence on American political life. 

 

Unfortunately, until Wisconsin has redrawn legislative district maps to make elections competitive again, we will remain in the backwater of a Covid plagued state which clings to a long-lost vision of an America repudiated by those who care about their neighbors. We will remain hamstrung by do-nothing legislators who bask in strained claims of personal liberty. 

 

Wisconsin has a long progressive history and there are still a lot of progressives here willing to work to bring back those policies that made us the envy of the nation. We just need to get vaccinated first.

 

  

Democracy’s Day

 Democracy’s Day 

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. was sworn in as the 46^th President of the United States this past Wednesday. Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as the Vice President of the United States as well. 

 

History was made when Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first woman Vice President and the highest-ranking woman of color and South Asian descent in America. She will be joined by other women of color in the most diverse administration we have ever seen. LBGTQ individuals have been nominated to cabinet and other administrative positions. Native Americans too will join the ranks of national leaders for the first time. President Biden’s list of appointees, while not perfect, are consistently educated, experienced, competent and ready to take on their assigned roles. With control of the Senate, all should be confirmed quickly.

 

President Biden’s inaugural address hit all the right notes. He called for the nation to unify, putting hatred and division away and replacing them with respect for one another, listening to one another, having empathy and compassion and working to find common ground. He also put forth a bold agenda to deal with the crises we face together, ending the COVID pandemic, addressing climate change, dealing with systemic racism, and healing the damage done to our democracy over the past four years. His inaugural ceremony recognized and marked well our multicultural and diverse society by including people of all races, creeds, religions and backgrounds.

 

The spirit of the inauguration and the incoming administration’s moral imperative was captured by Amanda Gordon. The young poet accepted the challenge and challenged the rest of us to rise above past divisions and hatred, “for there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” 

 

The inauguration helped lift a dark cloud from our collective psyche and replaced it with the realization that people who care about us, all of us, are back in charge. They will act with respect, integrity, empathy and compassion. The ceremony, for all its pomp, renewed the American Spirit to seek “a more perfect union.”

 

After laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, President Biden got to work signing Executive Orders, memorandums and proclamations aimed at reversing some of the damage done during the previous administration.

 

President Biden went right after the COVID pandemic, immigration, climate change, protecting the environment, systemic racism in our government, ending discrimination against LBGTQ Americans, pausing evictions and foreclosures, ethics in his administration and freezing pending administrative regulations. His first day actions started to fulfill campaign promises and will shore up support in Congress for a bold legislative agenda. 

 

On Thursday, President Biden released a comprehensive plan to speed up the federal response to the pandemic, increase vaccine distribution, mandate travel restrictions and other measures to combat Covid-19. 

 

Clearly, President Biden’s bold strokes will make those who oppose his actions on social or religious grounds wonder how they will unify the country. His agenda makes a clear statement. We can disagree and debate how to achieve the goals he set, but not the goals themselves. We will debate based upon facts and science, not lies and alternate realities. 

 

While much remains to be done and the work to get it done ramps up, let us relax and take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

 

Trumpism Ends

Trumpism Ends in Violence

Democracy Prevailed

 

January 6, 2021 will be recorded in the annals of American History as only the second time a group of armed insurrectionists stormed the Capital Building in Washington D.C. demanding the United States of America surrender to a dictator. 

 

The first was during the War of 1812 when the Capital was burned buy those supporting a return to British rule. The second was when supporters of soon to be former president Donald J. Trump, incited by him directly that very morning, stormed the Capital Building, overwhelmed the Capital Police and attempted to disrupt the Constitutionally required certification of the election of Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice-President of the United States.

 

Both attempts failed miserably, and our Democracy prevailed. Congress completed the people’s business and certified the election results.

 

What we witnessed on January 6^th was the culmination of the death-throws of the current Republican Party, dominated by the cult of Trump, which rose to power on promises to change the culture of Washington and support for law and order. Those early promises were followed by a take no prisoners brand of divisive politics the likes of which we have not seen since the days leading up to the Civil War. Those early promises dissolved completely as Trump grifted his supporters and mobs of supporters attacked police on the steps and in the halls of the Capital.

 

The brand of pluralistic white supremacist nationalism that became the Trump presidency was on full display this past Wednesday. The overwhelmed Capital Police later supported by the DC Metropolitan Police and still later by the DC National Guard demonstrated for all to see the stark difference in how protests and rioting by people of color and identical behavior by white people on the alt-right are met with a law enforcement response. 

 

The Black Lives Matter protest in Washington last year was met with an overwhelming law enforcement presence from the outset. Even though Trump had been calling on his supporters for weeks to come to Washington on January 6^th to resist the peaceful transition of power to a Biden-Harris administration, there was little advance law enforcement preparation for what most knew was coming. When fringe alt-right groups vowed to show up to support the unproven false conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from Trump and his supporters, the die was cast. The resulting invasion and seizure of the people’s House was completely predictable and should have been met with a much stronger law enforcement response. 

 

Trump’s continued claims to a stolen election were supported and enabled by those members of the Republican Party, in and outside of Congress, who supported him throughout his term even has he became increasingly unhinged. Trumpist republicans are just as much to blame for what happened in the home of democracy as Trump himself. Unless they disavow Trump and all he stands for, the GOP will forever bear the stain of his failed coup and rightfully lose the trust of principled conservatives. 

 

Some have called for Trump to be removed from office immediately as a result of his actions in inciting the insurrection and then failing to condemn it or meet it forcefully. What remains of his Cabinet has the power to invoke the 25^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to declare him unfit for duty and suspend his powers. Vice-president Pence would have to sign on and would become acting President for the remaining days of the term, but he has signaled he will not. This would be the quickest way to prevent further damage short of a Trump resignation. The more cumbersome path would involve congressional impeachment proceedings which would require two-thirds of the Senate to agree to Articles of Impeachment passed by the House of Representatives. It looks like this is what will be attempted. 

 

Others outside of government have already moved to limit further Trump incitement to sedition. Most of the major social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others have blocked his on-line accounts, slowing down his access to his followers. Major media outlets have uniformly called the insurrection for what it is and condemned Trump’s actions. They report his actions accurately and are calling them what they are, acts of treason based on unsupported claims and lies. 

 

The leadership of the Republican Party from the Republican National Committee down to local party leaders in every state need to publicly disavow Trump and his enablers. Those betting on Trump’s continued influence, support or blessing must be shown the door from elected offices and party leadership.

 

We cannot begin to heal as a nation and a democratic society as long as the evil festering in our body politic is allowed to remain.