Delta Means Business

 Delta Means Business

Natural Selection at Work

 

The Delta coronavirus variant is on the rise here and across the country. It recently killed six prominent conservative anti-vaccination, anti-mask talking heads and is overwhelming our national hospital system where over 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. The nightly news showcases people in intensive care units struggling with COVID who regret not getting vaccinated when they had the chance.

 

Locally, we have county, municipal and school district officials bowing to pressure from the false flag freedom believers and embracing refusals to adopt mandatory vaccinations and mask requirements. Washington County has some of the lowest vaccination rates in Wisconsin. When last I checked, our local hospital had just one open ICU bed.

 

In the midst of this avoidable phase of the pandemic, there are small rays of hope. Government officials who are trying to keep up with and follow science-based recommendations from those who are studying the data on infection rates, vaccine efficacies and newly emerging variants of the disease are stepping up the pressure. 

 

The Federal Government is starting to impose vaccine and mask mandates for its employees and contractors, those who travel on transportation systems, employers with more than 100 employees, military personnel, and many other segments of the society. The goal is to reach 70-80% vaccination rates as quickly as scientifically reasonable. 

 

Many in the business sector, often resistant to governmental mandates, are embracing these new requirements. Some offer incentives for getting the shots. Others have imposed penalties on employees who refuse to get vaccinated such as increasing premiums for employer-based health insurance or withholding coverage for healthcare costs associated with Covid caused hospitalizations or deaths. Some have gone so far as to require vaccination against the virus as a condition of continued employment. All of these measures should be applauded and encouraged. 

 

Unions are embracing employer vaccination requirements without even going back to the bargaining table. They recognize that a fully vaccinated workplace is a safer workplace for their members. 

 

Other economic pressures are being brought to bear on those who refuse to follow the science and protect those under their umbrellas. School districts which refuse to require staff and student vaccinations or measures such as mandatory mask requirements and other recommended mitigation strategies are beginning to get warnings from their insurance carriers that coverage may be denied for Covid related lawsuits. School Boards listening to the rabidly unvaccinated anti-mask crowds may find themselves unprepared and financially unable to defend lawsuits from parents of children who catch Covid at unprotected schools. 

 

Our legislature and governor recently implemented a limited liability shield for schools from Covid related lawsuits, but it does not provide protection for intentional acts or omissions, such as refusing to follow government mandated measures to keep kids safe. 

 

Local businesses are stepping up by requiring masks in public establishments and vaccinations as a condition of employment. Entertainment venues are starting to require proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test as a condition for entry. All means of public transportation are under mandatory mask orders for all passengers and drivers. Airlines and cruise ships are starting to require vaccinations for travel, no exceptions.

 

All these efforts are meant to help protect those like children under 12 who cannot yet get the vaccine. They are meant to help the immunocompromised like transplant patients and the elderly. They are meant to stop deaths, not compromise anyone’s freedom.

 

Pretty soon, we will be divided into the protected and unprotected. Those who choose to be unprotected and unwilling to protect others will pay the ultimate price with their lives as they crowd into hospitals without space, beds, or staff able to treat them. Once you get the virus and have to turn to the scientists to save your life, it is too late to get the vaccine.

 

Worse yet are those who spread misinformation about the disease and promote fake claims of cures like horse dewormers and gargling with anti-bacterial solutions. Google is not competent to provide medical care and advice, especially to those who have consumed too much of the Covid hoax Kool-Aid. Perhaps, this is just the latest form of natural selection, weeding out the weakest members of the population and preventing them from contributing to the gene pool. 

 

It is time for those who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask to take a step back and reconsider. Either you will need to and get the shots and wear that mask or you will face further ostracization, not to mention a substantially increased risk of needing hospitalization or death. 

 

If you get terribly sick and die, your freedom to choose won’t mean very much.

Celebrate Labor

 Celebrate Organized Labor

Labor Transformed America

 

This weekend we take time to celebrate Labor Day. For many, this just means a three-day weekend. For those of us who are children of the Labor movement and a vibrant middle class, Labor Day means a lot more. 

 

The labor movement in the United States started in earnest in the early years of the 20^th century, growing out of protests over working conditions imposed by robber barons in the coal, steel, and transportation industries. Soon, garment workers, printers, brewers, auto workers, electricians, iron workers, newspaper workers, teachers and other laboring people joined up to demand safe working conditions and living wage. 

 

Through collective action, organized workers transformed American labor practices and forced changes in laws governing the workplace. 

 

The Labor movement was directly responsible for overtime pay, the weekend, sick leave, parental leave, domestic partner benefits, child labor laws, Social Security, paid vacations, pension benefits, the 40 hour work week, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), employer paid health benefits, worker compensation programs, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, equal pay for equal work, farm labor rights, grievance procedures, the right to organize in a workplace, and living wage laws. Labor has always been a major player in the passage of civil and voting rights legislation.

 

Early labor leaders also recognized that their movement needed to look beyond wages and working conditions to help create time and support for the families of working people. Some of those early pioneers, my grandfather was one of them, created schools for the children of working people and colleges to train union organizers. Unfortunately, with the creation of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the movement lost sight of these broader goals and shifted the focus to wages and working conditions. 

 

At the height of the union movement in post-World War II America, union membership reached 35 plus percent of the work force. This helped build the post-war vibrant middle class of my parents’ generation. This enabled folks to make it on a single income, to buy houses, educate their children and live more comfortably. Workplace excesses were exposed and corrected. Labor was recognized as the backbone of a Democratic society and corporations paid their fair share of the tax burden.

 

As with most societal movements and pressures, the gains sought and achieved by the Labor movement were resisted by financiers, business owners and corporate stockholders as they saw wealth created by their companies being redistributed to the very people who created most of that wealth. This pushback led to so-called “right to work laws,” restrictions on union organizing, limitations on the powers of government labor regulators and in, Republican controlled administrations, anti-labor activists being put in control of government regulatory efforts.

 

The push backs, combined with a rising economy and the movement of industrial activity overseas to avoid the costs involved in maintaining a unionized workplace, led to a decline in union membership and a weaker Labor presence.

 

The Labor movement is at cross-roads on this Labor Day. The newly elected leadership of the AFL-CIO with its first woman President and African American Vice President, has an opportunity to re-invigorate a movement of working people that will continue to grow with more service and health care workers, office workers, retail and restaurant employees and a host of others who have not been part of the unionized workplace historically. Recent polling shows union approval ratings at their highest levels since the 1960s. A new Labor movement, allied with other progressive organizations can again transform America into that “more perfect union” envisioned by the founders of the republic.

New organizing efforts will do well to not only celebrate the Labor movement’s past successes but return to those early roots where Labor leaders embraced support for working families that included education, healthcare and voting rights for all. 

 

Celebrate this weekend. Be proud of what organized Labor has achieved. When you go to work on Tuesday, help your working brothers and sisters by helping to organize them into an effective and strong voice for all.

 

Welcome Afghan Refugees

We Must Welcome Afghan Refugees

Help Those who Helped Us

 

With all of the hand wringing and teeth gnashing surrounding the blame game over the end of the war in Afghanistan, the GOP leadership fails to addresses the humanitarian disaster caused by the swift Taliban take over. 

 

President Biden choose to follow his predecessor’s deal with the Taliban to end the war and withdraw American troops from the war-ravaged country. Biden’s administration did not foresee the swift collapse of the Afghan military and government and plan for evacuation of U.S. personnel before the current chaos ensued. They could not safely evacuate the thousands of Afghans that worked with our troops, much less their families before the collapse.

 

We have seen the ensuing madness at the airport in Kabul with Afghan civilians chasing a U.S. Air Force cargo plane, clinging to its side like Tom Cruise, as it taxied down the runway. The desperation on their faces was patent.

 

We have been able to secure an agreement with the Taliban to allow all foreigners to leave safely. No so clear is Taliban willingness to let Afghans who worked with us leave for America.

 

Those Afghans who have made it out and all those who might be allowed to leave in the future are coming to America on special visas to their new home. They will start out at processing centers on U.S. military bases. One of those is our own Fort McCoy, near Tomah.

 

Governor Evers issued a proclamation welcoming those who come to Fort McCoy. He recognizes our obligation to those who helped our soldiers and diplomats to keep them safe from Taliban retaliation.

 

While the Republican National Committee ghosted its previous praise for the former President’s deal with the Taliban, it has searched in vain for a unifying message about the incoming refugees. The alt-right GOP base has beat them to it. They proudly waive the white nationalist flag and tell us more people of color are not welcome here, their prior service to American efforts notwithstanding.

 

One of the former president’s chief white nationalist advisors, Stephen Miller, sought to frame the issue on Twitter. “It is becoming increasingly clear that Biden and his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany and Europe,” Miller wrote.

 

Newsmax’s Stephen Cortes picked up the cudgel. “The very last thing America needs right now is a swarm of migrants from a battle-torn wasteland,” he tweeted. 

 

Not to be outdone, Fox’s Tucker Carlson told us, “[i]f history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade, and then we are invaded."

 

Our own TV Channel 12 interviewed a woman who lives next to the Wisconsin military base where the refugees will be housed on Tuesday. While recognizing the need to offer a safe haven to those who sacrificed to help us, she clearly was concerned about the influx of “foreigners” about to become her neighbors. She took a classic “not in my backyard” stance expressing her concern for the upcoming changes.

 

On August 17, GOP Congressman Tom Tiffany, whose district includes Fort McCoy, tweeted that bringing Afghan refugees here was too dangerous and reckless and suggested they should be sent to a third country where they could be vetted before being allowed to enter the U.S. On the 19^th, Tiffany tweeted that the Afghan refugees are coming from a very dangerous country, the implication being that the refugees pose a threat to our country. 

 

Like the Hmong and Laotians who helped us in Viet Nam, we owe a debt to those Afghans who risked their lives and the lives of their families by helping us during this war. Those previous Asian immigrants also came from war-ravaged countries and have skin tones different from most Anglo-European Americans. They were welcomed as they settled among us after that war. We thanked them for their service and helped them make new homes here. 

 

We need to put aside our fear of those who look different and speak different languages and pay our country’s debt to them by welcoming each and every one and making them feel safe.

CRT Misinformation

Combatting CRT Misinformation

Facts and Truth Win

 

When I see a coordinated campaign of misinformation, I start looking for motivation. The coordinated campaign to ban the teaching of systemic racism in our public schools is but the latest example. 

 

A conservativ writer, Christopher Rufo, picked up on an established law school course called Critical Race Theory, concocted a campaign to sweep K-12 public education into the maelstrom created by the Black Lives Matter movement by accusing public school teachers of indoctrinating youngsters that all white people are racists. He developed a series of talking points, all inaccurate, about how this was a Marxist conspiracy designed to pollute young minds. He set up a strawman caricature of the actual CRT course and it was off to the races. 

 

Many extreme conservatives, lacking a positive message or platform, resort to oppositional messaging designed to scare and get their followers to join in the fray.

 

Ad hominem attacks are the most common. This is a debate device which ignores the content of an opponent’s argument and attacks the opponent’s character. Labels like “Socialist.” “Godless,” “Marxist,” “morally bankrupt,” “leftist,” “liberal,” or, one of my favorites, “lefty gadfly” are just some that folks who cannot debate the issues based on fact throw into their comments. 

 

Conflating things that are not alike to justify a position is another one of these devices. “A drug addict gets free needles or methadone, but my insulin costs a thousand dollars” is a current example meant to disparage one group while invoking sympathy for the other. Effective addiction treatment has nothing to do with the cost of insulin. If you want to complain about the cost of insulin, go after big pharma or support universal health care.

 

Scare tactic messaging is another common way of avoiding a debate on the merits. “Immigrants are taking our jobs,” “Democrats will take our guns,” “that government program will lead to SOCIALISM” are meant to scare people into action without understanding what is really at stake.

 

Exaggeration is another form of deflecting an opponent’s argument.  Saying, “all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter” ignores the problems faced by African Americans at the hands of police officers by sweeping them into a bigger population. Of course, all lives matter, but not “all of us” have experienced racial profiling by police embodied in the complaints about “driving while Black.”

 

Outright lying about something one opposes is, unfortunately, all too common in today’s political debate. “Covid vaccines contain microchips that allow the government to follow your movements,” is a perfect example meant to discourage vaccination efforts. “Masks don’t work and forcing us to wear them destroys our freedom,” are among the most egregious.

 

Getting back to the Critical Race Theory debate, clearly those opposed rarely really know what they are opposing. Labels are used to invoke fear. The labels are supported by exaggeration and outright lies to bolster the ephemeral arguments made against a practice that does not exist. But, what lies beneath the vehement opposition?

 

Let me suggest that the vocal opposition to the teaching of systemic racism in our public schools is rooted in the very racism that fuels the movement to destroy public education all together. 

 

Fear that white kids mingle with “others” or actually learn about our country’s real history of white invaders’ treatment of peoples of color helped fuel segregated schools in all parts of the country. When racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional, private schools sprang up to shelter the offspring of white folks from peoples of color. 

 

As people of more modest means, taught to fear the public-school melting pot, wanted access to private schools for their kids, churches ramped up religious education for their members as an alternative. 

 

As the costs of these alternatives to public education rose, those not wanting their kids exposed to the “others” or curricula they could not control, demanded their public-school taxes be diverted to private school funding. With that, GOP controlled state legislatures created “school choice,” “charter” and voucher systems that take tax dollars away from public schools and send them to private ones following the flight of white kids.

 

Current extreme conservatives are still not satisfied. Public schools still exist and teach things they do not like. They already lost trying to ban teaching about evolution, human sexuality, gender identity, same sex relationships, equality for women, abortion, stem cells, climate change and a host of other issues. This explains the vehement opposition to teaching real history. The opposition is adding more fuel to fires already burning to drive more away from public education and into the arms of the private and “for profit” charter school industry where a rosier world view and white supremacy are the prevailing norms.

 

When looking for the motivation behind the current CRT misinformation campaign, it always helps to follow the money.

This is the Way

Bi-Partisanship is the Way

Compromise is not evil

 

GOP leaders in the US House and Senate have lost their way and, unfortunately, our Senator Ron Johnson is following blindly along. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have staked out the position, “we will oppose everything” and dumped any notion of compromise. Johnson took the bait and is hooked.

 

Recent examples include McCarthy’s self-sabotage of his ability to take part in the Select Committee to investigate the January 6^th insurrection at the Capital and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to debate the bi-partisan infrastructure bill. Senator Johnson supports both positions and continues to question the validity of our elections, all evidence to the contrary. He even opposes the voting rights bills that would guarantee our right to cast a ballot.

 

As a result of the GOP leaderships’ extreme intransigence, they are in danger of losing control of their respective caucuses. Democrats are using GOP leaders’ extreme positions to carve out relationships with more moderate GOP members who see their re-election hinging on their ability to limit some of the extreme positions from the left. Ten republican senators are working on a bi-partisan infrastructure bill and have told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer they will vote for it, even if the GOP leadership opposes the bill. Rep. Liz Cheney is openly defiant of McCarthy’s leadership and other republican representatives now openly declare that Joe Biden won the last election fair and square. 

 

Our system of government depends on the ability of our elected representatives to compromise to get things done. It has worked in the past when the branches of government and the general populace have been divided. The notion of compromise as a hallmark of governmental effectiveness only works when both sides agree that government has a role in solving societal problems.

 

In our current version of divided government, GOP leaders apparently believe that government should just get out of the way and let individuals solve their own problems. It is the result of the “take no prisoners” political strategy introduced by Newt Gingrich and advanced to extremes by the cult of Trump.

 

The future of the GOP is clearly not going to find success following the Trump cult and continuing to promote the “Big Lie” that Democrats stole the last election. Those, like Sen. Johnson, will soon see their political futures end following that path. The way to political relevance with most voters is to support governmental activity that helps improve the lives of everyday Americans and makes the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. 

 

Our local “conservative” elected officials would do well to dump the extreme GOP rhetoric as well. Supporting baseless election fraud conspiracy claims and trying to ban the teaching of America’s real history does little to advance an agenda that helps people have better living conditions. Saving money while cutting services to the elderly and infirm does not advance the public good. Ignoring public health crises while claiming the mantle of personal freedom does little except increase infection rates and early deaths. Suppressing legal voting by citizens of color does violence to the very fabric of democracy.

 

Moderating extremist views and looking for ways to work with those with whom you don’t agree will move us forward. If we sit down across a table with a good cup of coffee, we will find common ground on issues of concern that impact everyone and find solutions that work. If our current crop of elected officials can’t find that path, they will need to let those who can show the way, or voters will choose their replacements.  

On The Importance of History

 We Learn from History

Let’s not repeat previous mistakes

 

Our legal system, like many others around the world, is a social construct designed to maintain the status quo. Ours came from Anglo-Saxon England and started as rules established by Kings to maintain order, punish violators, and provide mechanisms to resolve disputes. What developed over time, was a series of decisions that came to govern resolution of current disputes. If a past decision was based on a previously established rule and was based on a certain set of facts, a current dispute with similar facts should be resolved in the same way. Order is maintained and affairs become predictable. 

 

The rules and decisions of Kings gave way to written laws passed by Parliament and written decisions based on them were handed down by courts to punish violators and resolve disputes. The written decisions became the precedents used to resolve later disputes. The goal was the same, maintain order and predictability.

 

As English colonial expansion spread out of their island kingdom, the English legal system followed. Parliament and the King sought to maintain order and make sure that the colonies continued to support the homeland by passing laws governing the affairs of colonials. They were enforced in the colonies by appointed governors who appointed magistrates to resolve disputes and were backed up by standing English armies in local garrisons. 

 

We all know how that system ended here. Colonials in the Americas rebelled. The legal system tried to keep order but became largely ignored and military force failed to bring the rebellious colonials back in line. 

 

Our ancestors started to create a “more perfect union,” declaring our independence from the Crown and deciding that rule by monarchy should be replaced here by a democracy where laws were passed by elected representatives and disputes resolved by judges appointed by an executive with the “advice and consent” of popularly elected senators.

 

We would not know about these basic tenants of our form of self-government were it not for the study of history. Studying history is important so we know where we came from and how we got to our present state of affairs. It is critical so we do not repeat some of the mistakes all societies make as they develop. Hence the old saying, “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.”

 

There is another old saying that comes to mind, “history is written by the victors.” 

 

No one likes to be cast in a bad light. Americans are no different. We don’t want to be seen as having created our “more perfect union” on the backs of enslaved Africans on land stolen from those people who were here long before our English ancestors invaded. We don’t want to be remembered for the genocide and forced relocation of indigenous populations as white people moved from East to West in pursuit of our “manifest destiny.”

 

What we did as the victors was to write a history of slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples that did not make us look so bad. Africans became inferior beings that needed discipline and were better off as slaves here than they had been in their homelands. Indigenous peoples became savages to be conquered or “Tonto” like helpers to white saviors. When gold or oil were discovered on lands the “savages” had occupied for millennia, we just stole the land and moved the original inhabitants to reservations for their own good.

 

If we jump forward a couple of hundred years, the descendants of those enslaved Africans and displaced indigenous people have been joined by those of us who have studied the real histories of our ancestors’ mistakes. What came out of that collaboration is something called “critical race theory” which is merely a vehicle to keep us from making some of those same mistakes our ancestors made by studying a more accurate version of our history and learning how racial distinctions became embedded in our institutions.

 

Right wing extremists, recognizing that knowledge is power, have organized a public campaign to get school boards and states to ban teaching about the accurate American history to perpetuate principles of white supremacy that form the core of their platform. 

 

We need to recognize that our system of government made mistakes and that our legal system was complicit in them. In the desire to maintain the status quo, our Supreme Court approved of slavery. It approved of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It approved of how we treated indigenous peoples. Racial segregation was enshrined in “separate but equal” schools. Poll Taxes and literacy tests prevented newly freed slaves from voting. Labeling a social practice “legal” does not make it right.

 

We have not yet become “a more perfect union.” The study of our real history and the lessons it teaches may just help us get there.

Our Road Trip - Part Two

Our Road Trip -Part Two

 

My last column chronicled the first part of our Great American Road Trip towards the East coast with family. When that column was submitted, we were still in Kitty Hawk, NC on the Outer Banks.

 

We finished our stay there by driving south on Hatteras Island and marveled at the wetlands that buffer the North Carolina coast from Atlantic hurricane storm surges. We saw inlets that welcomed the pirates and provided refuge from storms at sea. More seafood beckoned at seaside joints that offered views of brave para-surfers flying across the bay. The next day, we headed West stopping at Fort Raleigh and the Lost Colony that was home to some of the first European immigrants until they vanished. 

 

Then it was onward further West to Greensboro, NC and a visit with my older brother who retired there after serving in law enforcement in California, working for our father in the family business and raising his family. He returned to the area where he met his wife while serving in the 82^nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. It was good to connect with him and share family stories from our early California childhood.

 

We next trekked further west to Knoxville, TN where we reconnected with our youngest and her family and we all met up with our second youngest granddaughter and her new husband, Kevin. The interesting connection here is that Kevin now works at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory which is where our youngest daughter’s husband worked after receiving his PhD. While there we went to the Museum of Science and Energy which traces the history of Oak Ridge in the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy during World War II and after. Current work at the lab continues to provide solutions for our energy needs and the decommissioning of nuclear weapons from around the world. 

 

After Knoxville, we went to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It is truly a mammoth cave and the park on top of it is spectacular. Our daughter and her family took the extended tour below ground that descends over 600 vertical steps. My wife and I took the less strenuous, old geezer, tour which only went down and back up about 100 steps. The history of the place is fascinating. The cave has been in use for thousands of years by native inhabitants of the area and then later European immigrants who settled there. It has been a tourist attraction since the early 1800s. Now a National Park, the various aspects of the cave and surroundings are being preserved for future generations. 

 

After Mammoth Cave, it was time for us to head back home. Three weeks on the road and over 3,000 miles driven is enough. 

 

We saw America on the move as we travelled. The more parks and historical sites we visited, the more families we encountered. We kept track of the license plates we saw and counted all but Wyoming and Vermont on the cars and trucks we saw on the road. We also encountered staffing shortages in restaurants and park facilities due to pandemic furloughs. Many could not fill available tables or spaces due to lack of staff. 

 

The other major issue that struck us was the condition of the highways and back roads we traveled. We went through Michigan, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois on our venture. We were struck with the quality of the roads we took. All of them, in every state we were in, had better highways and secondary roads than we find in our home state of Wisconsin. It did not seem to matter whether the states were controlled by Republicans or Democrats, they all appeared to invest in building and maintaining good roads for travelers. Instead of visiting bogus election audits in Arizona, our legislators should just get in their cars and take a road trip to see what we are missing.

 

All in all, we had a great trip. It was wonderful to reconnect with family and hug our kids. We loved visiting places where history was made and learning about the feats of everyday Americans that built this country. We have been privileged to see much of our country’s parks and monuments and hope to continue the journeys as America recovers from COVID.-