Governing is Complicated

Very Complicated

The complete collapse of the American Health Care Act shows that Republicans in Washington are still stuck on being the party of "No" and have not learned how to govern.

When you have solid majorities in both houses of Congress and a sympathetic, but unaware, president, it should be easy to pass legislation you think important. Speaker Ryan learned that "just say no," does not translate into legislative enactments that actually accomplish something.

The AHCA was flawed from the beginning. It was not a bill designed to provide Americans with affordable health care coverage with lower premiums, but one designed to continue the GOP redistribution of wealth to the rich by means of more tax credits. It was designed to put more money back into the Treasury to help fund even more tax credits to the rich when the GOP tries to tackle tax reform.

Given the ideological fractures in the House of Representatives' Republican caucus and their inability to compromise even among themselves, there was little hope that the bill would pass. The far-right Freedom Caucus would never vote for anything short of a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act that leaves everyone to fund their own health care without government assistance or involvement. They held their ground, leaving those in the GOP's center and center-right with no place to go. Without significant shifts towards an actual universal healthcare bill, there was not going to be any help from Democrats.

Speaker Ryan, who has had seven years to draft a workable alternative to the Affordable Care Act, did not even start until this year. He pinned his hopes on the ultimate deal maker sitting in the White House to strong arm and cajole those opposed into falling in line. Try as he might, President Trump could not close the deal.

When Ryan ended up pulling the bill before there could even be a vote, he announced that "Obamacare remains the law of the land." The reactions were swift and merciless. Repeal and replace was the single unifying theme of the last election cycle and they just could not pull it off. The blame game looked to deflect responsibility away from Trump and Ryan but appeared to fall on deaf ears. The Freedom Caucus refused to accept any part of the responsibility, claiming Ryan just is not conservative enough. Democrats rallied and pushed again for a single payer, Medicare for all plan. Trump has declared war on the Freedom Caucus and Ryan rejected Trump's suggestion that they could work with Democrats on health care. Trump and Ryan turned their backs on the failure and vowed to move on to tax reform legislation.

Tax code reform has been on everyone's radar for over 30 years with nothing getting done except minor tweaks and more loop holes for corporate interests. With no one willing to seriously look at military spending or any of the other required costs of running the country, there is an insatiable demand for revenue. The government has already taxed and regulated  the middle class into a terminal condition so there is no help to be found there. Businesses, corporations and the wealthy keep demanding bigger slices of the pie so there is no help there either. The vanished savings from repeal and replace will make the task even more difficult. It is no wonder that Trump's claims that tax reform will be easy are being received with more than a little skepticism. 

Tax reform will bring out more dark money from lobbyists and super PACs than ever before. All will pitch their entitlements to this tax benefit or the next and the congressional lackeys who have not met a lobbyist with a check they did not like will swoon once more before delivering more back to these benefactors. The end result will add volumes to the tax code making the rich richer and the poor and working stiffs poorer.

The GOP agenda has run aground on the rocks of governing. Even with majorities, our system of government requires compromise in the middle before progress can be made. If he is to survive the meat grinder, Speaker Ryan is going to be forced to forge coalitions in the center in both parties. Hopefully, he will be up to the task. If not, it will be a rough pull to avoid a GOP disaster in the 2018 mid-terms.

Support Tony Evers

DPI Superintendent Evers Deserves Re-election

Holtz is Wrong for Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction provides institutional and financial support to the state’s public schools. It is led by a non-partisan superintendent who gets elected every four years. Tony Evers is the current superintendent and is running for re-election on April 4^th.

Superintendent Evers has done a great job negotiating the troubled waters post-Act 10, trying to keep public education afloat while school budgets were slashed, teachers vilified and local control obliterated by Governor Walker and the GOP controlled legislature. Evers’ steady leadership has been the only bright light in the wholesale assault on public education, especially in urban areas.

Evers has a solid plan to rescue public education and to stand up against the forces that would continue the slide into privatization and profiteering now led by Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s wholly unqualified pick to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

Make no mistake, the privatizers here in Wisconsin and nationally have their sights on the money we spend to educate our children. They sell it grandly through claims about the wonders of school choice, competition and “free markets.”

School choice has been and continues to be a disaster, siphoning money out of public schools and giving it to religious private schools in the form of vouchers to parents. The voucher, when presented to the private school, takes the student’s state funding from her former public school and gives it to the private one. Vouchers rob the public schools of the economies of scale that make them manageable financially. Take a student’s $7,000 state aid out of a public school and they still have to hire the same number of teachers because that one or two students less in a classroom does not mean the remaining students should not be taught. 

The privatizers for choice also siphon money out of public schools through charter schools. They too are funded with tax dollars that would otherwise go to neighborhood public schools. Neither charter nor voucher schools are held to the same standards as public schools. Neither has to offer the help or services special needs students require. These private schools do not have to take every student who applies and can kick students they do not like out mid-year. Those students return to public schools without the public money given to the private schools returning with them, further stretching the already thin public school budgets. Study after study shows that private charter schools do not produce better performing students than public schools.

Vouchers and charters are the new form of school segregation. They appeal to many who don’t want their kids mingling with students of color, those with special needs or those with multi-colored hair.

Superintendent Evers has called for an end to this drain on public school funding as part of his package to completely redo public funding of public education. He correctly observes that the current school funding formula cannot support our public school system, much less one that includes vouchers and charters.

Evers calls for a drastic overhaul of the current school funding formula to correct for the disparities between urban and rural schools. He wants more resources for underperforming schools, not less, and opposes turning them over to private school operators who will take out profits at the expense of students learning. Evers wants to provide support to rural districts facing enrollment declines so they can continue to provide quality education to all who come through the doors.

Superintendent Evers supports educators, recognizing they are the lifeblood of our public schools. Public schools need adequate funding in order to retain and support experienced teachers who not only teach our kids but mentor young teachers just starting out. He is very concerned about the significant drop off in students entering schools of education and wants to make teaching attractive as a profession once more. 

You can learn more at www.tonyforwisconsin.com and https://dpi.wi.gov/statesupt/about

Evers’ opponent is Dr. Lowell Holtz. Holtz’ website is full of buzzwords, but short on substance which is surprising given his years in public education. He appears to favor the privatization views of his conservative supporters and refuses to answer questions from those he does not like. He also seems short on integrity having been involved with the meeting with anonymous business leaders and his former rival, John Humphries, where there was discussion of six figure employment should Humphries drop out of the race. Then there was his use of a school district email to Republican donors seeking financial support which was followed by complaints from one of the school boards where he worked about his unauthorized donation of the school’s bleachers to the private school Holtz’ children attended.

Holtz website can be found at www.kidservative.org.

The choice on April 4^th is clear. Please support the reelection of Tony Evers as DPI Superintendent and help him keep public schools public and make them strong again. They are, after all, the bedrock of democracy.

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

Save Our Air and Water

Environmental Deregulation Fails

There is no Planet B

I grew up in Southern California in the 50s and 60s and remember well smog alerts caused by air quality so poor that my eyes watered when I played outside. I remember clearly flying into Los Angeles and seeing the basin filled with thick brown air from auto pollution. I remember seeing rivers in the Eastern U.S. clogged with waste and polluted from sewage and acid mine drainage. I recall standing on a street corner in Chicago in the 1970s and watching my shirt get dirty from flakes of ash dropping out of the sky.

After people complained about and died from dirty air and polluted water, governments finally stepped in, passing laws and creating agencies to start cleaning up our air and water resources. States and the Federal Government took aggressive action to eliminate or greatly reduce pollution from auto emissions, the dumpling of waste and pollutants into our lakes, rivers and oceans and started to regulate the industrial sources of many pollutants.

Generations reaped the benefits of cleaner air and water as a result of government imposed regulations. Unfortunately, we have let our guard down, secure in the belief that our governments will continue to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink as they have in the past.

After years of misleading and deceptive ads protesting the so-called job killing regulations that protect our water and air and promoting crackpot theories that people have no impact on climate change, the folks who currently control our state and federal governments are poised to undo the water and air protections in place in pursuit of profit and ideological purity.

In Wisconsin, Governor Walker and his climate change denier cronies in the legislature have already cut back funding for the environmental protection work done by the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Justice. Enforcement of existing clean air and clean water regulations has been curtailed. New regulations are being written by the regulated or legislators in their employ. Walker’s proposed budget will shift regulation of large-scale animal farm operations away from the DNR and its rules limiting manure runoff into water sources. Instead, he proposes to move them to the much more farm friendly Department of Agriculture. Scientific study of pollution sources has been drastically curtailed. Walker even proposes to eliminate future publication of the DNR Magazine, once a valued source of pubic information about the DNR’s efforts to protect our environment.

At the federal level, environmental protection is being dealt an even worse hand. 45’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is the poster child for White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s regulatory deconstruction program. Pruitt is the craven handmaiden for the fossil fuel industry and earned his chops suing the EPA for doing what Congress and the American people want it to do. He sued the EPA over a dozen times to block air pollution controls, to prevent fracking bans and, immediately after he was confirmed, vowed to aggressively roll back Obama era clean water and air regulations.

Pruitt has already directed EPA staff to begin work on rolling back regulations governing which waterways can be regulated, Clean Power regulations designed to cut back on power plant emissions, methane emissions on federal lands and many others. He praised the recent Executive Order allowing coalmine ash to be dumped into protected waterways, threating drinking water for millions.

45’s decisions to approve both the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines over legitimate environmental concerns further demonstrates his callous disregard for our health and safe water.

We have come full circle back to the environmental consequences ignorance of my childhood. Left unregulated, many of the polluters from yesteryear will be back. It will not take long to see the consequences in our air and water resources.

Those of us who see the connection between human activity, greed and climate change and believe that science, not profit, should drive how we treat the planet we inhabit need to work together to save our air and water. Pick an environmental advocacy group like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Clean Water Action, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Earth Island Institute, Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth or League of Conservation Voters and join up. Write letters to our editors and legislators demanding clean air and water.

We know that business, industry and environmental protection can co-exist. We will not go back unbreathable air and undrinkable water.

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

Suppressing Dissent

Unconstitutional School Board Policies

Cannot Suppress Concerns

The outgoing leadership of the West Bend school board introduced two new policies on Monday that pretend to simply streamline how citizens, including district employees, can raise concerns with the school district. The combined policy shifts will concentrate power in the superintendent's office and severely limit what individual school board members can do when they are contacted with citizen concerns. They will fail to squelch dissent and criticism from those challenging the status quo.

The policies, if enacted, will clearly violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the statutory authority and responsibility of school board members and the statutory ability of the West Bend Education Association to raise staff concerns directly with school board members. They will severely limit the ability of individual teachers and other staff to raise concerns as well.

The new policy proposals are the next attempt to curtail, if not eliminate, teacher and public criticism of administration policy and procedures. They are clearly intended to handcuff the new board after the April election and limit those who might disagree with the administration.

The proposed policies essentially direct all complaints/concerns to be shifted away from the Board and into an internal complaint management system designed to bury anyone who might dare to speak up. The potential for discipline against staff members who might go outside this chain of command is clear.

There are several problems with this system.

Public schools are governmental agencies exercising the public trust to see to the education of all our children with tax dollars provided to make it so. The public elects the school board to oversee the process, set budgets, approve expenditures and a host of other duties. They are ultimately responsible to the electorate for their performance.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows all citizens to approach board members, individually and collectively, to "petition for the redress of grievances." This cannot legally be shifted away from the elected officials to an administrative functionary. Similarly, given their statutory oversight functions, individual board members have a duty to receive citizen suggestions and complaints and to investigate them in order to become fully informed and better able to perform their duties.

These two policy proposals also make some pretty glaring assumptions about the nature of complaints that may be brought. Certainly, there are some that could and should be resolved at the building supervisory level, like please fix my cracked classroom window. Concerns that involve board policy, budget, and other governance issues should not be referred in the first instance to the Superintendent, much less to lower level functionaries. Systemic concerns should go to the board directly and be put on the agenda for discussion in open public meetings, except where prohibited by law. That is what transparency looks like.

Finally, the staff complaint proposal ignores the constitutional reality that district employees are also citizens and entitled to the same level of access as everyone else to "petition" their elected officials. Those represented by a union, the WBEA, also have the legal right to address the board, individually and collectively, about concerns the union may have that cannot be denied by board policy. The litigation that will follow any attempt to discipline teachers for violating their policy will certainly cost the district thousands of dollars as it loses the latest attempt to squelch dissent battle.

Courts considering First Amendment cases look at any regulation or policy that might limit public access to elected officials with skepticism. If the new policies sweep protected activity and speech into their orbit along with properly limited activity and speech, they are considered “overbroad” and struck down. Limitations that infringe on protected speech and activity must do so in the least restrictive manner and be justified by a compelling governmental interest.

Representative democracy is a messy business. Making it harder for people to raise concerns with their elected officials and easier to discipline staff who dare to criticize is unacceptable. These policies strip too much power and accountability away from the school board and give too much power to the district administration to throttle criticism and dissent. They are classically “overbroad” under the First Amendment and should be rejected.

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

We can do this.

Each time we come close to victory during the current resistance only to have it snatched away, it will be easy to give in to despair that we will never win. Take heart my friends from the lessons of history and remember Richard "dirty tricks" Nixon. It took resolve, determination, guts and a long view, but we saw him off into early retirement, ended the unjust war in Viet Nam, launched a new era of social justice, equality, feminism and stood tall for voting rights and civil liberties. We did it before, we can do it again.

Fired up my Twitter Feed

Had to follow many of the #altGovt feeds on Twitter. Found this one.

Follow me @waringfincke

Women March to Protect and Improve

Watch Women March

They will change the world

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

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

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

The battle is joined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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