Save the Republic

 Responsible Conservatives Step Up to Save the Republic

 

The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party is getting more heated. Sensible conservatives are starting to condemn the authoritarian former president and his followers as the true threat to our democratic Republic. 

 

In a joint, open letter published on Wednesday by the conservative magazine The Bulwark and the liberal New Republic, writers and pundits from across the political spectrum came out with a specific list of policies implemented by followers of the former president which they all agree are inimical to the survival of our democratic Republic.

 

Here is the list, verbatim,

 

“We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.

 

“We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.

 

“We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.

 

“We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and, if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.

 

“And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.”

 

The letter concludes, “[n]ow is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.”

 

Wisconsin and Washington County GOP leadership have embraced all the policies opposed in the letter and need to be replaced by those who support our democratic republic form of government. 

 

There are decent conservatives in our state and community who are appalled by the actions of the former president and his followers, especially with the conduct of the former president after he lost the last election and of his followers who stormed the Capitol to overturn the result of the election on January 6^th. Some congressional Republicans are also speaking out against the former president and what he represents.

 

There are decent conservatives who support our system of open and fair elections and want to secure the vote for all eligible citizens. 

 

There are decent conservatives who support fairly drawn legislative districts which are competitive and more responsive to the will of the voters. 

 

It is time for those conservatives who support the rule of law and our democracy to step up and retake control of the Republican Party in our country, state and county. 

 

If that happens, hopefully, we will return to a political debate about ideas and policies that move the country, state and county forward instead of the current culture wars that do nothing but divide us and stoke hatred. 

 

Locally, the first place where we need to tone down the rhetoric is with our local school boards. Well heeled Republican mega-donors are funding the Mequon-Thiensville school board recall movement over health and safety policies implemented by the current board. Other Wisconsin school board meetings have become heated battlegrounds over mask and vaccine policies and inclusive curricula where the real motivating factor is frustration over a vanishing way of life and privilege.

 

Responsible people need to take back the conservative movement and the GOP to move back to governing in a spirit of compromise and collegiality. If they don’t act, our democracy is in peril. 

Shut Down the Big Lie

 Shut Down the Big Lie

 

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R - Pleasant Prairie) visited with the former president this Summer and came back home to start a completely partisan “audit” of the 2020 presidential election. He earmarked over $676,000.00 of your hard-earned tax dollars for the effort and appointed former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to head it up.

 

Clearly, the former president is thriving on a continuation of the “Big Lie” that the past election was “stolen” and that he is the only legitimate occupant of the White House. Equally clear is that adoption and continued spread of the “Big Lie” is a condition precedent for any conservative politician who wants the former president’s endorsement in upcoming elections.  Vos was only too happy to continue the fight and his election “audit” is proof of his fealty to the lost cause. 

 

Gableman’s appointment to lead the effort gave Vos further alt-right credibility. Gableman ran for the Court as a staunch conservative and continued his far-right march after leaving the Court. He has deep ties to the Republican party and its major donors. Before he was selected by Vos, Gableman made numerous public statements that the 2020 election was “stolen” without ever citing any supporting evidence. 

 

After his appointment, Gableman continued to show his true colors with his hires for investigator and legal positions. He choose people who already expressed belief in the “Big Lie” or worked in the former president’s administration seeking to overturn the election loss. 

 

Gableman and Vos issued subpoenas to election officials and mayors in Wisconsin’s largest cities and the state’s Election Commission requiring them to produce documents and sit for interviews in Gableman’s office in a private building next to a liposuction clinic. Gableman’s emails to other government officials have come from a Gmail account, not a secure governmental email address. His office announced that the mayors would not have to sit for interviews if they produced the requested documents. Gableman almost immediately said the mayors would have to honor the subpoenas and sit for the interviews, contradicting his own staff. Most of the documents Gableman seeks are already in the public domain.

 

After the Arizona “cyber-ninja” election audit failed to produce any credible evidence to support the “Big Lie,” Gableman sought cover by claiming his investigation was not seeking to overturn the last election, just to make sure everything was done properly. 

 

Gableman has not helped his cause in the court of public opinion with admissions that he really does not know how elections work in Wisconsin. His credibility as an election watchdog took another hit with recent revelations that he did not actually vote in seven elections in the past three years. He shows his ignorance of the electoral process by focusing his requests on data in voting machines which do not store data. 

 

Gableman dug more holes in his effort by consulting with the “MyPillow” pitchman, Mike Lindell, who has made repeated claims, without supporting evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen and hacked by the Chinese. Another Gableman consultant has claimed that votes were shaved off the presidential election totals, again without offering any proof to support his claims. 

 

Finally, as news reporters began asking the tough questions, Gableman attacked the news outlets, comparing them to German Nazi propaganda efforts by anti-Semitic zealot Joseph Goebbels who was responsible for the worst atrocities against Jews in Europe before and during World War II. 

 

All the evidence in the public domain and the results of numerous lawsuits here and in other states clearly shows that the last presidential election was fair and free from undue influence or corruption. Joe Biden won the election in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes and more than 7 million votes nationwide. The “Big Lie” is just that, a whopper. 

 

Governor Evers correctly noted the Vos/Gableman “investigation” is a sham and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has called on Vos to shut it down as a boondoggle and waste of taxpayer dollars. 

 

Newspapers and other media outlets around Wisconsin are calling on Vos to end the farce and wasteful spending. 

 

There are a lot better ways to spend 676,000 than sending a biased and partisan former judge to look for something that does not exist. It is time for our elected representatives to focus on what Wisconsin needs, better roads, fully funded public schools, acceptance of increased Medicaid funding, COVID mask and vaccine mandates, protection of the environment and an end to the culture wars.

 

Contact your representatives and senators in Madison and demand they shut this craziness down.

 

Orange Shirt Day

 Orange Shirt Day

Part of Teaching History

 

This past Thursday, September 30^th, was Orange Shirt Day.

 

Orange Shirt Day originated in Canada and has spread to the United States. It is known formally as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and was designed to educate and raise awareness of the Indian residential school systems in Canada and the U.S. along with their impact on Indigenous communities for over 100 years. 

 

In the 1800s, governments in both countries sought to absorb indigenous peoples into their majority societies by creating residential schools which took native children from their families to wipe out their heritage, language, and values by teaching Native children Anglo-European language and culture. Native names were changed to sound more like the names of White children and the use of native languages was forbidden. Native spiritual traditions were ignored and supplanted by Anglo European religious practices and holidays. 

 

The schools were largely funded by the governments and run by religious groups, mainly Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian. Only recently have some of these groups apologized for their roles in this inhumane activity.

 

The separation of children from their parents was mandatory and enforced by law enforcement agents who seized the children and brought them to the schools. Parents had to get a “pass” from the agent on their reservation to visit with their children. 

 

The schools were underfunded and diseases like tuberculosis were rampant. Many children were sexually abused and died at these schools. The recent revelation of thousands of unmarked graves at former school sites has increased scrutiny and condemnation of the past practices. 

 

Even though these schools and their practices were condemned starting in the 1920s, it took a long time for the schools to be closed. The last one in Canada was closed in 1996.

 

Orange Shirt Day was started in 2013 by a residential school survivor in Canada, Phyllis Jack Webstad. She recounted being taken from her family at the age of six to a residential school where she was stripped of her clothes, including the new orange shirt given to her by her grandmother. It was never returned. The Orange Shirt now symbolizes the identities stripped from Native children by the schools. 

 

To try and atone for these wrongs, the Canadian government made September 30^th a national holiday. It recognizes the day on which the children were rounded up and taken to the residential schools. Canadians put together educational programs and television shows to recount the horrors of these practices, hoping to ensure they are not repeated. Canadian commissions were formed to study the past events and come up with strategies to honor First Nation tribes and their members. 

 

Indigenous peoples’ history in the United States has not been recognized as well as it has been in Canada. Our residential schools were just as bad as those to the North. We have not done anything substantial to rectify the wrongs perpetrated in them.

 

The United States government was even more ruthless in carrying out the Indian Wars in our Western territories, massacring millions of people while relocating the survivors to reservations that remain to this day. We still ignore treaties made with tribes when they conflict with things like mines, pipelines, harvesting of fish and rice, and wolf hunts. Tribal efforts to protect the environment for all of us are mostly ignored or rejected. 

 

We can learn from our Northern neighbors that teaching the true history of past wrongs helps heal the wounds those wrongs caused. Reconciliation can only come with an honest self-appraisal of past misdeeds and atrocities.

 

Our elected representatives in Madison seem not to have figured this out. Our state Assembly, with all our local representatives in support, recently passed a bill banning the teaching of the history and impact of our systemic racism in Wisconsin public schools. As if this will forever hide those transgressions of the past from seeing the light of day. Of course, passage of the bill is merely symbolic of the culture wars that make up the current GOP agenda. It will never survive a Governor Evers’ veto. 

 

We need to confront our real history, including our complicity in the selling of human slaves, to make sure it never happens again. Just claiming that racism is done, does not make it go away.  We also need to recognize and rectify our abysmal history when it comes to how we dealt with those who were already living here when our westward expansion sacrificed their way of life. 

 

Maybe that can start with the elimination, once and for all, of the use of Native mascots and names for cities, towns, villages, public schools, and sports teams. 

 

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.