First Impression of Scott Walker Resonates With What We See Now by Thomas Martin Sobottke

Posted in Essays, National Affairs, The State of Labor with tags , , , on May 29, 2012 by thomassobottke

“He is the Napoleon of crime Watson, he is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city.”
Sherlock Holmes, the “Red Headed League”, the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Scott Walker is a bad and dangerous man. There is something fundamentally wrong with Walker’s personality that makes him unfit for office –both then and now. That’s my and many other’s conclusion after seeing how abusive and ill-tempered he was then. And how bad of a political bully he has become.”
Dr. Glen Bary, Classmate and Student Government Opponent of Scott Walker at Marquette University 1986-1990 “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker STILL Unfit for Office,” Essay, Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op, 25 May 2012.

“There were around a hundred loud, and obnoxious Bush-Cheney campaign Republicans loudly calling for four more years for President Bush and yelling insults at Democrats via bull horns and air horns. They continued their barrage for almost four hours . . . Senator Kerry even politely thanked George Bush for “sending out his goons.”
Thomas Martin Sobottke Diary, 2 August 2004

The man with the bullhorn leading cheers of “Four More Years,” and mixed with demeaning comments about a Kerry Campaign event in Pere Marquette Park on the afternoon of Monday, 2 August 2004 had everyone’s attention. There were less than a thousand of us waiting there for John Kerry and his wife to appear at a Kerry for President Campaign Event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin just behind the Wisconsin County Historical Society at the Milwaukee River. The bullhorn and background chanting of dozens of voices, perhaps more, came from the bridge that overlooks the river to our right and from behind us where we had entered the event through security. Nearly all of us were Democratic activists, Union leaders and liberals out to see Kerry.

But after a minute or so of the loud voice calling insults at us on the bull horn I noted that the voice was somehow familiar. Then one, two and dozens of people started buzzing about the man with the bull horn making such a complete ass of himself. It was none other than Scott Walker, the newly-elected Milwaukee County Executive. I remember my reaction. I was stunned. Even someone I profoundly disagreed with politically could not be that stupid, obnoxious, and lower himself to that sort of boorish behavior as an elected public servant for Wisconsin’s greatest County—a man with such huge responsibilities. I recognized the voice from campaign ads I had seen on Milwaukee TV. Not many, but enough. His voice left the scene after ten to fifteen minutes and was replaced by younger voices that were still more strident and obnoxious. There were more bull horns.

Eventually, the “four more years” chants were interspersed with obscenities. We were informed that these were the area’s most active “Young Republicans.” Needless to say I do not look forward to meeting them as older Republicans.

No one at the Kerry rally that day objected to their right to speak and be heard. And heard they were. Free speech is a much valued right under our law and democratic form of government. Here it was useful that these people be heard. They made an impression all out of proportion to their numbers and actual influence. And the event marked my first geo-political and time-bound crossing of paths with Scott Walker. First impressions mean a lot they say. I am inclined to agree.

Dr. Glen Bary relates his experiences with Scott Walker in an essay currently posted on Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op. At Marquette University where Walker attended from 1986 to 1990 but never graduated for reasons that are far from clear or established, Bary describes Walker’s personality as narcissistic, authoritarian, and going even so far to label the Governor as a sociopathic personality. Oddly, just the weekend before, I had attended a niece’s graduation party from college in Evanston, Illinois and we got talking of Wisconsin’s turbulent political scene. The guy I met as a friend of my brother-in-law wanted to go into detail about Scott Walker the Marquette University undergrad that he knew quite well as a classmate. The manner in which the man, a by no means progressive democrat, white and Walker’s age, rolled his eyes practically out of his skull spoke volumes. This Walker guy was not popular at Marquette. He made an ass of himself there as he did that day on the bridge near Pere Marquette Park in 2004.

The most salient observations made by Dr. Bary concern Walker’s political campaigning style and moral character in that role. When the Marquette Tribune Bary tells us endorsed a liberal social-justice oriented student over Walker but declared that both would do fine as student body presidents, Walker and his operatives removed thousands of copies of the paper endorsing his opponent. He ran dirty campaign stunts and was sanctioned for his misbehavior. The incident ended in the Marquette Tribune’s next issue declaring Walker “Unfit for office.” Walker suffered a humiliating political defeat campus-wide as a result. The experience may have left him embittered.

I read the essay this morning and it immediately called to mind my first experience with a guy named Scott Walker. The collision was mighty and led me to write this piece today. I kept a diary from 1993 to 2010 then switched to blogging. I had no idea my diary would serve so well in providing still more insight into the present Walker Recall election.

Tom Barrett has many deficiencies. He is not a loud and boisterous guy that moves the masses. He has had the character though to work with people on all sides of our political scene to make very difficult decisions. He put his very life at risk and was seriously hurt at Summerfest in defending people from attackers who were attempting to rob or assault them. He is a good, decent, and honest man who has not betrayed the public trust over a long career of public service. Look at what Walker has done that is so consistent with the picture I got in a nutshell in 2004, what Dr. Bary observed and still another classmate did back when Walker was at MU.

Walker turned away 4,800 high-paying jobs and an infusion of nearly a billion dollars all told, in projects connected to the Obama Stimulus Package for Wisconsin in the high-speed rail from Milwaukee to Madison. Even if the train would have been a white elephant, the jobs and capital brought to build the train and related road bed and track improvements would have helped us immensely. Walker’s principled refusal to accept the money and the project AFTER it was approved and the State had spent millions in laying the groundwork for the project actually cost Wisconsin taxpayers millions. And the train company that was to put up shops in Milwaukee, and a second firm doing the same thing were sent packing off to Illinois. The money was not saved from adding to the Federal budget deficit. And this guy has the gall to say that Barrett’s jobs record in Milwaukee was and is bad. He took jobs away from the city and he made that decision even before taking the oath of office as Governor. It was the first sign that this guy was trouble.

Walker introduced a budget bill that went beyond money to attacking worker rights in the workplace. That’s not just dollars and cents. Walker betrayed the public trust here by ending collective bargaining for public servants in Wisconsin. We are not talking about the payments state workers and teachers make to their health benefits or pensions here at all. In point of fact, the Unions came forward and offered and made good on their promise to give up thousands of dollars of disposable income per worker each year to aid the taxpayer in our state. $660 million every two years. And every one of these demonized Union workers are taxpayers and full citizens of the State of Wisconsin like everyone else.

Walker told a Congressional Committee under oath and penalty of perjury that the taking of collective bargaining rights from public servants at all levels in Wisconsin was budgetary and not related in any way to some sort of political vendetta or move to break the power of people to speak and to oppose him. In short, we now know he lied outright to the committee. A videotape of his January meeting in the days before his inauguration with a billionaire constituent from Janesville, not denied to be true by Walker, and confirmed for weeks shows him promising even before anyone publicly knew of his plans to enact such a sweeping policy with such deep ramifications for hundreds of thousands of people he took the oath to serve that he would end collective bargaining to “divide and conquer” state unions and make Wisconsin an entirely Red Right-to-Work State.

When prison guards talked of walking off the job the Governor was quick to act to prepare to call out the National Guard not only to secure State prisons but to prevent protests from coalescing around the collective bargaining issue.

He openly discussed and seriously considered planting people in the large crowds coming to the people’s house, the lovely Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, so that the incredibly loud and vociferous but peaceful and orderly people seeking redress of their grievances before government could be discredited. Planting people who would employ actual violence, and that is what Walker is heard speaking of, would have placed thousands of people’s lives at risk unnecessarily. And this threat of violence was for personal political gain and not any need to keep public order. By contrast, it was a plan to promote disorder and lawlessness. That he decided not to do it is less important than that he must be the first governor since Jeremiah Rusk ordered police to shoot down workers at the Bay View Rolling Mill in May 1886, to deliberately seek to do violence to Wisconsin citizens.

Walker is the subject we learn this morning of the John Doe Probe conducted by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office that has already racked up 14 Felony counts of misconduct and law-breaking. Three of those charged have already plead guilty. Now we can better see that Walker as County Executive and as Governor of Wisconsin and perhaps as a presidential candidate in 2016 or VP pick this summer if he wins June 5th is really acting in ways that are consistent with his political behavior throughout his political career, which we are told began at Badger Boys State in the mid 1980’s. Did Walker pull some shenanigans to get selected by counselors at his high school? Why would that not surprise me now?

What is so shocking is that what to supporters of Scott Walker will seem like character-assassination is really just reporting factually what he does and who he is. The high speed train project debacle, the collective bargaining “divide and conquer” anti-worker strategy, threatened violence against peaceful protestors at the State capitol and using the National Guard against Wisconsin workers have all been accomplished in just a year-and-a- half in statewide public office as Governor. Never mind 250,000 good paying jobs that have yet to appear here.

No one would compare the level of political divisiveness and meanness on both sides in the Walker Recall struggle to that under Walker’s predecessor, Jim Doyle, or even Scott McCallum, Tommy Thompson, Lee Dreyfus or anybody else going way back for decades in Wisconsin politics. The new intensely partisan and divisive political climate and dirty politics of our State are a Walker innovation. Love him or hate him you must see that—know that. Walker is the common denominator in all this unrest in our state.

He is Wisconsin’s Napoleon of Crime. He is the author of half of all that is evil but so much that is now becoming detected in our great state. We still have June 5th to set this right: all of us. Not just liberals or Democrats or Union people. Scott Walker is a fundamentally flawed individual. We should pray for him and love the man enough to help him let go of the reigns of power in the State and settle in a good job and be with his family in peace and tranquility. We should feel sorry for him. He reaches for greatness but has no conception of what it is. Sherlock Holmes’ Professor Moriarty was similarly flawed.

Perhaps Tom Barrett and Scott Walker could fly to Switzerland this week and meet at the Reichenbach Falls. I’m betting on Barrett, just ask the guys he took on at Summerfest.

If he wins on June 5th in the Recall, Scott Walker will hang himself. Not literally, but figuratively. He is going too far and he’ll soon destroy himself. People like this always do. His wife has told him to go into the private sector and cheat people there for a lot more money. Perhaps there is an opening at Bain Capital now that Romney has left. Mrs. Walker’s suggestion to her husband is the very best kind of advice.

Dr. Thomas Martin Sobottke
for Struggles for Justice

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Obama the Anti-Colonialist: Film Backed by Joe Ricketts and Dinesh D’Souza Makes the Case but Fails to Close the Deal by Thomas Martin Sobottke

Posted in Essays, National Affairs with tags , , , , on May 27, 2012 by thomassobottke

According to the thesis of Dinesh D’Souza, and billionaire Joe Ricketts, President Barack Obama is secretly planning to take down the United States of America in his second term. His plans will go to his very roots, his Kenyan Anti-British and Anti-Colonialist father, the great influences of the reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayres and destroy the United States of America and take us in a direction away from the liberty exalted by the Founding Fathers. Ricketts is backing a documentary film to be released in June and based on D’Souza’s research: a film called 2016.

According to D’Souza, despite three years and more in office, Obama is still the least known prominent American. Huge gaps exist in what we know about every girl he dated, every idea he had, every person he met and so much more. He is the Manchurian Candidate writ large. We must condemn Obama for example, for his refusal to have a bust of Winston Churchill in the oval office. He backs Muslim extremists by refusing to intervene in Iran in 2010, when D’Souza believed we could have easily toppled the regime. He intervened with our military in Libya but did not do so in Syria.

All this D’Souza warns, goes back to Obama’s dedication to revive his father by adopting his father’s dreams. One of them was written in 1965, when the Kenyan Mau-Mau Nationalist father argued for 100% taxation rates on the top 1% of Kenyans. We should look for the same initiative here in the United States D’Souza warns us. Under a second term Obama presidency, the United States will not intervene militarily wherever our interests might be advanced. Instead, we will back efforts of peoples to throw off foreign rule and establish governments where they rule themselves. This is truly the essence of the anti-colonialist danger posed by Obama.

If we look at the people who founded the United States of America in 1776, we do not find a group of imperialists and colonialists. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and so many others were themselves anti-colonialists and anti-monarchists. For the first century of American history, the United States stood out as the most anti-colonialist power in the entire world. And the nation we hated most was Great Britain. President Obama and his father are in fact more in tune with the American tradition regarding foreign policy and core beliefs connected to it than anyone in political leadership in the United States today.

The Founders were the epitome of anti-colonialism and the United States opposed imperial ventures anywhere by any power in the world. Our war against Britain between 1775 and 1783 was an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and anti-monarchical outburst we are known for the world over. Even in the midst of our Civil War in the 1860’s there were impulses both North and South to unite the country by launching another common effort to fight and defeat Britain yet again. It took until the 1870’s to have a foreign policy that settled longstanding differences with the Alabama Claims. It is not only doubtful, but lunacy to imagine a U.S. President having a bust of King George III in the president’s office.

As to Obama’s connections to Jeremiah Wright, they have been cut such as they were. We’ve not heard any speeches that trumpet the Black Liberation Theology of the Reverend Wright. The President’s contacts with Bill Ayers, who has not bombed anything since his Weather Underground days in the 1970’s have been minimal.

Obama has sought to raise the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 39 percent as was in Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House. Dwight D. Eisenhower, that extreme anti-colonialist revolutionary from so many of our childhoods, presided over top tax bracket tax rates more than double that of anything contemplated by Obama.

Even if we suppose as D’Souza posits, that Obama will govern as a completely different man and president in a second term, with no limits on what he will do, it is a slander upon the Founders who wrote and established a Constitution that permits the Legislative and the Judicial branches of government to check or limit Executive excesses. Failing in that, even Daniel Webster in his famous Second Reply to Hayne in January of 1830 argued as did Lincoln in mid-century that the words of the old Declaration were true and right. That included the ultimate right of revolution to remove an oppressive government.

Strangely, one of D’Souza’s complaints at the 2012 C-Pac Convention in Washington is that Obama has shown a marked proclivity to aid peoples fighting oppressive regimes.

Why didn’t Obama attack Iran in 2010 at the time of the resistance to election results there? Well, to begin with we were at that moment involved in Iraq in war, and in ramping up war in Afghanistan with the surge there. D’Souza implies the United States ought to employ its military every time it is possible or likely to produce some result. This is an extreme of militarism that the Founders and the Anti-Imperialist of Fin d’ siècle America at the time of the Spanish-American War would soundly reject.

What all this really is about is yet another attempt to paint President Obama as the unknowable, the foreign, the dangerous, the scary, the other. It also is a response to the behind-the scenes concerns of large multi-national corporations that the United States military might be less available to them to back corporate control of markets and the labor pool that people in Asia, Latin-America and Africa can provide in coming years.

The “Rage of Obama” as presented to us by D’Souza is precisely the kind of rage we are going to need through 2016. It is interesting to note that when Americans security is truly threatened Obama has been even quicker to act than previous administrations and with greater effectiveness and success. Obama is aiming his efforts at economic change at preserving and restoring the American middle class. Leftists in the United States do not view him as their champion but as an impediment to what they want.

D’Souza might gain much further insight into the core of Obama by studying as much as he can about Abraham Lincoln. I caught Obama even adopting the folksy style of Lincoln on the stump in Iowa this week. His following Romney to venues he has just spoken in is classic Lincoln in his pursuit of Stephen Douglass in the Illinois of the 1850’s.

Someone charged by a foreign government with trying to understand the latest American president would note Obama launched his campaign in Springfield, Illinois in 2008 and went back to Lincolnian themes again and again. He has governed, and will govern from the center. Lincoln outraged Radicals in his own party and so Obama has disappointed Americans on the radical left. Lincoln was viewed as a kind of strange otherworldly figure and hated for his reaching out so much to African-Americans no matter how tentative. The racial and ethnic component to the Obama opposition is eerily similar to the Copperhead and Peace Democrat support for white supremacy in the North and opposition to Emancipation from a racial point of view in the Civil War years of the Lincoln Presidency.

Lincoln had a relationship with his father that was problematic to say the least. Obama, though writing in his auto-biography of wanting to revive the ideas and dreams of the father yet remains cut off from him somehow. Scholars of Lincoln even today are divided on the influence of Thomas Lincoln on the President. We really have not solved the riddle of the elder Obama and his son. That has a lot to do with the fact that Obama himself may have just such a problematic relationship with his father in his childhood that Lincoln had.

Yes Mr. D’Souza. You observed that Obama reveres the anti-colonialism of his father. But no British leader would accuse him of being anti-British. President Obama has both Irish and English connections via his mother’s side of the family, a group of Kansas white people. Obama has somewhere in his mind adopted the style and lessons of Lincoln, even though he will most probably fall short of him when historians of the future are through with him. But you never know. Obama’s critics say precisely the same thing about him as they did about Lincoln—he’s a nice man but he is just not up to the job.

Lincoln was among the most hated of American presidents and the most unpopular—that is until his assassination and the growing realization that he had been instrumental in preserving the Union and ending human slavery in America.

In the end, turning out for the film, 2016, a movie made and produced by the man who gave us Braveheart and Shindler’s List may be arrestingly professional in its execution, but what it tries to argue will not make the grade. It will highlight yet again what Joe Ricketts and Donald Trump and Sheriff Arpaio and all those who hate Obama and fear the nation’s first black President with the unusual resume are so wrong about him. Add a badly mistaken Dinesh D’Souza to the list.

Dr. Thomas Martina Sobottke
for Struggles for Justice

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Walker Indifferent to Reality–to Half of the People of Wisconsin in First Televised Recall Debate

Posted in Community and Citizen Action, National Affairs with tags , , , on May 26, 2012 by thomassobottke

The hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin citizens who gathered in the State Capitol in February 2011 to protest governor Scott Walker’s stripping of worker rights to collective bargaining and the nearly a million who signed recall petitions are viewed by Governor Scott Walker as “outside special interests coming in.”

The Governor defined the Recall Movement as being special interests from outside Wisconsin, rather than the grassroots citizen movement who’s very structural support from public employee Unions were those that operate within Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), and the Wisconsin Chapter of the AFL-CIO. are not outside interests. They are both led by Wisconsin people, and the rank-in-file citizens are all Wisconsin voting citizens. We Are Wisconsin and other recall groups receive their sustenance from a movement that is distinctly home-grown. Walker revealed to Wisconsin and the nation Friday night that he continues to govern no more than half of the citizens of the State.

It was just this last week that real outside money came in for the Recall. $1.4 million from the Democratic National Committee. Note that this puts Barrett in a position of being outspent over 20-1 by the Walker campaign, that gets more than two thirds of its money from interests, special or not, that are outside the State of Wisconsin.

The entire recall effort is viewed by Walker as “a distraction.” He wants to get rid of the Recall in Wisconsin politics even though, as Tom Barrett pointed out, he was elected to Milwaukee County Executive as the result of a recall.

Walker’s primary contention for his being retained as Governor was that he was the one “who stood up to the powerful special interests” within and without Wisconsin and defeated them. He failed to identify Koch Industries, and the myriad of corporate and outside interests that have given him tens of millions of dollars after months of travel over the last fall and winter out of the state of Wisconsin as constituting anything similar to WEAC and the AFL-CIO in Wisconsin.

His mantra repeated at least eight or ten times during the debate was that he is “moving the State forward.” Walker failed to define what constituted moving forward is other than what we have seen in the first year and a half of the Walker years. Notably Walker defended his time outside the State engaged in activities that do not serve Wisconsin citizens by saying several times how he had met people right here in Wisconsin. He employed the time frame “in the last six to eleven days” as when he has been fully engaged in serving the people of the State. Struggles for Justice notes that the last six to eleven days are not a year and a half in public service as Governor.

Walker said it was he who has led the John Doe probe from the beginning, by insisting that this matter be fully investigated. The truth was pointed to by Barrett when he reminded the audience that Walker is the only Governor in the nation with a legal defense fund, that three close aides are already indicted for felonies in the probe, and that these people were running a secret campaign operation just 25 feet from Walker’s very Milwaukee County Executive Office. That these people who are engulfed in the investigation worked intimately with Walker for years, the Governor’s efforts to make him seen as an outsider to this affair would be laughable if they were not so serious.

The election is viewed by Walker as a repeat of the 2010 Gubernatorial race and Tom Barrett’s positions in the Recall Election as the “same old tired policy ideas” from 2010.

To the distinct contrary, Barrett said right in his opening statement that “this is not a rematch or a do-over. We cannot do-over the decision of Scott Walker to start a political civil war, which resulted in this state losing more jobs than any other state in the entire country in 2011.”

Barrett said he seeks to unify and heal the State and its people. That certainly was not front-and- center back in the fall of 2010. Barrett continued to speak of Walker’s actions upon becoming Governor as having “tore apart the state and made it impossible in some instances for neighbors to talk to neighbors, for relatives to talk to relatives, for workers to talk to co-workers, because it was too bitter a fight.”

Barrett made reference to the fact that Walker told contributors that he was “going to drop the bomb” of an end to collective bargaining and that he told a key donor that his strategy was to “divide and conquer” the State of Wisconsin. Walker had no response at all to these references appearing indifferent to them entirely.

Walker did say that “the reforms are working.” He did indicate that his opponents don’t talk about them anymore. Indeed the Governor’s strongest argument the whole debate was that the budget has been balanced and that property taxes fell for the first time in decades. But his contention that opponents are not talking about these things is complete falsehood. The cost of doing these things has been high. $1.6 billion cut from education just when we need to train the workers of the future. A loss of a voice in the workplace and an average ten percent pay and benefit cut to public employees across the state. Thousands thrown off Badger care. A Federal government that had to force the Governor to restore funding for Medicare and Medicaid. It was not Walker himself who launched an initiative to place more funding in those places—another falsehood.

Nationally, both sides are expecting Scott Walker to win June 5th. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the Chair of the DNC said Wisconsin was unimportant, and that what happens in November is more important. Republicans are described this morning as emboldened, and already the buzz is that Walker is perhaps a key leading candidate for President of the United States in 2016, assuming Romney loses 2012. Walker retains a clear and commanding lead in the race, despite losing some ground as reported previously by Struggles for Justice. Just how a 48 to 46 percent lead in the polls, with over ten days to go and the margin shrinking by the hour equals victory is not explained by these national experts. Wisconsin residents concerned about good, honest, clean government continue to take a contrary view.

Thousands of people continue to work on the ground to get out the vote for June 5th. In the end, it matters little what the pundits think of the outcome of the Recall Election here in Wisconsin.

What matters, Struggles for Justice firmly believes, is what we people here do in this state to take hold of our destiny and speak at the ballot box and answer Scott Walker’s falsehoods and defy the verdict of history before it is made. Our vote on June 5th to Recall Walker sends a message. It gives the lie to the idea that Walker is serving the people of Wisconsin. Plainly he is serving half of them and acting with complete indifference to the other half he took an oath to serve. Every person that lives within the State’s boundaries is entitled to equal consideration by those who govern them.

Barrett’s best point was to talk about the Recall Election as a restoration of the public trust. “It’s easy to say yes to your friends and no to your enemies,” Barrett said in his closing statement. “I have had to say no to my friends.” He pointed out that Walker has “punished your enemies.” That’s easy. Barrett defined real leadership as being able to stand up to your friends and say no. It is hard to argue the point.

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Barrett Gains on Walker With First of Two Televised Debates Tonight

Posted in Community and Citizen Action, National Affairs with tags , , on May 25, 2012 by thomassobottke

Most polls taken this month of May 2012, just weeks ahead of the historic Walker recall election of June 5th, have failed to take into account that Democrats, and virtually the entire Walker Recall Movement ,did not have a single champion to take on Walker until AFTER the May 8 Democratic Primary. Walker and his party knew all along who their guy would be! It took a sluggish Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Obama for America campaign network to get behind Tom Barrett, the Democrat and Mayor of Milwaukee who was defeated in November 2010. Barrett did not have the enthusiastic backing of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC-NEA) and the A.F.L.-C.I.O of Wisconsin either. They were bankrolling Kathleen Falk.

But now a full two weeks after the primary, the DNC has come through with $1.4 million for Barrett’s campaign, most for the get-out-the-vote ground game. The Obama campaign in Wisconsin has made many of its State offices available for the Recall effort. And now organized labor knows who their guy is and they are fully in the game.

One liberal poll group had Walker with a clear 49 to 45 percent lead over Barrett as late as May 18th. Recent polls also put Walker in a solid lead over Barrett but now within the three to four point margin of error. Democratic Polls show the race tightening into some kind of 48 percent dead heat. Walker’s support has not cracked the 50% margin in all but one poll. It is just not going to happen. Walker will not get more than 52% on June 5th regardless of turnout. But Barrett’s internal pollsters are seeing that the more people know about the John Doe Probe Governor Walker is ensnared in, and how people who are nearest him are already indicted on felony charges in at least three cases related to the probe, are helping Barrett’s numbers. And it was not until just this very week (May 21-25) that Barrett has been able to launch any kind of coordinated TV ad campaign raising issues like this.

And the two televised debates between Walker and Barrett, the first one tonight (Friday, May 25th) at 8 PM CST on Wisconsin Public Television will generate news coverage that Barrett can’t buy with his limited TV ad budget. Walker has more than twenty times the financial resources of the Barrett campaign. But here he cannot absolutely control what will come out of these debates. Barrett is a lot of things Walker can criticize. But he is competent to lead and he is much more worthy of the public trust. That might come out in one or both of these debates. And there will be national media attention for both and not just Wisconsin media coverage Walker can manipulate like he does on Fox News or out-of-state speeches to conservative groups.

Even if Wisconsites are all out working on their tans, barbecuing with family, boating, fishing, and the like this weekend to notice the debate, the national media will. That will have a backwash effect on Wisconsin along with legitimate news coverage of both debates by Wisconsin media outlets Walker nor Barrett can control. Walker has largely confined public appearances to Fox Television who never mention the John Doe Probe and only speak glowingly of his end to collective bargaining in his state. He has limited his media exposure from reporters still free to ask questions. He has failed to answer those questions adequately if at all. Now a guy is going to get that chance: Tom Barrett. And he gets two media shots at Walker.

The race is sure to tighten into one dominated by voter turnout. If Democrats can get a good part of their base and independents out to vote who did not do so in 2010, Walker is toast and he knows it. If not, Walker will be retained easily as Governor until at least January 2015. Polling shows the Republican base is fully energized and is almost certain to turn out in 2010 numbers for him. Look for a Barrett win here by something in the 50.3 to 51 percent range. We are talking about a victory margin for Recall supporters in the 10 thousand plus vote range. Nothing so wild as exceeding twenty thousand. Both Walker and Barrett will certainly demand a recount if the vote falls within the 7,500 required for the State to pick up the tab either way. Walker can afford to pay for a recount if he wants and will do so if he loses by some greater margin.

Even if Walker shines in both debates, he is not going to be able to entirely prevent Barrett from traversing over the connections Walker has with out-of-state business and conservative groups and how much time he has spent courting them, and not Wisconsin citizens. And how much time that has taken away from doing his job as Governor. He’ll also face questions and debate on the John Doe Probe, the pernicious effects on working people of the attack on collective bargaining that started this whole thing.

However he hammers Barrett on the sorry jobs situation in Milwaukee, he will be met with the fact that the largest portion of Milwaukee County, a county he managed until just a little more than a year ago, itself contains the major American city of Milwaukee. He may not want voters to think on that too much.

Barrett is going to say that Walker’s job record is the worst in the United States. That is factually correct. Walker’s optimistic 30,000 new jobs is based on Department of Revenue data that must be cherry picked and sliced and diced to make things look as rosy as possible. The fact is that the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics collects the jobs data to allow citizens here and elsewhere to know how we are doing on the jobs front. Walker relied on those numbers like everyone else Barrett will correctly point out for 15 previous months, until the need to close the deal with voters a second time in the Recall required he invent some new statistics.

Is Walker lying to Wisconsin about the job’s numbers? Yes. He has to know his figures are doctored. No one uses his method of computing employment anywhere else in the nation.

Is Walker lying to Wisconsin about the John Doe probe? Well not necessarily–yet. But he is not sharing the e-mails he sent to and from the people who did get snagged in the probe, and it is not completed yet. He has hired two attorneys and “criminal defense’ attorneys at that. He is in fact the only Governor in the nation to have a legal defense fund. And he has dodged reporter’s questions when they manage to get one in.

As incredible as it may seem to Wisconsin voters, and to the country as a whole, a significant segment of Democrats and independents and moderate Republicans with a conscience flying under the polling radar, are just now setting their minds to how they will vote and IF they will vote June 5th. The larger the turnout, the better for Tom Barrett and a restoration of the public trust and a healing of the rift Walker has caused. Whatever your perspective, the Walker recall race is tightening considerably. We have something that will remain within the three to four point margin of error here.

Struggles for Justice will provide full coverage of the debate in its May 26th posting. Game on!

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Measuring Eagle Scout Scott Walker Against The Scout Law of the Boy Scouts of America

Posted in Education, National Affairs, The Faith Community with tags , , , , , on May 22, 2012 by thomassobottke

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not only the son of an ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a sweet loving mother, but he earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. It is the highest rank attainable in the organization and involves years of participation and full exposure to the following rules the organization instills in boys for a lifetime. The Boy Scouts of America says this about the Scout Law:

“The Scout Law is a guiding light to millions of boys and young adults throughout the world today, but the principles of the law have been brought to us from ancient days.”

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Exodus 20: 16)

Scouts: A Scout is Trustworthy:

Here Scott Walker fails miserably. He has been anything but. His lack of personal integrity is shown in his serving roughly half the people of the State of Wisconsin. He has been unworthy of the trust of the entire people of Wisconsin. He has pushed through an end to collective bargaining when nothing was said about initiating so important a policy. In short, the people of the State were misled. He knew full well that if he had campaigned on doing this he would lose. So he failed to tell what he planned to do well in advance of his elevation to the State’s highest office and public trust. He has lied to the Congress under oath and in response to a question they asked if his end of collective bargaining was anything beyond budgetary when testifying some months ago about this question before Darryl Issa’s Congressional Committee. A video released last week showing him talking to a billionaire donor has him saying that his aim in ending collective bargaining was to “divide and conquer” the labor unions and make Wisconsin a right-to-work Red State.

Leader: He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much. (Luke 16:10)

Scouts: A Scout is Loyal:

Walker scores high here. He has been unflaggingly loyal to the Wisconsin Association of Manufacturers and the Koch Brothers of Koch Industries. He is also a loyal member of the Wisconsin Republican Party. He has also been the hero of those who wish to kick the labor unions in the teeth, and smash the Democratic Party. He has stuck by conservatives. Yet, loyalty as indicated by the response of scout leaders to the boys like Scott Walker taking the Oath and learning and accepting the Scout law raises several issues. His massive cuts to Badger Care and the assault on working people “the sons of your people” as they are all Wisconsin residents and of his people who live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin is more than ironic. And the sons and daughters of the parents who send them to public schools have been ill served by $1.6 billion in cuts to education in the State.

Leader: You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18)
For the poor will never cease out of the land: therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother. To the needy and to the poor, in the land. (Deuteronomy 15:11)

Scouts: A Scout is Helpful

Walker has helped some Wisconsin citizens and failed others completely. So here his score in following the Scout Law he promised to obey and to inculcate into his own belief system is mixed. He has given massive aid to great out-of-state corporations who cannot live without hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax breaks. He has done all he can to help Koch Industries and business interests like them. But the poor, the elderly, working people, students, and all those brothers and sisters who may disagree with him on policy but who nevertheless belong to the same human family that he is a part of have been let down severely. There is a whole segment of the populace he has failed to help. He has however, done great harm to them. The State is divided so evenly that polls show the division and that his challenger in the Recall Election, Tom Barrett, has even made unifying the people of the State his main theme.

Leader: Love one another with brotherly affection: outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10) Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! (Psalm 133)

Scouts: A Scout is Friendly

Walker scores high here. Walker has been so friendly that he has traveled to dozens of States to meet and greet people who are so impressed with his friendly manner-of-speaking and acting that they have given him upwards of twenty millions of dollars! About the only fly in the ointment here is it again depends on who you are. If you are a Union man or maid, a public servant, a Democrat, a liberal, a minority member, a gay or lesbian person, a woman needing proactive health care from Planned Parenthood, the reception you’ve received has undoubtedly failed to meet expectations in this category.

Leader: Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29)

Scouts: A Scout if Courteous

Governor Walker scores low here. Being courteous to some and arrogant, unfeeling, and discourteous to millions of others is such a low standard of performance since Walker began public life that his failure to even meet the bar here is shocking. Jesus of Nazareth taught that being good to ones friends is not of much credit to us. It is loving our enemies and doing good to them that wins God’s favor. Judged by this great teacher, Walker has failed the exam repeatedly.

Leader: A righteous man had regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. (Proverbs 12:10).

Scouts: A Scout is Kind

Let’s just say that no one is going to accuse Scott Walker of coming anywhere near meeting this standard, not even his friends and supporters. That’s not what they love him for. Nuff said.

Leader: Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy first commandment with promise: that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth. (Ephesians 6: 1-3)

Scouts: A Scout is Obedient.

There is serious question here about Walker following this one. We know little of his disciplinary record in school; we don’t wish to intrude on how well he obeyed his parents though his attaining the Eagle Scout rank suggests he was a dutiful son. Nevertheless, we are aware that the pending John Doe probe has put him in danger of losing his liberty via law-breaking. There are serious questions about the legality of some of his actions as governor. And there is no doubt that he has hit one out of the ballpark when it comes to failing to obey his God’s commandments. Here we give the guy a free pass reminding ourselves that we all fall short in the eyes of the Creator and only his grace saves us. So here the score is decidedly mixed and in serious danger of dropping like a stone.

Leader: A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken. The mind of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly. All the days of the afflicted are evil, but a cheerful heart has continual feast. (Proverbs 15:13-15)

Scouts: A Scout is Cheerful.

Walker is spot on with this one. He has cheerfully dismantled so much of the Wisconsin Progressive tradition of good, honest, clean government, cutting edge reform, and our fine public education system and so much of the quality of life in Wisconsin that we cannot but give him a high score here.

Leader: Go to the ant, O sluggard: consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest. (Proverbs 6:6-8)

Scouts: A Scout is Thrifty.

This is where Walker beats the world. His balancing of the Wisconsin budget in deficit for the most recent two-year budgetary period cutting some $3.6 billion from that budget, placing it in balance, and putting in controls of property taxes that lowered them for the first time in many decades is truly an accomplishment however liberal Democrats might complain about it.

Leader: Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure hear, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of his salvation. (Psalm 24: 3-5)

Scouts: A Scout is Clean

If this pledge and law of the Scout law means anything beyond physical cleanliness, then Walker fails entirely. He’s demonstrably lied on several occasions and more may be revealed in the years to come. He has not acted in ways that absolve him but only convict him in matters of injuries to so many people in Wisconsin. If being clean means living in a right relationship to God that is not always left to others to judge.

Leader: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. (Mark 12:30)

Scouts: A Scout is reverent, he is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion.
Scott Walkers disrespect for the “least of these” and for those who offer us a challenge in loving them as they are contrary to most people and how they live find Walker seriously wanting.

(Source for the Oath, Law and Leaders comments: Boy Scouts of America).

AS TO WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS. Struggles for Justice.

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It’s Your Money: Why a New Glass-Stagall Act Is Needed

Posted in National Affairs with tags on May 21, 2012 by thomassobottke

Since Louis Brandeis published Other People’s Money in 1914 in support of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom domestic program, there’s been extensive and well-argued documentation on the dangers of collusion between banks and corporations, especially stock manipulation, to ordinary Americans on Main Street. Those people got whacked in 2008-09 when the big banks got caught gambling with “other people’s money” and speculating with it in the booming housing market which went bust.

That pulled the entire nation into its worst depression since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Middle Class Americans whose greatest source of economic security, the equity in their homes, saw much of that disappear.

The most important issue next to creating consumer demand and more jobs is preventing another such meltdown. The Dodd-Frank Law which has yet to be fully implemented due to Republicans cutting off the funding for its enforcement and forcing regulators to make needless regulations to strangle its enforceability, needs the clearest possible line to be drawn between “our money” on Main Street and that of the high risk speculators in Wall Street investment banks. The problem is the same banks that make that routine auto loan or homeowner’s loan to you, or hold your savings and oversee your bill payment activity are also using and risking that money in high risk speculative investments designed to make a lot of money fast for them. This is not shared with you but all of the risk is passed along to you.

Before any of you bail since economics, the dismal science, bores you like watching four straight State of the Union messages by a president of either party, stay with us.

In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, it was necessary to regulate banks, investments firms, and the stock market to promote greater economic stability when the inevitable high-risk investments went south and bit people in their hind quarters. One key law was the Glass-Stagall Act of 1933, which put up a clear emergency firewall between banking activities that most impacted on Main Street and more transparently isolated speculation on Wall Street where people could lose their shirt in an afternoon.

In 1999, the Clinton Administration and Congress, riding the last year of an eight year economic boom cycle sought to sweeten the pot for Wall Street by repealing Glass-Stagall with the Gramm Leach Billey Act. Essentially, what the new law did was allow traditional old-style banks to merge with the most high risk investment companies. The up side was that now the new firms had a lot more money to leverage in the world economy and open a whole new world of instant money-making at previously unseen levels. The down side is that a lot of the cash that was used to leverage those big deals you’ve heard of as derivatives and swaps was money from the assets of the old banking system. That money was and remains guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Savings and Loan Corporation (FSLIC).

Translation: billions of consumer dollars were lost in 2008-09, and to add insult to injusry, taxpayer dollars via the Federal Reserve and the United States Treasury bailed the big banks out. Too big to fail became the most common phrase you heard from Wall Street in those tense last months of the second George W. Bush Administration.

The ability to trade or swap millions of Americans home mortgages back and forth until the traders literally knew not who owned what was greatly aided by the repeal of Glass-Stagall and the disappearance of the fire wall protecting ordinary consumers. Effectively, the big banks used your money in high risk investments after the repeal of the law to make a lot of money and then used it again to bail themselves out via Federally insured money and that of the government which belongs to us all. The worst part of the deal is this: ask yourself how much of the profits made on derivative swaps of home mortgages did you get from the shenanigans on Wall Street before the big housing bubble burst in 2008? If you are like most readers of Struggles for Justice, not one red cent! Nor even a browning old penny either.

Who is foolish enough to let somebody else take your equity in your home, and even your bank accounts and the burdens of debt assumed by your government and go to the 21st century’s greatest gambling casino ever constructed known as Wall Street, risk and actually lose it, and then not share earlier profits nor the burden imposed by their poor decisions with you. Why should the ordinary consumer pay for Wall Street’s misbehavior at all?

The fire wall that separates the slow, but sure and steady profits of traditional Federally insured banking from outright casino stock manipulation like Louis Brandeis argued for and we eventually got in 1933, then lost in 1999 has brought us full circle. Brandeis was right; the money used by the big banks and hedge fund moguls is “Other People’s Money.” It is our own.

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Walker Recall: Wisconsin’s Progressive Legacy and Our Personal Integrity at Stake

Posted in Community and Citizen Action, National Affairs with tags , on May 18, 2012 by thomassobottke

Since Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette and the progressive wing of the Wisconsin Republican Party cleaned up Wisconsin politics and attacked corporate interests like the corporate Railroads, Power Companies and Timber Industry at the opening of the Twentieth-century, Wisconsin has had a well-deserved reputation for both honest, clean government that serves all its people, and progressive legislation that is progressive in that it both advances the cause of the masses of Wisconsinites and creatively solves problems the State has faced.

We presently have a Governor, Lt. Governor, and a legislature and Supreme Court that do not adhere to this legacy of integrity and serving the public at large. And it was La Follette himself, along with the Wisconsin Idea, of using the great University of Wisconsin to be an engine of change that brought the Recall itself to our State. We were the very first state to have it.

The purpose of the Recall is to permit the citizens of Wisconsin to remove an elected official prior to the expiration of their regular term of office if they have somehow betrayed the public trust in a fundamental way. Or if they have engaged in criminal activity or abetted it. In this case Scott Walker has done the former and the latter may be proven in the near future to be true as well.

Walker’s people say we have gained 30,000 jobs via their doctored figures since he took office. The Barrett camp follows the data that the State and the national Bureau of Labor Statistics have used for years. Those figures show a net loss in 2011 of some 23,000 jobs and both a gain of 15,000 to begin the year, only for a figure of 6,200 lost jobs as measured by the last quarter of data. The national figures are more accurate a measure because they take into account the quarterly numbers that reflect longer-term trends and which the Federal Government uses to measure how we’re doing compared to the nation. We are now 49th of the 50 States in job creation under Scott Walker. That’s the fact of the matter. Walker promised to do extraordinary things to bring 250,000 more jobs to the State. Thus far he is still some nine to ten thousand jobs lost since he took office. Where are the 250,000 that HE and not President Obama promised?

But how many jobs is not the question under the recall. The integrity and honesty of our government is.

Under Walker, the State is indeed open for business. He and the legislature have put the State up for sale to corporate interests. Koch Industries, and large donors with corporate ties have been consulting with Walker as he went out of our state for an extended period this past year to pull in some fifteen to twenty million dollars from people who do not live here and who are not looking to the interests of our State and only their own. Even the one big Wisconsin donor who was told by Walker in the first month he took office, and who gave Walker a half million dollars, was told by the Governor that he would “divide and conquer” the Unions to make this a right-to-work state. She is a billionaire!

Meanwhile, he ended collective bargaining for public employees, a right much prized and hard-won decades ago, as working people struggled to enter and stay in America’s middle class. This was the great betrayal requiring the Governor’s recall. It is why 100,000 and more citizens gathered repeatedly on the Capitol Square in Madison last year to protest this betrayal of the public trust. And nearly a million of the State’s voters signed recall petitions to make this first recall of a Governor possible.

Walker has divided the State. His divisiveness is shown by the massed hundreds of thousands, the recall signatures, the polls showing the state divided in half, and most of all by Walker’s own admission just yesterday.

Scott Walker told the people of Wisconsin that he intends if re-elected in the recall to govern “more inclusively.” This is a direct admission that up to this point he has governed “exclusively.” And Walker has lied repeatedly to the people of Wisconsin so there is no guarantee that his definition of “inclusiveness” will square with bringing in the other half of the people of the State. And remember that Walker has only succeeded at dividing the Unions public from private. He has yet to conquer.

There is also the bald fact that 14 people Governor Walker worked and still in some cases works most closely with have been the objects of a John Doe probe into all sorts of illegality ranging from embezzlement, to pedophilia, and to violations of Federal and State campaign laws. Beyond wide eyed wonder at how Scott Walker could be so squeaky clean when his staffs are now at 14 Felony indictments is beyond rational belief. And we must remember the John Doe Probe is not over. It has NOT been closed out as yet. The Governor himself has telegraphed how exposed he is to prosecution on this matter by hiring two attorneys—two criminal law attorneys who defend clients charged with crimes. These are not high priced paper shufflers or civil law guys. And he is the very first Wisconsin Governor to ever have a Legal Defense Fund.

When you go to vote on June 5th to decide if Scott Walker will be retained as Governor and Rebecca Kleefich, who backs everything the Governor has done, you must consider these matters directly. Walker lied to all the voters in 2010 when he said nothing about collective bargaining being denied public employees. He ran on making those folks pay more for health and pension benefits which they now do and do reluctantly but with a certain pride as public sector Unions came forth and offered to do so. Thousands of voters have since said that they would not have voted Walker in 2010 had they known what he was secretly planning to do to collective bargaining. Now the Governor if retained in office will see that result as a mandate for all the lies he’s told and all the people he’s hurt.

And the 14 Felony indictments of close Walker staffers in the John Doe Probe, even if Walker walks away clean, speaks volumes as to both who he chooses to associate with, and who he entrusts with the public trust of our State. Do you want a number of future felons running Wisconsin? And more to follow?

This should NOT be a partisan Republican versus Democrat election. It is a Wisconsin versus people who are not us, the ones who are honest, hard-working and compassionate to those in our State who need our help. That basic human decency which we’ve known under Governors and legislatures, led by both parties, will be gone and perhaps for good if we fail to do the right thing on June 5th. That is what is at stake here. Not some let’s line up you loyal Republicans kind of thing at all.

Bluntly, most people on both sides do not get it. This is a bi-partisan problem that Walker has created. While the Republican Party leadership is at fault, good loyal long-time Republican Wisconsinites are not at fault at all unless they continue to support Walker and his crowd. Remember: La Follette himself and those around him a hundred years ago and more were Republicans!

You may be private sector worker or professional, solidly Republican, and proud that we’ve balanced the budget, kicked the Unions in the teeth, and you want to stand with this guy. But you have a greater responsibility resting on your shoulders June 5th than mere party loyalty.

If you put Walker back in on June 5th in the Recall you will aid and abet the lying, the selling out of Wisconsin to large out-of-state corporate interests, and that this perfidy and license to screw the vulnerable that is just beginning. Everyone loses if Walker wins June 5th.

As to Wisconsin’s Progressive Legacy and “Fighting Bob” La Follette and the national respect our State has enjoyed nationwide for decades, that too is on the line. Our basic self-respect as people who made this State is on the line. It is OUR personal integrity for truth and for justice for all where everyone shares in the achievements of our State for the common good that rests heavy on your shoulders as you wield that stylus or pull that lever in the June 5th Recall Election.

This is the most important vote you will make in your lifetime. To put it plainly, Scott Walker is not capable of acting in the interests of all of us—just some of us. And the us may be much more limited than many of his supporters may think.

Tom Barrett has that integrity that leaders from both parties have always had. Even as a Democrat, he will have to bring us all back together. Not as political partisans: we’ll remain in our separate camps. But we have the opportunity to send a message to the nation that this kind of nasty and divisive “divide and conquer” government is not something a Badger from the proud Badger state supports.

Let’s uphold the Wisconsin Progressive Legacy on June 5th and not let it be taken permanently by those who would trample it in the dust and sell it to the highest bidder. Let both Republicans and Democrats and Independents be a part of this. When Tom Barrett takes the oath of office as the new Governor this summer, you Republican conservatives hold his feet to the fire when it comes to uniting rather than dividing this state and ending the civil war begun by the Walkers and Fitzgeralds of this world.

Then in 2014 let’s have at it in the old traditional Wisconsin way and elect a new Governor as yet unknown. For then we will have recovered our self-respect and personal integrity as the people of this State and we all will be the better for doing so.

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