Walker kills Milwaukee jobs, makes Barrett the fall guy

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

You’d think you wouldn’t need a Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote in this case. After all, Scott Walker killed jobs in Milwaukee in broad daylight, with eyewitnesses all over the place. He single-handedly idled scores of construction workers, engineers and others when he halted newly initiated work on a planned rail line between Beer Town and the capitol city, handing back to the feds $810 million in stimulus money and the thousands of jobs it promised to stimulate.

Yet, Walker is pointing a finger at a fall guy. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is to blame for the city’s sluggish economy, Walker insists. Demonstrating an uncanny ability to fog minds, the governor may get away with this misdirection.

Amid the bravado with which Walker delivered his victory speech after Tuesday’s recall primary, it was easy to forget a little detail: Under Walker, Wisconsin leads the nation in job loss. Walker kept the focus on Milwaukee, whose unemployment numbers and poverty levels he derided, as if his hands were clean. “We don’t want to be like Milwaukee,” he thundered.

Ouch. The city can’t help but feel like the state’s unwanted stepchild. The March jobless rate for Milwaukee was 10.4%. For Wausau, it was 10.1%. Yet, you can’t imagine the governor sneering, We don’t want to be like Wausau – even were he running against Wausau’s mayor.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett

Actually, Walker is deeply implicated in Milwaukee’s plight. Not only did he actively kill jobs, but, for crying our loud, he served as Milwaukee County executive for eight years. True, when he ran for governor in 2010, he disowned responsibility for the city – a pattern he’s now repeating. But that denial raises the issue of what was the point of his being county exec. He boasts submitting budgets with no tax increases and keeping light rail out of the city, but none of these “accomplishments” apparently made the city better off, to judge from his own description of how bad things are in Milwaukee.

Walker helped shape Milwaukee’s plight even before he was county exec. As a state lawmaker, he helped put together Wisconsin Works, which replaced the thoroughly vilified Aid to Families with Dependent Children. To hear Walker and his colleagues talk back then, this new way of aiding needy moms and their kids was supposed to liberate families from poverty. But in noting that Milwaukee has one of the worst poverty rates in the nation, Walker inadvertently indicted W-2 as a failure.

Barrett, the Democrat chosen to face the Republican Walker in the recall election, has helped attract companies to Milwaukee. One such company is Talgo, the Spanish train maker, which set up shop at the old Tower plant at Townsend and 28^th Streets. But Walker is chasing that company out of town by quashing its business due to the governor’s distaste for rail.

You’d think this wouldn’t be much of a whodunit. Walker is holding the smoking gun. The corpse is at his feet. The victim’s blood is on his hands. And eyewitnesses saw him shoot. Yet, Walker is brazenly pointing his finger at Barrett.

GOP two-faced on stay-at-home moms

Stay-at-home moms get much homage from Republicans – unless the moms happen to be poor.

A Democratic operative and talking head by the name of Hilary Rosen made a half-baked remark on CNN last week when she said that Ann Romney, mother of five and wife of Mitt, “has never actually worked a day in her life.”

Ann Romney

Dems, like Michelle Obama, almost beat Republicans out of the gate to condemn the tactless comment, which Rosen has since taken back. Nonetheless – surprise! – the GOP is exploiting the incident for political gain.

"I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys.” Mrs. Romney tweeted. “Believe me, it was hard work." Amen went the GOP chorus.

Ann Romney further confided on Fox News that her husband has considered her career choice more important than his: "He would say, 'My job is temporary...Your job is a forever job that's going to bring forever happiness.’"

During the welfare debate of the 1990s, however, the Republican Party pooh-poohed such reasoning. Needy, single moms who stayed home to raise children got scorn, not sympathy. They should get their lazy butts off the couch and get a job, the party said, by which the GOP did not mean a job inside the home.

The reasoning behind Aid to Families with Dependent Children, welfare as we used to know it, sounded a lot like Ann Romney’s defense of her stay-at-home role. A presidential panel wrote in 1935 that the program was designed to "release from the wage-earning role the person whose natural function is to give her children the physical and affectionate guardianship necessary not alone to keep them from falling into social misfortune, but more affirmatively to make them citizens capable of contributing to society."

But the mood changed by the ’90s as AFDC recipients morphed into Cadillac-driving, steak-buying, couch-lounging welfare queens in the GOP’s fervid imagination. Thus, the Republican Congress, along with Democratic President Bill Clinton, ended the guarantee of financial assistance to such mothers – the only entitlement program Congress has mustered the nerve to eradicate.

The truth is most AFDC recipients did work. The trouble was, both low-end jobs and their own lives were too unstable for them to sustain work. A child’s illness, babysitting problems, transportation issues would lead them to leave their jobs and use AFDC as a safety net until they got another low-paying job.

Another truth is that welfare as we knew had to end. It lacked popular support and gave the Republicans too big a club to use against Democrats. The replacement, however, should have been more humane.

But the point here is simply that, despite all the self-righteous indignation they have expressed over Rosen’s inferred put-down of stay-at-home motherhood, Republicans actually subscribe to that put-down for some women.

Ann Romney photo is by Brad Skidmore

Not knowing Jack and running for the U.S. Senate

Jeff Fitzgerald

Wisconsin's education system has failed 45-year-old Jeff Fitzgerald. Neither at Hustisford High School nor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh did he learn an elemental fact of American life: The world is slanted against black people.

If you don't grasp that basic reality, documented as it is by a mountain of studies, you don't grasp America. Yet Fitzgerald holds a powerful post: speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, where, alarmingly, his ignorance helps shape state policies.

Now the Republican is seeking a new office: the U.S. Senate seat that Democrat Herb Kohl is vacating. His mis-education casts doubt on his fitness to represent a racially diverse state in an even more racially diverse America.

I brought up the taboo topic of race when Fitzgerald visited the Milwaukee Press Club this week. I noted these three facts:

• The federal unemployment figures for February continued to show that young black high school grads had a harder time finding jobs than did young white high school dropouts. The unemployment rate was 35% for the black grads and 33% for the white dropouts. (Notes: 1. "Dropouts" is my term. The feds describe them as people who are not enrolled in school and have not graduated. 2. The disparity was actually less last month than usual.)
• When sending resumes to an employer, Mary is more likely to get a response than Tameka even when they have identical backgrounds and qualifications.
• When applying in person for entry-level jobs, young whites get further in the hiring process than do young blacks with equal credentials (and similar grooming, I could have added.)

Then I asked whether government had a role to play in addressing such racial disparity in the labor market.

Fitzgerald's responses were two:

• "There are laws in place against discrimination."
• The Democrats killed a bill earlier this month that would have boosted mining in Wisconsin and thereby boosted jobs at Milwaukee companies that make mining equipment.

FYI, the bill would have also loosened environmental regulations and reduced the opportunities for the public to weigh in on mining decisions.

My follow-up questions:

• Even if the bill was passed, the trend suggests that whites would be preferred for any new jobs over equally qualified blacks. What can be done about the preferential treatment that the data suggest whites get?
• Are laws against discrimination sufficient? After all, young white dropouts still fare better in the job market than do young black high school grads despite the laws.

Fitzgerald's retort:

• Yes, the anti-discrimination laws are sufficient.
• Referring to my data, "I don't know what those stats are based on."

His air was like: Why are you bothering me with this trivia?

Mark Neumann

In truth, to say that the world is slanted against black people opens you up to scorn. You are just trying to appeal to white guilt or just trying to evade responsibility for problems that African Americans themselves created. The trouble is, though, the world is slanted against black people. To ignore that slant is to ignore reality.

Besides jobs, for instance, white people have dibs on bank loans and choice housing, in comparison with black people with equal characteristics. White people have stay-out-of-jail-free cards that black people lack.

The last thing I want, however, is for white people to feel guilty about that slant. After all, it's not really their fault. It's just how society is. But I do expect believers in the American creed of equal opportunity to work to neutralize this inbred racism and not to work in the opposite direction, as Fitzgerald has done, by making it impossible for cities to consider race or residency for awarding contracts and by repealing a law that would have had law officers collect data on the race of drivers involved in traffic stops. To counteract a racial bias built into society, you have to take race into account.

Tommy Thompson

At the same time, I expect African Americans not to use that bias as a crutch, as an excuse for not fully applying themselves. Rather, the forces arrayed against us are all the more reason to hang tough. The wisdom of our foreparents still holds: You have to work twice as hard as a white person to get ahead.

Mark Neumann, the Republican ex-congressman who's also running for the Senate seat, showed some inkling of the racial disparity that hampers black people when I questioned him at his appearance at the Press Club earlier in the week. He suggested that the solution was putting jobs in the black community.

A third Republican candidate, Tommy Thompson, demonstrated some sensitivity to that racial disparity when he was governor.

Fitzgerald, in contrast, wallows in blissful ignorance of a crucial feature of American life. 

Note: There is breaking news as I post this commentary:  Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson announced Gov. Scott Walker was creating a task force to develop "action steps that address minority unemployment in metro Milwaukee, particularly the unacceptably high unemployment rate among black males." Co-chairs will be Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and state Rep. Elizabeth Coggs. The task force represents a departure from the pattern of hostility the Walker administration has shown toward black Milwaukee. The "action steps" should include ways to counter the preferential treatment whites receive over better qualified African Americans in the labor market, as demonstrated by a comparison of the jobless rates for black high school grads and white high school dropouts. 


More samples of studies pointing to a slant in American society against black people:
"Opportunities Denied, Opportunities Diminished: Racial Discrimination in Hiring," Urban Institute.
"The Federal Reserve  Bank of Boston Study on Mortgage Lending Revisted," Journal of Housing Research.
"Blacks pay more for Honda car loans," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"Report: Study suggests racial bias in calls by NBA referees," The New York Times.
Marked: race, crime, and finding work in an era of mass incarceration, Devah Pager.
"Racial disparities found throughout organ transplant process," Madison Capitol Times.
"Blacks Face Bias in Bankruptcy, Study Suggests," The New York Times.
"Illinois minorities more likely to do time for drugs," Associated Press.
"Study: Minorities more likely to get tickets, have vehicles searched," Chicago Sun Times.

Blockbuster musical thrills audience at North

 

So mesmerizing was the performance of "We Are the Drum" by Capita Productions over the weekend, I had to keep reminding myself I was in Milwaukee's North Division High School, not on New York City's Broadway.  Everything about this high-energy, community-based musical, featuring mostly non-professionals, was superb: the choreography, the singing, the costumes, the story line, the staging.

This blockbuster traces through music and dance the African-American experience - from Africa to present-day America, with some emphasis on Milwaukee. A live band performs in a pit, and vocalists demonstrate impressive talent on stage.

Does the cast number about 100? It seemed that way. A good share was kids, and the tiniest were among the most vigorous dancers

Capita Productions was founded in 1990 by the late Brother Booker Ashe, a Capuchin monk famous for serving Milwaukee's poor. Its president is Arlene Skwierawksi, the fabled music teacher who did wonders with the North Division choir.

The show drew hundreds of people last Friday. Still too many seats  were empty in the voluminous North Division theater. The artistry and craftsmanship, the sweat and tears that went into this community production deserve a full house. At the same time, Milwaukeeans owe to themselves the honest-to-goodness high the musical induces.

There is good news, though. The show repeats this weekend, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 2 and 3. Tickets range from $10 to $20. Click here for details. It's worth your while to attend.

Photographs are courtesy of Capita Productions.

Hoping for a glimpse of the prez

The Master Lock company, which President Obama visited Wednesday, sits right smack in the middle of Milwaukee's black community. Onlookers gathered at N. 33rd and W. Clarke Streets, across from the plant's parking lot. A festive atmosphere prevailed.

Kathy Vincent of Brookfield displayed a sign about union-busting Gov. Scott Walker. The sign proved to be popular.

Here's a fuller look at the boarded-up house in front of which she stands. Board-ups, often the result of foreclosures, are not uncommon in the neighborhood.

This couple wear their support for Obama. Ernest Boyd says his niece gave him the jacket as a Christmas present after Obama was elected president. Not to be outdone, his wife Carolyn sports an Obama sweat shirt and a Michelle and Barack watch and pin. Ernest has a Barack pin, and they both wear Obama caps.

 As the president talks inside the plant about how businesses should follow Master Lock's example and bring jobs back from overseas, the crowd waits, hoping to get a glimpse of Obama as he leaves.

The first dignitary to exit from the plant is state Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee. She gets a hero's welcome from the crowd. She says Obama gave an excellent speech.

 

  

Dogs seek to sniff out trouble outside the parking lot.

The calvary arrives. Members of the Occupy Milwaukee movement join the gathering. With their chants and signs, they add a hard edge to the assembly.  While supportive of Obama, they demand that he do more. "Make the banks pay!" they chant.  

James Causey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial writer and columnist, exits and checks a photo he shot.

The need for jobs is a major theme. More examples of chants: 

Jobs, not jail

and

Money for school and education,
not for banks and corporations

Suddenly, local, county, state and federal law officers speed north on 33rd, toward Center Street in their cars. They came from the south, not from the lot across the street, as many in the crowd had expected. Black limousines follow. "He's in the second one," someone says. But the cars are but a blur. Nobody catches a glimpse of the prez. The action was so quick I couldn't take a decent shot with my camera. Still, echoing the crowd's general sentiment, a gentleman says aloud, "It was still worth coming." There is something awe-striking about being in the presence of the nation's live symbol, moreso when that symbol gives you hope.

Political landscape shifted on Tommy Thompson

Don’t let the gray hair fool you. Tommy Thompson is as spunky as ever. But back when he was top dog in Wisconsin, politics was a mere boxing match. Now it’s Mortal Kombat. Can he master the new game?

The state’s longest-serving governor stopped by the Milwaukee Press Club the other day to explain why he would be an “excellent” choice to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Herb Kohl. Like many a politician, the Republican Thompson, who’s 70, made his case with truths, half-truths and exaggerations.

An impressive truth is that in all but 18 months of his 14 years as governor, Democrats controlled the Legislature. Yet, "nobody can't say I didn't accomplish a great deal.” Amen to that. Trouble is, the Republican Party now views as a character flaw playing nice with the other side to get things done.

The former Bush cabinet member did his obligatory attacks on President Obama. Thompson said that, under Obama, the national debt has soared from $10 trillion to $16 trillion – which is a teeny bit less deceitful way to put it than do the Republicans on the presidential campaign trail, who say outright Obama caused the rise. Actually, the lion’s share ($5 trillion) of the increase stems from the continuing impact of President Bush’s economic policies, especially his tax cuts and two wars. In seeking to end the tax cuts for the wealthy, Obama has tried to slow the hemorrhaging, but the Republicans have blocked him at every turn.

Like Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Thompson is milking so-called welfare reform. Gingrich was speaker of the House when Congress and President Bill Clinton did what was never done before or since – end an entitlement program: Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The replacement was Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is not an entitlement. The Wisconsin version of TANF is Wisconsin Works.

Thompson boasted that the switch, which indeed he did spearhead, led to a 90% reduction in the state welfare caseload – whch he views as an astounding success. Trouble is, cutting off life support for needy, powerless kids and and their moms takes neither brains nor guts. It just takes a cold heart. The correct measure of success is how are poor families faring. On the streets desperation seems to have only intensified..

Don’t get me wrong. Welfare as we knew it needed reform, mainly because it was losing almost all political support. And the alternative had to be work-oriented. But imbedded in W-2 are wrong-headed policies that reflect a disdain for poor people and keep the program from being the help it ought to be.

When asked about the successful effort to date of current Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the right to collective bargaining for public employees, Thompson made clear he would not criticize his successor.  “He’s the governor, and I support him. I was not there when he was making his decision based upon the facts and evidence that he had. I’m not going to come now and Monday morning quarterback and say I would have done it different. I probably would have, but I don’t know.”

He gave a similar reply when asked whether he would have sent back to Washington the $810 million Walker returned for high-speed rail from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison. A rail buff and former chairman of the Amtrak board, Thompson said he supported Walker, but he would have made the Milwaukee-to-Madison leg truly high speed. As it was, he said, the train would have had too many stops to go fast.

I swear I could almost hear Thompson thinking something like this: That kid made some boneheaded decisions, but I have no choice but to support the top Republican in the state.

Once it was not uncommon for Republicans to openly back collective bargaining or high-speed rail. But times have changed. Thompson made note of the new landscape: When he first ran for governor, he was criticized as being too conservative. Now, he said, the criticism is that he’s not conservative enough.

Thompson admitted that the negative tone of today’s politics turns him cold: "We have just way too much of tearing things down in the country,” he said. ”I don't believe in this politics of destruction."

The other Republican candidates are state Assembly speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and former southeastern Wisconsin Congressperson Mark Neumann. The sole Democrat running for Kohl’s seat is Madison-area congressperson Tammy Baldwin

Newt gives new life to Southern strategy

Dear Newt:

Your victory in South Carolina has made me proud. Though we have never met, I have come to think of you as my second son. You were floundering in the race for president until, wisely, you borrowed from my playbook. Some of them “elite” (heh, heh) commentators said my game plan had lost its clout, but you showed ’em. The Southern Strategy – that’s how the eggheads christened my playbook – still has some life in it.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

The way you put that black journalist Juan Wiliams in his place – well, that was just masterful. He was calling you out on your use of the Southern Strategy by your implications that black people lack a work ethic. Not only did you stand your ground, but you also used the question as a platform to attack Barack Obama. The audience went wild. The idea of the Southern strategy is, of course, that you win votes by appealing to white prejudice against black people. Even the way you said “Juan” was masterful; it sounded almost like “Boy.” The audience got the message, if only subconsciously.Your labeling President Obama “the food-stamp president” was a coup. Amazingly, you may have even outdone me in sophistry. The cracks in the free enterprise system widen during bad times. Hence, regardless of who’s president, more people will fall through the cracks into the social safety net, of which food stamps are a part. But saying that Obama has broken records in putting people on food stamps feeds nicely into stereotypes many whites have of blacks.

You doubtless know the story of my first run for Alabama governor. It was 1958, and my Ku Klux Klan-backed opponent, John Patterson, portrayed me as a friend of the Negro, and I lost. With the bitter aftertaste of defeat in my mouth, I swore I would never, ever be outniggered again. And the rest is history. I became the symbol for defiance against integration.

The beauty was the strategy worked up North, too, when I ran for president. Of course, I couldn’t use the N-word, like politicians used to do in Alabama. I just talked about law and order and "sissy-britches welfare people." The audience got the code. I won a third of the vote in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin in 1964.
 

My playbook wasn’t copyrighted, and the Republicans stole it, making in short order the solidly Democratic South solidly Republican and making inroads into white, blue-collar neighborhoods up North.

Some in the media, doubtless old hippies, have said that my playbook will soon run its course because it will start turning off more voters than it turns on – thanks in large part to the dastardly Voting Rights Act and out-of-control immigration. Even Karl Rove, George Bush’s brain, subscribed to that theory. Well, your showing in South Carolina demonstrates the strategy still has juice. Of course, the Confederate flag still flies at the Statehouse. So Republican South Carolinians may be more susceptible to that strategy than their compatriots elsewhere.

I wish you well and will continue to watch with interest your race for the Republican nomination for president. We get Fox News down here. I hope to shake your hand soon. I know a tavern we can go to. The beer is not too horrible.

Yours sincerely,

George Corley Wallace