Wisconsin's middle-class still needs saving

The movement that sought unsuccessfully to oust Scott Walker from Wisconsin’s governorship must by no means disband. Rather, it must dig in for the long haul.

The fight always centered on the plight of Wisconsin’s middle class – a plight Walker’s victory Tuesday keeps in jeopardy.

This is no time to sulk. Ousting Walker from office was a long shot anyway. Besides, in the one bright spot,  the Democrats did seize control of the state Senate – which should keep Walker from ramrodding more of his right-wing agenda through the Legislature. The movement deserves praise for getting as far as it did. Now, it must keep fighting this good fight.

Illustration by Resizia

The middle-class has gotten weaker in large part because unions have gotten weaker. Private-sector unions were the first to bite the dust. Thus, public-sector unions long carried the torch for the working person. But Walker fixed that. He eviscerated public-sector unions in Wisconsin, in line with the Republican tendency to tilt power away from working people and toward rich corporations.

I myself have been a critic of public-sector unions, particularly for teachers and police officers. But, in contrast to Walker, I believe in their right to exist. In fact, the role they play in society is vital.

During the campaign Walker intimated that he would make nice to the other side – a meaningless promise unless he intends to restore to the unions the right to collectively bargain. Which, of course, he does not intend.to do.

Walker is pursuing policies that would hasten the growth of income inequality in Wisconsin and the decline of the middle-class. His opposition can’t just give in. Rather, it must work out a long-term strategy for winning.

True, in smashing the unions, Walker is decimating the source of large amounts of Democratic funds, leaving Republican corporate campaign money with no rival. So keeping up the fight for the middle class will become tougher. But that fight must nonetheless be waged.

This post was revised later on June 6 to reflect the Democratic takeover of the Wisconsin Senate – which had not been clear at the time this article was originally written.

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.

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.

Mischief lurks in closed concealed carry records

Guns are not the only things that will be hidden from the public under Wisconsin’s concealed carry law. Any information about the license holder – name, age, residence – will also be secret. That concealment will hamper the ability of the public to monitor the law.

Investigative work by the Los Angeles Times showed that, despite being barred from owning firearms, hundreds of convicted criminals, including rapists and armed robbers, received concealed-carry licenses in Texas, and many then proceeded to commit more crimes, ranging from drunken driving to murder.

Will outlaws likewise get licenses in Wisconsin? Keeping license holders secret will make it tough for the public, including news organizations, to check.

The National Rifle Association has been wildly successful in their campaign to get state legislatures across the country to enact concealed carry laws. In only nine states in the 1980s were you legally able to carry a pistol in your pocket either without a license or with a license that must be given merely for the asking. Now you can do so in 40 states. At the same time, the number of states that completely bar concealed carry has dropped from 15 to 2. Make that one. The Wisconsin Legislature has sent Gov. Scott Walker a concealed carry bill, which he is sure to sign, leaving Illinois as the sole holdout.

The NRA insists on inserting into these laws provisions keeping the records secret, and Wisconsin lawmakers happily obliged. Although all other licenses the state issues – for motorists, barbers, lawyers, dentists, hunters, day care providers and so forth – are open to public inspection, records on concealed carry licenses will be sealed.

Even police officers in hot pursuit of a suspect are barred from asking the state whether the guy they’re after has a license to carry a gun, which, of course, he could use against them. (Only should he produce a license once they nab him will officers be able to check with the state whether the license is authentic.)

Reasons the pro-gun forces give for the secrecy are far-fetched, as illustrated by Richard Pearson of the Illinois State Rifle Association: "Once this information is released, it will be distributed to street gangs and gun-control groups, who will use the data to target gun owners for crime and harassment.” Note that this fantastic argument runs counter to the gun lobby’s own rationale for the unfettered right to firearms. Gun possession makes you safer.

The real reason the NRA insists on keeping concealed-carry records secret is likely that their release could spoil the narrative the organization spouts (as put by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence): Good people with guns prevent harm from bad people with guns.

The hard truth the NRA doesn’t want you to know is that some bad people will get the licenses, too, which they will sometimes use to wreak havoc. To keep that secret, the Legislature has shamelessly turned its back on Wisconsin's tradition of open records.

Negative news


The likely purpose of keeping concealed carry records secret is to cut down on the bad press concealed carry gets from time to time. Here’s a sampling of such press. All the gun wielders here boasted concealed carry licenses:

“The mixture of guns and alcohol exploded at a Lynchburg restaurant Saturday night when a customer accidentally shot himself in the thigh with a concealed weapon.” Lynchburg (VA) News & Advance , Sept. 16, 2010.

“One Indiana man pressed the barrel of a loaded handgun into the chest of a woman holding her 1-year-old son. Another's handgun was confiscated by police three times – twice for shooting in public. … And in all of these cases – and hundreds of other questionable ones uncovered by The Indianapolis Star – the Indiana State Police granted [the gunmen’s request to carry concealed handguns]. Even worse, many of those people committed subsequent crimes, some with the guns they were legally permitted to carry.” Indianapolis Star,  Oct. 11, 2009

“Houston police said Richard Calderon, 24, hit the teen's mother's car at about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday and then left the scene. The mother … tried to catch up to the vehicle to get its license plate number. As she drove by … , Calderon fired shots at her car, police said. Alexis Wiley, 13, was shot in the head. She was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where she died a few hours later.” KPRC Local 2, Houston, March 5, 2010.

“Jacksonville police said a woman was killed Monday afternoon by what appears to be the accidental discharge of a concealed firearm. Police said a man with a concealed weapons permit went into the Allied Veterans Cyber Center Internet café … Police said the man's gun was mishandled or dropped and discharged, striking a woman in the back. Witnesses said the gun fell from the man's belt.” News4 Jax.com,  Oct. 19, 2009.

“Federal investigators have searched the home of a North Carolina terrorism suspect, seizing counterterrorism literature, ammunition and portable electronics. A search warrant released Wednesday shows agents searched the home of Anes Subasic….The warrant says Subasic had a concealed handgun permit. Agents reported taking boxes of ammunition, knives and an empty box for a 'super sniper' rifle scope. Subasic is one of eight North Carolina suspects accused of plotting international terrorism.” Associated Press, Sept. 30, 2009.

For many more such stories, see the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. For an overview of crimes committed by concealed carry license holders, check out the Violence Policy Center.

Arousing the green-eyed monster

In their campaign to stifle the rights of public employees in Wisconsin, the would-be masters of the universe are fanning the embers of a human vice: envy.

You no longer have the nifty pension or health insurance or the decent pay or the union protection that you or your parents once enjoyed. You may have even lost your job. Yet, look at those fat-cat public employees, strutting around with their good salaries and benefits and their union rights – all made possible with your hard-earned money. That’s so unfair. They should suffer just like you do.

The upshot is that this message is being brought to the working stiffs in the private sector by the very people who helped make them suffer: our corporate overlords (think brothers Charles and David Koch among others). They helped shove those workers onto a downward economic spiral. Now these tycoons are counting on their victims to reach up and grab their public-sector brothers and sisters and pull them down that spiral, too.

Some Wisconsin workers have bought that message, as indicated by signs on display at a relatively small counter-protest at the Capitol in Madison on Feb. 19. (See photos on this page.) One sign – “IT’S MY MONEY NOT YOUR HUMAN RIGHT” – particularly reflects the anti-government message coming out of talk radio and right-wing think tanks (financed by our corporate oligarchy) over the last three decades.

We don’t tell workers at our cable TV company or our computer store they shouldn’t bargain for fair wages because that’s our money they’re dealing with. Rather, we figure that once the money leaves our hands, it’s no longer ours. What’s ours is the 200 TV channels or the 500-gigabyte computer we got in exchange.

Likewise, in exchange for the money we give government, we get valuable services. Public-sector workers lock up bad guys, plow snow on the route to work, teach first graders their numbers and letters, make sure rat feces don’t flavor our pasta dish, put out house fires before they reach our homes and maintain our favorite parks.

True, unlike in the private sector, we are not just consumers; we are also collectively the boss of public employees – which gives us the right to debate how the money ought to be spent, but also the moral duty to be a fair boss and to give just compensation for work done. Collective bargaining helps ensure we fulfill that duty.

Fortunately, the appeal to envy has had only limited success, polls suggest. Most people in Wisconsin and in America side with the effort of public employees to maintain their bargaining rights (though Wisconsin residents are evenly split on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill). Doubtless, labor’s readiness to concede on all economic issues has helped it in the battle of public opinion. The governor’s refusal to compromise in the face of that concession shows that his real goal is to castrate the unions.

A big reason America’s middle class has receded is that labor unions have eroded in the private sector. One possible response of workers there is to resent their compatriots in the public sector, where labor strength has grown over the last several decades. But most workers have not succumbed to that temptation. Rather, they astutely recognize that the middle class is less likely to rebound if public-sector labor unions lose their strength, too.

A day of protest in Madison

At a gas station in Delafield, Wisconsin, off I-94, two female clerks – one older, one younger – are arguing about the merits of the labor demonstrations in Madison. It’s Saturday, Day 5 of the protests that have grabbed the nation’s attention, and this time the Tea Party is supposed to show for a counter-demonstration.

“I do respect the teachers.” the older woman retorts, as I walk in. “But they don’t have to pay hardly anything for their benefits. A lot of people don’t even get health insurance or a pension. Besides, I believe Wisconsin is rated as having the worst school system in the country. So why should they get all that money when the schools are so bad?” (Actually, Wisconsin is rated among the top in the nation in teaching white kids and among the bottom in teaching black kids.)

I arrive in Madison about noon, park at the East Towne Mall and join a crowd at a city bus stop. Fare is $2, exact change, I’m told. A woman says she’s been waiting 45 minutes; she just missed the previous bus. Labor is operating free shuttle service to the Capitol elsewhere in the sprawling mall, but a man informs us that the line for that service is “a mile long.”

An empty No. 6 arrives. We fill the bus. Almost as many are standing as are sitting. The bus rolls down E. Washington Avenue without stopping until about 10 blocks away from the Capitol, where it picks up a dozen more passengers.

We deboard near the end of E. Washington. I pass a bank of portable toilets, relieving my mind of one anxiety.

Crowds are streaming around the Capitol sporting picket signs. The throng seems like Middle America with students mixed in. The young people add energy, beating drums, blowing horns and whistles, and leading chants, among them:

·         “It’s disgusting – union busting.”

·         “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker’s got to go.”

·         “Kill the bill!”

·         “Down with Walker – up with the people.”

A West Allis man tells me he was surprised by Walker’s ploy to take away the bargaining rights of public-sector employees. “I knew he was anti-union,” he says. “But I didn’t know he was out to kill the unions.”

The man himself, who does not want his name used, is a union member, but not a public employee. Echoing others, he adds, “If this was just about pay and benefits, there wouldn’t be thousands of people here.” At issue, he says, is the survival of public-employee unions. Walker wants to quash their bargaining rights, the raison d'etre for unions

Equainess Price of Racine quips that he came because his job is to support teachers. He is ESP (educational support personnel) for Gateway College in Racine.

“The bill wouldn’t kill me,” he says, “but I know it would hurt many others.”

I look for the Tea Party. I find only isolated groups of counter-demonstrators. Finally, I find their rally, which is breaking up. The pro-Walker people number in the hundreds at best. The anti-Walker people number in the tens of thousands.

There are long lines to enter the Capitol, which is living up to its name as the people’s house. Madison is, of course, no stranger to protests, which hit a crescendo in the 1960s. One difference between then and now is the police. Then they were hostile; now they’re friendly. To prevent overcrowding, police courteously let in only so many demonstrators at a time.

Legions participate in a continuous rally in the rotunda, where speeches and applause echo. Protest signs and banners adorn walls and railings.

On the fourth floor young people sit at a long table in an office working on Macs. They overflow into the hallway. The Teacher Assistant Association, a union consisting of University of Wisconsin grad students, runs this operation, which is part of the protest infrastructure. The association picks up trash inside and outside the Capitol, runs information booths, supplies marshals, feeds social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, produces flyers (including a ubiquitous one here reminding participants, “This is a peaceful protest”), helps coordinate activities and do sundry other chores.

A harried-looking Alex Hanna, a UW-Madison sociology grad student, heads the 24-hour-a day operation, which he admits is “physically taxing.” He says he broke away only once to go home and refresh himself since Tuesday and he has fallen behind on his school work.

At a rally outside, Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin tells the multitude: “Gov. Walker said today on TV that he received 19,000 e-mails that were in support of his legislation. Nineteen thousand. I think I have 19,000 behind me and 20,000 over there, 20,000 over here … and that doesn't include those who are in the Capitol right now.”

The protesters hear promises that they will win and expressions of love for the 14 Democratic senators who left the state to deny Walker a quorum and thus thwart action on his proposal to gut public-employee unions.

The rally breaks up. My son and grandson, who live in Madison, pick me up and we grab a bite to eat.

Photos by Gregory Stanford

To replay slide show, click "labor protest" in bottom left corner, then click play button.

Scott Walker the job slayer

Gov. Scott Walker, who talks big about boosting private-sector jobs in Wisconsin, is so far doing just the opposite: costing the state private-sector jobs. A Milwaukee think tank puts at 10,000 the number of jobs that sector would lose were Walker’s plan to cut compensation for public-sector workers to go into effect.

Yes, you heard right. Cuts in public employment hurt private employment – which is the exact opposite of the mindless mantra beaten into our heads over the last two decades: to wit, cuts in public employment help private employment.

What that mantra ignores is that public-sector pay checks stir the same economic ripples as private-sector pay checks. In other words, $50 spent at the local supermarket from a government payroll has the same impact as $50 spent there from a company payroll. Both equally enable the supermarket to meet its own payroll. The fewer dollars that come in, whether from public or private salaries, the less money the supermarket can spend on its payroll and the more likely the supermarket will have to lay off workers.

Walker is trying to crush the public employees unions in Wisconsin. He is seeking to eviscerate their bargaining rights. His diabolical plan also includes unilaterally reducing the take-home pay of union members by having them step up contributions to their benefits. That element is what an analysis by the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future  addresses. The analysis also factors in reduction in pay from planned furloughs

Jack Norman

The institute concludes that Walker’s plan would lead to the the loss of $660 million a year in economic production in the private sector, eliminate $46 million in property taxes or shift them to other taxpayers, noticably boost the state’s unemployment rate and wipe out 9,900 private sector jobs.

Yes, there are a couple of counterarguments, which I put to the institute’s Jack Norman, the author of the report:

Sure, public employees won’t spend as much, but the cuts mean taxpayers will gain spending money. So won’t the state’s taxpayers make up for the loss in expenditures by the state’s public employees?

Well, the idea of the cuts is to reduce the budget deficit. So the savings wouldn’t go back to taxpayers.

In light of the dire budget situation, doesn't Walker have no choice but to enact the cuts, whether they hurt the economy or not?

If he has no choice, why then did he give money away in a special session last month through the enactment of new or expanded tax breaks.

Even before he took office Walker killed a federally financed high speed rail project that would have led to thousands of temporary and permanent jobs for state residents. Despite his highfalutin rhetoric about creating jobs, Walker is starting his governorship as a job killer, not a job booster.

Related reading:

“An Update on State Budget Cuts,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Rail backers demand jobs at Madison protest

Madison, Wis. – As power shifted here from one major state party to the other Monday, five bus loads of Milwaukee residents rode into town demanding jobs. They invited new-Gov. Scott Walker to appear at a community meeting in Milwaukee to explain why he killed a project that would have led to employment for thousands.

The 250 Milwaukeeans were joined in front of the Capitol by roughly 100 others, many of them students. The crowd heard labor leader Sheila Cochran bellow: “He says that the state of Wisconsin is open for business. I want him to know that we mean business.”

She and others noted that, in killing the $810 million high-speed rail project connecting Milwaukee and Madison, Walker was going in the opposite direction of his promise to create 250,000 jobs.

A coalition of organizations, including MICAH (Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope), sponsored the protest. Their first stop was Monona Terrace for a prayer rally outside as Walker attended a prayer breakfast inside. The Rev. Willie Brisco, who heads MICAH, says he gave a Walker representative an invitation to attend a community meeting in Milwaukee and that she promised to make sure Walker got the invitation. The governor would choose the date.

The group is calling on Walker to bring good jobs to Milwaukee and to explain face to face how he’s going to do that and to invest in the Milwaukee north side complex that contains train maker Talgo, which has said it would move its manufacturing operation to another state because of Walker’s antagonism toward rail.

The group prayed and sang freedom songs, such as “This Little Light of Mine” and “We Shall Overcome.”

The sky was grey and the air was cold.  But it was not the biting cold participants had feared.

Later in the morning, the protestors rallied at the Capitol, where the Rev. Gregory Lewis said, “We are living in times of desperation” due to the absence of jobs. That desperation is leading to crime, he said, volunteering that his church office was recently broken into and its contents  rifled and items taken. He led a chant: “We need jobs.”

The Rev. Leondis Fuller said, “We have a governor who's being inaugurated today, and I want you to know he does not care about workers.”

Saying the people have the power to fight back, he added: “The fight is going to be long, the fight is going to be hard. but we're going to have to stay the course because the Republicans in this building behind us, they do not care about you and I.”

He said that “Walker had already sent jobs out of state.” Because of Walker’s action, train maker Talgo plans to move its manufacturing operation from Milwaukee to a state friendlier to rail. What’s more, the federal government has redistributed Wisconsin’s $810 million to other states, where the money will create many jobs.

The federal government would have fully financed construction of the Milwaukee-to-Madison line. Walker objected to the state’s picking up as much as $7.5 million a year in operating costs, even though the project promised to generate enough taxes – by boosting sales and personal income in the state – to cover those costs.

Said another speaker at the rally: “We are tired of going to job fairs where there are no jobs.”

After the rally the crowd broke up into groups stationed in front of the entrances to the Capitol and chanted slogans and held picket signs.

Inside, Walker was being sworn in as governor, and a new regime was beginning – a regime seemingly callous to the desperate plight of workers in Milwaukee.

Photos by Gregory Stanford and Cynthia Henry

Busses to go to inaugural protest in Madison

Prayer will take place inside and outside of Monona Terrace in Madison Monday morning. Inside will be a prayer breakfast in honor of the inauguration of Scott Walker as Wisconsin governor. Outside will be a prayer rally in protest of the actions Walker has already taken to scuttle thousands of anticipated jobs in the state.

The rally and other protest activities during Monday’s inauguration will give residents a chance to show the state and the world their anger and concern over the incoming governor’s cancellation of a federally financed, $810 million, 110 miles-an-hour rail line between Madison and Milwaukee.

The rally will take place at 9 a.m. Monday. No passenger train connects Wisconsin’s two biggest cities, so Milwaukeeans who want to participate can board busses at 6:30 a.m. in a parking lot at 27^th and Hopkins Sts. MICAH (Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope) has details.  (For background, see my earlier post, "Rail backers to 'crash' Wis. governor's inaugural.")

* * *

Business community paralyzed

Would Milwaukee’s business community have stood silently by had a Democratic governor-elect chased a manufacturing company out of town and rejected hundreds of millions in free economic development money, killing a project that (1) had already hired dozens of construction workers and would eventually have hired hundreds more, (2) would have created dozens of permanent jobs directly and hundreds indirectly and (3) would have linked the state’s two top economic engines by fast passenger rail?  I think not.

The business community’s silence in Walker’s case, I submit, betrays its bias in favor of Republicans. That bias made it too paralyzed to head off a Republican-engineered economic fiasco.

In announcing it would move its manufacturing operation out of Milwaukee in light of the state’s anti-rail climate, train-maker Talgo expressed disappointment about that silence, which, the firm said, stood in contrast with the encouragement it got from business leaders to come to Milwaukee in the first place.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce blames its non-action on a poll that found its members evenly split on the merits of high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison.

* * *

Other states cheer Walker

“California's high-speed rail system is slowly coming together, thanks to a commitment to 21st-century progress and political games over federal funding by the Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin.” Fresno Bee.

“Thanks a billion, cheeseheads.” Los Angeles Times.

“California is not too proud to take leftovers.” The Orange County Register. 

“U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla), welcomed Thursday the news that Florida is getting ‘an early Christmas present.’” News Chief  (Winter Haven, Fla.).

* * *

Let them eat donated goods

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle donated proceeds from his inauguration – $233,000 in 2003, $323,000 in 2007 – to the state's Boys & Girls Clubs. Walker plans to split the proceeds between the state Republican Party and his own campaign chest. He is, however, asking inaugural guests to bring canned goods for the Hunger Task Force. Not a bad idea. Given Walker’s job-killing propensities, hunger may well rise during his governorship.

Rail backers to "crash" Wis. governor's inaugural

Seething over the jobs lost because of the cancellation of high-speed rail in Wisconsin, a church full of people in Milwaukee cheered calls Thursday night to “crash” Gov.-Elect Scott Walker’s inauguration on Jan. 3.

“What Scott Walker has done is despicable, is shameful,” Father Tom Mueller, an Eastern Orthodox priest, told the more than 300 people on hand. “He slams the city. He spits on the city. … He doesn’t care what we say. We have to take our message where he is.”

Father Tom Mueller

Added Marilyn Miller of the Reformation Lutheran Church: “We need to crash the party on Jan. 3.” Organizers did not specify what they meant by “crash.”

The emotional meeting was a reminder that the high speed rail issue is not just a political game. It affects real people. It could mean the difference between having a livelihood and not having one.


A long string of residents went to the microphone at New Hope Baptist Church on Milwaukee's north side and expressed dismay and anger that Walker turned down an opportunity to create thousands of jobs, which they described as badly needed. Several said they themselves were unemployed. Others spoke of the travails of living in a community with high unemployment.

Marilyn Miller

A church coalition called MICAH joined forces with labor unions and other groups to sponsor Thursday night’s event and the upcoming demonstration in Madison.


Walker had vowed to reject $810 million in federal money, mostly for building a high-speed rail system between Milwaukee and Madison.  As a consequence, the federal government took most of the money away and handed it out to rail projects in other states. Construction had begun on the project, but present Gov. Jim Doyle halted it in light of Walker’s statements.

Citing Walker’s anti-rail policies, Talgo, which makes trains, plans to move its manufacturing operations out of Milwaukee in 2012, but would leave a maintenance crew behind.

Walker’s rationale has been that, although the feds would fully cover construction, he didn’t want the the state to be saddled with up to $7.5 million a year in operating costs. The rationale makes little sense because the project itself should have generated more than enough state taxes to cover those costs.

“When you throw away $810 million, that’s a colossal mistake,” one audience member, a pastor, told the crowd.

“Who in his right mind gives away all that money?” asked a young woman.

Said another speaker,: “This man is on drugs. … That’s the only thing I can figure out. His brains are fried.”

Eddie Tipton, a bus driver said of Walker, “He doesn’t care about you or me.”

Rubin (Ben) Ciriacks carried a sign with the numbers “250,000,” the amount of jobs Walker has pledged to create in Wisconsin, and “-55,” the number of workers idled by the  halt in high speed rail construction that was already under way. During Walker’s tenure, he said, keep asking, “Where are the jobs?”

The Rev. Leonard Fuller, who works with ex-cons, noted the tough time they had finding jobs, the lack of which fuels crime.

One woman advocated “following Scott Walker everywhere he goes.”

Attendees signed up to go to the protest in Madison on Jan. 3 and to get others to go.

The sponsors of the event: Milwaukee Innercity Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), the Services Employees International Union, the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, the League of Young Voters and Wisconsin Citizen Action.

Photos by Gregory Stanford

Wisconin Gov.-Elect Walker has a deep-seated hatred for rail

Photo credit: dreamstime_11512691

Hatred of rail most logically explains Wisconsin Gov.-Elect Scott Walker’s torpedoing the planned high-speed train between Milwaukee and Madison. His stated motive – to save Wisconsin taxpayers $7.5 million a year in operating costs – doesn’t compute. After all, the project should easily generate that money and more for the state coffers.

Before I had a chance to post this piece, an alternate explanation emerged: the gobs of money the road builders lavished on the Walker campaign. But the Milwaukee County executive’s phobia about rail goes way back, stunting public transit in Milwaukee for years. Now he has public transportation in a whole state to retard.

Consider these facts:

• The Republican politician has pledged to attract 10,000 companies to Wisconsin in four years. Yet, almost the first thing he does as governor-elect is to practically shoo a company away, Milwaukee-based high-speed train maker Talgo, which Mayor Tom Barrett and outgoing Gov. Jim Doyle had convinced to open shop in the industrial city. The company has said that, because of Walker’s anti-rail policies, it may move to Illinois, into the open arms of Gov. Pat Quinn.
• Walker has pledged to bring 250,000 jobs to the state in those four years. Yet, already he has done the opposite, idling dozens of workers who have started to construct the high speed rail line. In killing the project, he would put the kibosh on thousands of construction jobs altogether and lead to the layoffs of scores of engineers and others already hired for the project. Dozens of new jobs – to run the railroad and its stations – won’t be created. He would likely chase away the 125 jobs planned for Talgo. Hundreds of spinoff jobs – at the ice cream parlor that opens near a train station or at the electronics store that must hire due to increased business generated by train-related paychecks – won’t come to be.
• Walker complains about the state’s fiscal crisis. Yet, he’s thumbing his nose at $810 million in free money – that is, money the state doesn’t have to raise. Sure, he’s asking the feds to redirect this stimulus money to Wisconsin roads, or, in the latest ploy, to existing rail. But that outcome is, as Doyle put it, “pure fiction.” Meanwhile, governors elsewhere, particularly in Illinois and New York, are salivating over these funds. What’s more, if Wisconsin drops the project, the law holds it would have to return millions already spent on it.
• The thousands of jobs to be generated by the project – the Madison-based Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group puts the number of permanent jobs at 13,000 – should result in state tax payments that would easily cover the $7.5 million in yearly operating costs. But Wisconsin may only have to pay $750,000 – should federal aid cover 90% of the costs, as it already does with the Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line.

In short, in killing the Madison-to-Milwaukee rail line, Walker is pursuing a course that would likely cost Wisconsin many times more money than the $7.5 million a year it might save. So the question becomes: Why is he pursuing this insane course? True, the money he’s getting from the road builders is likely a factor, even though the $810 million can’t be used for roads. But the most logical explanation, to borrow from Glenn Beck, is that Walker has a deep-seated hatred for rail.

Milwaukeeans are familiar with this hatred. One of his chief “accomplishments” as Milwaukee County executive was to keep light rail away – for reasons that likewise failed to withstand scrutiny. He called himself protecting the county bus system, from which light rail would drain resources. He depicted himself as champion of the poor (don’t laugh!), who ride the bus, whereas light rail draws the upwardly mobile, quiche-eating crowd.

Some protector he turned out to be. He has the bus system in a death spiral of rising fares, reduced service and falling ridership.

While Walker was saying “no” to light rail, Minneapolis was saying “yes.” And that enlightened city found that light rail 1) drew more riders than expected, 2) in contrast to busses, pulled people out of their cars and onto public transit, 3) increased bus ridership since passengers could use their light rail transfers for the bus and vice versa, 4) boosted business around light rail stops and 5) increased job opportunities for poor people.

Minneapolis could look amused at County Executive Walker’s irrational hatred of rail. But the Minnesota city must be alarmed at Gov. Walker’s hatred. The next leg of high speed rail to be constructed was supposed to connect Minneapolis to Madison and thus to Milwaukee and Chicago. But Walker’s quashing those plans.

The better workers, customers and business people can move around, the more vibrant the economy will be. Walker retarded that movement in Milwaukee County. Now, gads, he’s trying to do for the state what he did for the county.

In race for governor, Milwaukee county exec blames mayor, exempts self from blame for community's ills

Never mind that, when all of America falls into an economic sinkhole, the source of the problem likely lies outside your city hall or your statehouse. Political ads across the nation are bludgeoning local and state office holders for the mess.


One of the more brazen examples is taking place in the governor’s race in Wisconsin. An ad sponsored by Republican candidate Scott Walker piles Milwaukee’s ills on the shoulders of his Democratic foe, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett

“Barrett’s city has one of the worst job creation records of any big city in the U.S.,” the announcer charges. The voice notes that the city’s August unemployment rate was 11.5% and called Milwaukee the fourth poorest city in the nation. (Actually, dozens of smaller cities are poorer than Beer Town, which is in a twelve-way tie for the-third worst poverty rate among big cities. See analysis by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Employment and Training Institute.)

From Scott Walker's campaign site

What makes the ad so nervy is that Walker is acting as if he’s an innocent bystander, with no responsibility for Milwaukee’s ills. He’s Milwaukee County’s top official, for crying out loud. He’s held the post of county executive for eight years. So if the city’s record means, as the ad puts it, “we can’t trust Tom Barrett to turn Wisconsin’s economy around,” ditto for Walker. The last I checked, the city was a big part of the county.

Under Walker, the county’s unemployment rate soared from 4.6% in April of 2009 to 10.5% in March of 2010 – a period when the county lost a whopping 34,000 jobs.

The county exec has claimed exemption from responsibility on jobs. Economic development is not part of his portfolio, he says – a telling attitude. In light of the crying need, he should have made encouraging job creation a top priority. The problem was he remained a bystander – a guilty bystander.

Does Walker think he deserves a pass on the county’s poverty rate, too? Of every six people in the county, one is poor – the tenth worst rate among the 50 biggest counties in the nation. Walker blew chances to tackle poverty. The state stripped from Walker’s portfolio programs to serve the poor on the grounds they were badly run. The Private Industry Council, which does job training, was turned over to the city, and the state itself took over food aid, child care and medical assistance programs "Milwaukee County has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its (poor) customers," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted a state official as saying in a letter to Walker.

As a legislator Walker got behind a measure that was supposed to take a big bite out of poverty: Wisconsin Works, which ended cash grants to most poor families with children and tied aid to jobs. The theory was that, rather than easing poverty, the grants themselves were causing it by encouraging dependency. So by taking away the grants, you do poor people a favor, ending their dependency and nudging them into the middle-class. Well, the Walker ad itself testifies to the failure of that policy. Wisconsin Works didn’t do what Walker and other backers said it would do. Poverty has only intensified in the city (and in the county).

The county exec touts his penny-pinching budget submissions as his way of attracting businesses. Never mind that the strategy didn’t work. For one, few took his budgets seriously, They were seen as political stunts, his way of claiming he worked to keep taxes low, while leaving to the County Board the heavy lifting of coming up with a realistic budget. For another, the strategy didn’t stop thousands of jobs from vanishing.

Among public officials you can legitimately blame for the nation’s loss of millions of jobs is former President George Bush, who presided over an economic crash after cutting taxes for the wealthy and loosening regulations on businesses – principles that, eerily, Scott Walker holds dear.