Voters bless Dems' flight from Wisconsin

The dust has settled. Two Republican state senators lay fallen in Wisconsin. All Democrats remain standing.

Lessons to draw from the state's historic series of recall elections:

• The flight of state Democratic senators from Wisconsin earlier this year enjoys the blessing of the voters.
• The proponents of returning Wisconsin and America to the days of Herbert Hoover are a force to be reckoned with.
• Hence, true believers of the Wisconsin state motto – "Forward" – must dig in for the long haul.

Robert Wirch

Jim Holperin

On Tuesday Democratic Senators Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin easily prevailed in their recall elections in the Kenosha area and the North Woods, respectively, just as Dave Hansen did a month ago in the Green Bay area. The stated motive of the recalls was to punish Democratic senators for vacating the state rather than vote on Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to strip public employee unions of collective bargaining rights.

But voters were in the mood to reward rather than punish. Remember, not only did they return the three Democrats to office, but earlier they thwarted Republican efforts to get enough signatures to force a recall for five other targeted Dems.

Voters thus displayed sympathy for the Democrats' drastic tactic of leaving the state to delay a vote on Walker's drastic union-busting bill. Republicans like to argue that, in fleeing Dairyland, the Democratic senators abdicated their duty as lawmakers. But voters apparently believe the Democrats were actually doing their duty. Their departure delayed a vote on the bill and thus bought time for public reaction, which came in the form of huge protests at the state Capitol.

Democrats did gain. They had been outnumbered in the Senate by five. [An earlier version of this post had the wrong number.] Now, the margin is just one. But truth be told, they had dared hope for even more: control of the Senate. That Republicans held onto the majority testifies to their tenacity (and possibly to lousy campaign ads on behalf of the Democratic challengers.)

The Republicans are not the party of the future. The ranks of white voters – whence the Republican Party strength hails – is shrinking. Its three-note economic policy – cut taxes on the rich, rules for businesses and help for the poor – leads to disasters (such as the current economic doldrums in which the nation is stuck). And the future will not regard kindly the party's other quaint notions, such as anti-environmentalism. But maybe a party is most tenacious when it's dying.

Perhaps sensing their time is lapsing, Repubican leaders are going all out to extend their rule (for instance, through redistricting and voter ID laws, which makes voting more complicated and thereby a tad less likely, particularly for poor people, older people and students.) And like the Dems, the GOP threw everything it had and then some into the recall battle and succeeded in keeping its losses to just two.

That the Senate didn't turn over is no reason for progressives to lose faith. The political momentum is still theirs – momentum helped by the flow of history.

Maybe tax cuts will work one of these years

The Creed still has power: Raising taxes on the wealthy kills private-sector jobs. Cutting taxes on the wealthy spurs private-sector jobs.

Nobody – certainly not the mainstream news media – bothers to ask after a decade of reduced taxes, Well, where are the jobs? Instead, Republicans just keep mouthing the Creed. To keep taxes from being raised on the rich, House Republicans are even willing to block the United States from paying its bills – a move that promises to throw the nation into financial chaos.

President George W. Bush took a big bite out of taxes for the rich. So the number of private-sector jobs soared, right? Wrong. In fact, the Bush presidency saw a drop in such jobs – from 111,634,000 to 110,981,000 – according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(Public-sector jobs rose, by 1.7 million. But the Creed holds that cutting taxes boosts private-sector jobs and that government jobs are a net negative for the economy.)

History has no relevancy to Republicans. Bosh to facts! Their belief is in things unseen. Tax cuts are their religion – their salvation.  Thus, they put intense pressure on Obama to keep Bush’s tax cuts. And against his better judgement he did. Now, Republicans characterize Obama’s fiscal policies as a failure. They thus implicitly acknowledge that the extension of the tax cuts flopped.

Yet, they fight raising taxes to help close the federal deficit and, instead, propose to take from the needy to give to the greedy, as is their wont. Confronted by the rare journalist who points to the long history of tax cuts that didn’t yield jobs, they speak louder and in a more indignant tone. The problem is not that taxes are too low; the problem is that spending is too high. Yeah, yeah.

Actually, the problem is their belief that, if they keep doing the same thing again and again, they will one of these years see a different result.

How the Republican Party got crazy

The name the “Radical Republicans” has been taken and is now retired like the No. 42 that baseball legend Jackie Robinson wore. The radicals were noble politicians, who pushed valiantly before and after the Civil War for full civil rights for black people.

Sadly, the nation failed to heed these prophets crying in the desert of racial oppression. If it had, the gains the 1960s civil rights movement made would have come a century earlier. Still, the radicals’ vision haunted the nation and helped inspire the 1960s movement.

No, “Radical Republicans” is too honored a name to describe the current crop of "hell-no" Republicans in Congress. A more apt term for politicians eager to plunge the nation into financial ruin if they don't get their way without compromise: "Crazy Republicans."

Maybe, crazy is what you get when you court folk who despise the Radicals' vision, as the Republican Party did in a pact it made with the devil.

The Democratic Party had a fateful choice to make in the 1960s. Would it side with the civil rights movement or the resistance to civil rights, with its Negro base or its white Southern base? Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson came down on the side of equality for all, alienating white supremacists, South and North.

The Republican Party went after those disenchanted voters with a passion, promising – in code, of course – to keep black people in their place. This "Southern strategy" turned the South from solid Democratic to solid Republican and enabled the GOP to form majorities to win elections.

Now the party is paying the price for selling its soul. It dangled intolerance and fear to draw new voters. So, not surprisingly, intolerance and fear are now a major part of the Republican base, which had fits when a black man was elected president.

The base staged tantrums and demanded its country back and called itself the Tea Party. It lashed out at President Obama, calling him simultaneously and contradictorily a Muslim and the disciple of a mad Christian preacher; a Communist and a Nazi. The base questioned the president's citizenship, pooh-poohing even notices of his birth in Honolulu newspapers at the time he was born.

The Republican base's vitriol, born of the Southern strategy, also shows in its opposition to immigration, gay rights and "big government."

The problem for the party is that the Southern strategy is not the winner it once was. It used to be that the strategy gained far more in white votes than it lost in black votes. No longer. The white share of the electorate is shrinking; the non-white share is expanding.

Karl Rove (President Bush's brain) recognized that fact and tried to push comprehensive immigration reform to woo Hispanics. But the GOP base blocked that move. And Hispanic support for the Republican Party dropped.

Not that the base cares. The vituperative base views any compromise as betrayal, whatever the consequences.So presidential candidate Mitt Romney is forced to downplay his singular achievement as Massachusetts governor: health care reform. And Republicans in Congress are barred from making concessions that would raise taxes on the rich just modestly even though that's what the country wants.

The GOP finds itself in a policy straitjacket that will hamper the party in winning elections – a straitjacket the party weaved for itself out of intolerance and fear.

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.

My brush with food stamp fraud

I was tempted with welfare fraud some while back. I was putting my groceries in the trunk of my car outside the old Uptown Supermarket on North Ave. in Milwaukee, when a young woman with a cartload of bagged groceries asked me for a ride.

“I’ll give you $10 in food stamps,” she said.

I gave her the ride, but rejected the stamps – and thereby avoided a crime. It is illegal to exchange food stamps except for the purchase of food, as an exposé in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes.

Actually, her offer wasn’t much of a temptation. She was plainly needy – sufficient reason to give her a ride. It’s one of the Beatitudes, I believe.

From U.S. Department of Agriculture

Still, I couldn’t help but think that, had I been broke myself with no job in sight – the plight of a whole bunch of people – I doubtless would have accepted the food stamps, middle-class morality be damned. (He who has never fudged on his 1040, cast the first stone.) In fact, I might have hung around the store’s parking lot giving rides for cash or food stamps to people with lots of groceries and no cars.

Which is why I find it hard to get worked up over the Journal Sentinel’s blockbuster story finding that nine people in Milwaukee and 70 nationwide were using Facebook to buy or sell food assistance benefits illegally. The people caught in the newspaper’s dragnet apparently lacked the sophistication to deploy a privacy shield over such transactions – an option Facebook gives them.

My brush with food stamp fraud preceded the Internet’s social networks, which have expanded the reach of people seeking to buy or sell the coupons. So maybe real big-time crime is now afoot. What’s more, the Journal Sentinel (where I spent most of my journalism career) has been doing superb exposés of late. Still, I find it hard to work up outrage over this particular peek at a struggle for survival on the part of poor people.

I don’t know whether my passenger knew that she was proposing to break the law. But she was in a bind. She lived close enough to the store to walk there, but had too many groceries to walk back. She knew she would need a ride, so she frugally reserved enough of her precious food stamps to pay for it.

Though she was ready to break the law, she looked more like a mom struggling to make ends meet than a crook.

About fire truck chasers and collateral damage

I own a duplex on Milwaukee’s west side, about seven blocks from where I live, and it was set afire. One recent morning, while playing catch-up on putting together my neighborhood newsletter, I got a phone call.

“Are you Gregory Stanford who owns a house on 41st St.? “

“Yes, I am.”

”I can board the house up for you.”

“What do you mean, board it up? The house is not vacant. It doesn’t need boarding up.”

 

“It’s on fire. I’m standing right across the street from the house. Fire trucks are out here. Flames are coming out of the roof.”

So that’s how you learn about a fire at your rental, I thought as I rushed to the scene. Your calamity is somebody else’s opportunity.

As firefighters flooded the roof and the second floor with water, I found myself surrounded by contractors seeking the board-up work. A police detective rescued me.

I once covered fires as a newspaper reporter. I combed the crowds for witnesses and victims – anybody with a link to the burning structure. But I never ran into this phenomenon: contractors pitching their services. I knew about the ambulance chasers – lawyers hawking their services after a car crash – but not about the fire truck chasers. Then again the last fire I covered was in the 1980s.

The mom who lives in the upstairs flat was huddled in an alley with her two grown daughters. They confirmed what I had guessed. The fire was set, and the likely suspect was the ex-boyfriend of the younger daughter. The couple had once lived downstairs and when they broke up, the flat was vandalized, reportedly by him – an incident for which he’s facing charges.

She and he have a baby, And he had come to the house the night before the fire ostensibly to see the child, the daughter said. (I had instructed her never to let him on the premises again.) Then she spotted him the next morning in the neighborhood as she was leaving to take the baby to the day care center.

The fire investigator said the side door was kicked in, and fuel appeared to have been taken from the lawnmower I had in the basement. The fire started in the second-floor living room. Thank goodness, nobody was home. I was between tenants downstairs.

Check your insurance. I was under-insured. The last time I got the bill, I  remarked aloud that the amount of coverage listed was not enough and that I was going to get more. I was still intending to do that when the fire broke out. Don’t you follow suit.  As it turned out, the settlement I received matched the vastly deflated assessment value of the house, but it does not come anywhere close to the quotes I’ve gotten so far to rebuild.

In the opinion of the claims adjuster and the fire investigator, despite extensive damage, the duplex was not totalled. The fire was confined to the front rooms upstairs and the front of the attic. The rest of the structure suffered smoke and water damage.

The truth of the matter is that, after a fire, immediate board-up is a necessity. Contractors’ coming to you does save you the trouble of going through the Yellow Pages. The tough part is choosing the right contractor. I ignored the advice of the insurance company and instead gave work to an African-American firm with the proper bona fides – a firm I figured was outside the good ole boy’s network that leads to contracts.

In my immediate neighborhood houses remain boarded up for months, even years – giving me the impression that I had at least two or three months to weigh my options. Wrong. The city building inspector is acting wth lightning speed in my case, condemning the building and ordering it razed even as I continue to get quotes on reconstruction.

I had  kept the property in good shape, recently spending a small fortune on a new roof and a rebuilt chimney. Not too long ago, I rebuilt the entire porch, upstairs and downstairs. My property record downtown is clean.

I can’t help but think about the prime suspect. I doubt that he ever thinks about me. It was his ex-mate, not I, who was on his mind when he vandalized the downstairs and later torched the upstairs. Yes, I may be out tens of thousands of dollars, but that’s just collateral damage in his holy war against his ex-woman.

This reckless, self-centered buffoon is behind bars, where he needs to remain for a long, long time.

A tightly guarded secret: Dems do better on economy

As a rule, the economy does better when a Democrat occupies the White House. That’s a clear-cut, longstanding statistical fact, which holds up whether you’re looking at jobs, the stock market, the nation’s total output of goods and services or some other economic measure. (See citations below.)

Now here’s what I puzzle over: How come this amply documented fact is such a well-kept secret?

Just imagine for a moment that the two parties’ economic records were switched. Every man, woman, child, cat and dog in America would know that the economy does better under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones, so powerful is the right-wing publicity machine. Fox News, talk radio and conservative think tanks would constantly hammer on that fact. And in reporting on budget debates, the mainstream media would routinely insert a boilerplate line noting the superior performance of the economy when a Republican is the chief executive.

But it’s the Dems that own the better record, so their accomplishments go unnoticed. Meanwhile, the GOP makes up in repetition what it lacks in a record. For instance, the party and its media spokespeople keep asserting several times a day that cutting taxes even on the wealthy creates jobs. Never mind that President George W. Bush spectacularly demonstrated otherwise. Make a dubious assertion often enough, and it starts sounding like solid fact.

Interestingly, all income sectors – the poor and the rich as well as everybody in between – do better under a Democratic president. Sure, the rich pay more in taxes, but because the economy is doing so well, they easily make up the difference with stock dividends and other income.

By the way, Bush’s fiscal policies (like President Reagan’s before him) have led to whopping budget deficits, which have spilled over into the Obama years – spillage that  the right-wing publicity machine has exploited. Thus, President Obama’s getting the rap. Republicans are going spastic over deficit spending, arguing it is a blight on America and must be wiped out. They skip over one little detail: Their party is the one largely responsible for that spending.

The major parties have two different economic approaches. Republicans tend to push money up the income scale by reducing programs for the poor and the middle class and cutting taxes for the rich. Democrats tend to push money down that scale by enhancing programs for the poor and the middle-class and raising taxes on the rich. Also, the GOP  tends to relax regulations on the marketplace, and the Dems tend to tighten the regs.

The results over decades are in: The Democratic approach apparently works better – a fact that is relevant in the present budget debate, in which House Repubicans are supporting Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget bill, which is, in today’s parlance, the Republican approach on steroids.

Articles on economic data showing better performance under Democratic presidents:

“Congresswoman says Democratic presidents create more private-sector jobs,” St Petersburg Times .

“How the U.S. Economy Performed Under Democratic and Republican Presidents,” Currency Thoughts.

“REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY,” The Washington Monthly. 

“Politicians Lie, Numbers Don't,” Slate. 

“Would Obama’s Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger?” The New York Times. (See chart showing all income sectors do better under Democrats.)

“Democratic vs. Republican Presidents: Economic Prosperity,” Blue Works Better. 

“Which Party Has Posted The Strongest Economic Numbers In The Modern Era?” DaveManuel.com. 

Articles on the budget deficit:

"Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming Years," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  

“CNN Fact Check: Is the annual deficit under Obama 12 times the deficit under Republicans?” CNN.