April 16, 2020--On Wisconsin

Under the radar, while understandably all attention has been focused on the coronavirus, the presidential campaign is gearing up. 

Trump's rambling press briefings have dominated the news as the death totals soar and the evidence accumulates that he wasted as much as two months denying there was a danger lurking.   

What concerns him is not the pandemic. To Trump that's a distraction from his real agenda--his reelection. It is also a mirror into what's important to him as well as what he fears.

Three things, directly related, terrify him--

(1) He might lose his reelection bid;

Which means (2) he would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution and, if so, could wind up jail; 

Then (3), always on his mind is money. Defending himself would require many millions while the Trump Depression is costing him a fortune in lost income from his real estate and entertainment empire.

No better example of the political trouble he is facing are the results from the recent Wisconsin elections.

For him there were at least two scary outcomes-- 

At the national level, though Wisconsin Republican leaders did all they could to suppress the vote, tens of thousands turned out, many risking their lives while having to wait up to two hours in packed lines to cast their ballots. 

The virus did not deter them nor did the fact that Republican election officials opened just five of nearly 200 historically available statewide venues for in-person voting.

Biden won in a landslide--he received 62.9% of the vote while Sanders attracted just 31.8%. Turnout was high even though a Biden victory was all but certain. 

Between the two candidates nearly 1.0 million votes were cast, about the same number as four years ago when the race between Bernie and Hillary was hotly contested.

This signaled to Trump that Democrats are fired up and willing to assume bodily danger to vote him out.

But, creating much more agita for Trump were the results of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election.

In spite of a huge infusion of out-of-state money to support his reelection, ultra-conservative judge Daniel Kelly was trounced by more than 10 points by Democrat Jill Karofsky.

Wisconsin may turn out to be 2020's Florida. Whoever carries the state is likely to become president. And with Biden well ahead of Trump in the polls, it is no wonder Trump is unraveling. 

June 8, 2015--On, Wisconsin

At football games the University of Wisconsin Badgers' fans sing this song--

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the ball clear down the field,
A touchdown sure this time 
(U rah rah)
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight! Fellows!--fight, fight, fight!
We'll win this game.

Ah, if only Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and for the moment the front-runner for the GOP nomination, could appropriate this song instead of trying again to get John Mellencamp to let him use "Small Town"--

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town,
Prob'ly die in a small town
Oh, those small communities.

Liberal Mellencamp told him, No way!

But with the governor recently turning his attention to undermining the quality of one of his state's institutional crown jewels--the University of Wisconsin--even he doesn't have the audacity to use the Badgers' fight song.

He finished off the state's municipal unions--his claim to national fame--survived a recall election, then reelection, and now is moving to take on the state's professors. A soft-touch group of opponents if there ever was one who are more used to taking sabbaticals than fighting a hyper-ambitious governor.

His plan for the university is to eliminate tenure.

Currently at UW, and almost all other private and public colleges and universities, tenure is universally available. Typically, anyone who holds the rank of associate or full professor who is rehired over three to five years is eligible for tenure, which, if awarded provides lifetime employment.

We could debate whether tenure is necessary or even a good idea. Advocates claim it allows professors academic freedom--to hold and teach any views they wish, very much including controversial ones. It protects faculty, they say, from being fired for their views, which has occurred at various times in our history, including the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against alleged communist penetration of our government and universities. Scores were intimidated and others fired for their supposed beliefs.

Others say tenure causes professors to lose their intellectual edge and too often, no longer interested in teaching but protected, to phone in their lectures.

Walker is not making similar claims, not demonologizing the faculty, merely asserting that tenure allows faculty members too much say about how universities are governed--it diminishes the power and control of the central administrations. In effect, he is saying, tenure and its privileges give too much authority to employees and too little to those that are expected to lead them--university management.

So much for right-wing Walker being true to his anti-government, anti-institution posture.

But Walker has a point. His real agenda is not university governance but to grab headlines by bully-style beating up on, in truth, rather powerless state employees who are stereotypically portrayed as absent-minded, lazy, and over-privledged. They typically "work"--teach--three days a week, at most nine months a year, and every seven years or so get the year off while receiving either half or full pay.

A pretty good deal by any measure.

As with other state workers, whose union he busted and from whom he then demanded and secured various financial givebacks, Walker is now going after another subset of Wisconsin employees who have little support among Wisconsinites, many of whom struggle to get by, not infrequently working two or three jobs just to stand still. How many trying to stay above water have any sympathy for others who they feel are less deserving of an easy ride? Walker is betting many and that that discontent, that anger, will propel him to the presidency.

Wisconsin has traditionally been a liberal state. Progressivism, liberalism has deep roots there. But now three times voters have turned out to keep Walker in office. He has been able to attract big Koch-brothers money likely because they see in Wisconsin's political transformation their hoped-for vision for America's future. If it can happen in the home state of La Follette, Proxmire, and Feingold, it can happen anywhere. But, we need to remind ourselves, Joseph McCarthy was also from the Badger State.

And, yes, Governor Walker is a college drop-out.

May 28, 2014--Bedfellows

"Here's something else you won't believe." I was all agitated.

"What is it now?" Rona asked, immediately exasperated with me. It was still the three-day weekend and we had promised each other we would restrain ourselves from reading about or watching the news.

"You saw that Obama paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he spent . . ."

"Four hours," Rona completed my thought.

"To spend millions and millions to get him there so he could have a few pictures taken with the troops. What is really making me crazy is that while he was there some White House official released the names of those meeting with Obama and included the name of the head of the CIA there. The station chief. To 6,000 journalists."

"Can't anyone do anything right?" Rona was sounding even more exasperated.

"If Obama wanted to show support for the military on Memorial Day he should have gone to the VA hospital in Phoenix where screw-ups led to the deaths of maybe 40 veterans. To look into the issue himself and as a way of taking responsibility. But, no, there were better photo-ops available in Afghanistan. Where, by the way, the president refused to meet with Obama."

"You sound as if you're ready to join the Tea Party."

"No kidding. I understand their frustration and anger about the government. It's too big and much of it doesn't know how to get anything worthwhile done."

"More evidence of how wide discontent is with government, all government, are the results of this past weekend's elections across Europe."

"Yeah, where right-wing extremists who masqueraded as Populists won major victories. From England to France to Denmark and of course Greece."

"They are an unholy alliance. Half of them are out-of-the-closet anti-Semites and most of the rest are either neo-fascists, anti-European Union, anti-foreigner, or violently anti-immigrant."

"Very anti everything."

"Almost sounds like the situation in the U.S.," Rona said.

"We haven't seen too much anti-Semitism."

"Yet," Rona added.

"Touché. But look at this." I held up the first section of the Times. "Look at this other unholy alliance."

"Between?"

"Progressives and conservatives over their shared antipathy for the widespread movement in public education to bring a common curriculum to kids and, as part of that, to hold teachers accountable for how well their students do on standardized tests."

"I saw that. How teachers unions are opposing the so-called Common Core approach while our version of states-rights Populists are wanting to block any kind of federal role in public schooling. Especially any that Obama supports."

"Even though this movement didn't start with him but, ironically for these states-rightists, with governors and state legislators even in Red States.

"But don't expect these coalitions to hold together," Rona said, "At the moment they're in bed with each other. In America, as soon they together get rid of the Common Core and teacher accountability, they'll resume fighting amongst themselves. And don't forget, most of the conservatives who have joined with the teachers unions are the very same folks who have been agitating to get rid of teachers unions altogether."

"And in some places like Wisconsin, they've succeeded."

"So expect them to be at each other's throats before too long. But in the meantime . . ."

I winked, "I'll have something to keep me agitated."

"Which you love."