Pogo Would Recognize Us

My hometown newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, often publishes a column or editorial from elsewhere as a counter, parallel or completely unrelated view of the paper's editorial position, which the JS labels "Another View". Such was the case in its Nov. 30 edition.

The paper's editorial headline that day was "GOP claims on tax effects overstated and misleading". The subhead said, "We're not persuaded that a slight increase in the top marginal tax rates will ensnare many 'job creators'." http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/gop-claims-on-tax-effects-overstated-and-misleading-pj7rhcc-181450841.html.

The other view, "Obama's demeaning ways don't help the 'job creators', (http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/obamas-demeaning-ways-dont-help-the-job-creators-q57relj-181450851.html) was written by a man named Peter Rush, who was identified as the author of Class Tax, Mass Tax. Rush's book bio says he is chairman and CEO of Kellen Company, a global professional services firm and that he has worked as a journalist, teacher, public relations executive and small business owner.

The word that got me was "demeaning," which I considered pejorative and, frankly, whining. Here's the letter I sent to the Journal Sentinel, as yet and probably forever, unpublished:

We have met the job creators and they are us. That play on the "We have met the enemy and it is us" epiphany of Walt Kelly's wise comic character, Pogo, came to mind when I read Peter Rush's "Another View" on Nov. 30's editorial page. Mr. Rush and so many others who have bought into the notion that rich people are "job creators," thus mustn't be taxed too much, (i.e. equal to the rest of us), don't seem to realize that without us, the consumers of goods and services, the wealthy would not be. It is consumers' buying power that enriches corporate owners and CEOs, hedge funders, entertainers and sports stars and rewards them for their talents and good fortune. Rather than demeaning the people Rush, etal, place in such elevated strata, President Obama is recognizing the value and contribution of the "real" working Americans, whom Rush, etc., do demean and don't acknowledge as being the engine of true job-creation power; American workers who deserve to be dignified with adequate pay and benefits. 

An Assault is Not a Fondle

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel didn't publish my letter, but that was no surprise. It was highly critical of the newspaper's editorial judgment in characterizing the assault of a female jogger as "fondling" -- not just once, but three times in the first three paragraphs of the story.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/regional-news-briefs-1j7n99q-180080571.html

Here is what I wrote:

  

 “To handle tenderly, lovingly, or lingeringly, caress, to show affection or desire by caressing.” Those are the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definitions for the word “fondle,” which the Journal Sentinel used three times in the first three paragraphs in a story today (Nov. 20) with the headline “Other bike trail sex assaults reported.” I can assure Journal Sentinel editorial staff that the woman who was attacked while jogging last week on the Oak Leaf Trail did not feel like the attacker was being loving or showing affection when he assaulted her. For any newspaper, much less a major daily – and the only one for Milwaukee County residents, to use such outrageous and retrograde language regarding a crime committed against a woman is a disgraceful reflection on your news organization in particular and on journalism in general. Perhaps your reporters, copy editors and editors need a class in what you might consider the passé concept of consciousness-raising.

I don’t know if, even though the letters editor chose not to publish my letter, it at least got somebody’s attention or if (hopefully) the paper received other complaints, too, but the terms used to describe the assault in a follow-up story when a man was arrested was “groping” and “fourth-degree sexual assault.”

How Has Competition in Healthcare Worked Out?

The Milwaukee newspaper, no doubt, gets way more letters from readers than it can possibly publish. That probably explains why the letter below, which I sent on Monday, Oct. 8, wasn't published. Surely, it couldn't be because I criticized the newspaper. Here, for anyone who follows this blog is what I wrote. 

The Journal Sentinel's top Page 1 news story today is that Mitt Romney "supports competition in healthcare". Given that the cost of healthcare has skyrocketed and access to healthcare has shrunk for a vast number of Americans ever since Richard Nixon opened the door to for-profit HMOs and hospitals back in 1971, I have to ask, "How did that 'competition in healthcare' thingy work out for us?" Medicare is the only healthcare program/plan that isn't a disaster. The people who have benefited financially are healthcare industry, including insurance, CEOs and shareholders. The only competition in healthcare for insurance companies is to get more of our money, not in providing better or more affordable coverage. Obamacare is showing real benefits, financially and otherwise, for many Americans, including those on Medicare for whom much less costly annual physicals are now covered before potentially catastrophic illnesses take hold that need highly expensive--and often--ineffective or inadequate treatment. The vast majority of Americans can't afford Romney's idea of returning to the good old days of "competition in healthcare" that has left so many in this country in financial ruin and some even dead.

Church Wants Government To Do What It Can't

Centuries after Jesus walked this earth, the Catholic church made a rule enforcing celebacy on its all-male clergy. Then it made another rule that prohibited its female parishioners from using contraceptives.

According to current statistics, 98% of those female parishioners have defied the dictum imposed upon them. I haven't seen any stats on the rate of clergy compliance with its rule, but the decades-old and ongoing scandal of clergy pedophilia might provide a clue.

So now comes the Catholic hierarchy demanding that the government do what it has so utterly and miserably failed to do.

After weeks of rancorous debate and vitriol about whether or not employers or their insurers should have to include contraceptives in their healhcare benefits, one of the highest ranking Catholic officials, Timothy Dolan, a cardinal who is New York archbishop, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a former Milwaukee WI archbishop, weighs in with an opinion piece that was published recently in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper arguing that his church has a First Amendment right to impose its will on everyone. http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/it-is-a-matter-of-religious-liberty-3s4ipri-143003455.html

Even more galling than Dolan's contentions, which are not surprising, was that his piece was stripped across the top of the front page of the paper's Sunday opinion section with a half-inch headline and no countervailing voice anywhere in the four-page section, much less in an equally visible space.

There are many hypotheses about the purpose of the Catholic church's rules. Among the suppositions about mandatory clergy celebacy that has a lot of credibility with me is that it better enables the church to control the wealth amassed by the clerics through their various religious activities, particularly since celebate clercs have no families to support or heirs to lay claim to any assets or support.

Given the great wealth the church has amassed, it looks like that rule has worked. And, of course, the objective of banning contraception is to control women.

It's bad enough that a bunch of old men who, ostensibly, have no experience with or stake in the consequences of their own or anyone else's sexual activities are dictating the bodily functions, health decisions and reproductive destinies of woman. Far more insidious is trying to get the govenment to enforce Catholic rules, not only on its own flock, in the perverted guise of religious freedom and First Amendment rights, but to insinuate the church's rules on everyone else.

What is never mentioned in this discussion is that most if not all of the Catholic-affiliated institutions that oppose including contraception coverage in their employees’ benefits receive federal funding in one form or another. That includes indirect funding via use of government-provided infrastructure and public-safety services that they don’t pay for, thanks to being tax-exempt, and more direct funding via grants and programmatic subsidies.

Doesn’t that trample the liberties of those who morally, religiously and otherwise object to funding of the church’s ideology and practices?

What’s the saying? One person’s rights end where another’s begin.

It’s important to clear the smoke that is clouding this debate. The Catholic church needs to:

• understand that the views and rights of non-Catholics are equally as valid as the Catholic stance,
• focus on enforcing its own rules internally,
• quit trying to get the government to do its work for it, and
• stop trying to impose its version of morality on the rest of us.

That's being truly conservative.

What Qualifies Wisconsin's Junior Senator?

Wisconsin’s junior senator has been on my mind lately—not because I think he’s doing a great job as one of this state’s two U.S. senators or that I’ve initiated any thoughts about him at all. It’s that his name has appeared a couple of times in the news and he was the subject of an email exchange someone I know had with Ron Johnson’s office staff.

First, the email exchange. My acquaintance contacted Johnson’s office about the debt ceiling/national debt and the need for a balanced solution of spending cuts and increasing revenue.

After seven paragraphs of explaining that the country was in dire fiscal straits, denigrating the President and Democrats for being irresponsible and not being serious, his staff email responder finally wrote, “I agree that we need a balanced approach which includes spending controls and increased revenue. But we need to increase revenue the old fashioned way, by growing our economy.”

That really set my friend off.

“After reading that,” she said, “I had to contact his office again. I asked how the heck were we to raise much needed revenue "the old fashioned way" when all of the policies he is pursuing put a stranglehold on economic growth. The policies he is pursuing cut public sector jobs, so those folks don't have money to spend to grow the economy. He pursues limits to social security, unemployment benefits and other social safety nets, so those people don't have money to spend to grow the economy. He pursues policies that undermine private sector wages, so those people have less money to spend to grow the economy. He is all for putting money in the pockets of people who already have more money than they need, and for ensuring those who would increase their spending of possible don't have enough to even cover the basics. 70% of our economy comes from consumer spending, yet he consistently pursues policies that guarantee consumers have less to spend. Then he turns around and makes a comment in his email to explain why he's against raising revenue by closing loopholes and letting the Bush tax cuts expire. From where, in God's name, does he expect the revenue our country needs to come??? Companies have plenty of capital with which to expand...they are sitting on mounds of revenue...but there is no demand for their goods and services 'cause none of us have any money to spend. It's all fine and good that Ron Johnson wants to raise revenue "the old fashioned way," but it's disingenuous (at best) to make such a statement in light of his concerted effort to take money out of the hands of those who actually can grow the economy and redistributed upward to those who are already hoarding significant ill-gotten gains.”

The first news mention. Johnson's name appeared on an opinion piece in Sunday’s Journal Sentinel Crossroads section. His was the anti position opposing President Obama’s judicial appointments, with U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin saying that long-vacant federal judgeships in Wisconsin need to be filled. The headline on the Johnson column was, “These nominees aren’t qualified.”

Whether they are or aren’t, all I could think was, here’s a plastics man who achieved his position as company CEO after marrying into the family that owned it before becoming a U.S. senator only six months ago. So what the heck would he know from who would be qualified to be a federal judge? Does he even know what a federal judge does?

The second news mention was the subject of a Wisconsin PolitiFact Check in which Johnson was rated him almost off the meter “True” to his statement that, “The federal government is spending 25% of our entire economy vs. 100 years ago we spent only 2%.”

I could only think, who would want to turn the clock back to those days?

A guy who posts at Toritto's blog gives a hint of what that might have been like, although he goes back only 70 or 80 years. His post about that was picked up by Salon.com, which can be seen here: http://open.salon.com/blog/toritto/2011/07/25/life_before_social_security

The truth of Johnson's statement is like saying the sky is always blue. That's true. It always is -- even on the cloudiest days. Above the thickest cloud layer, the sky is perpetually blue. That, like the virtures of an unfunded federal government, all depends on a person's point of view -- and access to government resources any way.

The Real "Me" and Gov't Handouts

Wisconsin resident Daniel Vitek complained in a letter to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the country "is being turned into a socialist state with the people and weak-kneed political hacks giving into the big labor unions demanding more and more handouts."

The country Mr. Vitek grew up, he wrote, "put self reliance and hard work first. ... Today it's all 'me' and handouts from big government."

There was more, but I'll stick with these excerpts.

(1) The handouts I'm aware of that union have demanded were for the most part benefits tradeoffs companies, pleading poverty, offered in lieu of payraises. Mr. Vitek, as a Wisconsin resident and presumptive newspaper reader, should know that those benefits are being rolled back, wholesale. Not only are union members' benefits shrinking, the politicians currently running this state have essentially stripped public-worker unions of collective bargaining rights and, thus, greatly diminished the union-initiated worker protections, higher pay and better workplace conditions that benefited all working Americans, whether union members or not. The decimation of private-sector unions began more than 30 years ago. Thus, those "big labor unions" Mr. Vitek so dispises and villifies are about as yesteryear as the cold war's communist scourge.

(2) The 'handouts' Mr. Vitek so resents laid the foundation for better pay, working conditions, and safer working conditions that resulted in better pay and safer working conditions for all Americans, including Mr. Vitek.

(3) The roads and highways Mr. Vitek drives on, the clean air, safe water and food supply he benefits from and so much more that contribute to Mr. Vitek's healthier life and good standard of living -- and the Social Security and Medicare I would bet anything Mr. Vitek receives -- are all parts of a social-sharing system that help stitch our country together. So too are the law enforcement, legal system, fire protection and myriad other "socialistic" benefits Mr. Vitek receives, thanks to his membershp in this democracy. That memberhip does have dues. They're called taxes.

(4) I'm flummoxed that Mr. Vitek is so resentful of self-reliant, hard-working Americans who band together to pressure employers to provide living wages for their labor, yet has no problem with the government's socialistic policies of this giving handouts the size of Jupiter to corporations that are pulling in record profits.

(5) The stunner though, was Mr. Vitek equating union actions with today's "all about me" narcissism. What could be more narcissistic and "all me" than American-style capitalism?