How Scott Walker Ruined My Summer Vacation

20 July 2011

Dear Scott Walker,

It's the end of July. It's 100 degrees. And we aren't just "still mad."  We're more mad. We're proving it at the ballot box. And we didn't go away.

To be quite honest, I, personally, did go away, for a short while, as you no doubt noticed when I didn't write as usual. I've been calling it a "vacation" on account of I didn't work much while I was gone, but it didn't really count as a vacation since (1) I spent most of my time trying as hard as I could not to spend any money (thanks, in large part, to you), and (2) despite my best efforts to remain gloriously unplugged, news of your misadventures and assaults on the working class still reached me, even in another state.

Portrait of my "vacation:" watching a (free) street Elvis and reminding Michigan to Stand with Wisconsin

Perhaps you're wondering why I'm blaming you for my $0 budget "vacation." I'm on reduced hours over the summer at my cushy term-to-term state job, and (thanks in large part to your cuts to all things worth funding), my position is going from 50% to 33% this fall, which doesn't make for a very rosy financial situation, despite the fact that my husband works full time. And taking on another job means finding full-time child care, which means even less take-home pay than I get now. So my "vacation" consisted of stress, worry, and embarrassing coupon-hunting penny-pinching every step of the way.

How many pennies did YOU save while I was gone? How many brown bags, for instance, did you let go to waste while you hobnobbed with financiers and lobbyists? Did you enjoy a couple of $350 bottles of wine over these dinners like your buddy Paul Ryan did? How much per person did you (or was it the taxpayers?) pay for the party your wife threw at the governor's mansion? I would really like to know what the brown bags you served at that party contained, but I only saw the footage from the marvelous protest flotilla, and couldn't make out any details. 

Anyway, it's been so long since I wrote to you that I'm struggling to prioritize my seemingly infinite list of items of dissent with your administration and its unprecedented, unconscionable, power grab. To make it easier for you to keep my specific comments in mind, let me bullet these for you, not necessarily in order of importance:

• Stop stacking the deck against democracy by gerrymandering and disenfranchising Wisconsin voters. The absurd, unwarranted, transparently partisan redistricting of Wisconsin is a shameful disgrace to our state's democratic tradition and a staggering marvel of political absurdity. Your support for this is proof that you do not now, and never did, support a government by, for or of, the people. As far as I can tell, the only thing you truly support is increasing the coffers of support for your own political agenda, which rarely (if ever) corresponds to the interests of this state, as the new map clearly shows.
• Stop with the "jobs" and "tools" talk. You have not created jobs; we have lost real existing jobs - and countless potential ones - under your administration and there is no evidence that your policies will create jobs that benefit this state. Unemployment is up in Wisconsin as it declines across the rest of the nation.  So stop lying about that and start creating jobs - and not the phony "new" McJobs you "create" by eliminating decent existing ones. And stop lying about how your budget cuts are "tools" that help local communities and won't lead to tax increases. 
• Stop wasting our money. And I'm not just talking about the money you waste being out of state all the time, or your insulting attempts at PR-stops around the state (which might better be called Protest Tours anyway), trying to take credit for local or existing projects.  You are wasting taxpayer money on your foolish political agenda and have the nerve to claim to be doing this in the name of "jobs".  The best example of this is the fiscal impact of your stubborn rejection of federal rail money, which would have created countless jobs, in addition to its money-saving environmental impacts.  By rejecting this money, you forced the state to borrow and we end up spending more on the Milwaukee-Chicago line than it would have cost to build the Milwaukee-Madison rail that the people have demanded. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a good article on how this math works. You should check it out. So we increase the debt, we lose the jobs, we don't have the rail service, and we send our dollars and our resources to Illinois instead of creating more jobs between Madison and Milwaukee. Free enterprise?  I don't think so.
• Resign. To put this in terms you can understand, given the "self-serving narrative" that is your constant reference to yourself as "CEO of Wisconsin," let me make it simple: you have proven that you do not know how business, or governments work. You have failed as governor (in your terms: "CEO") and you are going to be recalled ("fired").

I have been watching this summer as people continue to follow you wherever you go, making clear to you and the rest of the world that we're still here, we're still fighting, and we're getting more mad every day.  This is not about collective bargaining, even if that's what shook people awake this winter.  This is about taking democracy back, stopping the sale of our state to corporate interests, and protecting our children's education and the programs that serve our most vulnerable. It's about transparency in government, exposing and calling out the lies of corrupt and duplicitous politicians (see mirror for more info). It's about the recalls, especially yours.

 

"The story's behind you, sir. Turn around, sir!"

Of all your lies, the one I hate the most is the one you repeated to a local reporter after this aptly protested event - the ironically audacious claim that "a handful of people should not be able to dictate what people do in this state." If you would confront your constituents honestly, and acknowledge the fact that well over half the people of this state oppose you, we wouldn't have to follow you all over the place, shouting. As long as you continue to ignore us, continue to disrespect us, and continue to lie about our numbers, our aims and our needs, we will only grow more determined to see you recalled. And you will be recalled. 

So resign. Because whether or not I can afford to take another vacation next summer, I don't want to waste a moment of it thinking of you.

Until you're out of sight, out of mind, out of office, and for good,

Heather DuBois Bourenane

Wisconsin taxpayer and recall enthusiast

The Gall of the Wisconsin State Journal (Part 2: Letter from Grant Petty)

Followers of Monologues of Dissent may have already read my own letter to the editor on the gall of the Wisconsin State Journal and the ensuing email exchange with opinion editor Scott Milfred. I'm happy to report that the paper has confirmed it will run a revised-down-to-200-words version of my letter (god forbid I include all my reasons for objecting to their editorializing - they only have so much room for dissent, you know). I'll also acknowledge that despite his glaring editorial weaknesses, Scott Milfred is a very polite person, and at least he writes back, unlike some governors I know.

I want to share however, this much more lucid and compelling letter to the the WSJ editors, which puts my own correspondence to shame and is a must-read for anyone who cares about what's going on in Wisconsin, or who is interested more generally in the depressing topic of how local news coverage betrays the local citizenry.  Grant Petty is treasurer of the local activist organization, South Central Wisconsin Move to Amend, and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I thank him for giving permission to share his letter here. Please read, and pass on, his letter, which has been making the virtual rounds all week and has now been picked up on The Daily page of local alternative news weekly, the Isthmus.

Why I am dropping the Wisconsin State Journal

by Grant Petty

Dear Wisconsin State Journal,

As non-union public sector workers (yes, we exist) who are about to be hit with an 8% take-home pay cut as a result of Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill, my wife and I have to decide what luxuries we're going to cut out of our lives. She has been arguing for weeks that we should let our subscription to your newspaper expire.

Despite my recurring annoyance with your hit-and-miss political news coverage and editorializing since moving to Madison, I had halfheartedly defended renewing it. My excuse was that there was local news in your paper that I still wanted to be able to get from my breakfast reading rather than having to go online to look for it.

My resistance to dropping your paper finally collapsed Sunday morning when I read your jaw-dropping editorial "Rampant recalls wrong".

It was not simply that I disagreed with your position. I disagree with other publications' positions all the time without necessarily feeling insulted by them. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was that you had once again ignored or grossly oversimplified deep and important issues affecting Wisconsin while basing your position on superficial ones.

There were of course other straws:

You habitually oversimplified the motivations of the countless thousands of citizens -- many of whom previously had no union ties whatsoever -- present at or supporting the protests at the Capitol.

You inexplicably neglected to report on the remarkable, and nationally significant, outcome of the April 5 Dane County and Madison referendums on corporate money and speech, leaving it to out-of-state blogs and a local reader to do your reporting for you.

You confidently touted the "narrow yet conclusive" victory of Prosser over Kloppenburg without ever acknowledging, let alone countering, widely publicized anomalies and procedural violations (see also here and especially this testimony before an Assembly committee) that severely tested voter confidence in the provable validity of that outcome -- at least among those voters who had news sources other than the Wisconsin State Journal. And despite your own earlier pious lip service to "making sure all votes have been properly counted and tallied."

You mentioned the mess of the Prosser/Kloppenburg election in your advocacy for merit-based appointment of judges (which I do strongly agree with) while utterly failing to address the obvious and disturbing implications of the same mess for all elections held in Wisconsin.

You praised the bottom line of the "balanced budget" while failing to offer more than token criticism of just a few of the very controversial provisions of Walker's "budget repair" bill. (Hint: there are certainly less destructive and divisive ways to balance the budget and "not raise taxes" even if that is truly your sole overriding objective. And there are analysts who argue persuasively that Walker hasn't even done that.)

And the list goes on.

You are writing for one of the most informed, educated and civic-minded readerships in the country, encompassing both a top-tier university and the state capital, and yet you often write pabulum. You ignore, rather than confronting and testing, information that is widely available through other sources. You routinely insult the intelligence of a large fraction of the readership you depend on for your livelihood.

Worst of all, you fail to confront the myriad signs that democracy itself is under assault in the state of Wisconsin.

Do you really believe that the recall efforts against the GOP senators would have gained the remarkable momentum they did if they were solely about disliking one specific vote those senators cast, independent of the way in which it was done? Your simplistic and superficial editorial makes it sound like a few whiners and sore losers were behind the recalls, failing to note that they collected record numbers of signature in record time. Just from union members?

Since you're apparently posting your editorials from another planet, or at least another state, let me be clear: the spreading flame of opposition to the Walkers, Fitzgeralds and Prossers of this government, and all of their enablers, may have been ignited by opposition to specific policies, but it has been fanned to white heat by the following:

• Arrogant contempt for transparency in government, for the rule of law and for the constitutional authority of our courts by our elected officials.
• The shameless appointing of unqualified cronies to important state functions.
• Appalling power politics as manifested in successful efforts to create unusual obstacles to voting by traditionally Democratic-leaning constituents, such as students and poor people. (Note: the myth of rampant voter fraud has been thoroughly debunked. We should be much more concerned about election fraud.)
• Blatant pay-to-play favors to major campaign donors.
• A rubber-stamp Supreme Court bought and paid for (PDF) by the WMC.
• Mean-spirited scapegoating of public sector workers for partisan political purposes.
• Politically motivated exemptions from collective bargaining restrictions for public sector workers who helped Walker's campaign.
• Partisan harassment of prominent critics like UW-Madison professor Bill Cronon (which, by the way, numerous major out-of-town papers saw as newsworthy but the Wisconsin State Journal, apparently conflating the roles of "public employee" and "public official," did not.)
• Troubling evidence of incompetence and possible malfeasance in the conduct of the Waukesha vote count by a partisan, legally-tainted clerk with questionable explanations for a two-day-late decisive swing in the vote total.

In other words, all of the ugly things that we used to associate with banana republics, not with Wisconsin, of all places.

Corruption of political processes and abuses of power are not unique to any one party; indeed, they are the rule rather than the exception in human history. In our democracy, we depend on constitutional safeguards enforced by impartial courts, an uncompromised ballot box, and a vigilant press to keep them in check.

Once those barriers are breached, they are not easily restored.

Passion for the recalls was inflamed by events -- starting with the open meetings violations and concluding with the compromised Wisconsin Supreme Court's blessing of those violations -- that give us good reason to fear that the Wisconsin traditions of clean government and rule of law will be as dead as Monty Python's parrot unless all Wisconsinites, not just union members, fight for it with every tool at our disposal.

By failing to do what real journalists are supposed to do, which is to hold the powerful accountable and to challenge your readers to have a more nuanced understanding of the issues and hazards confronting us, the Wisconsin State Journal, our newspaper of record, has become one of the enablers of our spiral into political corruption, and for that reason we will not support it any longer.

It's a luxury we literally can no longer afford.

   Sincerely,

   Grant Petty

   Fitchurg, WI

 PS:  And just this morning, we have this:  http://www.fightingbob.com/article.cfm?articleID=1334 .  When will YOU start defending Wisconsin?

Thank you, Grant, for sharing your powerful letter. Let's hope the Wisconsin State Journal  - and its readers - take it seriously. Because you're right: we can't afford not to. The people fighting these corruptions of democracy and decorum are not just isolated fanatics screaming into the void. Maybe if we put all our "monologues" together, people will start listening, and we'll get to some real dialogue. 

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, 

you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

 

Advice to Scott Walker from the World's Greatest Mom

8 May 2011

Dear Scott Walker,

I had no intention of letting you ruin my Mothers' Day, but somehow, you did.  I was going to go to the Mother's Day Picnic at the Capitol, and spend the day just relaxing with my kids. I was going to take a day off. But I couldn't. Because of you.

For starters, I couldn't get the image out of my mind of you in that hideous camouflage jacket, pretending you like going fishing during your annual gubernatorial publicity event, event though the protest had been planned for ages. And I couldn't stop thinking of the interview in which you, of course, insulted the protesters (and by extension, me personally) by saying "most people in this state go fishing to get away from politics, from business..." Which made me immediately feel exactly the same way I felt when I heard you were out bowling and the rest of us were raging against the preposterous gall with which you continue to "govern" this state.  (I put "govern" in quotes to make it clear that I don't think you're a very good governor - in fact, I refuse even to acknowledge you with the title of "governor" until you begin to show that office the respect it deserves by engaging in actual dialogue with your consituents.  So now you have a goal to work toward!)

Anyway, your callous remarks - while intended, of course, to be yet another subtle yet direct insult to anyone opposed to your illegal and dictatorial abuse of office, really got me thinking about how impossible it's been, ever since you took office (and even before, really, when the threat of your reign of terror prevented our TAA union contract from going through last fall). Because you really, truly believe you can leave your conscience at the office and chill out on the lake while the rest of us agonize over what the hell we're going to do with our lives if you are successful in your irrepressible efforts to ruin them. 

So even though it's Mothers' Day, and even though I just so happen to be the world's greatest mother (as evidenced below), I wasn't able to leave this business in the Capitol. I wasn't able to "get away" from politics. Because the people of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, cannot just "get away" from the consequences of your actions, as much as you like to try to convince yourself that these consequences are entirely noble and - in the long run - the best for us.  Because, in the long run, people are going to be jobless, and homeless and without insurance.  People like me. And then, while you are sitting on a boat with some people you barely know, you'll be forced, I hope, to have a terrible time. Because you'll be thinking about how you ruined the life of the world's greatest mom, and how she'll never, ever forgive you for that.  And you should never forgive yourself for it, either.

Luckily for you, though, I give out complimentary advice on almost any topic and have the perfect, and perfectly simple, solution to our problem: just resign.  It's that easy.  Do it.

Until then, thanks for ruining my Mothers' Day, and I wish you the absolute worst in your visit to Washington, D.C. to impress your benefactors (the DeVos Foundation for the Destruction of Public Education) by spreading the outrageous lie of how "successful" Milwaukee charter schools are, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I have a feeling I'll be sharing more on this later this week. For now, just know I fully oppose your measures to take national your attempts to defund and destroy public schools while you use tax payer money to support private education and I will not be silent as you continue to mislead the public into thinking you support education while you work constantly to undermine it.  I hope you make as humiliating an impression as you did when you testified before Congress recently, if not worse.  And I hope there are tons of people there to give you the same "welcome" you got on your I-don't-give-a-crap-about-the-consequences-of-my-actions fishing trip.

Again, resign.

Heather DuBois Bourenane

World's Greatest Mother and Outraged Wisconsin Citizen

See that? "Best mom ever." That's me. So take my advice, and resign. Unless you hate mothers, which wouldn't really surprise me.