Progressive Thinking

ALTOONA, WI - I am not a government worker. I do not qualify for civil service protection. I have never been represented by a union in the workplace. But the assault on Wisconsin’s civil service system deeply concerns me, saddens me, frightens me and angers me all at the same time. This affects me because it’s not just a government employment issue, and it’s not just a union issue. This is about Wisconsin’s soul.

Where our state’s current rulers are taking us is a place Wisconsin has been before. Wisconsin once had a spoils system. A little over a century ago, the people of our state were well acquainted with political patronage and cronyism.

Citizens and their elected representatives responded to those corrupt conditions with sweeping reforms, including the establishment of the civil service system, done under the slogan “The Best Shall Serve the State.” Not the most loyal. Not the most well-connected. Not the most faithful supporters. The best. The most qualified.

That system has done Wisconsin good for 110 years. It has been updated and modernized many times since then. But it has remained an objective, merit-based system for hiring and firing. It has remained true to the original intent that the best shall serve the state.

What is being done now is not an update. It is not modernization. It is the replacement of an objective, merit-based civil service system with a subjective system, one that can easily morph into a spoils system. Those pushing this legislation keep saying decisions will continue to be based on merit. But the point is, those in charge of government agencies will no longer have to base their hiring and firing decisions on objective standards of merit. They will be able to consider political loyalties, they will be able to take connections into account, they will be able to look at campaign donations and time spent working for the party in power.

If they are able to, you can bet they will.

Finally, it is important to point out that this assault on Wisconsin’s civil service system is not happening in isolation. The dark impulses that inspire the dismantling of 110-year-old safeguards against government corruption are the same ones behind the continuing attacks on our state’s laws requiring the public’s business be done out in the open and in plain sight. Civil service protections are targeted for the same reason Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board was abolished. Our state’s current rulers need to do away with obstacles to cronyism and patronage for the same reason they can’t stand independent, nonpartisan oversight of their activities. And for the same reason, they felt the need to shield suspected political crimes from John Doe investigations.

Civil service, open records, the GAB and John Doe criminal probes all threaten their grip on power, they all hinder the current rulers’ ability to serve a privileged few at everyone else’s expense. That is what this latest legislation targeting civil service is all about . . . making sure their power and privilege cannot be questioned and cannot be challenged.

With student loan debt in Wisconsin at $19 billion and rising, we need a plan that allows loans to be refinanced at lower interest rates. Gov. Walker's rejection of refinancing leaves hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents at the mercy of Wall Street.

MADISON - With student loan debt in America standing at a record $1.2 trillion and more than a million Wisconsinites currently burdened by student loan debt, Governor Scott Walker announced his student debt proposals during a news conference at the Waukesha County Technical College Monday.

The Governor's plan includes increasing Wisconsin grants for technical college, deducting student loan interest from taxes, and creating grants for students in emergency financial need.

"It`s taking an existing program that`s in place -- and this just adds money, about $1 million more, which will add assistance for about 1,000 more students but it`s on a needs basis. It`s taking a program but expanding," Governor Walker said.

Walker says his new plan will make higher education more affordable and will build on the historic four-year UW System tuition freeze.

Few students, former students, educators or Democrats agree that Walker's plan will be much help.

"It`s not going to do anything to help the hard-working student loan borrowers in the state of Wisconsin who have done the right thing," Scot Ross with One Wisconsin Now said.

A study by the Institute for College Access and Success finds 70% of Wisconsin college graduates have student loan debt. The average exceeds $28,000. Walker’s college affordability initiative fails hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents with student loans because it does not provide needed relief from high interest rates.

What former students say they need is a plan that allows loans to be refinanced at lower interest rates like car and home loans.

Saul Newton is one of those students. "My highest interest rate on one of my loans is 7.5%. If I could refinance that down to 3% or 4%, that would be thousands of dollars a year that I could put back into the economy," Newton said.

Walker said that the most important thing he's done to improve college affordability is push a four-year tuition freeze for the University of Wisconsin System, which began with the 2013-'14 academic year and is to continue through 2016-'17.

“Unfortunately the Governor is not proposing a serious plan to help the over 815,000 Wisconsin residents who have student loans,” said State Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) co-author of the Wisconsin Higher Ed/Lower Debt bill.  "This seems to be more of an attempt at a political solution rather than a real effort to fix the problem."

Wisconsin ranks third in the nation for the number of residents with student loan debt. Seventy percent of college graduates now have student loan debt and sixty percent of those with student loan debt are 30 or older.

The amount of total student loan debt in Wisconsin is at $19 billion and rising with the average student loan debt at over $28,000. Research has shown that the high cost of student loans is also hurting Wisconsin’s economy. Over $200 million in annual lost new car sales have been attributed to the student loan crisis as borrowers often settle for used cars rather than buying new.

“If the student loan plan being put forward by the Governor and Senate Republicans was a class project it would get a failing grade," said Hansen. "It amounts to little more than lip service to a growing crisis that is crushing the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents and stifling any chance we have of real economic growth.”

Since 2013 Senator Hansen and Representative Cory Mason (D-Racine) have been promoting the Higher Ed/Lower Debt bill that would make it possible for Wisconsin residents to refinance their student loans at lower interest rates.

The state of Rhode Island, which has a student loan authority similar to the one proposed by Hansen and Mason, has been offering low cost student loans since 1981 and is currently offering student loan financing at rates as low as 4.24%.

“The only affordable way to address this growing crisis effectively is to offer borrowers the ability to refinance their student loans like home or car loans," concludes Hansen.  "Anything short of that is to leave Wisconsin borrowers at the mercy of Wall Street and the student loan giants.”

Wisconsin's stagnant economy would also benefit. “Wisconsin’s economy would clearly do better if we had a real policy solution to student loan debt and the governor’s plan isn’t it”, added Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha).

***

Legislative Staff writer Jay Wadd contributed to this story.

As the Republican leadership in Madison rush to move complex and controversial bills through the legislative process, legislators and the public don’t have access to changes in proposals offered until just before committee hearings. Thoughtful and meaning dialog on the impact of complex legislation is compromised when speedy passage becomes more important than open debate.

MADISON - “How can we digest all your work in this short amount of time?” Senator Bewley asked the Chair of the housing committee and author of the bill before her. An amendment replacing the bill was released just before the hearing on that bill.

“How can we have a thoughtful and intelligent discussion...we just got this stinking thing a few hours ago.”

The bill, SB 464 (which has an Assembly companion - AB 582) was complex. The bill’s author said he wanted to avoid “moving the goal post” on a development project. Among other things, the bill froze in place laws on an industrial development once a minor approval (like a driveway permit) was granted even if the project would not be completed for years.

The Towns Association called the legislation, “One of the most damaging bills to local control in recent memory.”

The committee Chair said he negotiated with local groups to remove the most egregious parts of the bill. It was impossible for anyone at the hearing, including the Senators on the committee, to say what was actually in or out of the twenty-page bill they just received.

After 5:00pm, the committee finally took up SB 464. It was the last on the agenda and many people had waited since 11:00am to testify.

Citizen after citizen who testified shared their concerns about the bill and offered some version of “I don’t know what’s in the bill and I don’t know if you’ve fixed the problem.”

People who waited all day in the Capitol hearing room to speak said they had no way of knowing a new version had been posted on a website. They gave up a day of work, used a vacation day and left home early to travel to the Capitol. No one told them about the revised bill or offered to give them copy.

During that day, in another hearing room, people testified against removing the effective ban on nuclear power plants. In a third hearing room, people waited to testify against a bill that would make extensive changes to protections for lakes and rivers.

All were controversial making big changes to public policy. There were six hearings happening at the same time. Twenty-two bills were voted out of committee. Many were introduced over the Holidays and rushed to public hearing right after the New Year.

That day the Senate Sporting Heritage, Mining and Forestry Committee, of which I am a member, heard a bill on fish farming. I asked the Chair why the bill was not assigned to the Ag Committee and he said, “It deals with water.” You’d think it would sent it to the Natural Resources Committee.

Knowing what was in the bill and how it interacted with existing laws related to water and agriculture was important for understanding the consequences of the bill.

Again, I received the bill just before the committee hearing. Supposedly, the bill was introduced the day before the hearing. Details of its exact impact were scarce.

Again, the bill was complex. It changed protections of streams and springs, altered water flow over dams (which affects streams) and interwove state and federal rules.

Again, the Chair was also the author of the bill. He and I were the only legislators at the hearing. All other Senators had two or more hearings at the same time.

I like fish. I keep two large aquariums and fiddle with water chemistry for fun. In full disclosure, the fish farmers named me their Legislator of the Year several years prior. I want fish farmers to succeed, but not at the expense of our Wisconsin waterways.

The homework needed on the bill was not possible with members pulled to other committees and the bill rushed so fast no one had a chance to read it. I sat in the public hearing, I was pretty opponents did not even know the bill existed.

Speed and secrecy have become all too common in the Capitol. Democracy suffers. Public interest suffers.

The process works best when – to use a fish analogy – we treat legislation like fish – open it up, set it on the table, let the sunshine in and see if the fish smells.

President Barack Obama, trying to do something about gun violence, and critics who believe he's determined to confiscate their weapons came face-to-face Thursday in a CNN town hall televised nationally. The President fielded tough questions from gun owners in a rare respectful and reasoned interlude in one of America's most poisoned political debates.

FAIRFAX, VA - President Barack Obama, who has vowed to do something about our nation's blight of gun violence, and critics who believe he's determined to confiscate their weapons came face-to-face here Thursday in a rare respectful and reasoned interlude in one of America's most poisoned political debates.

The President fielded tough questions from gun owners in the CNN town hall moderated by Anderson Cooper and televised nationally. For once, the nation's bitter, polarized politics failed to swamp a conversation on gun violence.

President Obama faced off against critics of his new executive actions, including expanded background checks for gun sales, but both sides listened carefully, referred to shared concerns and avoided histrionics. One absent voice was the National Rifle Association, which declined CNN's invitation to participate.

The event at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, came as Obama rededicates himself to an effort to reduce gun violence following a string of mass shootings and his own failure to get expansive reform efforts through Congress.

Obama fielded questions from supporters of his actions, including a priest, gun violence victims and a Chicago schoolboy who fears being shot, as well as critics ranging from a gun executive to a sheriff, a rape survivor and a murder victim's widow.

The meeting of about 100 people invited by CNN on all sides of the debate was an unusual forum for the President. While Obama has conducted hundreds of town hall events as a candidate and president, it's rare for him to hear so directly from ordinary Americans who oppose his policies.

While the President respectfully conversed with those who questioned him in person, he did not spare his foes in the gun rights debate, accusing them of spouting "imaginary fiction" about his motives and evoking the partisanship that typically encompasses the issues.

"The way it is described is that we are trying to take away everybody's guns," Obama said. "Our position is consistently mischaracterized ... If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top, it is so overheated."

He dismissed the notion that he was behind a plot to take away everybody's guns "so we can impose martial law". And he tried to dispel it by pointing out that he lacked the time remaining in office to take away the nation's 350 million firearms.

The President had sought tougher laws after the Newtown massacre that killed 20 small children and 5 teachers, but said he was foiled by the NRA. He has made his changes this time using his lawful executive powers, enraging Republicans who say he has overstepped his authority.

"All of us need to demand leaders brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby’s lies," Obama had wrote in column in the New York Times that was published on Thursday.

It is not clear if Obama's efforts this time will cut through the wall of suspicion that has been built up over many years by the gun lobby and their Republican allies in Congress. But it is clear that the President has not given up the fight.

ALTOONA, WI - We live in crazy and unpredictable times politically. The Republican Party descends into madness in so many respects and grows more self-destructive by the day, yet for now remains the majority party in America both nationally and at the state level. That says a lot about the Democratic Party’s weakness and lack of appeal.

In most statehouses across the country and most of the time in Congress, liberal or progressive ideas do not have the upper hand in policy debates and haven’t for quite some time. Progressive advocacy groups are regularly losing in the political arena, watching helplessly as right-wing forces successfully chip away at old progressive policies and programs or dismantle them altogether.

In searching for explanations, many rightly point to the corrupting influence of money in politics. Indeed, the exponential growth in money’s role in election campaigns and lobbying – and, just as importantly, the fact that so much of that money is supplied by so few – does cripple efforts to advance policies that promote the common good or serve the broad public interest.  A privileged few pay for politics, and a privileged few benefit from politics.

But here is modern-day progressivism’s great dilemma….

Ideas favoring the commoners among us instead of the royals don’t stand much of a chance of becoming the law of the land as long as the vast wealth of a few holds policymakers in such an iron grip. For there to be a chance of progressive values being reflected in government actions, something clearly needs to be done about money in politics. But campaign finance reformers aren’t faring any better than any other progressive policy advocates. They too are watching helplessly as old safeguards against government corruption are stripped away and the floodgates are opened ever wider, allowing more and more money to flood into elections and lobbying. They are powerless to stop political inequality from breeding still more political inequality. Growing political inequality then produces greater economic and social inequality. And the more government is seen working for just a few at everyone else’s expense, the more the masses despise government. The more government is despised, the easier it is for a wealthy and well-connected few to control.

This vicious cycle is the progressive quandary.

The recipe for breaking the cycle is undoubtedly a complicated mixture, but three ingredients are required for sure.

Repair the broken bonds between rural and urban people and their communities. When elected officials put policies and programs in place in the past that promoted greater equality and broadly shared prosperity, they did so with the support of both city and country folks. Rediscovering common ground that now-estranged rural and urban populations once stood on together starts with examining the reasons rural-urban political unions have fractured and rural and suburban interests have coalesced around a right-wing agenda. Then new counteractive measures for the 21st Century that both rural and urban voters can get behind have to be cooked up.

Weaken and eventually break the grip of the political industrial complex that strangles our democracy. Our political system has been commandeered by professionals. Now more than ever, the involvement of people with a life outside politics is needed. It’s quite possibly never been harder in our nation’s history for people who don’t practice politics for a living to gain a foothold in the public arena. But given how Americans are feeling about politics and politicians and government these days, there probably hasn’t ever been a time when such a rich reward awaits those willing to swim against the powerful currents of political professionalization.

And to do that….

Put non-monetary political currencies that have been largely forgotten back into circulation. One such currency is organized people. Another is provocative ideas. Those who call themselves progressives have been playing defense for more than a generation. They have become America’s true conservatives. They need to start playing offense. They need to start thinking big again.