Wisconsin has always been a progressive state - we sent a man racing on
horseback to ensure that Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution
which granted women the right to vote in 1920, and soon after established
Wisconsin’s chapter of the League of Women Voters. Long before that, the
Grand Old Party (GOP) was founded on March 20, 1858 - only ten years after
Wisconsin became a state - in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the term Republican was
coined as the name of our nation’s anti-slavery party. The progressive values
espoused by these actions are broadly indicative of the values of the people
who populated Wisconsin during the settlement of the western U.S. and strived
to create a state where hard work, mutual respect, and democracy became the
cornerstones of our social fabric.
After living out west for nearly a decade I can attest that being
from Wisconsin carries certain responsibilities because others have the highest
expectations of us. Specifically, Wisconsinites are known coast-to-coast for
receiving a top-notch public education and possessing an unmatched work ethic.
To be from Wisconsin means something, at least it used to.
The state’s motto says it all - Forward - yet here we sit, stationary at best,
and perhaps even moving backward to a state of old fashioned English-like rule,
like that which the pilgrims fled from in the first place, where politicians
legislated morality based solely on the religious beliefs of the rich and
powerful. The GOP has shifted radically in this direction over the past few
years, leaving behind truly conservative values in favor of radical oppression
of women and their children, minorities, and the poor, overt voter suppression
designed to silence and disenfranchise these same demographics, deceptive
legislative practices, and outright law-breaking, particularly as it relates to
campaign finance and election laws. The GOP’s platform has swung radically to
the right, and Democrats are engaged in an ongoing battle with them over who
might be right, or perhaps correct, on any number of issues, and together, but
separately, they pass legislation that satisfies no one, and provides no real
solutions to our current problems - all the while, both sides are accepting
money, donations, and gifts from lobbyists who have cheapened our statehouse to
nothing more than a shell. In the end they are all the same: bought and paid
for by corporate and special interests who are in no way representing you and
me, the electorate of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, here we sit, the electorate as real people, with real
problems and no real hope for a solution on the horizon among all the
bickering, to which there appears to be no end in sight. By real people and
real problems what I am talking about is hungry children and homeless families.
Real people who are unemployed and struggling to make ends meet to ensure their
families have enough to eat and a place to live, not to mention equitable and
affordable health insurance and access to high quality healthcare. Families who
send their children to failing and desperately underfunded schools, without any
other option for the education that is now nearly always required for gainful
employment. People who are living in communities with a rapidly deteriorating
physical infrastructure and who are further subject to a caustically eroded
social fabric. And that’s just here in Wisconsin.
Clearly we have failed, as a government, as a state, as a society,
and as humans. Just one hungry child in Wisconsin is one too many - and this
holds true for all of our failures, particularly as it relates to homelessness,
hunger, education, and community safety. As a state, as a society, as human
beings, it is incumbent upon us to do better, to demand better, of ourselves
and our neighbors, our elected officials, and our government. So long as our
politicians, on both sides of the aisle, continue to be bought and paid for by
special interests they will never live up to these expectations, and there can
be no new and innovative solutions to resolve the issues that have spiraled out
of control over the past 20 plus years, particularly the largest social
injustice issues of hunger, homelessness, healthcare/health insurance, and
unemployment. Current estimates for political advertising in the 2012
election season eclipse $32 Billion - can you imagine how many families that
amount of money could feed instead?
By providing all Wisconsin residents affordable and equitable
access to real health insurance (not some discount program with limited
services) and the highest quality healthcare the state resolves two issues with
a multiplier effect that ripples throughout our social fabric. First, it is
consistent with our humanitarian values to ensure every resident of our state
has equitable and affordable health insurance and access to high quality
healthcare, and it further rises to the expectation that we must do better for
ourselves, and demand more of our government if we are to live up to the values
our state was founded upon. Second, it removes a substantial burden and cost
for employers doing business in the state. By providing health insurance and
healthcare to every single resident, the state’s employers no longer have to
pay for benefits, nor employ personnel to negotiate and administer workplace
programs related to health insurance. This includes public schools, colleges,
municipalities, and your neighborhood manufacturer - you want to talk about job
creation, do you?
The job creation aspect goes a long way to resolving hunger and
homelessness - and I am not talking about dirty, dangerous mining jobs or minimum
wage box-store jobs that people are admittedly grateful to have, but fall short
of providing the income necessary to support Wisconsin’s families. We are
talking about modern manufacturing careers, high-tech biotechnology careers,
and other high-demand, high-wage industry sectors that provide safe working
conditions, and wages that are sufficient to support Wisconsin’s families.
The other part of the jobs equation is a workforce that supports
innovation and creativity to ensure Wisconsin’s firms can compete on a global
scale with the quality and value today’s global consumers demand. Wisconsin can
only live up to employers’ expectations if our education system produces
graduates who are work- and/or college-ready without remediation. Current data
indicates that more than 50 percent of incoming freshmen at public universities
require remediation in Mathematics, Reading, or Writing - and more often than
not, in all three subjects. Cost savings that schools realize when the state
provides health insurance to its residents aren’t enough to resolve the
problems within our schools, though it goes a long way under the direction of a
visionary leader who recognizes that ALL children can learn, and learn at high
levels when exposed to consistently high-quality instruction structured around
clear, high standards and powerful, thinking curriculum.
This requires a paradigm shift in education where teachers are
constantly challenged to find new and better ways to deliver instruction,
empowered with the resources and professional development necessary to
implement meaningful, evidence-based changes, fairly compensated, and revered
like the professionals they are when students demonstrate academic gains.
Furthermore, teachers whose students aren’t being successful must be supported
by school leadership, and frankly the entire community, as they grow into
effective teachers or other professions. Protecting the comfort of adults at
the expense of our children can’t be tolerated any longer; teachers must live
up to the awesome responsibility they have been charged with: to help raise
other peoples’ children. Or they must find a new line of work.
With health insurance and healthcare off the table, and the
resurrection of a first-class educational system in Wisconsin that feeds a high
quality workforce to attract employers and create jobs, our state can easily
resume the long-standing practice of collective bargaining. To be effective
though, collective bargaining must be revisioned to ensure that every unionized
worker is as good as the union’s best worker, and that unions discontinue the
practice of protecting all members at any cost - when a worker isn’t performing
to adequate standards and expectations they cannot continue to be granted union
protections from discipline and termination. By charging the state’s unions
with the responsibility of revisioning collective bargaining in Wisconsin
within this framework, Wisconsin’s worker’s rights are guaranteed to be
protected and worker quality becomes unmatched - like it once had been.
The only real question is “are we human enough to do this?”
To set aside our religious and political differences and demand the changes
necessary to ensure no resident of Wisconsin goes hungry or homeless, or is
without access to health insurance or healthcare, or is unable to get a good,
family-supporting job. It’s not as hard as you think:
1 - Forbid all lobbying of Wisconsin’s politicians, in and out of
our statehouse, under penalty of criminal law assessed against both the
lobbyist and the politician. We must demand that our legislature answer to the
electorate, and no one else, especially not corporate personhoods.
2 - Transition to a part-time, volunteer legislature that only
conducts actual legislative business (sorry Aaron Rodgers, and Lactococcus
lactis the state’s official microbe), with no time wasted on honorariums and
other pomp and circumstance.
3 - Require any politician, PAC, SuperPAC, or any other political
or social special interest group that wishes to clog our air waves (tv, radio,
internet) with advertising donate $5 for every $1 spent to Wisconsin’s chapters
of SecondHarvest/Feeding America. There is just no excuse for the excessive
spending when there are hungry people in our state.
4 -Simplify our state’s tax code so every single resident and
corporation based in Wisconsin, or having a physical location in Wisconsin,
pays a flat tax rate on every single dime they earn, along a scale from five to
25 percent based on the previous years’ income, without deductions or loopholes
of any kind. This is what human(e) people mean by shared sacrifice.
Now, if only I ran the zoo…
