Vouchers, Abortion and the Radical Right in Wisconsin Politics

"Conservative" Can be a Misleading Label

Several months ago, I wrote that “conservative” was a misleading label for those on the right in American politics, and that they should be called “radical rightists.”  I said that conservatives were people who wanted to conserve something, while radicals were people who wanted to make radical changes. Recent passage in Wisconsin of a law promoting private school vouchers and of a law creating new restrictions on abortions provide an opportunity to revisit that argument.

Conservatives Favor Limited Government With a Few Exceptions

Historically, conservatism has been associated in the United States with opposition to the expansion of the role of the government in people’s affairs. Conservatives have argued that most decisions should be left to individuals or to the impersonal workings of markets. They have said that unnecessary government interference reduces our freedom.  Therefore, conservatives have traditionally said that the powers of government should not be used to make changes in long-established practices.

At the same time, conservatives have always accepted that some things require collective action, and they have agreed that those things should be the province of government.  Education is one of those things. Public education has been a part of the bedrock of our society since its very beginning in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century.  Conservatives have traditionally supported public education, and consequently, it has been very strong in conservative parts of our country. It is not an accident that some of our best public school systems and our best public universities are in conservative states like Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Supporters of Vouchers Favor Radical Changes in Education

Today, however, many on the right in American politics want to apply the principles of free market competition to education. They say that schools that have to compete for students will have to work hard to serve those students well, and in order to stimulate that competition, they have decided to divert tax money from the support of public schools to vouchers that can be used by students who want to attend private schools. This is a radical change in the relationship between government and private education in the United States. 

It is also a radical change in the role of government in determining the structure of education. Setting curricula and setting requirements for graduation have always been responsibilities of local school boards and of state governments in this country.  Under the voucher program, curricula and graduation requirements will be set by private schools even when tax money is used to pay the students’ tuition at those schools. Thus, school vouchers are a very radical solution to the problems of education in the United States. Vouchers may work out well, but by no stretch of the imagination can they be considered conservative.  People who support the use of vouchers are radicals even though they are on the political right.

Opponents of Abortion Favor Expanding the Power of Government to Eliminate Abortions

The situation with regard to abortion is similar. Legal abortion has been an established part of our system for 40 years. However, unlike public education, it has always been controversial.  Supporters of a woman’s “right to choose” and supporters of a child’s “right to life” have no common moral ground. To the latter group, an abortion is a murder, and the group’s members have dedicated themselves to eliminating such murders from our country. Since the decision in Roe v. Wade precludes eliminating the right to abortion, its opponents have focused on making abortions difficult to obtain both physically and psychologically.  The hope is that, if abortions can be made sufficiently difficult enough to obtain, the right to an abortion will become an empty right, which exists only in theory.  No one will actually get an abortion in this country because abortions will be too difficult to obtain.

Here again we see the nature of the political right in our country. Its members seek to alter established practices radically, and in the case of abortion, they seek to do so by means that are directly opposed to traditional, conservative values, which stress limiting the reach of government.  Opponents of abortion seek to extend the powers of government to abridge a right guaranteed in law.  From their point of view, they are correct to do this because, if an abortion is a murder, the law is clearly wrong.  Our system has always included the idea that citizens have a right to oppose laws that are wrong and to attempt to end practices that are immoral.  The anti-slavery movement, for example, used legal and illegal means to bring an end to slavery.  However, such opposition to established practices cannot be described as conservative. A willingness to use all available means to change established practices is a radical stance, and so, members of the anti-abortion movement must be labeled as radicals.

Never Call Radicals “Conservative”!

This is important because words make a difference. The word “conservative” evokes an emotional response that is very different from the response evoked by the word “radical,” and a false use of the word “conservative” affects the character of political discourse.  False political labels mislead voters just as false labels on food mislead consumers. Falsely labeled food is likely to be bad for people who eat it, and falsely labeled political movements are bad for all of us. Never call radical rightists “conservative.”  If you do, you are supporting the use of false labeling. People like Scott Walker, Dave Murphy and Jim Steineke are radicals. They cannot be considered conservatives.

That is the Way to Tyranny

The NSA is Collecting Data on Millions of Communications

We have recently learned that the National Security Agency has been sweeping up data on millions of phone calls and emails. The agency has not collected the content of the communications, but it has collected the number (address) to which each communication was directed as well as its time and date.  Such information will allow the NSA to map communication networks over both space and time.

Is the Information Really Useful?

It is easy to see how this information might theoretically be used to improve our national security, but it is not so clear how much the information has actually contributed.  Have terrorist plots been foiled because of information collected in this way? We don’t know. How many plots have been foiled this way?  We don’t know.  Could they or would they have been foiled without this information? We don’t know.  We also don’t know whether there are other, less costly or less intrusive methods that could have been used. We really should have a national debate on this and other related questions, but we probably won’t be able to have such a debate, because our government will be unwilling to share any information about what has been done on the grounds that the program is “classified” and that revealing information about it would damage our national security. 

Veering Toward Totalitarianism

This is the point where we veer dangerously toward totalitarianism and a police state.  Our government is saying in effect, “We can collect any information about you that we want to collect, and we don’t have to tell you what we are doing because if we told you, we would damage our national security.”

“Trust us,” they say.  

“We have your interests at heart,” they say. 
 

Imprisoning People Without Trial or Even Charges

Before the NSA’s program was revealed, we had already allowed our government to hold people in prison for many years at Guantanamo without having to prove in court that the people had committed any crimes or even that releasing them would endanger our national security.  Again, our government said that it couldn’t reveal how it knew that these people were a danger to national security because to do so would endanger that security. Again, the government said, “Trust us.”

These Programs Invite Political Abuse

The motives of the officials who run these programs today may be pure, but the programs themselves are invitations to political abuse.  If we allow them to stand, they will eventually be abused.  We know that they will be abused because such abuse has occurred in the past.  We know, for example, that for many years, the FBI kept voluminous files on politicians and that J. Edgar Hoover used those files to maintain his power.  We also know that the FBI illegally collected information on civil rights workers because J. Edgar Hoover didn’t like their politics.  We saw with our own eyes that people were harassed and sometimes crushed by the McCarthy committee and by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

We can be certain that sooner or later, the temptation to use the powers of the new programs to silence or harass political opponents will be too great to resist. Sooner or later, the communications of a political opponent of a president, of a powerful senator or of the head of the CIA or the NSA will be monitored.  His or her friends will be subpoenaed to testify before congressional committees. Pressure will be brought on them to keep their mouths shut on political topics. Perhaps, their careers will be destroyed as were the careers of many writers, directors and actors in the days of the Hollywood blacklist. And when we ask why this or that person is targeted, we will be told that unfortunately, the reasons for doing so cannot be revealed because revealing them would damage our national security. This is not a fantasy.  We have seen such things done in this country in our lifetimes, and anyone who thinks that they could not happen again is I am sorry to say, sadly mistaken.  

The Bill of Rights is Supposed to Prevent This Sort of Thing

The writers of our Constitution knew that power will always be abused unless it is hedged about with limitations.  That is why we have the Bill of Rights.  That is why we do not allow our houses to be entered and searched without warrants.  That is why we do not allow people to be imprisoned without clear charges.  That is why the right of habeas corpus is important.  

The Way to Tyranny

Today, again, our government wants to be able to bypass the rules in the Bill of Rights. The war on terror provides a good excuse for doing it, but we cannot allow the excuse to be used unless it can be proved to be a valid excuse.  If we want to continue to enjoy our democracy and our freedom, we have to stand up now.  We have to say that national security cannot be used as an excuse to abridge our freedom without proving that it is a valid excuse and without showing how the scope of the abridgement will be limited. We have to require our government to show that the benefits of abridging our freedom really do outweigh the danger of doing so. We cannot allow our government simply to murmur the words “national security” and then do anything it wants to do.  That is the way to tyranny.

Winners For Walker

The Post-Crescent Labels Medicaid Expansion "a Winner for Wisconsin"

An editorial in the Post-Crescent’s on June 2, 2013 entitled “A Winner for Wisconsin” pointed out that expanding Medicaid to cover more people as provided under Obamacare would be a winner for Wisconsin from nearly every possible point of view. The state would save money.  Consumers would save money. Health care providers would save money, and people without health insurance would obtain it.

Why Has Mr. Walker Refused a “Winner for Wisconsin?”

If expanding Medicaid would be so great for all of us, why has Governor Walker, who is not a stupid man, decided to reject the expansion?  A part of the answer is that, like his fellow radical rightists in the legislature, Mr. Walker believes in minimizing the size of government in order to reduce taxes on the rich, and that consideration outweighs every other goal except that of building political support.  In Mr. Walker’s view, it doesn’t matter whether expanding Medicaid would be good for Wisconsin or not. What matters is that expanding Medicaid would expand the roles of the state and federal governments in providing health insurance, and in his doctrinaire view, that is always bad.

Mr. Walker Plays Politics With Medicaid

The other part of the answer is that the special interests who support Mr. Walker love what he is doing, and Mr. Walker works hard to satisfy the special interests who support him.  In fact, he is so anxious to do so, that in order to please those special interests, he is willing to make one big exception to the principle that the role of government should be minimized.  He doesn’t mind expanding the role of government in order to give large amounts of the taxpayers’ money to businesses.  He says that the purpose of giving money to businesses is to create jobs in Wisconsin, but we know that isn’t true because he has never bothered to track the use of the money to see how many jobs were really being created.  In fact, giving the taxpayers’ money to businesses has not created many jobs, but it has been very successful in building political support for Mr. Walker.

Refusing to Expand Medicaid Uses the Taxpayers’ Money to Further Mr. Walker’s Political Career

The refusal to expand Medicaid also uses the taxpayers’ money to build political support, although in a less direct way.  According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau as quoted in the Post-Crescent’s editorial, the state would save $119 million by accepting the Medicaid expansion. So, by refusing the expansion, Mr. Walker is giving up those savings.  In effect, he is using $119 million of our money to build political support for his career by pleasing the special interests who support him.  Refusing to expand Medicaid and giving money to business may not be winners for Wisconsin, but they are winners for Mr. Walker, and that is what counts for him.

“The Case for Voucher Expansion” is Weak

Post-Crescent Article Lays Out the Case

Jim Bender’s article entitled “The Case for Voucher Expansion” that appeared in the Post-Crescent on May 23, 2013 lays out the case for public funding private school vouchers, and it is a very weak case. Mr. Bender makes two important points. The first is that “data shows that students in parental choice programs graduate at higher rates than their public school counterparts and are more likely to enroll in college.”  Unfortunately, things are not so clear. The findings to which Mr. Bender refers come from a 5-year, longitudinal study of comparing a sample of students in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program (MPCP) voucher program with a matched sample of students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).  For detailed reviews of the reports of the study’s findings, visit the website of the National Education Policy Center.

The Finding is Based on Fewer Than Half of the Students in the Sample

The study was based on carefully drawn matched samples that were chosen at the beginning of the 5-year period, but of course, the students in the samples did not always stay put for 5 years. In fact, 56% of the students in the MPCP sample left the program before the end of the period. The finding that the MPCP students were more likely to graduate and enroll in college than their MPS counterparts was based only on those who remained in the sample at the end of the five years.  No results were reported for the large number who left the program. So, we do not know what happened to them. Did they graduate?  Did they go to college? Did they move to other cities? We don’t know.

The Differences Were Too Weak to Be a Basis for Policy Decisions

In addition, the differences between MPCP students and MPS students were found to be statistically significant only by using an unusually loose definition of statistical significance.  The differences between MPCP students and MPS students were so small that they were significant only at the level of p = .10 instead of the more usual p = .05.  This is important because the study used a very large sample size (more than 800), and with large samples sizes, statistical significance is easy to obtain.  In short, what we have here is a very weak finding of a very small difference, and no conclusions about the general value of voucher programs can be drawn from it.

Parental Choice is Not the Issue

Mr. Bender’s other important point is that parents ought to be able to choose where to send their children to school.  No one can quarrel with this sentiment, but parental choice is not the issue. Public funding is the issue.  No one denies the right of a parent to send his or her children to private schools. The question is: who should pay the tuition?

Private schools have always played an important role in our educational system.  In our own Fox Cities, generations of immigrant parents struggled and sacrificed to send their children to Catholic or to Lutheran schools.  The schools had and continue to have scholarship programs to help families that cannot afford their tuition.  Because of these scholarships, parents already have the choice to send their children to private schools.  Public funding will not change that, but it will drain scarce dollars from our public schools. 

We Have Great Public Schools.  We Should Not Weaken Them

Wisconsin has some of our country’s very best public schools.  We have them in part because we have consistently supported them. We have not diverted desperately needed dollars to the support of private schools instead, and we should not do so now.  People come to live here because of the quality of our schools.  Businesses locate here because of the quality of our schools.  They are our very best investment.  Why would we want to weaken them by diverting funds to private school vouchers?  Mr. Bender would like us to think that Milwaukee’s experience with vouchers offers proof that they make a big difference in students’ lives, but his evidence is very weak. We should not abandon something that has worked well for us for many on the basis of such weak evidence.

WEDC Invests in Scott Walker’s Political Future

Gov. Walker Doesn’t Care About Jobs

Scott Walker doesn’t care about creating jobs. Yes, I know, he promised to create 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin, but we all know that hasn’t happened. Now, we also know that he doesn’t really care. How do we know this?  We know it because he has not bothered to supervise the agency that he created for that purpose, or so he said.

The Post-Crescent ran an article on May 10, 2013 headlined “State Job Agency Put on Legislative Notice.” It was the latest in a series of articles describing the results of an audit of The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). The article says that the audit found that, “WEDC did not follow state law or adequately track loans it awarded. … the agency also sometimes gave money to companies that didn’t quality for tax breaks.” The article goes on to say, “… the audit said WEDC claimed its efforts created or saved 5000 jobs. But the audit said WEDC received only 45 percent of required progress reports from award recipients and didn’t verify any of the information.”

We Know He Doesn’t Care About Jobs Because He Didn’t Track Progress in Creating Them

It is one of the most basic principles of management that if you want to make something happen, you have to track its progress, but Gov. Walker was perfectly happy to allow tens of millions of dollars to be spent with no adequate oversight or reporting. There could be no more convincing demonstration of his priorities. He cares about giving tax money to businesses, but he doesn’t care what they do with it.  If he had cared about jobs or anything connected with the economic development of our state, he would have insisted on receiving detailed reports.  If the reports didn’t demonstrate that WEDC was successful in creating jobs, he would have wanted to know why, and he would have insisted on whatever changes were needed to make the program a success. But he didn’t do any of that.

Gov. Walker Cares About Building Business Support For His Political Career

So, if Gov. Walker doesn't care whether the companies that received the money created jobs or contributed anything to our state’s economic development, what does he care about?  I suggest that he cares about building political support among the recipients of the money.  I suggest that he cares about getting campaign funds from businesses.  I suggest that the state money given out by WEDC in the form of loans and tax breaks was intended as an investment in Gov. Walker’s political future.  There may of course be other explanations, but mine makes sense of the facts.  He made sure that the money was given out, but he didn’t worry about what it was used for.  If you don’t agree with my explanation, what do you suggest?

Radical Rightists Prefer to Reduce Taxes Rather Than Create Jobs

Radical Rightsts Don't Care About Creating Jobs

The Radical Rightists’ attitude toward creating jobs in Wisconsin is becoming clearer every day. They don’t really care about jobs at all. They care about reducing taxes on rich people, and they will do anything to achieve that. The Post-Crescent recently (May 1, 2013) reported that a project to expand and improve Outagamie County Airport may be delayed because of Congress’s recent  decision telling the FAA to use money from the airport improvement budget to pay the air traffic controllers and thereby avoid flight delays.

Reid Ribble Agrees: Avoid Airport Delays at All Cost

You may remember that the air traffic controllers had to be furloughed because of the federal budgetary “sequester.” With fewer controllers at the airports, flights had to be spaced further apart and that led to the delays. Congress decided to view delays at airports as a national emergency that demanded immediate action and passed a law modifying the “sequester” to allow money to be moved from the airport improvement budget to pay the controllers’ salaries.  With less money for construction, some projects will of course be delayed, and that brings us to jobs. Moving money out of construction will cost jobs. Apparently, creating jobs is less important than avoiding delays at airports.

Our own Representative Reid Ribble shares this attitude, as he made that clear in a recent release from his office. “Representative Reid Ribble (WI-08) today praised House passage of a bill that will give the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flexibility to avoid flight delays stemming from mandatory budget cuts known as the sequester.” Translation: the FAA can cut construction and eliminate jobs in order to avoid delays at airports.

Is There a Pattern Here?

We can see a pattern here. Recently, the radical rightists in Madison decided to turn down federal funds for expansion of Medicaid to cover more uninsured people. As I discussed in an earlier post in this blog, the decision to reject the expansion of Medicaid will cost jobs in the Fox Cities as well as Madison, Marshfield and other communities in Wisconsin that have regional medical centers. Governor Walker’s reason for turning down the funds was that the cost of the program might later fall on Wisconsin. He was concerned that the state might later need to increase taxes, and avoiding tax increases comes before creating jobs every time for a radical rightist. The next time you go to the polls, ask yourself whether you agree or not.

Wisconsin’s Radical Right – Believers in a Big Role for State Government?

Radical Right Wants to Guide Economic Development

An article in the Post-Crescent on April 25, 2013 described a new plan being promoted by Gov. Walker and the Radical Rightists in the legislature to create an organization that would funnel state and private funds into investments in start-up companies in Wisconsin. Under the proposed plan, the new organization could invest in a company if the public funds were no more than one-third to the total invested. The bill would target emerging companies in five industries: agriculture, information technology, engineered products, advanced manufacturing, and medical devices and imaging. According to the article, “… the state would be a limited partner in the program … it would share the risks and rewards with private investors.”

In other words, the new organization would do two big things. First, it would promote development of companies in certain industries,  and second, it would in effect become a shareholder or a partner in new companies.  By promoting this plan, Wisconsin’s Radical Rightists make it clear that they do not really believe that the free market economy left to itself will favor our state. Instead, we need a strong involvement by the state government, which will invest our tax money in private companies.

Radical Rightists in other states share this lack of faith in the private sector. I recently read that Alabama has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the production of Airbus’s A320 to the city of Mobile. Not to be outdone, Kentucky awarded $146.5 million in tax credits to Toyota to induce it to produce the Lexus ES at its plant in the state.

I do not wish to criticize the politicians who propose to invest tax money in luring companies to their respective states, but I do find it hypocritical that they do so after stigmatizing progressive politicians as “socialists” because they want to invest tax money in education or health care. For a state government to guide our state’s economic development by investing in selected companies is as “socialist” as anything currently being done in Washington.

What Should the Role of Government Be?

 It is time for Radical Rightists to come clean. They know that in a global economy, the state needs to play a large role. The question is what should that role be? Well, our Constitution lays it out when it says,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Some of these things are controversial but others are not. We can all agree that providing for the common defense and securing the blessing of liberty are among the roles of government, but what about the others? How can a government work to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare?

The Radical Rightists who control the government in Madison seem to think that if they give money to businesses, the businesses will create so much wealth that justice, tranquility and the general welfare will take care of themselves.

The Role of Government Should Be Broader Than Promoting Economic Development

We know that this is not true. Education does not happen automatically. Health care does not happen automatically, and wealth created by companies does not always trickle down to the rest of us. In fact, over the last 30 years, household incomes for most people have stagnated while the top 1% have enjoyed huge increases in their wealth. This sort of imbalance cannot be sustained. It does little to establish justice, and it will surely lead to social conflict and a loss of domestic tranquility.

 Moreover, companies in search of profits may damage the environment or even kill people as we see in the recent accident in Bangladesh, where more than 300 people died in the collapse of a factory, where garments were being made for popular, international clothing brands. The factory owners’ lack of concern for the safety of their workers was due to the corruption of Bangladesh’s regulatory agencies combined with the mercilessly low prices and tight schedules demanded by the clothing companies, who have shown in this incident that they will kill without mercy in order to meet the demands of a competitive market.

The dire effects of unregulated competition or government corruption are not limited to faraway places like Bangladesh. Here in Fox Cities, we know about the pollution of the Fox River with PCB’s, and we have just seen the Radical Rightists in Madison pass a Mining Bill that will allow Gogebic Taconite to develop an iron mine in our state without much environmental oversight.  We have learned that a competitive market without public regulation to insure the general welfare will lead to a loss of justice and of domestic tranquility.

Moreover, there are things like education and health care that cannot be provided effectively by the free market. We have always maintained public schools because we know that if we did not, many people would not be able to go to school, and we have recently come to understand that depending on the market to provide health care for people leads to radical inequity in its distribution. We can see that if we change a well-known song only a little to say, “If health care were a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.”

Clearly, promoting economic development, while useful, is not the only thing that our state needs to do. So, while I applaud the Radical Rightists’ belated recognition of the importance of government in a modern economy, I wait hopefully for the day when they will see that the role of government cannot be limited to giving money to business.