Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 7
Wisconsin Republicans embrace secrecy
Once again with this Legislature, the leaderships’ infatuation with secrecy has prevailed.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Republican state senators backtracked from their earlier flirtations with common sense and ran into the arms of their worst instincts.
They voted to let people make political donations without disclosing their employers. The provision was part of a sweeping rewrite of Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws that didn’t pass the Senate until just after midnight. All Democrats voted against the measure, as did Sen. Rob Cowles (R-Allouez), who had the courage to buck his party’s leaders and stand with citizens. The rest of the GOP voted in favor.
We urge Gov. Scott Walker to veto the bill - at least the provision dealing with donors’ employers. The public deserves better from its government.
This bill will make it much harder for citizens to know who is influencing their government. Requiring the names of employers is a basic piece of information that helps citizens track how powerful corporations are doling out influence.
An oft-cited example: William Gardner. In 2011, the CEO of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co. was convicted of two felonies for exceeding campaign finance limits and giving personal and company funds to railroad employees so they could make political donations to Walker and other candidates at Gardner’s direction.
Under current law, those illegal contributions could be identified. If Walker signs this bill into law? Maybe not.
That requirement also made it easier for citizens to know that payday lenders had sent thousands of dollars to both Democrats and Republicans in 2009 in an attempt to change state law.
Make no mistake: Republicans pushed through this provision but both parties benefit from it.
We urge Walker to listen to people such as Cowles, who demonstrated a higher degree of respect for citizens than did many of his colleagues.
“I’ve always believed strongly in transparency,” Cowles told reporters. “People deserve that. … The citizens need information.”
This legislation is reminiscent, though not as audacious, of the thwarted attempt last summer to gut the open records law. Voters should let their legislators - and the governor - know how they feel about this latest assault on open government.
Republicans, of course, were quick to declare their efforts a victory for “free speech.”
But it’s really a victory for the powerful who want to exert influence over lawmakers.
Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), at one time a reasonable voice in the Senate, went so far as to claim that the names of corporations and other employers weren’t relevant and that those parties could face boycotts or worse for making political contributions.
But there is precious little evidence to support her position, and for the public that risk has to be balanced against the benefits of disclosure.
As expected, the Senate also approved a bill that will eliminate the state Government Accountability Board, giving its job of overseeing elections and ethics to two new commissions. The Senate bill would include two former judges on the new ethics commission (the current accountability board is composed of six former judges). That’s an improvement over the Assembly version, but it’s not enough.
Reverting to a system of partisan commissions, which this bill would create, guarantees deadlock. And that will mean no oversight and a watchdog with no teeth. But that’s what this group of legislators seems to want.
Both bills have their genesis, in part, in an investigation of Walker and conservative groups who backed him. That John Doe investigation was ended last summer by the state Supreme Court, which determined that candidates and issue groups can work together.
While Wisconsin campaign finance law was due for a rewrite, this legislation weakens oversight. Consider how it would handle coordination. While collaboration between candidates and express advocacy groups - groups who specifically use words such as “vote for” or “vote against” in their communications - would remain illegal, the bill provides for a very narrow list of activities that can be banned.
All it will take is a wink and a nod to skirt the rules.
Senate Republicans had a chance to end this Legislature’s affair with secrecy. Instead, they remain locked in its embrace.
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Wisconsin State Journal, Nov. 6
Oscar Mayer had a way with M-a-d-i-s-o-n
Madison - especially its North and East sides - won’t be the same without Oscar Mayer.
Neither will the lives of some 1,000 employees, most of whom are losing their jobs.
The company’s sad announcement Wednesday that its headquarters and plant will close delivered a heavy if not surprising blow to workers and their families. Many said they saw it coming. The aging factory and offices, which once employed 4,000, have been shaving jobs for years.
The pain to those people most affected, including local businesses that cater to the plant and its workforce, can’t be minimized. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin estimated the impact at “hundreds of millions of dollars” on the area’s economy.
The only consolations may be that Madison has a low unemployment rate, and the company plans to phase out the plant over more than a year. So workers will have some time to prepare. They’ll get severance benefits and help finding new jobs, a company spokesman said. The mayor pledged to work with state officials to help displaced workers retrain.
But this loss, more than others in recent years, really hurts.
Oscar Mayer, famous for manufacturing hot dogs and lunch meat, has been a fixture here for nearly a century, giving to countless community causes. Along with its employees, it gave more than $500,000 to the United Way of Dane County last year, for example. And many of its workers serve as an army of community volunteers.
Madison needs more company headquarters, not fewer, because of the prosperity and generosity they so often provide.
If only Kraft Heinz, the recently merged parent company of Oscar Mayer, had seen the value of consolidating its manufacturing and corporate operations here, rather than in Iowa, Missouri or Chicago, where many of Madison’s jobs are apparently going. Local officials say they’ll try to talk the giant corporation out of its decision, but hope is thin.
The plant closing will leave a big hole on the North and East sides. The city should start planning now for ways to remake the large site so its shuttered factory and large surface parking lots don’t sit idle for long.
Madison loved being associated with Oscar Mayer, a pop culture icon. Everyone seemed to love its classic hot dogs. And the company’s fun bologna jingle and goofy Wienermobile complemented Madison’s quirky spirit.
When the State Journal last year compiled the 100 objects that define Madison, the Wienermobile easily made the list. Oscar Mayer’s 27-foot vehicle shaped like a wiener is a “pure Madison trademark,” much like the colorful, sunburst-patterned chairs of the Union Terrace, this newspaper reported.
And now it’s leaving.
The smell of Oscar Mayer meat wafting in the air near the plant may have bothered some neighbors in the past, but now it will be badly missed.
Oscar Mayer shutting down in Madison is the end of an era. It’s another hit to traditional manufacturing in a city that’s rapidly going high-tech. It hurts our city’s psyche as much as its heart.
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The Journal Times of Racine, Nov. 9
Rooting for Bart Starr all over again
The clock is ticking for the Green Bay Packers and their fans.
No, we’re not making a reference to Sunday’s kidney stone of a game down in Charlotte.
The clock is ticking down to what, we hope, will be an unforgettable moment linking multiple generations of Packers fans.
On Thanksgiving night, when the Packers play the archrival Chicago Bears, the team will conduct a ceremonial unveiling of Brett Favre’s retired No. 4 on the Lambeau Field façade at halftime.
Aaron Rodgers will be present, of course.
If all goes as planned, so will Bart Starr.
Younger Packers fans, those familiar with the nearly uninterrupted run of winning seasons with Favre, then Rodgers at quarterback, surely know Starr’s name, but might not realize that Starr has three more NFL championship rings than Favre and Rodgers combined. When Vince Lombardi won all those championships in the 1960s, Starr was his quarterback.
But more important than his success as a player is the content of Starr’s character: A true gentleman, married to the same woman - the former Cherry Morton, his high-school sweetheart - for more than 60 years, and a co-founder of the Rawhide Boys Ranch, which has been offering faith-based services to at-risk youths in Wisconsin since 1965. When he won a Corvette for being named Most Valuable Player of the second Super Bowl, he raffled off the car to complete the down payment on the Rawhide property in New London.
When Favre rose to NFL MVP status in the mid-1990s, Starr described himself and his fellow Southerner as “just a couple of Bubbas.”
After Favre’s messy divorce from the Packers in 2008, it took time for the wounds on both sides to heal. Rodgers helped welcome No. 4 back into the Green and Gold family, and when the time came to discuss retiring Favre’s jersey, Favre indicated he wanted Starr to be there.
Starr, of course, agreed. But then came the all-too-real concern that Starr, 81, might not live to see the ceremony.
In early September, Starr’s chances of appearing at the ceremony sustained a major setback, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported. About a year after a heart attack and multiple strokes nearly killed him, Starr suffered a life-threatening lung infection. Although he was able to leave the hospital after four days, the illness undid much of the progress he’d made since his first round of an experimental stem cell treatment in June.
A wonderfully touching piece by Ian O’Connor was published by ESPN.com on Sept. 1 detailing Starr’s day-to-day struggle. He struggles to remember games and plays from his glory-filled playing days, to remember who Lombardi was, but as O’Connor wrote of his visit to the Starrs’ home:
“Well look who’s back,” Cherry says. “Hey darling.”
“Hi, beautiful,” her husband says through his brightest smile of the afternoon.
“Good days, bad days, mediocre days … it never, ever matters. Bart Starr is always a 17-year-old boy when Cherry Morton is in the room.”
For Packers fans of a certain age, reading about his failing health and remembering his greatness as a player and a man, it’s all of a sudden become very important to see Bart Starr on Thanksgiving night.
The Press-Gazette reported late last month that Starr was on course to make it back to Lambeau.
“If it were tomorrow, he’d be there,” Cherry Starr said on Oct. 26.
It’s 1967 again. We’re all rooting for you, Bart.
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