FEELS LIKE TOO MUCH BUT 100 DAYS IS NOT ENOUGH

By Dominique Paul Noth

The Internet has made a laughingstock
out of how often Trump presents
his executive orders.

Trump’s diehard supporters are right. One hundred days is not enough to judge a president.  Six months would be better -- though, if in that time he provides no greater satisfaction to the base than Neil Gorsuch, their diehardism should  die away. If there is any objectivity left.

For the majority of the nation that didn’t want him, it is maddening for Trump to talk about eight years as inevitable while they are anxious for four years to be over quickly. They want their own satisfaction – booting him out.

Still,  with some 1,360 days left to him by the Constitution he wants to eliminate – he’s mad that Congress and the courts are enshrined as equal powers – it would be wise to curb the detest  though not the protests. It could be time for America to pace itself a bit even as he bangs his new bumper car post to post. 

Truth is, he has outlined his plans for the next nine months. There are few signs  that any of the goals will be achieved, including his constant promise that he will grow the economy by far more than 3%.  Federal economists note that in the first quarter the gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of just 0.7%, down from the 2.1% he inherited from Obama. 

In a remarkably self-serving op-ed in the Washington Post – yes, one of those “fake news” sites he wants people to ignore – Trump slams the old ways of doing things while policy-wise he is getting credit for sticking with the old ways on foreign policy and trade, mainly negotiation, caution and reliance on allies.

Curious how he is getting points for not being as offensive as expected.

He criticized Obama ad nauseum for signing executive orders, but he does mainly that even more, and his orders unlike Obama’s count for little except study and threats. So the nation has not been rocked on its heels as it could be by changes in health care, the environment and taxation.  He has a Congress in the  same party (ostensibly) but has great difficulty in getting either the Senate or the House to buy his exorbitant ideas of a border wall or a one-page tax outline.

No one has quite figured if he is a hawk or a blusterer on Syria and North Korea, but this may be the lone example where uncertainty is helping his image.  As long as we don’t know, Armageddon is not at hand.  Eventually, in those next six months, he has got to determine a direction, but for now he is successfully playing “fast and loose,”  which may work in a pool hall but not long in the White House.

Hasan Minhaj tore into the media even
more than Trump does

Even with vicious verbal attacks on immigrants, his decision to hold a self-congratulatory rally in Pennsylvania April 29 worked out well, giving him a rare optic win. The correspondents’ meal he ignored allowed Comedy Central’s Hasan Minhaj to unload bombloads of comic truths on the media and the president, but Trump still got media coverage and did look like he had the truer Americans to meet with than the tuxedoed dinner crowd packed into a Washington ballroom at a rival hotel.

Until you recall who has used dress-up crowded dinners to his advantage at Mar-a-Lago.  There the great unwashed who flock to his rallies can’t afford the entry fee.

The pressure on his presidency is not about to let up.  Climate change opposition to his semi-denial brought thousands into the street, proclaiming not just the wisdom but the economic strength of science.  His efforts to claw back the environmental protection of Obama using the Antiquities Act appears to be producing new protests in the environmental community, which includes many conservatives. 

There is a suspicion among many Americans that his “good friend,” Chinese president Xi, is a shrewd double dealer, licking his lips as he eats Trump’s lunch.  Including Trump’s sea food lunch since China remains the major cause of global overfishing, which may not yet affect Trump’s lavish lifestyle but is wreaking havoc on the rest of the world.

While Trump scores easy points catering to the NRA convention, states and the courts are taking up the issue anew. 

So are the artists he dislikes. They are working grassroots in community after community, offering viewpoints that he may find disturbing but are influencing the public mind. 

Immigration has always been a major movie theme, but now has moved onto the global stage. Even law enforcement in sanctuary cities are rushing to enact the stories of dreamers.

And new plays about guns in society are back in force.

What we have is a continuing war against Trump’s approach even as he embraces so much of what past White Houses achieved, without acknowledging the debt. For many observers locally and abroad, the chief problem is Trump’s ignorance, which has him learning on the job but obviously at a loss on the complex issues he has to decide on. More than ever, who is around him has become more important than his self-described “great mind.”

The basis of the American dream is that anyone can become president.

Now that anyone has, America has to reassess what that meant. 

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as one of the editors for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor, then was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as at his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.  

THERE IS NO SANCTUARY FROM TRUMP’S IDIOCY ON THE LAW

Voces de la Frontera is urging a gigantic repeat of massive solidarity for its May 1 Milwaukee march

By Dominique Paul Noth

The White House continued its careen out of control by adding sanctuary attacks to its judicial failures – and then criticizing the appeals court that has yet to hear the case.

It was a San Francisco court that initiated a nationwide blockade -- along lines that conservatives usually applaud.  The White House and Jeff Sessions can now add San Francisco to the derision laid on “an island in the Pacific” for opposing the travel ban.

On April 25, federal district judge William H. Orrick temporarily stopped nationwide the effort to threaten “sanctuary cities” with loss of federal money in a case that next will be heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that Trump and the White House have already condemned.

If that doesn’t start your laughter juices flowing, consider that the Frisco judge scolded the government for the revealing words employed despite its court arguments -– remarks by Trump, Sessions and press secretary Sean Spicer -- pointing out, as Jennifer Rubin wrote for the Washington Post, that “as in the legal fight over the travel ban, the government employed what can only be described as a ridiculous defense.”

The government argued that this sanctuary executive order didn’t accomplish anything – again! – except threaten.  Orrick ruled that the complaining counties were likely to succeed “that the Executive Order is unconstitutional because it seeks to wield powers that belong exclusively to Congress, the spending powers.” 

This was also the basis for a 2012 decision that drew the wrath of liberals in 2012 when SCOTUS gave states the option to turn down Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, saying states had a right to decide in use of the money.  It was, of course, unbelievably stupid that any state did turn down the willing federal expenditure, but those states under GOP control rushed to hurt Obamacare and their constituents by opting out, as did Wisconsin where the negative effect is still being felt.

In clear terms, Trump is trying to penalize cities for broad uses of money that Congress and federal agencies had long validated.  The ruling left alone Department of Justice grants but these also have wider use than immigration and are likely to spawn separate legal action.

This suggests an interesting lesson that Trump has still to be taught -- about what rights states should seek and what rights the federal government should affirm.

State rights remain a lively issue at the courts, but Trump is helping determine which state rights are worth keeping – such as states deciding how best to keep their citizens safe by open community engagement vs.   policies better suited to universal federal standards, such as health care.

It is notable that Trump on April 26 got the Freedom Caucus behind his previously doomed attack on Obamacare by using “state rights” as a goad. But look at what they agreed to – that states to save money could weaken medical protections at the local level as a way to get conservative votes. Who would want their financially strapped state making that life and death decision?

That same date, Trump tried to argue that the Antiquities Act, which presidents have used for a century  with congressional authority to protect the scenic heritage from exploitation, had been egregiously misapplied to land he admitted was beautiful but wants dug up by rapacious privateers. 

By ordering an antiquities review, Trump is probably again misreading his executive authority, but he was also hypocritically pretending he was concerned about the land when the whole idea was to open up Utah and other protected areas to fossil fuel exploration. But he is specifically targeting use of the 1906 law by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, unaware that he may one day want to use the law himself and that protection of national resources is best left to the nation. 

Now on sanctuary cities, the federal government is trying to oppose what local police and local courts have determined are better ways to handle their own communities.

Trump is failing in court, but he may be making points in public opinion, given the way national media tends to mischaracterize the issue – by suggesting that sanctuary cities are not cooperating with the federal government.  Which is untrue – they are not cooperating with the extremism demonstrated by AG Sessions and President Trump, who basically want to turn local police and courts into ICE agents inspecting every offender, be it traffic court or pot smoking, for their legal papers – and then reporting any discrepancy to immigration for deportation.

Let it be noted that the term “sanctuary city” exists in Trump’s brain but not in any clear legal definition.  The term “sanctuary city” – experts tell me -- is used to refer to those localities that place limits on their assistance to federal immigration authorities seeking to apprehend and remove those who got into this country but lack current papers.  The majority of so-called illegal immigrants actually entered legally but overstayed their visas, again demonstrating that Trump wants to waste billions on a border wall that does virtually nothing.

The word “sanctuary” has migrated from a religious and social term for protecting the persecuted into a welcome by communities that on a local level differentiate between valuable residents and the “bad hombres” of Trump’s imagination, thereby creating a trust between the law and the community that has worked to the advantage of society.

Even when Trump refers to MS-13 gangs, an international criminal scourge that started in Los Angeles four decades ago, he fails to recognize that these tattooed terrors hardly represent the millions in America whose only crime has been how they got in or stayed in. An LA paper has offered a fascinating history that corrects Trump’s tweets.

It’s doubtful that a border wall would stop even one gang member. Yet Sessions has openly warned that entry without papers alone is enough to get people deported without process. No wonder there are communities that slam this approach, including Milwaukee.  No wonder the courts shut down the excess he thinks are presidential powers.

And sadly, no wonder local legislatures keep stepping in to pretend to support federal powers while actually signaling gigantic mistrust of local police and mayors to determine what is best for their residents.

It’s happening right now in the Wisconsin Assembly with two bills, AB 127 and AB 190.

The first is what I call the squealers bill, or maybe the Quisling bill or maybe McCarthyism returned and unleashed.  It protects anyone who calls into question someone else’s immigration status, a worry that almost has to be based on hearing someone speak Spanish or having a neighbor whose color or language style you don’t like.

AB 190 spreads the idea to communities that try to write any law of protection connected to immigration, penalizing the local governments that try to go further than what their Madison masters allow. This is similar to laws imposed on local communities to prevent broader paid sick days or minimum wage than the state allows.

It’s interesting how those who pretend to be against government getting too large are always using legislation to impose their government on the rest of us. 

Trump, so determined to prove success within 100 days, is doing the same thing, with continuing bluster and failure.   He’s demonstrating how destructive such overreach is to the image of the federal government at home and overseas.  And he shows no signs of growing up.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as one of the editors for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor, then was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as at his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

HOW TO PICK (OR NOT) RIGHT DEMOCRAT TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR

By Dominique Paul Noth

Even in 1901 Robert M. La Follette Sr. looked like
a governor, and he wasn't even a Democrat! What
will the new Democratic candidate look and
sound like?

I don’t know which is more distressing – the Democrats thinking the game is over because the party has not locked in lead candidates for Wisconsin governor in 2018, or the party assumption expressed at social gatherings  that it has to be someone personally well heeled to take on incumbent Scott Walker.

Talk about stepping on your own options! And having reality backwards. The race has already swept  over Dane County Exec Joe Parisi, Green Bay Packers retiree Mark Tauscher (pretty smart idea), retired state senator Timothy Cullen and now is looking at businessmen (Andy Gronik???)  and some more familiar names.

Not only do I think there is still time, but I’m worried about the price tag being put on the search, as opposed to the unity that must elevate the choice. 

First, let’s dispense with the nonsense that Republicans do it better.  Of course they will always have more money and if that is your standard, just go and lay down in the corner now. This is not a question the Republicans worry about,  since Citizens United and unenforced campaign finance rules in Wisconsin mean  they can rely on a network of dark money to fund Slenderman if that is the choice. Okay, I exaggerate but even if they pick Robin Vos they can raise money. 

Inbred confidence about money puts  the GOP ahead – but  in ways that no one should emulate. And not that far ahead.

Trump may have talked endlessly about money during his campaign – and since -- and received endless free coverage for that. But his actual campaign outlay was lower. Maybe his  voters thought some of his money would rub off on them. Promises were bigger in the Trump campaign. Only now the reality that he doesn’t know how to do diddly is sinking in.

The death rattle of  weak deeds will count most in the campaign against Walker, who already is entering his seventh year in office.  He is not a dumb politician. He makes it sound like it is his Christian and Boy Scout duty to oppose taxes in any shape except for his own secret and dirty   ones. But he has been an ineffective governor. The ship of state just bobs back and forth in the same spot. 

You can hardly quote him to create  ridicule, as you can with Trump. Inelegant? Boastful?  Sure, but hardly a memorable style. He’s much like Trump in promises exuded with confidence, but Walker already has a long  track record of  deception, of policies unfulfilled or exaggerated or misapplied. Current GOP legislators don’t admit this aloud, but he has put many in bind after bind.

This should be a campaign where the Democrats succeed by borrowing from Reagan – the “are you better off” question reaching back to 2010.  Not just  poor families but a typical middle class family of two parents and two kids, or single parents, or farmhands, or storekeepers or  seniors – the bulk of the voters.  It’s tax time. Have them write finances down and then look at the realities.

Despite Walker’s tax pledges, are you truly better off? Because of him?  Can you  claim real savings on property tax, faster transit to jobs, more assured life on the farm, better schooling at reasonable cost,  health care improvements the state is responsible for, better treatment and balance in the environment – or is it mainly promises about not spending like the Democrats of GOP legend? And how has that  welfare to educate the rich worked out for you?

Give Walker the votes of private school beneficiaries,  throw in the  upper class bureaucrats and managers, discount the GOP stalwarts who are wising up,   and the Democrats stand a good chance despite Walker’s lock on the state GOP machinery  and glib evasion on the hard statistics.

It may come down to how the Democrats argue for change, without a smidgen of arrogant superiority and a big dollop of common sense.

Of course money is essential to today’s campaign environment and it is harder for Democrats to scratch it up because they inevitably rely more on poorer voters. But a good candidate for the people is still an overriding advantage. History is one proof. 

Leading into 2008, Obama was not the best heeled candidate  but he stirred the most excitement and that allowed a working system to raise enormous funds.  There were deeper initial coffers on the Hillary Clinton side and it did not matter.

In 2016, Hillary had the money advantage plus the universal sentiment that it was her turn –  yet Bernie Sanders generated more excitement and probably took away the economy as the hottest issue for her. So she had to look elsewhere.   In fact, back then, no one – not even the Sanders camp – questioned her plan to use Trump’s words against him, just as many now are pushing to use Walker’s words against him – you know the 250,000 jobs promise, the opposition to trains  and other failures like that.

Forget the words. Walker’s record is prime for attack on basic principles.  And never underestimate the power of taking a chance.

Right now the state party is consumed in discussing who will lead it behind the scenes even before picking a candidate. Not crazy about that priority. How about this one?

Imagine a Democrat with good ideas about transportation, about jobs and infrastructure, about how to rebuild Wisconsin as an education leader, about embracing the value of our land more than providing a free dump of hog manure into the river or a fouling of the water table. 

Many Democrats need to put such ideas into writing and stop playing defense – or claims of “we obviously know better” -- against the GOP financial  juggernaut.  Remember, some Republicans are longing for the leash to be removed so they can just consider community needs. They may not jump over to the Democrats but their hesitation about Walker will be eminently exploitable.

Nor do the Democrats have a weak bench, just  maybe a younger bench that may have to wait a few years to challenge for the top spot.   I know the Milwaukee bench pretty well and asked some veteran Democratic rainmakers, such as former legislator Gary Goyke, to monitor my ideas and provide a few more names from around the state.  That’s partly to put a lie to the attitude that the Democrats don’t have anyone anymore.

Vinehout in 2012 campaigning at Serb Hall.

Here are names that will grow in importance – Mandela Barnes, Sens.  Kathleen Vinehout and Chris Larson, Reps.  Dana Wachs, Chris Taylor, Katrina Shankland,  Evan Goyke, David Crowley, Daniel Riemer, Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nichols,  Rep. Cory Mason now running for Racine Mayor, Waupaca Mayor Brian Smith  plus a slew of candidates that look appealing (Dmitri Martin, Justin Bielinski, Mandy Wright, Edgar Lin) --  and that’s just from the front of my brain.

Some are too green. Walker may for a long time represent  the last gasp of trusting the state to an immature backbencher whatever his rep as a campaigner. So the Democratic  candidate for governor should have some gravitas and proof of experience and results. 

Name recognition is not as important as the impact that can be built over 18 months and the ability to withstand an onslaught of negativity. The interest should be from the angry  bottom up.

Now it gets tricky. Think like a TV showrunner – because appearance carry weight in the modern era.  It shouldn’t matter, but does the candidate have a voice like Ezio Pinza? Or a voice like Tiny Tim? How they sound and talk on the stump will be important.

Can't look like a Coles Bashford in 1855.

It is no lame joke that someone who looks like Lincoln couldn’t win the modern presidency.  Certainly someone as pot-bellied for governor as Coles Bashford  couldn’t be fielded today  -- and he won the governor’s office in a voter fraud scandal in 1856 and  left office ahead of a bribery scandal in 1858  (and we think today’s politics are nasty).

I have heard Vinehout’s peppy style and saw how it worked better with country voters than city ones, and I sense she is eager to run.  There is another factor.  Hillary may be right that there was some misogyny in play and Vinehout may suffer an interesting sort of backlash (men more enthusiastic than women) over the choice issue.  But I also saw how she stepped right in to  help dairy farmers in the Grasslands trade issue, as did Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

I don’t know what Dana Wachs sounds like or how well he speaks, never met him. I know he is being actively courted.   Mainly I noticed the sort of bills Wachs  introduced and backed, particularly a bill on voucher school financial openness that should have come out of Milwaukee.  His ideas have geographic reach though I don’t know if his appeal does. 

Dana Wachs, an unknown face
with a good resume

So if I were going by resume, he would be among those I’d think of. Besides, Vinehout’s  from Alma, Wachs is an assembly member from Eau Claire and I think there is a statewide mistrust of anyone from the Madison or Milwaukee. Not right. But it’s there.

Basically I am annoyed if  the Democratic search puts self-funding ahead of actual doing.  The elements I have outlined  -- what’s best for Wisconsin and who is proven  -- count more than private income or potential celebrity. These are people we’re electing, not interchangeable brands. 

I know this sounds idealistic and actually unrealistic to political insiders, who have to slave to raise funds and long for a head start. They are much more experienced than this outsider in those realities.

But I know what I want after Walker: Restoration in the broadest sense of the Wisconsin Idea.  Even if they are new ideas.  Our state has lingered too long in the middle and near the bottom while once it flooded the nation with hopeful concepts and successful programs.

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own website and review theater for Urban Milwaukee. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal.

WILL THIS DEMOCRACY BODY-TACKLE TRUMP?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Trump:  The American dollar is too strong – my fault for doing so well.

Health care is more complicated than people thought.

Trump being schooled by Xi

Xi explained to me in 10 minutes the history of China and Korea, so “it’s not so easy as I thought” for them to deal with North Korea.

My military has been so successful in the last eight weeks compared to the previous eight years.

China is no longer a currency manipulator.

NATO “was once obsolete; it is no longer obsolete.”

The monthly job report “may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” 

Steve Bannon? He is just someone who works for me and actually came late to my campaign.

“People aren't even trying to get through the border because they know they can't.”

I told President Xi Jinping about US missile strikes while we dined over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake.”

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is “doing a great job” after Kelly testified to Congress that there never was going to be a wall covering 1,954 miles – “It’s not needed.”

This is the shallow top of a shallow iceberg -- quoting or paraphrasing the droppings of Donald Trump. His spins, his ignorance and easily exposed boastful lies should lead American citizens, even those who supported him, to one inevitable conclusion:

We’d better use the special elections and the big one in 2018 to surround him with intelligent, knowledgeable people who can act as brakes on his worst impulses and weathervane views.

If it took China’s Xi to educate him on Korea (after hearing after dinner that Trump was bombing Syrians because the gassing pictures so disturbed him); if NATO makes sense only after he meets with the secretary general; if the border wall that still exists in his mind has no support from his own staff; if his actions in Afghanistan depend on “something his generals did,” he badly needs minders to curb his methods and restrain his tendency to break promises without clear definition of why.

It’s gotten to the point where nepotism in this White House is more acceptable, and security clearance less an issue, if Ivanka and Jared can at least hold him down.

We’re stuck with this stupidity for nearly four years. Yes, it’s early days, some diehards say, but a pattern of lies and self-congratulation has been set.  Too slowly some people who believed his bloviating are looking twice.  Others will never care what he says or what he does – their support for him was not consistency driven but a personality embrace.

Incompetence is not yet grounds for impeachment.

Even before Trump, China was not a “devaluation” currency manipulator as it was years ago under Obama, they’ve actually been propping up the yen to help their businesses.  NATO was never phony -- the money gap Trump complained about loudly and Obama softy was never to replace what the US gives, though it sounded like that on the stump.  Even his staff knows you can’t build a wall in the middle of the Rio Grande – unless you want to hand the entire river over to Mexico.

Most of the jobs and plant expansion he’s taking credit for were in the planning before he took office. The regulations he is eliminating seem to be freeing businesses to do more mischief and create more pollution instead of jobs – or they’re a political way to help states defund Planned Parenthood despite its popularity in national polls. Wall Street has been positive but the skepticism in executive corridors is palpable and turning the Street even more yo-yolike than usual. 

Many voted for Trump believing he would keep us out of war, rather than showing off that he can drop bigger bombs than Obama did and kill more innocent civilians by turning the military loose. 

The US may not anymore be the world leader in environment and trade, but something has kept the rest of the world reasonably tolerable of Trump.  It’ s  because one out of four of his cabinet picks are reasonably intelligent, led by Mattis at defense, Haley at the UN, Kelly at Homeland Security and even Chao is an experienced conservative at transportation.

Americans are pinning some gigantic hopes on them and National Security Adviser McMaster. Mainly they can keep him in check on foreign policy – blunders rather than disasters – and their example may bring saner echoes on domestic policy. These seemed doomed with the likes of Ben Carson at housing, Tom Price at health, Jeff Sessions at justice, Rick Perry at energy, Betsy DeVos at education and other weirdos such as Scott Pruitt at EPA. 

Bigger handcuffs have to come from Congress insisting on its priority in declaring war and controlling the purse strings. But don’t expect a Republican Congress -- which has longed to see any Republican, even this one, occupy the White House -- to protest too loudly, to interfere, to defend its constitutional rights.

What can be done by shaming and goading will, but the voters had better gear up for more. 

Either Trump has to learn on the job, or be forced by circumstance to bend to reality. But it’s unlikely to see him mature at age 70 or absorb the basics of the presidency. 

Get used to seeing him revolve and seesaw, hugging Bannon one moment and rejecting the right-wing extremist when he gets too much publicity, moving center one moment and into a parallel universe right after.

Trump may, in private, be realizing he made some ridiculous promises on the stump but it’s not in his nature to change course by openly admitting he was wrong.  Instead he’s claiming credit for high tide while the ship slides under the ocean.

How ironic for a complacent democracy – to realize it’s only lasting salvation comes at the polls. 

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as one of the editors for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor, then was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as at his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.