BOTH FEAR AND ELECTIONS BEHIND HEADLINES

By Dominique Paul Noth

The White House press secretary, who should be named Sarah Huckster Sanders, keeps turning once normal phrases into laughable clichés.  Whatever Trump’s vague policies on health care, Dreamers and taxes, they are “clear and consistent.”  Every such major issue is always drawing his “laser-like focus” while every Trump critic is engaging in something Trump would never do – “petty grandstanding.” 

Flake, a strong conservative,
dislikes the image of the right
that Trump projects.

The tweets – which she described to shell-shocked journalists as Trump’s way of reaching the public “unfiltered” – have actually driven both camps into derision:  Democrats to prove the president is unhinged, Republicans because his tweets minimize every policy initiative they want, as now seems to be happening with the tax bill.

The situation has finally brought calls from the public to the press to stop wasting time covering Sanders’ constant lying for her president and Trump’s unsavory tweety birds insulting everyone who disagrees with him or anyone who reports conversations truthfully.   It does seem they keep putting the daily clang of Trump in our head when we desire Bach. Even Nine Inch Nails would be more soothing.

The media now is having its feet held to the fire even as it wonders why establishment Republicans are not holding Trump’s feet to the fire the way a few respected senators have.  There’s a sad, simple reason:

Upcoming elections, one as soon as December, will keep political headlines percolating and the GOP fence-sitting.  The fever for Trump is still too high – even with only 37% supporting him in polls, even with Republicans in obvious disarray about how to place the cold cloth of truth on the feverish.  The temperature may have to fall below 25% before the Republicans will act. 

Self-protection is proving more important than public service for the GOP -- because there are still policies Republicans hope from even an unstable, impulse-driven White House.  The common Beltway description of the tax bill has become “having a baby to save a failing marriage.”

Let’s be clear that conservatives are embracing their own brand but ashamed Trump is the spokesman.  Jeff Flake of Arizona, who took to the Senate floor for a blistering speech against Trump, still votes 94% his way. Similarly strong for conservatives is Bob Corker of Tennessee who has also called Trump “debasing of American values”  and dangerous enough to lead us into World War III.

Yet both are respected as principled and interested in bipartisanship – as is John McCain who has joined them in fierce criticism of Trump’s behavior (though not all his policies).  Since they represent what many once held important in the Republican Party (small government, fiscal conservatism, freedom from tyranny) it becomes painful to realize they are throwing the glove in Trump’s face as they are leaving the field of battle, not in advance of a duel. Both Flake and Corker have announced they are not running in 2018.

The Republicans left in Congress could not have a shinier example than their speeches for  standing up to the Trump who rides roughshod over statesmanship – but  they are not streaming to join the revolt. That suggests a key requirement of running for office is cowardice.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss suggests many Republican office holders privately agree with Corker and Flake but are afraid saying so will arouse the Trump base to primary them.  That base may be shrinking to a hard core as polls suggest independents are abandoning the president, but there are more than enough immovables to scare up silence.

It is not Steve Bannon, no longer in the White House, who is driving up GOP caution, though he is whipping the hard core hard. It is the money behind him – the Mercer fortune that can be applied against Republican seat-holders in upcoming races. So they would rather be Trump’s nannies than the citizens’ voice.

All this may actually be good news for Democrats  the clearer it becomes the Republicans are too cowardly to follow their instincts. 

Corker was popular in Tennessee, which has long been solidly red (the last Democrat elected to the Senate was Al Gore in 1990) and thus Democrats at best face an uphill campaign.   Distaste for Trump, combined with concern for health care and other basic public values, could be changing things on the ground to the Democrats advantage.

Their best hope lies in the likelihood that strident Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a vehement hard-right Trump backer who has pushed her way into being a spokesperson for GOP House policies, will likely sweep the field in the primary to face the still undetermined Democrat. Given some of the names being floated, including popular mayors, her mere presence leaves the GOP vulnerable in November 2018.

Democrat Krysten Sinema
sees her chances go up
in Arizona

Arizona is even more in play, since chances are boosted for highly regarded Rep. Kyrsten Sinema on the Democratic side.  She has a winning life story and a reputation for independence that should appeal in Arizona, particularly if the GOP choose Kelli Ward, the physician who publicly wished John McCain would die so she could be appointed to his seat (a statement that pretty much guarantees Arizona governor Doug Ducey would look elsewhere if that eventuality occurs).

She has also been so indiscriminately in Trump’s corner  and so savagely anti  the popular McCain that  a lot of Republican voters could be swayed to Sinema’s side. It may even flip Flake.  His powerful speech on the Senate floor announcing his departure --  and his vision of an unsavory Trump who will never change --  has led the GOP to search for someone more palatable than Ward to run for the seat.

But a lot can happen before those events in November of 2018.  This December 12 there is a once unimaginable opportunity to lower the GOP Senate control from 52 to 51, basically blocking the worst legislative possibilities of the Trump administration (since finding only two GOP senators  stops Vice President Pence from casting the tie-breaking vote). If that Alabama upset had been in place October 24, Republicans could not have eliminated a strong plank at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

With help, Doug Jones may pull off
an upset in Alabama

Alabama is the definition of a deep red state, has been for years.  So much so that Sen. Richard Shelby switched to the Republican Party in 1994, reading the voter tea leaves. But the GOP primary decided to put up Roy Moore, the twice removed state supreme court justice whose policies can charitably be described as unconstitutional, anti-homosexual, anti-women, anti-Muslim and anti anything he interprets as against a Christian god.

His Democratic opponent, a well regarded former prosecutor,  Doug Jones,  still has an uphill fight despite a FOX poll that puts him in an amazing tie with Moore. That’s not decisive because Alabama voter turnout has traditionally been low. 

In the past there were few Alabama elections where the results were even in doubt between the parties, which means Democratic voters have not been much involved and are out of the habit.  But Jeff Sessions, whose seat is being filled, has been an extremist attorney general, angering  much of the nation with his policies. Roy Moore has not been making headway beyond a loyal band of supporters.  Doug Jones has been successful in raising money nationwide.

So the results could be a shocker – and not just to the Alabama system. 

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

WEINSTEIN AND THE TRIGGERS OF WRATH

By Dominique Paul Noth

It’s been a banner bacchanal year for leering and revulsion --  a dominating CEO hinting or demanding  casting couch liberties from the budding famous or wannabes, using female employees as his stalking horse, engaging in outright fondling and literal chasing around the hotel room, accused of rape, subject of secret tapings and commonly known for rampant misogyny. 

Brute has become Harvey
Weinstein's middle name

It’s juicy enough to be a horror film -- the continuing predatory tale of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has now been deservedly kicked out of every influential film organization. 

Why didn’t Hollywood act earlier? So scream the media and the public. But let’s turn that around because Hollywood was hardly alone in the winking.  The same charge of too broad acceptance could be said about Bill Cosby, the late Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and even Donald Trump.  We came to know how they operated so why didn’t we holler to the rooftops?

It was an open secret that this hurricane Harvey was a rapacious womanizer. But our society as a whole, and the entertainment industry in particular, know the power of sex in the marketplace. Both sexes tend to accept a certain level of sexual teasing, a tolerance for woman-chasing as long as it more amuses than horrifies.

Prosecutors may never be able to make a rape case against Weinstein (the time element). But outside the courtroom there’s no doubt anywhere of his savage sexual come-ons disguised as auditions, the power plays Miramax covered up, the system of protectionism and the failure of groups, even the entertainment unions, that should have intervened faster. 

But a lighter version of such sexual misbehavior – with dark hints of far worse -- is not only tolerated in our society but welcome.   It sells tabloids in the supermarket, entire channels on cable television, series on networks and it’s turning darker and more salacious as standards loosen up. It takes quite a bit of coverage to switch our smirking SNL acceptance into a Weinstein level of social disgust.

What is the switch point? For one thing, volume of encounters, a predatory pattern.  For another, power.  The predator is in the position to force cooperation or has developed a successful pattern with women whose looks have a lot to do with their employment. 

There’s yet another reason, though we are proving more selective here, the possibility of escape because of wealth -- that they will continue to get away with it without media exposure and public condemnation. Stripping away their authority becomes the remedy when the courts fail.

These seem the trigger moments when we stop joking about the Weinsteins of the world and act against them. But in the past our outrage has been misapplied.  Yellow journalism and public fury ended the career of Fatty Arbuckle, a silent film star lynched in ink by untruths.  An abnormal fear  of womanizing and politics barred Charlie Chaplin for generations while in modern times we quickly forgave Hugh Grant, Eddie Murphy and others for dallying with prostitutes.  Today’s Internet sweeps up rumors rapidly even as it seems to loosen standards.  That, our evolving attitudes and our past mistakes should serve as some sort of cautionary tale. 

Why does Trump escape censure?

We need to talk more about what triggers the kind of outrage that sticks to Weinstein and Cosby but not to Donald Trump.  If anything positive comes out of this case it is turning our glares at the justice system.

A little known 10-year-old Twitter hashtag, #MeToo,  is choking with messages from women abused my men in power.

The publicity has emboldened all manner of women even knowing the complaints may not go anywhere given the antiquated status of our laws. 

Elected officials should realize the wrath lands particularly hard when the courts and society cannot dole out punishment.  All these headline-making offenders who spent years establishing authority over men and women were often praised for it.

Nor do they fit the traditional rape stereotype of the back alley prowler. Asked to comment on Weinstein, Brandeis law professor Anita Hill (who obviously knows about this) pointed to the fallacy of  who to be careful around.  “Too many are under the impression that the people who do this are losers, and that’s not the case,” she told Newsweek. “Liberal men, high-achieving men, educated men, men who claim to support women, can be harassers.” 

Today’s headline-generating scandals recall how the 1950s and 1960s amalgamated conflicting trends in American society, with powerful effects on adolescents in their formative sexual years.

Feminism grew slowly on one side while the other side entrenched the Playboy magazine view of the world, an era when “Bikini Beach” movies were innocent silly fun at one level and ogling adolescent fantasies on another. 

Weinstein born in 1952, O'Reilly 1949, Trump 1946, Ailes 1940, Cosby 1937. They assuredly shared a similar generation of cultural attitudes and behavior that society tolerated or was even attracted to. By their twenties they moved in similar circles of wealth and Type A power.

This does not mean Weinstein’s behavior can ever be excused. Frankly, unlike the others, it could have been nipped in the bud. But it needs to be understood in the context of the world he grew up in and that we, Americans, created.

The late Hugh Hefner was a slick marketer in this cultural turmoil  -- magazine interviews in which the future President Carter (hard to imagine a better man) confessed to “lust in his heart,” the only phrase anyone remembers from that article.  There were frequent magazine essays defending free sex, same sex and even feminism while the centerfolds unfolded merrily in high school bedrooms.  As one writer has noted, Hefner could “mainstream pornography” if he could tie it to upper class aspirations.

Some men moved past that  obsessive interest in the female form even as some women shot past the boxes society put them in.   But not all men and not all women, not by a long shot.

Natural impulses were extended into aggressive exploitation.  The language and teasing of the times are now rich fodder for TV shows like “Mad Men.”  Even today where groups of men gather, you hear the same butcher shop snicker when a woman in a miniskirt walks  by.  “If you don’t want us to look at the meat, don’t hang it in the window.”   Men get defensive when women get angry about treatment like this  – blaming the woman for their  reaction.  

The movies today may acknowledge all ages and generations but the bulk of the profits still stem from catering to the adolescent male mind, even as that mind lingers into adulthood.

Cultural icons embody attitudes that would stir anger today. When Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night TV show conjured up the ghost of Frank Sinatra to sing his real hatred (historically documented) for casino owner Trump, we first had the faux Sinatra confess he was still “banging ghost broads” in heaven before insulting Trump in familiar Sinatra song patois (****you to the moon I’d like to sock you in the snout).  The Sinatra annals are full of stories not only about women flocking to him but some women coerced into giving sexual favors to Frankie baby, and this was the avatar that was familiar to this generation – a vulgar combative man’s man. 

Yet no expert on popular song can overlook Sinatra’s depth of interpretation, sense of swing and amazing intonation.  Do we stop listening to Sinatra? Of course not.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler drew one of their biggest Golden Globes laughs in 2013 when they singled out director Katherine Bigelow and the controversy over “Zero Dark Thirty.” “When it comes to torture,” Poehler quipped, “I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron.”  Is there now a move to ban “Titanic”?  Don’t be silly.

Comic Seth McFarlane says his 2013 Oscar joke to the supporting actress nominees (“Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein”) was based on what he heard from friends in the business.  A year earlier “30 Rock” used a similar joke without apology: “Oh, please, I’m not afraid of anyone in show business. I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions out of five.” Before we blame Hollywood for looking away, both these moments were viewed and laughed at by millions.

Dominant and even brutalizing males have long been part of our (male dominated?)  culture.  Go back to Anita Hill and those hearings about Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court.   An in-bred southerner whose record on civil rights was quite disturbing, the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia, immediately recognized the verity of what a conservative Baptist African American (Hill) was saying about sexual come-ons by Thomas and took to the Senate floor to defend her.  His remarks barely dented how a bunch of middle aged white men, led by the likes of Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch, treated her – and of course, Thomas survived and she was ridiculed.

These men were hardly isolated chauvinists in 1991. It was women in office conversations who discounted her the most, saying in effect, “Anita should grow up” – that this kind of sexual innuendo from male bosses was natural in the workplace and women had long ago learned to shrug it off.  The office women of 1991 are not far from the Donald Trump Jr. of today.

While these Hill doubters sneered at the feminists' freakout of TV talking heads,  Weinstein was becoming established in the movie business and “The Cosby Show” was No. 1 in the TV ratings – to put in perspective how our society runs on parallel tracks.   Straying into adultery or calling on prostitutes? A one-day headline.  Sexual brutality forced on the less powerful? That lights our torches. 

There will be no historical rescue of O’Reilly and his backstage master Ailes, though neither was convicted. Their proclivities and bellicosity extended to how women were dressed, talked about and treated on Fox News, and their documented stalking of female employees fits the image their product projected.    

Weinstein, thank the Lord, was seldom a hands-on producer, with all that term implies. So his exposed offenses certainly should not cast shade on the films he executive produced whose artists elevated the profession:  “The King’s Speech,” “August: Osage County,” “Silver Lining Playbook,”  “The Iron Lady,” “Mandela” and so forth. 

Cosby case sickens and saddens

The case of Bill Cosby, though, is more complicated and upsetting – just like the hung jury he recently experienced.  

Few can embrace the hero of black culture, the early and innovative Cosby who made his mainstream mark in Playboy clubs (wasn't that a hint?), was a philanthropic giant, dominated TV living rooms for a decade and established a long-style form of observational comedy that didn't sound perverted. To the contrary, he was Jello Pudding family friendly, even though stories of infidelity trailed him.

His offenses violently contradict his family image. It was private behavior so in contrast to public persona that it becomes unforgivable.  I feel much like Jerry Seinfeld did in a recent interview about how he had so admired Cosby in his own formation that he was tempted to defend him  but he can no longer listen because he  “can’t separate” Cosby from the allegations.

Even today Cosby might  argue that this sickening feeling whenever his name comes up is unfair. After all, he has escaped court  punishment.  His “Cosby Show” associates are undeserving victims of his serial abuse. But the image of drugging and seducing women -- and his escaping because of his fame and built-in protection -- stands in such stark opposition to the Cosby the nation loved that, right now like Seinfeld, any past warmth turns bitter in the mouth.

It may take generations for that to change – not because we think better of the offenders but because we learn to think better of ourselves.

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

TIME TO RIP THE COVER OFF FACEBOOK

By Dominique Paul Noth

Facebook salesman Mark Zuckerberg

According to the tabloids, Mark Zuckerberg has spent the last four years countering that brilliant Aaron Sorkin portrait of his shallowness in 2010’s “The Social Network” and has used massive philanthropy, business suits and political speeches to paint a more likeable portrait.

The one thing he hasn’t done is pay attention to Facebook and its two billion accounts that made him one of the richest men in the world.

Until September he denied that Russians were using Facebook in any significant way – and then was confronted with Russian ads, some paid in rubles, that were using Facebook’s targeting abilities in particularly ugly ways.

Such as seeking out people who posted disparagingly or suspiciously about Muslims and then sending them anti-Clinton items (what Donald calls fake news).

Such as targeting secession movements from Catalonia to Texas to encourage disgruntlement with current governments, specifically devaluing belief in democratic solutions.

Such as spreading dissension between Clinton and Sanders supporters by choice use of items pretending to be news and playing up long-standing but unproven enmities.

Such as using the image of a black woman firing a rifle to inflame sentiments.

Last November Zuckerberg was actually pulled aside and warned by President Obama about the misuse of Facebook underlying Trump’s election, yet ignored that as well. 

Now his company if not him has to testify to Congress and try to explain to the public just where his brain has been for the last few years.

He has gotten rich for inventing Facebook, but if it is out of control, what is his right to keep running it?  Or does he even know how?

Facebook and social media in general have developed an unprecedented power that governments and their citizens are finally seeing not as a salvation but as a threat.

It also turns out that Russians siding with Putin may also have grasped the possibilities of algorithms more cunningly that Silicon Valley did and may or may not have needed Trump underlings to help out.

Siri on your phone is a useful if sometimes annoying example of algorithms. So are many other accepted pieces of coding.  There are applications you install because they promise one thing, such as anti-virus protection, but may open a trapdoor to something nefarious.  There are computer viruses and bots (automated software) that can replicate commands from hidden call centers.

Adults chuckle that their kids are more comfortable with computers than they are.  Yet even most kids don’t understand the stew of math, propaganda, coding and fraud. There are a lot of curious portals out there and they are now working hand in glove with familiar utilities like Google and Facebook.

The slowness of Facebook to grasp the mischief inherent in its creature is actually frightening.  I occupy an infinitesimally small sliver of Facebook with only 1,000 shared visitors mostly friends and necessary contacts.  So why, dating back two years, could I see problems worth writing about that Zuckerberg couldn’t?

I never leapt to the realization of Russian involvement, but in 2015 I wrote about how cunningly Facebook’s elements were being used by both practical jokers and politicians seeking a publicity advantage. I even said  “If Isis uses the Internet to recruit the unthinking, they now have helpers in such politicians as Wisconsin Gov. Walker.”

And in June of 2016 – more than a year ago --  I wrote another piece describing the insane dislike of Bernie Sanders supporters for Hillary Clinton fans, and vice versa, on Facebook.  I speculated that this was also political mischief because in real life these people, if they were real people, would never express such vitriol without some shrewd goading.  As I observed then, in calling for some code of ethics, “On the Internet these usually don’t exist at all.”

Looking back now, a lot of that vitriol was stemming from bots not people, yet amazingly few of the victims – even today! -- want to admit falling for all that.  The consequence of the admission would be devastating psychologically when people ask themselves why they stayed home or voted opposite of expectations or common sense.

There is growing evidence that thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of accounts on Facebook and Twitter are not individuals but clones -- robotic agents for spreading “information,” to make real-life recipients believe they are part of a mass movement.

These poor citizens. They believe their innocent photos of puppies and recipes reflect the benign use of Facebook for the bulk of those two billion listed users.  These puppy lovers, convinced that their Facebook pals wouldn’t deceive them, repost alt.news and fake news portraying Hillary as a demon, Trump as a savior (literally) or whatever momentary fancy moves them.

One lesson just came from Las Vegas. The algorithms that add weight to initial searches on Google created a flood of falsehoods, including the wrong name of the shooter, which was spread on Facebook.  Such incidents are no longer a rarity.   Google searches turn into Facebook posts for hours or even days before actual information can slowly seep in and correct misimpressions – doing worse damage than a news crawl at the bottom of your TV screen.

The New York Times also detailed how fictions about juvenile sex and Shariah law used social media to unbalance an entire town.  More and more users of Facebook are realizing that the “Like” button is almost a virus, opening the door for years to misapplication of what you Liked and what you didn’t.

There may be an egotistical key to all this. That steady drumbeat of misinformation makes it seem that people who love you -- or people who care about your opinion -- are just trying to keep you in the know.

There are few objective online companies that identify fake news sites out of the volume of sites that can be created by anyone with basic coding ability – or even by Internet providers who provide the expertise for a price, with little concern about ethics.

This is an awkward moment for democratic societies.  We may admit that the Russians attempted to play with our voting databases (the US has sent confusing mixed messages about the attempt in 21 unnamed states) but we seized on assurances by state and federal agencies that the Russians did not succeed in physically pushing the wrong button.  We the People did.

Which means Trump was genuinely elected president.  How awkward.

People walked into the voting booth confident of their beliefs – or stayed home confident of their reasons for doing that, in large part believing in all the lies including that Clinton won the contest against Sanders unfairly, or that a vote for Jill Stein was not a wasted vote (though there is more and more evidence than it was wasted and was part of the Russian invasion).

Only in hindsight can we blame ignorance or deception.  Time has confirmed it was a minority of citizens who elected Trump, but unless the majority is willing to overthrow the Constitution we are stuck with him. For now.

In the meantime we should openly recognize the dangers of cyberspace are not some scientific sleight of hand.  The dangers are real and largely untouched.

This is also a particularly awkward turn for journalists like me and others who welcomed the free range of opinions the Internet allowed.  The occasional misuse – forwarding news accounts while denying the originating journalist just financial due – was regarded even by starving journalists as an almost worthwhile price for broader dissemination of real research and write-ups for the public. Many never grasped this also meant wider misinformation.

The greedy acquisitive nature of media companies – the commercial reasons they want control of the main digital pipes of the Internet – made many citizens champion net neutrality.  And still do. Frankly, the Internet seemed a welcome freedom from government interference, or the shackles of orchestrated behavior.   Saying what you think – is that bad?

Only now are we realizing that those so-called platforms – Facebook, Twitter and so forth -- rather than becoming agents of better knowledge were easily turned.  They are not harmless diversion but harmful attacks on the truth.  

These social media brands should no longer be called “platforms” but “channels” or “publishers,” not much different than TV, print and other established outlets.  They may need ethically trained and alert gatekeepers rather than technologists manipulating the codes for maximum attention rather than moral considerations.

Technology advances faster than the law can keep up. In many areas. Who in the 18^th century could envision a legal handgun that could kill 58 civilians from 500 yards away in five minutes? Or a society churned by the inability to distinguish factual information from false.  Surely our Constitution could stretch to handle such matters?   Surely it won’t.

I am not so egotistical to believe the Russians needed help against naïve America, though I remain ever more open to the likelihood of  Trump or his aides being involved,  knowing their nefarious financial connections of the past. But bluntly there are hacker sophistication and propaganda skills far beyond what Trump has ever demonstrated.

As Congress and Robert Mueller continue their investigation, the president looks foolish to think it is all about him. It is actually all about us – how we are influenced or even led around by the nose, and who is doing it, and why -- and how we change it.

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

DON’T RUN A VICTORY LAP YET OVER HEALTH CARE

By Dominique Paul Noth

Defeated multiple times on their own health care bill, writhing in confusion over political direction, you might expect Trump and the Republicans to scurry off,  lick their wounds and try to regroup.

Instead they are forging ahead as if there had been no setbacks, no disabled carried out of the hearing room, no outrage from coast to coast at even attempting this nonsense after previous defeats.

Moving past health care as if nothing had happened, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell held a press conference September 27 to talk up a tax package as the same essential rescue of America from disaster that,  a week earlier,  they claimed for a much hated health bill. 

(Has anyone looked deeply at this tax plan? Beyond the “do your taxes on a postcard” promise?  Everyone supports a simpler tax code but how far will the GOP get removing the special protections for their own members, as they continue to deny those are even there? Or eliminating the mortgage deduction so popular with middle class buyers?) 

Trump meanwhile is engaged in health care sabotage, along with promising an executive order to further a Republican myth and a health insurance company nightmare – selling policies across state lines in the hope that the cheaper states will drive costs (and real health care)  downward.  He has pulled most of the promotion budget for the health exchanges and for the Navigators, the trained helpmates for people to sign up.  

These actions deliberately undercut some true bipartisan efforts in the Senate as Republican conservative Lamar Alexander and Democratic leader Patty Murray both believe that solidifying the insurance market and solving some frayed edges of ACA could succeed. 

That runs straight into a seven-year itch of the Republicans to defeat Obamacare and to hell with the health of the citizens. They always had the wrong end of the elephant since improving health care should have been foremost – yet foremost was hatred of all things Obama. That was not only unworthy but probably gave them Trump to deal with. 

The people don’t care whose name is on it, they just want affordable and comprehensive care, and recognize that Obama was at least trying for that while the Republicans are only trying to defeat the Democrats.

At this point it looks like only active citizenry can save the nation, as it always has.  It’s time to talk to young people and others confident in their own good health and skeptical about needing coverage. They have to be forcefully reminded to get on board. Anyone can get sick tomorrow and it is unfair to ask fellow citizens to pay for their treatment.   If they begin to feel a solidarity with fellow citizens, even a self-centered realization rather than a burst of compassion, they can sign up in droves no matter how Trump threatens and rants.  

The Republicans are drowning in their own mudpit until they actually come up with better ideas.  That seems to be harsh given some good people I know who vote GOP.  But they of all citizens know how far their party has strayed from reality. They are secretly hoping that some explosion of reality will keep crazed Christian zealot Roy Moore from taking the Alabama senate seat in a December election. 

 “If you thought Jeff Sessions was extreme,” one D.C. journalist told me, “you ain’t seen nothin’. I’m hearing from Republican officials  who would rather have a Democrat win than this guy.  But Alabama is not about to turn that way,” he added, “and those Republicans  know they can wish in safety.”  

But Republicans are talking seriously – as are some Democrats -- about the need for a third party,  of somehow isolating the Bannons and even the Trumps for more moderated positions that might actually succeed in running the country.  Their fear is that Trump has unleashed a primitivism he can no long control and the more that raises its head, the more progressives will lash out in rebellion.

The health care debacle taught several Republicans to look outside their own party – the conservatives for something more extreme, the established Republicans for something more likely to work.  Meanwhile the progressives are looking, too, but with more unfettered debate than the unhappy Republicans seem capable of.

They are watching with some dismay while Ryan and McConnell keep cheerfully  pressing the wrong buttons. Given past behavior,  I doubt they will stand up without some severe prodding.  Such as the Mueller investigation.

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

CITY PROGRESS BEGINS WHEN STATE GOP INTERFERENCE ENDS

By Dominique Paul Noth

With the end of the legislature's fetish to control MPS properties,
the old Wisconsin Ave. School is being converted
into an extended stay Ambassador  hotel

Lurking within beat writer Tom Daykin’s fine story on how the former Wisconsin Avenue School (near 27th St.) will be converted by 2019 into an extended-stay companion to the Ambassador (the hotel is a few blocks away) was an unwritten  political reality. The Madison legislature’s constant intrusion into local affairs continues to backfire into delays, blind alleys and higher costs for the citizenry. (And just wait till the new budget spits its venom.)

I’ll define what a real estate journalist cannot (and the JS editorial board probably should).  The development is fruit of the collapse of one Madison effort at interference.

That was the misguided command that vacant or underutilized Milwaukee Public Schools’ buildings must be sold only to voucher school or charter competitors, freezing for two years any city effort to develop commercial uses on nearly a dozen properties. Technically, the city owns these school buildings.

If you look at that two-year moratorium, it was never about robust neighborhood development but imposing the march toward private and religious schools on the community, inventing a demand for such schools that clearly didn’t exist. It also intended to hold MPS’ head deeper under water.

If you look at what now is happening, retail and apartment developments are spurring ahead in the Harambee, Bronzeville and other inner city neighborhoods (even the Ambassador is expanding the popular definition of the Downtown area).

All this also gives the lie to arguments that the city of Milwaukee is only interested in developing the core Downtown area.  Turns out, once Madison leaves the city alone or offers real help, good things happen for the tax base.

Once the moratorium ended, the Ambassador Suites became only one of four commercial developments (retail,   apartments or mixed) rushing forward using MPS properties – and there are others in the wings.

Moreover, city development deputy commissioner Martha Brown reminded me in an interview, before the moratorium shut things down for two years, there were several MPS properties either completely or in the process of being converted into commercial use – the old Jackie Robinson School now the Sherman Park Senior Center; Garfield in Bronzeville (2205 N 4th St.) almost ready for mixed use, and Fifth Street School (2770 N. 5th St.) already under apartment conversion.

It was a sign that, despite agitation from Madison that these were all dead weight and invented claims that MPS was the culprit, there was a lot of life being snuffed out in the fabrications.  The city even had to fight off a lawsuit threat from the rabid right-wing WILL (Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty) when it tried (appropriately it turns out) to finesse the moratorium rule.

While there were feints of educational use from MPS competitors, Brown says only Rocketship’s intention to use Carleton as its upper northwest campus is still active (national data on Rocketship profitability keeps me a doubter) while another negotiation with a religious voucher operator has stalled.

The moratorium was inserted into the 2015-2017 state budget as part of an enormous education failure aimed at Milwaukee known as the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program, brainchild of Dale Kooyenga and Alberta Darling with such cheerleaders on the side as Leah Vukmir.

Failure may be too optimistic. It is, legally, still a vulture poised to swoop down on the hardy local pioneers of public education and peck out the eyes of real progress.

OSPP (my emphasis would be on the PP) would have an administrator chosen by County Executive Chris Abele (city Mayor Tom Barrett was too savvy to be the whipping boy) seize MPS schools designated within the boundaries of “failed schools” by the state – and sell the losers only to education privateers. In other words, MPS properties would be used to prop up its enemies.

The administrator, Demond Means, was chosen, tried to change the plan, resigned and departed the state for Georgia.  The whole idea was laughed out of public court when the MPS survived the “failed” designation within the state’s boundaries.  (That was also a measure of how well the MPS has been improving schools.)

Sidelining these school businesses for MPS competitors was originally intended by legislators to make properties available for a dollar or so to education privateers, under the invented demand for such schools. But the city insisted on heeding land assessment for what in several cases were valuable pieces of real estate, as opposed to the original penalty to any expansion of property tax rolls.

The landscape immediately changes when private schools are forced onto an even playing field. (That reality is already chilling the state’s expansion of the voucher school idea into the whole state, since many school districts, even conservative ones, are quite happy with the public school route and correctly see the voucher schools as siphoning off public money.)

There is also an interesting sidelight to those who remember Right Step. It was the only private school that responded during the moratorium, forcing the city to sell it the listed Centro del Nino at 500 E. Center St., actually a bank building converted into a Head Start program but included on the master life for MPS schools though the area was not zoned for a school.   With strong anger at the whole idea from Ald. Milele Coggs, the zoning appeals board turned the idea down.   

Brown and others speculate that a big part of the push was the fallacy that all a private education operator had to do “was get in the building and turn on the lights,” since MPS had been a highly regarded absentee landlord and was only closing buildings over decades to retain flexibility in the face of changing demographics (which made some neighborhood schools obsolete). 

Of course “walk in and turn on the lights” wasn’t true since there remained considerable costs on long closed schools (handicapped accessibility, repairs, lead pipes, new code standards, etc.). A lack of common sense was another factor in how bad this idea was, because an MPS building usually went vacant when demand in the area for a school had fallen off, so it wasn’t demographics and need,   just the rising money the state taxpayers were forced to pay that explained the interest.  

And how that money is rising! That state legislature, with Gov. Scott Walker as gang leader, has elevated the voucher goodies as high as $75,647 for a family of four.  The new budget does even more, as much as $9,800 per student by 2019.

Amazingly, despite that come-on and constant expansion of the limits, around the state there are few takers – and it is not surprising that most of the responders are not public school participants but children from families attending private schools already. They are in effect getting a state taxpayer discount of $7,696 each on their private school tuition.

So in Milwaukee there was no land rush – and actually crippling of some neighborhood commercial development.   Assessing the value of a school building is difficult depending on the intended use, noted Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for the mayor who is also deeply involved in the Department of City Development.  MPS was probably not happy that Wisconsin Ave. School, land-assessed at $800,000 under some scenarios, was sold to Ambassador developer Rick Weigand for $100,000.  But the MPS and the city were assuredly comforted that Weigand has also pledged half a million in environmental cleanup as part of a $15 million project.

Because of changing expectations in the master list of MPS buildings, two schools – Fletcher and 68th – still have a year left when they can only be sold to private school operators. There don’t seem to be any takers while the city anticipates movement by commercial developers on other sites now lifted from the moratorium.

Bottom line -- the “school choice” liars actually held the city of Milwaukee hostage for two years in growing neighborhood development. That’s the exact opposite of what elected representatives should be doing. Brown says MPS has been cooperative in conversion efforts, exposing another lie from the school choice camp.

There are several emerging opportunities for citizens to punish such feeble education thinkers, including rabid right-winger Vukmir, who has wrapped herself around these failed education policies to run against Sen. Tammy Baldwin.  Ideology sinks her –what is keeping her campaign afloat is billionaire Diane Hendricks and single-issue voters who don’t seem to give much of a damn of what happens to our children and taxes.

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

DACA – FALLING CRUELLY BEHIND IN FOUR YEARS

By Dominique Paul Noth

President Obama in Milwaukee five years ago -- what he and
we dreamed about immigration and the Dreamers.
-- Photo by Dominique Paul Noth

A long memory can sometimes be a curse.  Trump’s Tuesday combination play on DACA – rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, then  delaying the full weight for six months to give a messed-up Congress a chance to get its act together,  though it hasn’t all year, and then saying he will revisit if Congress doesn’t – was also a reminder of how tragically we have traveled backwards.  

The US has horribly moved from overly optimistic hope into morass and cynicism.

The recent events raised memories of what I wrote as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press  more than four years ago, for a newspaper now defunct largely because of the gouges taken out of union strength and solidarity by Gov. Scott Walker. I looked it up and was dumbstruck at how prescient, if overly hopeful, I and perhaps the nation were about the progress of immigration. 

It was then I headlined that optimism, though with a warning:  Do Immigration Steps Rescue or Merely Reveal GOP?  Even while critical of Obama, the story stands as an important signpost of what America dreamed in early 2013 and what depth it is descending into today:

February, 2013 -- If you listened to President Obama’s impassioned call for “common sense comprehensive immigration reform” January 29, you can’t be blamed for hearing an echo.  He made much the same speech when he was running for re-election and, in fact, though now fleshed out, in earlier presentations throughout his first four years. 

It isn’t Obama who has budged in 2013.  It’s the opposition, not from moral drive but self-preservation.  All along he has seen the issue more clearly -- willing to bring others along on the details but a  superior politician and analyst of the American psyche, seeking ways to combine what he wants, what the country needs and what the voters will come around to agreeing with. {Editor’s Note: So I dreamed then, remember?}

What makes overdue immigration reform possible now are the self-centered politics of once obstructionist Republicans and reluctant Democrats.  He now has a bipartisan group of eight senators and a House committee working on similar immigration regulation.   Some are true believers. Some are doing the politically expedient.  Consider those GOP senators like Rubio and Graham who have spun back and forth on this issue, failing to inhale the proper political winds.  John McCain is now back in the fold, contradicting his own dervish reversal when he ran for president or fought off a right-wing primary challenge in Arizona.

No one should fool themselves that this is a done deal.  It’s just that the atmospherics are better.  The Republicans cannot permanently be a major political party until they address the growing Latino community.  Democratic political insiders wonder if their own party is being foolish to risk a devastating advantage for the opposition  by moving to solve this crucial lingering problem and helping the GOP look good.  But in doing so willingly, the Democrats are again spelling out the differences between the two sides.

At least Obama has been there from the start.  But, to the dismay of the most progressive Latino activists, he has to put emphasis on something necessary but fast becoming the least central issue in comprehensive reform – security of the US-Mexican border. The deal on the table sends more boots on the ground and even drones to a region where illegal human traffic has shrunk to near nothing under Obama’s watch, a combination of tighter security, higher hostility to Latinos and fewer jobs in America.

No vast numbers of undocumented further clog the path to citizenship of the millions already working and raising families here.   But it’s wrong to use such apprehension to demonize a central fabric of the US community or claim the border must be locked tighter than a drum before any scrupulous path to citizenship can be allowed.

It’s worrisome how Obama must stress Mexican border security to give Republicans a reason to act sane. [Editor’s Note: They sure didn’t and still have the same hangup.]  Yet there are many other porous borders while this one, where we’re spending vast money, is largely dormant except for drugs. There are bigger people problems, such as greedy middlemen from Europe to Asia – many moving traffic through Canada and the Caribbean in both directions if you talk to the human slavery coalitions. 

Yet we still focus on penalizing families who have worked hard for decades in this country because they jumped the fence to save years in waiting or – no different than the homeowner duped by some shady roof contractor – believed the promises of a better life from businesses bussing them to rural jobs.

As politically savvy as it may be, given the insistence on border security before intelligence, this aspect of the outline has already raised the first doubts from the left in the immigration debate. Right-wingers insist that Southwest officials (many who would never agree to any path to citizenship) must first verify border security . . .

Cynically, the system will remain out of balance if Congress bends to Republican fears just to get the votes. But the true common sense will indeed be what the Tea Party fears would happen – speeding the process, because that is the right thing.  Let’s not pretend that sending 12 million people to the back of a cumbersome crooked line is better than putting humanity and fairness at the front. It’s not even fiscally intelligent because the citizenship route combines fines, back taxes and further contributions to the taxpayer coffers, and the quicker the better for the economy.

Frankly, undocumented workers are not the key concern of citizens, though their treatment is intrinsically tied to our view of a political party. It is the fading right-wing whites who are most agitated. . . . 

Well, they still are. And now they have a president who plays into those fears – and a Congress being asked to show some sanity in the middle of those fears.  No question, our country has retrogressed in four years.

Where will we be, if we are allowed to be, in another few years?

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 an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He 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 Internet 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 his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.