Dear Editor: A recent report by Human Rights Watch on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by members of the 82nd Airborne Division makes sobering reading for anyone who continues to believe that we need to keep U.S. troops in Iraq to help the Iraqi people reconstruct their war-ravaged country.
In the report, which can be read at www.hrw.org, three soldiers who participated in the abuse recount how U.S. soldiers beat prisoners "to vent their frustration," and how one soldier broke the leg of an Iraqi prisoner using a metal baseball bat. The soldiers also described systematic abuse and torture by U.S. military interrogators.
These stories are tragic, but hardly surprising. The pressures of participating in a military occupation of another country -- a country in which you are not wanted, and even hated -- will inevitably cause some soldiers to turn from decent human beings into violent abusers.
The soldiers who came forward to speak to Human Rights Watch did so because they felt remorse for committing these brutal acts.
Let's not give one more of our soldiers reason to feel the same remorse. Let's bring our troops home -- now.
Dear Editor:
Estimates now top hundreds of billions for reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Apparently President Bush is ensuring his gang's share of the loot. On Sept. 8, Bush suspended the application of Davis-Bacon minimum wage requirements on federally funded reconstruction projects in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and parts of Florida.
The prevailing wage requirements under Davis-Bacon ensure that employees of contractors are paid local minimum wages for their jobs in construction. In the affected areas these wages range from $9 to $14 an hour for laborers, carpenters, electricians and others who will undertake the difficult work of making these ravaged areas functional and, more importantly, livable for themselves and their neighbors.
President Bush has eliminated the minimum wage paid to these individuals who have already faced storm, flood and fire in their lives. While the president makes sure nothing over a few dollars makes it into the pockets of those most in pain and whose skills are most needed to rebuild our Gulf Coast, he has made no law or proclamation that would prevent war- and disaster-savvy contractors from filling their carpetbags with those same wages they will not pay.
I have a disturbing vision of a flotilla of yachts carrying contractors out of our southern Gulf, with oversized carpetbags full of spoils earned for them by those who toiled for cents on the dollar by proclamation of George W. Bush.
Dear Editor:
As Assembly Speaker John Gard's medical malpractice task force sat down to discuss re-imposing a cap on pain and suffering for the most severely injured, they agreed coming up with a new dollar limit for the cap was difficult. After all, how do you provide a rational basis for a number that is picked out of the air, without knowing the impact on severely injured patients?
So, after the task force spent months trying to figure out what kind of cap would get around constitutional protections, they decided to punt the issue back to Speaker Gard.
Now Gard, who hasn't attended the task force meetings, will presumably pull a number out of a hat. The arbitrary nature of this decision alone will violate the Constitution, forcing us to use our tax dollars to defend the new cap in the courthouse.
In the end, only juries, who have carefully heard all the facts of a specific case, can properly decide what is fair. Perhaps that is why our Constitution requires it.
Tell your legislators that here in Wisconsin justice belongs to people not corporations, to juries not insurance companies, to citizens not politicians.
To get to work each day, Tawfiq Nasser needs a green card, known as a "dirty ID." He also needs what is called a magnetic card to show that he is not a terrorist or security threat.
On top of that, he must carry two permits, both of which have to be renewed every few months.
Nasser is one of the lucky ones. As director and CEO of Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem, the Palestinian doctor moves about the city and the rest of Israel with some aggravation and complication.
"This is a privilege, a real privilege," he told an audience of about 40 Sunday afternoon at Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg.
Nasser, who has studied and worked in the U.S., was in Madison to give a presentation, "A View From Jerusalem: Challenges for Palestinian Health Care." He also spoke at St. Stephens Lutheran Church in Monona. His appearances were co-sponsored by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.
"I am not angry," said Nasser, 40, noting that he makes a good living and has a driver to help navigate the checkpoints.
But with its 52 permanent and 60 "flying" or mobile checkpoints, and now its security fence almost half complete, the Israeli government punishes the whole Palestinian population for the crimes of a few, creating "more anger, polarization and radicalization," he said.
Suicide bombers -- whom Nasser calls creative and "literally crazy" -- will plan their attacks close to the wall to make holes in it, he said: "Just to signify to the world that we need a way out. We can't just be prisoners."
Israel contends that its controversial 435-mile security barrier -- a mixture of concrete, razor wire, ditches and electronic fence - is crucial in keeping out Palestinian suicide bombers.
Hundreds of Israeli civilians have been killed and injured in suicide attacks in the last five years. Israel maintains that the wall has cut attacks significantly.
The U.S. administration is talking about a viable Palestinian state, Nasser said.
"We appreciate Bush saying it," he said. "We just don't know if he meant it. Like when he said we are in a 'crusade' in the Middle East. Whoops!"
Still, Palestinians want more than just a "viable state," they want a better quality of life and opportunities for success, security and independence, Nasser said.
In Nasser's imagination, he likens Palestine to a patient on life support with "200 tubes" attached to him.
Nasser's Augusta Victoria Hospital is the second largest hospital in East Jerusalem. It is largely underwritten by the Lutheran World Federation and by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to provide affordable health care to Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of the West Bank.
Nearly 40 percent of the hospital's operating expenses come from charitable contributions, he said.
As the Jewish community in America supports Jews in Israel, so too must Christian churches support Palestinian Christians, Nasser said.
Nasser has become close friends with Jacob Assaf, an Israeli Army colonel, who is director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Assaf helped Nasser open the first pediatric oncology unit for Palestinians earlier this year and the two doctors are campaigning to show how the occupation is detrimental to the health of Palestinians.
They were recently invited by United Nations ambassador John Bolton to make a presentation to the U.N., but couldn't get any media attention.
As the two men dined that night in a New York steakhouse, Nasser joked that if he took his steak knife and jabbed Assaf, 500 reporters would come flying because when it comes to Palestinian-Israeli relations, violent conflict is what gets attention.
During a question-answer period, Judith Utevsky assured Nasser that not all Jews give unconditional support to Israel.
"We've been oppressed in the past and to turn around and do the same to others is just heinous," said Utevsky, a member of Shaarei Shamayim Reconstructionist Congregation.
"As a Jewish person I feel a moral obligation and responsibility to work to end the occupation," she said.
\ E-mail: skalk@madison.com
This American success was celebrated in Baghdad by the pre-planned "spontaneous" toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue and the seizing of Saddam's palace complex. The only other building occupied "to prevent looting" was the oil ministry.
The ludicrous photo-op aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln appalled those of us who had joined millions in the worldwide call "No Attack on Iraq," but we were so shocked by the banner "Mission Accomplished" and so amused by the awkwardly costumed president-as-pilot - Falstaff would have been jealous of Bush's codpiece - that we did not see the truth of the statement hung out before our eyes.
For once the Bush administration did not lie.
The mission was never about saving America from destruction by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, was never about bringing democracy to the Middle East, was never about winning "the war against terrorists" - it was about oil and empire.
The coupling of our desire for empire and the need for oil beyond domestic sources became apparent only after the extraordinary military and industrial buildup during World War II.
As the war was winding down, President Roosevelt pledged the Saudi family of Arabia our protection in return for a free flow of oil from the Middle East to America.
After the war, Truman decided that the United States should keep substantial forces in Germany and in Japan. (We now have forces in 179 countries.)
The details of the "Plan for America's Future" (empire and oil) began to take shape in the 1970s with the birth of the neocons, who, in 1980, found a political home in the Reagan administration: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al.
Immediately, the United States urged Saddam to attack Iran, starting an eight-year war that ended in 1988 in a stalemate: Neither country lost or gained territory, but the armies of both countries were decimated, an outcome we engineered because we had helped both countries militarily and monetarily.
In 1990, Saddam turned his attention to Kuwait, hoping to get the extended seaports on the Persian Gulf that he failed to gain in the war with Iran. We tricked him into the invasion that we needed to forward our plans for oil and empire.
When Iraq occupied Kuwait, a huge U.S. underground air terminal suddenly was activated in Saudi Arabia, and that country was rapidly turned into an American staging ground for 500,000 troops.
The United States went to the United Nations to point out that Saddam had performed a pre-emptive strike against an unarmed sovereign state and got permission to expel the Iraqi occupiers of Kuwait.
Before moving to "mop up" the invading army, we bombed Iraq from Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border, demolishing the health and material infrastructure of the country: bridges, dams, hospitals, hotels, schools, radio and TV stations, communications systems, highways, and civilian populations in general.
Within weeks, Iraq had no army and a plagued society. As if this were not defeat enough, the United States forced the United Nations to place sanctions on Iraq, as punishment for having broken international laws.
Furthermore, Iraq was not "allowed" to rebuild its destroyed infrastructure. Then, as if this total destruction were not enough, the United States (and Britain), without U.N. authority, unilaterally declared "no-fly" zones over most of Iraq and began aerial photographic surveillance and air attacks by bombs and machine guns on the average of five days a week from 1991 to 2001, more often after 9/11, and even more by the summer of 2002, at which point we "knew" an attack on Iraq was coming.
Even if we had had an idiot in the White House, he would have known that after 13 years of photo surveys and bombing of every inch of Iraq, no WMDs could possibly have survived as a threat to our country and our "freedom."
March 19, 2003, did not begin the mission of securing for the United States the Iraqi oil fields and the land for 14 permanent military bases needed for our strategic control of the Middle East.
This mission was decades long in the planning and gradual implementation. No wonder that the new, "successful" administration wanted to celebrate on the USS Lincoln the accomplishment at last of the neocon's ultra right-wing goal.
Fourteen bases mean that so long as Bush is in control American troops will be stationed in Iraq.
Cindy Sheehan asked President Bush: "What is your 'noble cause'?" The ugly answer is, "Oil and bases."
Bush admitted as much when he said that he would not bring the troops home now because we must honor our dead "by completing the mission" (italics added).
* In blunt terms, "Mission Accomplished" means a continuous expenditure of blood for soil and oil.
\ Robert Kimbrough is a professor emeritus of English literature at the UW-Madison. He is a combat veteran of the Korean War, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Reserves colonel, and a member of Veterans for Peace.
The Capital Times :: FRONT :: 5A
Thursday, October 13, 2005
By Anita Weier The Capital Times
In the face of soaring health care costs and limited access to care for many, Democratic legislators want to set a deadline for health care reform in Wisconsin.
A bill proposed Wednesday would force the state Legislature to enact a reform plan by Jan. 1, 2008, that would ensure that at least 98 percent of Wisconsin residents have health insurance coverage within two years of enactment, and that health care costs be reduced by 15 percent in that time period.
"We want to develop the plan and get Republicans and Democrats working together," said Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona. "We don't want to let this drag on with people promoting various plans. We want to focus on it. This legislation would hold our feet to the fire so we get the job done."
Though the bill is being proposed by Democrats -- led by Senate Minority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, and Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Jim Kreuser, D-Kenosha -- Miller is hopeful that Republicans will support it.
"We are in the minority but we are trying to push the Legislature so we will do something on this issue instead of talk about it," Miller said. "We are hoping the Republicans will say we are all for supporting health care and all for working together to pass a proposal."
However, initial GOP response was not favorable.
Todd Allbaugh, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, said the plan was "typical" of Democratic proposals that he said are weak on details and not based in reality.
"What you've seen from the Republican side is to put forth bills and solutions to real problems which are thoughtfully crafted and based in sound fiscal numbers," Allbaugh said. For instance, he stressed, Republicans put forth the property tax freeze.
"We want to work with the Democrats if we can, but these pie-in-the-sky wouldn't it be lovely if' bills leave all the hard work to others," he added.
The bill states that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau would determine whether reform proposals meet the requirements it sets.
The bill is being circulated to legislators to gain support.
"Despite the deepening crisis, legislative action has been appallingly absent," Service Employees International Union spokesman Robert Kraig said in a written statement. "Since 2000, health care premiums for family coverage have increased 73 percent. ... Unless the Legislature is forced to act, the health care crisis will only get worse."
Registered nurse Dian Palmer, president of the SEIU Wisconsin State Council, said that the exploding cost of health care is the single most important issue facing the state.
"There are a number of viable solutions out there, but the Legislature has refused to take them up," she said. "It is time our lawmakers in Madison stop paying lip service to the rampaging health care crisis, and take real action."
\ E-mail: aweier@madison.com
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Kathy Walsh Madison
Dear Editor: I attended the talk by Dr. Tawfiq Nasser at Memorial United Church of Christ. While your article was both enlightening and accurate, it made it seem as though Palestinian anger at the Israeli checkpoints and travel restrictions are the main fuels that spark Palestinian suicide bombings that have resulted in deaths and injuries to Israeli civilians.
The article missed Dr. Nasser's point that Palestinians are suffering a much higher rate of death and injury due to direct Israeli violence than vice versa.
Palestinian children and adults have also died at checkpoints while trying to access medical care. These deaths show that the travel restrictions placed on Palestinians often have mortal consequences.
Statistics collected by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and the group Remember These Children show the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed during the Second Intifada is greater than three to one. For children the ratio approaches six to one. Remember These Children posts all deaths of minors on both sides along with the causes of death. Some of the children killed on both sides were infants and toddlers. Few if any of the children could be considered security risks.
These facts suggest that Palestinian anger is also fueled by the high number of deaths due to direct Israeli violence.
And so the cycle continues with Palestinians suffering the mortal consequences at a much higher rate than the Israelis. Meanwhile, continuing annexation of land on the West Bank (which is continuing despite the much publicized but very small-scale Israeli withdrawals) and the continued construction of the "Security Fence," described by Dr. Nasser as the "Annexation Wall," are shrinking the Palestinian territories into ever less viable, less successful, less secure and less self-sufficient bantustans.
It seems as soon as one top Wisconsin politician's conviction on corruption charges slipped off page one, another disgraced Wisconsin lawmaker pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in public office.
First it was Gary George, sentenced to four years in federal prison for fraud related to a kickback scheme. Now Brian Burke is a convicted felon and is headed to jail. Four more await their day in court. They represent a who's who of Capitol bosses. A onetime Assembly speaker who to this day sits on the Legislature's most powerful committee. The former majority leaders of both houses, not to mention the ex-assistant majority leader in the Assembly.
All this speaks volumes about how ethically pathological politics has become in our state. The corruption scandal is not the product of a few bad apples, it is the result of a system that is rotten to the core. The state's political system is breeding corruption and will continue to breed corruption as long as taking out a second mortgage on your soul is pretty much a prerequisite for making a serious bid for public office.
More scandals are inevitable unless Wisconsin adopts reforms that strike a fatal blow against the ethical pathology that has taken root in the Capitol. But the new bosses who replaced the indicted bosses continue to resist a thorough housecleaning.
The felony convictions and prison terms have sent them scurrying for cover, but deep down they seem as devoted as their predecessors to preserving the corrupt status quo. They remain cool to campaign finance reform that puts an end to the campaign arms race and the pay-to-play criminality it spawns.
There are three major campaign reform bills currently before the Legislature. One of them is modeled after the highly successful "clean money" systems in Arizona and Maine. The second is identical to last session's Ellis-Erpenbach bill, which was sponsored by seven Republicans and 16 Democrats. The third is a disfigured version of Ellis-Erpenbach that now allows unlimited corporate campaign contributions and no longer requires full disclosure of special interest campaign ads.
Legislative leaders are ignoring the two stronger reform measures altogether and are busily working to further weaken the weakest bill. There is a cancer growing in Wisconsin government, and it is spreading daily, and they're prescribing a topical cream.
To make matters worse, we have two useless enforcement agencies -- the Elections Board and Ethics Board -- both of which refused to investigate even when news of Capitol corruption made headlines. Even as jail sentences are handed down, they remain paralyzed.
Burke is about to lose his freedom and most likely his law license, but not his lobbying credentials. The Ethics Board, which seemingly has never seen ethical corner-cutting it could not tolerate, says Burke can remain a licensed lobbyist.
Apparently, the Ethics Board is OK with him calling clients and lawmakers from a prison cell.
Adding insult to the injury already done to Wisconsin's reputation for clean government, the Elections Board says it has no problem with Burke paying restitution to the state's taxpayers for money he stole from the public treasury with campaign funds he collected by shaking down special interest donors.
Lawmakers evidently remain entirely comfortable with these two foxes guarding the chicken coop. For 21 months now, there has been no debate and no vote on Senate Bill 1, aggressive ethics enforcement legislation that replaces the hapless Elections Board and Ethics Board with a beefed-up, politically independent Government Accountability Board.
It is up to the people of Wisconsin to take matters into their own hands. The powers-that-be are proving themselves no less oblivious to the growing cancer in state government than the indicted powers-that-were. The political malpractice will continue until we ordinary folks take the bull by the horns and insist on a cure in keeping with the disease. That's why we have concluded it is time for the rapidly growing citizen movement known as the People's Legislature to meet the Lobbyists' Legislature.
That is going to happen on Thursday, Oct. 27. Plan to come to the Capitol that day. Your democracy needs you.
* If history teaches us anything, it's that there always have been and always will be forces intent on subverting democracy and corrupting government. So there always must be vigilant citizens willing to fight those forces. Here's hoping that spirit of vigilance will be on prominent display Oct. 27.
Bring a broom.
\ Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for pro-democracy reforms. Web site: www.wisdc.org.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Marty Preston Wisconsin Dells
Dear Editor: On Wednesday, with sadness, we dismantled the Arlington Midwest Memorial in Lake Delton that honors the soldiers from Wisconsin and Illinois who have died in Iraq. Those of us who had become accustomed to seeing it and working with it every day are already feeling the gap in our hearts.
The owner of the land wanted to do some work on it before winter, and since we had already decided to close it down during the cold season, we decided not to place it anywhere else right now. And besides, we do not have another place at the moment.
Come next spring we will be looking at all of this again. Some folks have wanted to establish a more permanent memorial, with the names, perhaps, on a bronze plaque. We could find a place to install a plaque per year so that at the end of the year we could add a new one. Or we could relocate the crosses to a more permanent location. We don't know.
But we are very open to ideas. None of us -- including Bert and Pearl Sylvander, Hiroshi and Arlene Kanno, Mary and Harvey Larson, Debbie and Jim Kinder and myself, all from the Dells area -- wants to see the memorial fade out of existence. From the comments left at the site and the communication we have had from the families themselves, it is of immense importance to everyone that these fallen soldiers not be forgotten. The families will never truly recover from the permanency of that loss, and their country should make sure their lives have a place of honor in our minds -- forever.
If anyone has an idea about a location (accessible to the general public but not in a spot that might cause traffic problems) or how we should continue this memorialization, I would welcome a contact. My phone number is 254-1126, and my e-mail is ArlingtonMidwest@yahoo.com.
It is an honor to participate in this dedication to the loyal men and women who have had their lives cut short. I hope everyone will remember them with gratitude and love.
Wisconsin State Journal :: LOCAL/WISCONSIN :: C1
Friday, October 28, 2005
ANITA CLARK aclark@madison.com 608-252-6138
Brooms belonging to political protesters, not Halloween witches, arrived at the state Capitol Thursday at a rally in which participants vowed to sweep political corruption out of state government.
About 300 people gathered on the State Street steps, many wearing name tags that declared, "Hello. My Name is Nobody."
That theme was echoed by speakers who declared legislators have made "nobodies" out of citizens who can't match the big spending of special interests.
"You realize, unless you have cash with you, you are a nobody" at legislative hearings, said Ed Garvey, editor of FightingBob.com, a Web site billed as Wisconsin's progressive voice.
Audience members cheered, hooted and brandished their brooms as speakers decried expensive political campaigns and the influence of money on government policy.
"The corruption of this place runs deep," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a rally sponsor.
Thursday's event, a good-natured affair on a cool, sunny day that drew many gray-haired participants, was described as drawing "politically homeless" people together as the People's Legislature.
It came two days after former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala pleaded guilty to felony charges that he hired state employees to run a political campaign and circumvented election laws. He is second of four legislators charged to be convicted.
The rally also came on the heels of a Wednesday vote by a key legislative committee approving merger of the state's Ethics and Elections Boards into an investigative division.
After the outdoor speeches, the crowd filed peacefully into the Capitol rotunda. They left their brooms outside, as required by Capitol police, but many waved dollar bills to emphasize their message.
Marcia Steele, 54, a licensed practical nurse from Oshkosh, held up coins.
"The only way you can get heard in this building is if you can afford to buy your way in," she said.
The Capital Times :: FRONT :: 1A
Friday, October 28, 2005
By David Callender The Capital Times
More than 400 broom-toting "nobodies" invaded the State Capitol on Thursday to sweep out a corrupt system that they say puts monied special interests ahead of ordinary citizens.
The rally by the People's Legislature, an informal network of mostly liberals and progressives, was aimed at rallying support for clean-government proposals that have largely laid dormant in the Legislature.
"The bosses at the Capitol keep telling us that nobody cares about political corruption, that nobody cares about campaign finance reform. To them I say, look at all these nobodies," said Mike McCabe, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which helped sponsor the rally.
The rally came two days after the second top Democratic leader this month - former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala - pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in public office.
Former Sen. Brian Burke pleaded guilty to felony misconduct charges earlier. Two top Republican leaders - former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen and former Assembly Majority Leader Steve Foti - are awaiting trial on similar charges.
The charges mark the first time that leaders from both parties in both legislative houses have faced possible jail time.
"I've always taken a lot of pride in Wisconsin's reputation for clean government, and now we have leaders of both parties charged with felonies," said Hank Zumach, who drove from Stoddard with his wife, Betty, to attend the rally.
Zumach said he's always considered himself a Democrat, but he's now disillusioned with his party.
"A lot of my Republican friends say they're just as disillusioned with the way the system is working," he added. "Where does the average person go?"
Zumach wasn't alone in his feelings.
Lynn Brethouwer of Madison admitted that she hasn't always paid much attention to politics. But she said she decided to come to the rally "because I feel so terrible about the direction our government is going.
"There shouldn't be all this money required when you run for office. There ought to be public financing" for campaigns so that ordinary people can run without having to get help from special interests, she said.
A recent poll found that only 6 percent of Wisconsin residents believe that their elected officials are actually representing them.
"The rest of us are really ticked off," said McCabe.
Two Democratic lawmakers - Reps. Spencer Black of Madison and Frank Boyle of Superior - decried the role of money in politics.
"We need a citizens' crusade to clean up the Capitol," Black said, because policy is being decided "not by what's best for the people but by who has the biggest checkbook."
Boyle, a veteran Democrat, called Chvala a "fall guy" for pay-to-pay politics.
"We are all guilty. Everyone who walks through these doors because of campaign contributions is guilty," he said.
The People's Legislature is pushing for full public financing of campaigns, overhauling the state's elections and ethics watchdog agencies, and eliminating one-party control of most legislative districts.
One of those proposals - a move to merge the state ethics and elections board into a single, more powerful state agency - cleared a major hurdle this week when it was approved by the Joint Finance Committee. But several key lawmakers have expressed doubts about the plan.
Brethouwer, who dropped off a note at Gov. Jim Doyle's office asking him to support the group's agenda, said she recognized that Thursday's rally was just the beginning in a long battle.
"The only way this is going to change is if there's an uprising," she said. "It's like a revolution. You have to keep the people going."
\ E-mail: dcallender@madison.com
People are angry that we are spending $1.5 billion a week (a mind-boggling amount of money) on a needless war and we can't even take care of our own here at home. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance. Schools are closing down for lack of funds, and people are working more hours and making less money.
A Madison referendum is being sought to give citizens the right to vote on the question: "Should the United States bring all military personnel home from Iraq now?" Similar efforts to are under way in Milwaukee, La Crosse, Oshkosh and other cities. This is about democracy in action, and the ability of people to express their views on the war. It would send a strong message to Washington on how our money should be spent and where our National Guard should be stationed. In fact, it is the taxpayers who foot the bill for war, while military contractors, like Halliburton, make huge profits.
Recently, the U.S. Senate voted to allocate $50 billion more for the Iraq war, and now Congress is talking of cutting $50 billion from domestic programs. The war is being waged at home and abroad. People keep asking, why are we even in Iraq? There were no weapons of mass destruction. There were no ties to al-Qaida. Eighty percent of the Iraqi people want us to leave their country. Let's do what they ask.
Meanwhile, here on the home front, people are suffering because our government is not providing the basics. We saw this in Louisiana and Mississippi, where individuals were left to die -- many of whom were African American. The National Guard were not here where we needed them. And our money was all tied up in warmongering. Resources were not allocated to fix the levees and prevent a disaster, or to help people after disaster struck.
We are the richest nation in the world and we can't even organize rescue operations in our own cities. Here in Wisconsin, residents of Stoughton were hit by a tornado and have not seen one cent from the federal government.
It's time that we get our priorities straight. Rather than killing people in another land and losing 2,000 American soldiers to a senseless war, let's put resources toward sustaining lives at home. We can do this by getting the referendum question on the April 2006 ballot and by voting to bring our troops home now.
Rather, we need help with the sifting and winnowing process. It isn't just a matter of throwing the rascals out. We need help from reformers and the media to help us decide who to elect and who to reject. There have always been earnest, hard-working elected officials who year in and year out do what they think is right for the common good.
Some we may reject not because we think they are corrupt but because we don't believe their policies are the best. There also are some in most elected bodies who care more about serving their own interests than those of their constituents. Some may actually undermine the process. Politics puts a magnifying glass on the process, often making people look better or worse than they are.
Elections should help us separate the wheat from the chaff. Painting the whole process with too wide a brush makes that more difficult. Too often we assume the worst of candidates and are easily manipulated by an opponent's propaganda.
The cost of campaigning has grown so high that candidates are put in an untenable position. Even completely honest candidates have to spend time raising money - time that would be better spent on developing policy. Contributions from special interests inevitably influence the course of legislation. Until we understand that the best thing we can do with our taxes is buy our own government, many well-qualified people will be unable or unwilling to go through the electoral process.
We will make better choices only when we respect the process enough to make the effort to pick and choose wisely. We can't really love democracy and disdain the political process that makes it work.
It's not about ancient history -- it was only in 1986 that the Supreme Court ruled, in Meritor v. Vinson, that sexual harassment, specifically a hostile work environment, could constitute sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The class action suit, Jenson v. Eveleth Mines, the basis for "North Country," was settled in 1998 after a 10-year legal battle.
The next Supreme Court justice will replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has often been the swing vote in favor of advancing women's rights. We must not lose ground on these rights, any of them.
While discussing high court nominations and women, abortion grabs the headlines. And, as the failed nomination of Harriet Miers proved, it is the make or break issue when it comes to President Bush's Supreme Court nominees. But it will not be enough to know where Bush's next choice stands on abortion; we must know how the nominee stands on affirmative action in employment and education, an issue vital to the gains women have made in the last quarter century. We also need to know the potential justice's views on protections in the workplace, access to birth control, and sports and Title IX, among other issues.
President Bush refused to release records of his conversations with Miers, who has served as White House counsel since February of this year and White House deputy chief of staff for policy from 2003 to 2004. This is unacceptable. The Senate and the U.S. public need to know where the next nominee stands on issues that will come before the court during their tenure, if confirmed.
His acceptance of Miers' withdrawal is a cop-out, along the lines of a kid saying, "I won't give you what you want, and if you don't like it, I won't play."
Bush must not be allowed to get away with hiding information on his nominees from the public eye. If the next nominee is going to have a chance at the honor of serving on this nation's highest court, we must make the candidate prove himself or herself during the Senate confirmation hearings.
* * *
The courts have long provided the remedy of last resort for the oppressed and marginalized seeking justice. Let's keep it that way.
Knowing how the next Supreme Court justice will vote on issues of utmost importance to protecting all women's rights is critical. Our livelihoods may depend on it.
\ Jill Hopke, a native of Minnesota, lives in Madison
Ethanol? Yes. Ethanol from corn? No!
Ethanol made from corn requires high- grade farmland and high inputs of fossil fuel energy. It increases air pollution and global warming emissions from machinery exhaust and other farming practices. It requires lots of petroleum-based fertilizers, elevates the use of pesticides and chemicals, degrades soil, increases erosion, adds pesticides and other toxic chemicals to the environment, expands costs for high- tech farm equipment, and more.
Corn should be raised for food, biodegradable plastics and other valuable commodities not for burning as fuel.
Instead, make ethanol from widely available, inexpensive bio-sources like switchgrass, sugar beet and cane residue, agricultural and dairy wastes, forestry and paper mill wastes and other material now largely unused.
Switchgrass is an easy crop to grow requiring low energy inputs and chemical applications, even on marginal soils, and it is a perennial crop that gives three to four cuttings per season while limiting soil disturbance. Ethanol can be made from other agricultural wastes whose residues still make good organic fertilizers.
The data are contradictory, but when total life cycle, full-cost accounting is done, it is highly unlikely that ethanol from corn is competitive with oil or other bio- sources. The energy gain is small at best, and then only with a taxpayer subsidy. It is surprising that free-market enthusiasts would want to go this route. Put corn up against switchgrass and bio-waste, and corn doesn't make business sense, unless you look at who is backing corn.
U. S. corn production is controlled by corporate agriculture giants like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and a few others that control more than 90 percent of America's food production, as well as by large corporate farms. It is not surprising that they have former conservative state lawmaker Robert Welch lobbying for an ethanol bill in the Legislature. The bill AB/SB 15 in its present form is simply corporate welfare from the taxpayer's pocket.
Producing ethanol from switchgrass, bio-wastes and other organic sources is cheap but can be accomplished with a high profit margin because costs are low. It will improve air quality, reduce oil dependency, and help restore the planet's eco-balance. Growing corn for fuel has a net negative and unbalancing environmental impact.
Wisconsin legislators should make sure AB/SB 15:
• Requires all ethanol production facilities to buy and use all available bio-products and bio-waste, not just corn, to make ethanol.
• Subsidizes the expansion of switchgrass farming and bio-waste capture and recycling to make new markets for all sectors of Wisconsin agriculture.
• Uses ethanol to help reduce our oil dependency, but requires constant life-cycle, full-cost accounting from the ethanol industry to make sure the planet and our well-being have a net gain.
The Rev. Steffenson, Madison, is education coordinator of the Wisconsin Interfaith Climate and Energy Campaign.