The Wave Could Be Building . . .

Could be.  But I am simultaneously too superstitious and too realistic to say that it is.

But it could be.  I sensed that the political seas were getting churned faster than a whirlpool cranked to eleven when Michigan Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed to face Republican Mike Rogers for the state's open Senate seat.  Two moderate Democrats - both women, Mallory McMorrow and Hayley Stevens - were splitting the centrist vote against the progressive El-Sayed, so McMorrow withdrew and endorsed Stevens in an effort to blunt El-Sayed's momentum.  The move failed.  Michigan Democrats have had enough of Trump and MAGA and are ready for democratic socialism. 

Michigan Republicans and independents?  Yeah, that's just the problem.  No one knows how a Muslim who is pivoting to the far left in a state known for large Catholic and evangelical Protestant populations and a hunting culture where guys in plaid outfits shoot God's creatures.  But he does have appeal in Michigan's suburban areas and small cities.  But in overwhelmingly black Detroit, he's still seen as an outsider, given the uneasy relations between black Detroiters and Arab-Americans in Dearborn.  

But so far, so good . . . he's competitive.  And there's no scandal around him.  His name is clearly not Arabic for "Graham Platner." 

In Wisconsin, where the governor's mansion is up for grabs, it looked like the state's Democrats were going to slit their throats and nominate Francesca Hong, a leftist Wisconsin legislator who dismissed Thanksgiving as a patriarchal holiday.  That was too much for Wisconsin Democrats, aware that the Republicans had nominated an election denier who could help the 2028 Republican presidential nominee - who could be Donald Trump - could help that nominee cheat to win Wisconsin, chose sanity and nominated David Crowley instead.

But here's something to note.  Not only is Hong Asian, but Crowley is black, as was former future of the Democratic Party Mandela Barnes (he lost a Sente bid to Ron Johnson in 2022), and a fourth candidate for the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial nomination was a Latina.  In what is possibly the whitest state in the Great Lakes region,  it's possible that outgoing Governor Tony Evers will be the last Democrat to occupy the governor's mansion.  But not the last Democrat.

There are too many surprising Democratic primary winners across the country to talk about here, but it looks like opportunities for Democrats to win practically everything this year. People are fed up and want to put in a more productive Congress than the current 119th Congress, the worst Congress in eighty years.  There's just one thing - MAGA is working overtime to make sure that doesn't happen.  Without the ability for Congress to pass the SAVE America voter suppression bill, Trump is already trying to use his executive powers to limit voting by mail (even though he votes by mail himself, and he is already planning to send ICE agents to the polls to scare anyone who looks like the typical Democratic voter away.    

And if the Democrats win back the House and possibly the Senate, Speaker of the House and noted election denier Mike Johnson could simply decide not to seat the new Congress.

It's not going to be over after Election Day.

And I'm still a secessionist.

Not Going Forward

The Senate election in Wisconsin looked to be the one that would finally send incumbent Republican Ron Johnson packing.  Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes (below) was ahead in earlier polls.  Now it appears that he's falling behind.

It appears that Johnson has - successfully, alas - tied Barnes to the rise in crime mainly due to the fact that he once voiced skepticism about policing and the fact that - hey, why don't I come out and say it? - Barnes is black.  Not to mention the fact that Barnes was named after the most famous black political prisoner of the twenty-first century, which makes for a pretty good dog whistle for Johnson to use in Wisconsin, the whitest state in the Great Lakes region.

Meanwhile, Johnson is on record as saying that the January 6 rioters were not in fact violent insurrectionists but in fact rioters who simply got a littel out of control. But hey, they stayed within the velvet ropes in the Rotunda, right? 

I can't believe that Johnson could be on his way to a third term on the issue of fighting crime when he's perfectly comfortable with the crimes the January 6 insurrectionists committed at the Capitol!

I gotta check my passport again . . . 

Forward or Backward?

Wisconsin - another pivotal state that could have implications for the 2024 elections and beyond - just had its primary for the general midterm election.  Tim Michels, a 2020-election denier with the support of Trump, defeated Rebecca Kleefisch, who had the backing of Mike Pence and former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.  Michels faces incumbent Democratic governor Tony Evers in November.  Michels could win thanks to favorable trends for the Republicans nationwide, and Evers barely won his office in 2018, a Democratic year. 

On the one hand, I was happy to see a Walker-backed candidate lose, because I still hate Walker, who lost the governorship to Evers. On the other hand, a Trump-backed governor could send Trump electoral votes to Washington in January 2025 even if the Democrats carry Wisconsin in the next presidential election in a landslide.  Talk about getting the feeling of watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Mercedes . . . 

Be that as it may, the Democrats just nominated Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes (below) to oppose Ron Johnson for the U.S. Senate in November.  Johnson is a two-term incumbent who may or may not deny the results of the 2020 presidential election but does question COVID vaccine repeatedly.  Barnes is a progressive who has supported the Green New Deal and has the endorsement of noted non-Democrat Bernie Sanders. 

A black progressive named for a black South African icon running for the Senate in a working-class state that's also the whitest state in the Great Lakes region.  Oh, yeah, that's a recipe for success!

Well, maybe it is.  The first polls for the general election show Barnes with a slight lead over Johnson.  And Barnes' chief qualification to oppose Johnson is that he is not Russ Feingold, who lost to Johnson twice.  

Judgment Day

It seems like too many people are listening to Alex Jones.

John Roemer (above), a retired judge in Wisconsin, was assassinated at his home yesterday morning by an alleged militiaman who was shot by law enforcement.  The gunman is in critical condition and the authorities hope they can get some motive out of him upon his recovery.

The suspect allegedly had a bipartisan hit list for more attacks, a list that included U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic governors Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

It appears that more and more self-described revolutionaries are ready to attack public officeholders to instigate and accelerate the "revolution" they have been pining for since the Tea Party was formed.  January 6 is turning out to have been the dress rehearsal for the coming American apocalypse. 

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Trump Can Still Win. NOT!

 Some people just won't take no for an answer.

Donald Trump, who still can't believe that he lost to Joe Biden - the same Joe Biden who accidentally appropriated a British politician's' life story in his first bid for the Presidency and once referred to Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television from the White House after the 1929 stock market crash - is still contesting the election after nearly a month since Biden was declared the winner.  When he got a recount of votes in two countries in Wisconsin, Biden ended up getting more votes to add to his statewide popular victory.  Trump then sued to get 20,000 ballots in Wisconsin thrown out after the results were certified.  He did that even as Arizona certified its results for Biden.  After failing to get thousands of votes thrown out by a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania, his lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.  No such appeal has since been filed.

And now that Georgia's presidential vote has been counted thrice and certified, Trump is suing that state and complaining about how Republicans there have run the election, raising the possibility that Republicans in Georgia won't come out to vote in the U.S. Senate double runoff in January because they don't trust the system - because Trump told them not to trust it.

This all prompted Gabriel Sterling, prompting a Republican electoral official in Georgia, to tell Trump to cut it out or someone could get hurt by some reactionary nut out to take action against GOP "traitors" who won't help Trump overturn the election - an election that even Attorney General William Barr says was free of mass voter fraud.  This puts him in concurrence with Chris Krebs, the former Trump Administration cybersecurity official who got fired for saying that the election was safe and secure.  Even Lindsey Graham is telling Trump to put up or shut up in regard to offering proof that the election was stolen.  And yet Trump went online for over 45 minutes to talk about how there was fraud, and no one cared a twit about a word he said.   

You think it was bad that Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova saying that Krebs should be executed (and Krebs is looking at suing him)?  Consider the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn calling for martial law to allow the election to be done over.

Give it up, Donald - haven't you done enough already?  

No, Wisconsin

Scott Walker serves his long-awaited last day as governor of Wisconsin today.  But any hopes of the Badger State following the advice of its own motto ("Forward") was quickly dispelled by the Republican legislature passing - and Walker signing - legislation severely limiting the power of his Democratic successor, Tony Evers (below), as well as that of the incoming Democratic Attorney General, Josh Kaul.  (Kaul can't stop the state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act currently pending.)

To make matters worse . . . well, injury, meet insult.  Evers has said that he will not challenge in court the new laws limiting his and Kaul's power, as he'd promised.  He said that he went over a possible legal challenge with lawyers and found that he's have to sue the whole Wisconsin state government, including the executive branch - that is, he'd have to sue himself.

I can think of something else he can do to himself.

Democrats will continue to disappoint and disgust as long as they're too afraid to fight back against the Republicans as hard as the Republicans kick them.  Evers says he still hopes to be an effective governor by directing - ready for this? - economic policy.

With a Republican legislature.

Good luck, Tony - just don't expect me to put much faith in your way of "governing!" 

Power Failures

Not the sort I've been having for nine years and change.

In Wisconsin, the Republican-controlled legislature passed - and outgoing scumbag governor Scott Walker signed - legislation limiting the power of incoming Democratic governor Tony Evers, making it illegal for Evers' administration to rescind a state suit against the federal health care law, and limiting early voting in an attempt to help Trump win the state again in 2020.  Evers asked Walker - pretty please, with sugar on it - to veto the legislation.  Yeah, right.   Walker responded by saying no to Evers with a bottle of elderberry wine.  With a touch of arsenic.  And similar efforts are afoot to undermine incoming Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan as well.

And then there are the new Democratic attorneys general in those states having their power reduced . . .

No matter how many state legislative seats the Democrats won in the 2018 midterms - 336, by one count - they still don't control enough state legislatures, and the newly elected Democratic governors in this cycle are more often than not susceptible to being failures as many of them will have to deal with GOP legislatures that will seem them damned before helping them run their states.  The Republicans are hell-bent on negating elections and rigging the system to keep themselves in power, or at least give them the upper hand in perpetuity.  The Democrats have to get smarter in winning back power in the states (and this goes for Win Back Your State) if they want to control more state legislatures.  Yet, even as Democrats won seats of Republican-leaning U.S. House districts by nominating candidates far more moderate than the Democratic base, this strategy translated into far less success at the state level - if indeed it was consciously employed at the state level.  Perhaps they should have nominated more moderates who could compete in Republican-leaning state legislative districts.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, where the Republican legislature turned Democratic governor Roy Cooper into a virtual figurehead and restricted voting rights in the name of stopping voter fraud, Mark Harris may have gotten himself involved in a voter-fraud case concerning absentee ballots in his race against his opponent Dan McCready for the seat for North Carolina's Ninth U.S. House District.  The local election board has refused to certify the results showing a Harris win, and a new election may be ordered.

Harris is the Republican candidate. 

Anarchy In the U.K. (and in the U.S.A.)

Riots have broken out in Great Britain over the unpopular austerity programs the coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, with several blocks of houses and flats in some of London's poorest neighborhoods being set ablaze - or alight, as the locals would say. Gunfire and the throwing of Molotov cocktails and gunfire have been reported in neighborhoods such as Croydon and Tottenham. Similar unrest has been reported in Birmingham and Liverpool in the worst wave of riots since the late seventies and the early eighties. What usually happens in the United Kingdom usually happens in the United States next.

In America, the unemployed and underemployed middle-class seethe over a debt ceiling deal that rewards the wealthy and a President that proposes modest reforms to the tax code when bolder action is needed - Obama looks less Rooseveltian and more Cartereqsue by the day. The Dow Jones average plunged 634 points yesterday and the Republicans resist doing anything to create jobs that involve "government spending." Meanwhile, Wisconsin progressives are striving to get enough Republican state senators voted out of office in recall elections today to help the Democrats take over the Wisconsin State Senate and block the "reforms" of Governor Scott Walker in advance of an effort to have him recalled in 2012. Americans are getting angrier.

This is the season, stormy weather's on the way . . ..

Imperial Walker

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is moving once again to ensure that his state's name ought to be spelled with a K, no longer even to disguise the fascist nature of his policies. Democratic State senator Fred Risser, who has represented his legislative district longer than Walker has been alive, was speaking against a Walker-backed bill that will restrict voter registration and participation by eliminating party-line voting, lengthening the residency requirement before registering to vote from 10 to 28 days, and - the icing on the cake - requiring voters to carry photo ID in the form of a driver's license or a passport, which will deter poor people (who don't normally own cars or travel abroad) from voting. The Republican Senate president cut off Risser before his time expired. When I saw the video of the incident, I thought I heard someone to tell Risser to shut up. The bill was passed 19-5, declared passed before some Senate Democrats could even vote.

Walker - who wrote the bill - is expected to sign it next week.

Wait - there's more! Walker is going after against gay and lesbian couples by trying to undo a law that allows basic rights such as taking leave to care for a sick partner and making end-of-life decisions. It's bad enough that homosexual couples aren't allowed to marry in Wisconsin, and now apparently they're not allowed to live together as if they were married.

Scott Walker is a disgrace and a detestable excuse for a human being.

Walker and Kasich: Union of the Snakes

Judge Maryann Sumi blocked enforcement of the Wisconsin state law barring collective bargaining for public employees. This time she means it!

Governor Scott Walker had tried to implement the law, insisting that publishing it online made it official, but Judge Sumi made it clear that she wanted Walker and one of his top aides, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, to wait for the legal challenges against it to proceed. Walker agreed reluctantly, but he is confident that the legislation - passed in possible violation of the state's open meetings law - will be eventually upheld.

The law allows public workers to negotiate on wages, but it says no to allowing for negotiations over anything else - no bargaining for work hours, no bargaining for vacation time, no bargaining for almost all of their work conditions, etc. They are also being told to contribute more to their pensions and health care costs (negating the wage bargaining right), something they agreed to already despite it being tantamount to an 8 percent pay cut.

At least Walker's bill allows police officers and firefighters to collectively bargain. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich just signed a bill that prohibits even that. Policemen and firemen won't be able to bargain for pay rates, working conditions, or even equipment; police unions usually bargain for bulletproof vests, for example. Police and fire departments in Ohio are worried about the effect this will have on their security, and rightfully so.

Kasich insists that his $55.5 billion, two-year state budget is based on unspecified savings from repealing union protections to close an $8 billion gap. Most Ohioans aren't convinced. From the second Kasich signed the bill, protesters have ninety days to get a referendum on the ballot for Election Day on November 8 to have the bill repealed.

The referendum stands a good chance of being put up for a vote. Chances of passage are less clear. Kasich says that people just have to get used to this change, adding that he understands that such change is difficult . . . just as it was difficult for him to - I'm not making this up - get a new haircut.

You Might Recall . . .

Ed Schultz reported on MSNBC last night on some polls that aren't as irrelevant as they seem. Polls taken in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan reveal that if the gubernatorial elections Republicans won in these states back in November were held today, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Rick Snyder would lose in their respective races. The suggested irrelevance comes from the fact that these financial fascists did win, and they're not up for re-election until 2014. These governors - and Rick Scott in Florida - remind me of abusive men who are as sweet as pie while courting their women, only to turn on them and treat them like dirt once they've gotten married.

The residents of these Midwestern states are likely to be stuck with these governors for awhile. But maybe not. Walker is thought to be a prime candidate for a recall election once he's eligible to be subjected to such a vote in January, and Rick Snyder could be up for a recall vote as early as June. This is happening even as a recall effort has started against Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona, which was mentioned here earlier.

Walker sold himself as a skilled budget planner without mentioning what he'd do to balance the Wisconsin budget (though anyone who was familiar with his record as Milwaukee County executive should have had a clue). In Michigan, Rick Snyder sold himself as a job creator by virtue of his experience as CEO of the Gateway computer company, only to leave out the fact that most of the jobs he created were overseas, the result of outsourcing. And even though Kasich sold himself as a job creator, he did, as you might remember, announce that he would cancel the high-speed rail project that would have bisected Ohio and linked Cleveland to Cincinnati by way of Columbus ("It's just more government spending," was Kasich's excuse) before he even took office. Thus, Kasich eliminated the jobs to build and maintain a rail line that would have had a positive economic impact on the communities it would have served along Ohio's I-71 corridor. Even if Kasich had allowed the Ohio high-speed rail plan to go ahead, of course, the workers who would have been hired to run the damn thing probably would have been denied a chance at unionization or been forced to work under dubious safety conditions. (I don't know if Kasich can be recalled, but his unpopularity is helping Ohio's progressive incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown in the polls as Brown prepares to run for re-election next year.)

The Republican governors' reversal of political fortune is indeed a strong turnaround from November, but by the time any of these rhymes-with-glass poles get thrown out of office, they will have likely done considerable damage to their states. I hope these recalls still happen. But of course, the people who are apparently wising up just a little too late did vote these jerks into office in the first place, and in a fit of passion without much reason. Elections have consequences. It figures that many voters in the Midwest would think of that only now.

So Sumi!

News flash: With all of the news coming out of Japan and Libya, I have to report something very important: Scott Walker is still the governor of Wisconsin. And he's still trying to undermine collective bargaining rights for public employees.

But Walker and his allies in Madison got an unexpected setback when Maryann Sumi, a state judge, blocked implementation of the law rescinding such bargaining rights from state workers after a Democratic district attorney sued to stop it. The case against the law is that it was a approved by a bicameral committee for a vote in the legislature as a separate measure from the budget - thus not needing at least one Democratic member of the state Senate - in a meeting for which there was not adequate notice, in violation of Wisconsin's open meetings law. The conference meeting was called by the Republican-majority committee almost literally at the last minute. Also at issue is whether or not the Republicans had a necessary quorum when they passed the law, which Judge Sumi is also considering.

The Democrats have a case in the former dispute. Everyone saw how Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca protested at and against the meeting that made the anti-union, anti-bargaining provision of the budget bill a separate piece of legislation, complaining that there had not been adequate public notice of it . . . and how the Republican-controlled committee ignored him as they voted to separate the provision and then walked out once it was done. They literally pretended that Barca wasn't there.

Judge Sumi says that there's nothing to stop the GOP-controlled legislature from passing the anti-collective bargaining bill again, so long as adequate, timely notice is given. But, as Democratic state senator Bob Jauch noted, it will only serve as notice for workers and union members to congregate in Madison and begin their protests anew.

Walker Wins!

Just a short time ago, as I type this, Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate, using the sort of procedural move that is becoming increasingly common in GOP-controlled state legislatures to ram through bills favored by the far right, passed a bill stripping public employees of their right to collective bargaining by separating that provision from the budget bill, this allowing them to vote on a non-budget related piece of legislation without a quorum. Only one of the nineteen senators voted against the legislation. It's expected to pass in the Assembly tomorrow.

The Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate might as well go back to Madison, because all that's left is to vote on a budget with concessions that public employees already agreed to anyway. And now that Scott Walker and his supporters have achieved their primary goal without having to negotiate, and it would be foolish to think that this act of union busting can be reversed in Wisconsin or that union busting can be slowed down elsewhere, even if Republicans do pay a political price in next year's elections, pay a price in this year's midterm elections in New Jersey, or get recalled early in Wisconsin.

Not that any of that is actually likely to happen.

I'm getting angry now. First a parliamentary procedure is used to further restrict abortions in Virginia by adding a rider to a bill already passed in one house, then a removal of two members from a state Senate committee in Ohio clears the path for anti-union legislation there, now this . . .. I'm ready to give up.

Badgered

Wisconsin's fourteen renegade Democratic state senators have had the pressure ratcheted up against them, with Governor Scott Walker not only threatening them with arrest for contempt if and when they return to the state, but also with fines of $100 - per day - if they don't return to Madison and provide a quorum to vote on Walker's legislation rescinding collective bargaining rights for public employees. No one has suggested that Walker be arrested for impersonating an office.

Meanwhile, Walker has announced that he will be forced to send out formal layoff notices to 1,500 state employees, without the bill's passage, in an effort to save the state approximately $30 million. "Forced?" After weeks of protest, Walker is being "forced" to do what he wanted to do legislatively - screw the middle class to save money? A movement has now started to recall eight key Republican state senators who have supported him. Wisconsin law allows for elected officials who have served at least one year of their current term to be removed from office. Supporters have sixty days to collect anywhere from 15,000 to 21,000 signatures, depending on the district, for each targeted senator. If only three of these eight senators can be recalled, the Democrats will gain control of the state Senate.

Also, Michael Moore joined the protesters in Madison yesterday to rally the faithful and fight Walker's agenda, which includes deep cuts in social services. I don't know if this helps or hurts . . ..

We Got a Thing We Call the Madison Blues

I never thought I'd see a class of people long oppressed and taken for granted rise up, take over a public space in their capital city, and declare that they've had enough abuse and that they're not going to take anymore.

Protesters in Egypt? No, public employees in Wisconsin!

Facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, Republican governor Scott Walker needs to cut costs, so in order to facilitate his task, he's decided to run roughshod over the state's public employees - teachers firefighters, you know, people like you and me (well, you, anyway) - by having them pay 50 percent more for their pensions and 12 percent more for health insurance. Oh yeah, and he wants to eliminate the right of public employee unions to engage in collective bargaining, theoretically allowing him to hold all the cards in dealing with the workers.

Walker's heavy-handed tactics have brought public employees from across the state into the capital, Madison, where they have demonstrated outside of and inside the state Capitol building. Tommy Thompson, at his most extreme in his efforts at welfare reform and school choice in his fourteen years has governor, never perpetrated the kind of backlash that Scott Walker has after only a month and change in office.

Reports of the demonstrations - from Fox News, mostly - spoke of civil unrest, but Ed Schultz went to Madison for himself and saw only Middle America types peacefully chanting slogans and carrying homemade signs demanding that Walker allow collective bargaining to resolve a budget issue that some observers believe is less serious than the state's Republicans insist. Although anyone has a right to be skeptical when Wisconsin public employees say it's not about the money (H.L. Mencken famously said that when someone says it's not about money, it's about money), many of them are happy to discuss pension and health insurance issues with Walker - but not in bad faith and with their own rights gutted to the point of irrelevance. Wisconsin Senate Democrats are siding with the people, having fled the state to avoid voting on Walker's proposal and to prevent a quorum in a Republican-controlled chamber.

Domestic policy in the United States has placed a greater economic burden on workers for thirty years, and people are finally beginning to rise against the status quo. I don't know how long Wisconsin public employees plan to hold out in Madison, but they're inspiring others to take action elsewhere; similar protests have sprung up in Ohio against the similar anti-union proposals of the similarly reactionary Republican governor John Kasich. And in Florida, noted Medicare ripoff artist Rick Scott, having sunk Alex Sink in the 2010 gubernatorial election, has indicated a desire to torpedo public employees there.

How insensitive are these guys? Kasich betrayed his attitudes toward public workers by calling a Columbus policeman who gave him a traffic ticket in 2008 an idiot. (He did so in remarks to, believe it or else, public employees - Ohio Environmental Protection Agency workers. Kasich has since apologized.) And Scott compared budget cutting to cleaning out an attic.

A lot of people are surprised, though, that Wisconsin is where the backlash against reactionary Republican labor policy has started. I don't know why. Yes, Wisconsin is where the Republican party was founded. And yes, Wisconsin did go overwhelmingly Republican in last year's elections, and the state has produced right-wingers like Joseph McCarthy as well as Thompson and Walker. But it's also the state where the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union was founded. It's the state of Gaylord Nelson, the U.S. Senator who founded Earth Day; of William Proxmire, who served with Nelson in the U.S. Senate and fought against government waste and for campaign finance reform, and; of Russell Feingold, who helped continue the fight for campaign finance reform in the Senate and continues the fight for liberal causes with his new group Progressives United.

Wisconsin is also the home of Robert LaFollette, the early-twentieth-century governor and U.S. Senator who championed, among other things, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, and progressive taxation . . . and who also signed the first state worker's compensation bill in the country into law. I think LaFollette would have been pleased with what's going on in his home state right now.

Backwards Badgers

The state of Wisconsin, where the Republican party was founded in 1854, is abut to come under control of that very same party. A PBS NewsHour report last night highlighted the success of the GOP in the Badger State, in which the Republicans won the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat, control of both houses of the legislature, and a larger share of the state's U.S. House delegation. Now the incoming state legislature is looking to negate and challenge many provisions in the federal health care law and make severe cuts to the state Medicaid program. Wisconsin's new Republican legislative majorities want to put more people at the mercy of the free-market insurance system as well as toughen requirements for state services.

In the state that gave America Robert LaFollette and William Proxmire, two progressive heroes, an ill conservative wind is blowing like so many winter gusts off Lake Michigan. As for the new incoming governor, Scott Walker - already charting a right-wing course with his decision to refuse federal stimulus money for high-speed rail - he has advocated cuts in Medicaid but refuses to say just exactly what sort of cuts he'll pursue when he takes office in January.

Somehow, the state's motto, "Forward," seems sadly out of date. :-(

More Derailings

If you're an American fan of passenger rail, it must feel like being an Irishman who likes erotic art; there's not much in your own homeland for you to appreciate. And thanks to two incoming Republican governors in the Midwest, there's going to be a whole lot less for rail fans in the United States to cheer about.

In Wisconsin, incoming Republican governor Scott Walker says he plans to refuse federal transportation money specifically meant for high-speed rail. Walker insisted that Wisconsin needs more money to fix existing roads and bridges, not build more railways. Walker plans to refuse $810 million for such a project, citing the burden between $7.5 million and $15 million it would place on taxpayers to pay for operating expenses. Walker sounds reasonable, though, in comparison to former congressman John Kasich, the governor-elect of Ohio. Kasich, who's also refusing federal rail money, also cited hard numbers - $17 million in taxes to pay for more than half of the $29 million cost of operating it - but added, "We don’t have any idea who would even ride the train. This is just the federal government wanting to spend money, and they've got it all wrong."

Kasich doesn't "have any idea who would even ride the train?" How about people who need to travel to Columbus from Cleveland or Cincinnati - or travel across Ohio - who don't want to put up with driving on Interstate 71 because it's too much of a hassle? How about people who want to take the train to transfer to an Amtrak train to take them to New York or Chicago? Mr. Kasich, do you have any idea about the cleaner air, less congested highways, and new jobs high-speed rail in Ohio would generate? Or how much more cost-effective it would by than more highway construction? Do you have any idea at all? About anything?

Kasich, a budget expert and former Wall Street executive, knows his numbers. But, like any other number cruncher, he knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Walker and Kasich would have gladly taken stimulus money for more highways, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, put his foot down. Trains or nothing. And nothing is what the residents of those two states are going to get. One Midwestern governor, Pat Quinn of Illinois, is happy to see his counterparts in Wisconsin and Ohio refuse the railroad money. Quinn, a Democrat who was just elected to a term in his own right after completing the infamous Rod Blagojevich's second term, is eager to get more money fort his state's high-speed passenger train program, and Illinois's senior senator, Richard Durbin, has said his state will be happy to take the money Wisconsin and Ohio don't want. LaHood, also from Illinois, might be happy to oblige.

It's enough to make me want to move to Chicago. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has killed the proposed passenger rail tunnel to Manhattan. And as if that weren't bad enough, negotiations between NJ Transit and Amtrak on a shared rail tunnel to New York City have broken down.

So, apparently, has common sense.