National security vs. civil liberty in America

Published: Sept. 20, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It is a solemn anniversary each year, the kind where you hold your breath hoping that you won't hear a news report about a terrorist bombing or some other horrific act. I'm talking, of course, about Sept. 11, a date that will remain seared into our consciousnesses for the rest of our lives.

Understandably, the date also has devolved into a ritualistic debate regarding the competing ideals of national security and civil liberties. Here's my take.

Civil liberties, including the right to privacy, are critically necessary in any free society. The ability to express myself through this column is an obvious example. However, civil liberties should not in and of themselves supersede national security. And some of the clamor about domestic surveillance has gone from making my eyes roll to making my blood boil.

Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, enacted in 1996, the government reserved for itself the right to comb through your medical records without court approval if such an action is deemed potentially useful to a federal investigation.

I wasn't particularly concerned about that in 1996, nor am I now. How many abuses of that law have been documented in the past 11 years? Consider the entire domestic surveillance hubbub we hear today and ask: Do you really think the CIA cares about phone calls you have made or books you have checked out from the library?

Of course not, and I don't want to hamper its efforts to locate people who would hurt innocent Americans. Vice President Dick Cheney can pore over my phone logs whenever he pleases. If I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear.

So frisk me! If it makes us all safer, it's worth it. Blame terrorists and their supporters for the circumstances that gave rise to these extraordinary precautions; don't blame policy-makers trying to keep us safe.

A related concept in the civil liberties controversy is the notion of racial profiling. The idea that added scrutiny is given to some purely on the basis of ethnicity is not new, and, in practice, it arguably can be quite troubling.

During World War II, for example, many Japanese-Americans and some German-Americans underwent humiliating treatment in this country to ensure that they possessed no loyalties to the Emperor or to the Führer.

That's a sad chapter for us, but it's not at all what I am advocating. There are no internment camps today for Muslim-Americans. No reasonable person would support such measures.

On the other hand, our country was not attacked by radical fundamentalist Norwegians. I doubt you'll find many Nordic sleeper cells operating around the world. So if I am acting suspiciously in an airport like the six Muslim men in the Minneapolis airport last fall, the fact that I am drawing comparatively more attention than some platinum blond named Sven makes sense to me.

Letter writer Patrick Collentine put it thus in the Sept. 16 Journal Sentinel:
"Since there have been countless attacks thwarted and none executed in six years, I think it is obvious we are more safe today because of the USA Patriot Act, domestic wiretapping, aggressive interrogation and holding suspected detainees until we are sure they pose no threat to America."

He added, "There has been one case in six years that the Justice Department has prosecuted for the infringement on civil liberties. I'll take that trade-off any day."

So will I.

To: Editorial board at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Their question to readers:

Would you be willing to pay a higher sales tax on gasoline to pay for bridge maintenance and replacement?

My reply...

Dear Editorial board,

My answer is no I would not and it’s the phrasing of your question that might draw scrutiny from other like-minded readers. That is, why do you presuppose that the only way to fund such infrastructure improvement is through an increase in the gas tax- or an increase in any tax for that matter? We already pay among the highest sales tax rates at the pump.

During the previous budget cycle, Governor Doyle, like a modern day Cesar Augustus, used his famous “Frankenstein veto” to instantly transfer over $400 million dollars from the highway fund to K-12 education. The magnitude of his audacity surprised pols on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps some of those funds might have remained better invested in infrastructure like that suggested by your query to readers in today’s paper.

In any event - why not ask a follow up question to JS readers?

“In order to fund such bridge work, would you allow the consolidation of school districts where enrollment no longer justifies operating such schools, or through asset sales of state owned property and land used by a paucity of our population, or through cancellation of marginally-necessary pet projects?”

OK, I understand space limitations -- but you get my point.

Respectfully,

John J. Maddente

Don't believe the doomsday predictions about newspapers

Published July 29, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Here's hoping that some things never change. The Civil War memorial statues on Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee, no stadium naming rights to Lambeau Field and the Menomonee River Parkway in Wauwatosa will all, with God's good grace, remain unaltered in my lifetime.

What you're reading at the moment is a local newspaper that has existed in various incarnations since 1837. Different names, different mastheads and different owners, but, nonetheless, this paper has been a part of our consciousness for a long time.

Some of us are old enough to recall a time when we'd pluck out The Green Sheet from The Milwaukee Journal and read Mrs. Griggs' advice column. For some, the memories go back even further. Many have heard prognostications about a trend away from newspapers as consumers demand more information via computer and the Internet. Some maintain that since more people than ever obtain their news and entertainment online the inexorable death of the old fish wrapper is just a matter of time.

Nonsense! I doubt that the printed newspaper will ever become extinct - and not just because I want to doubt its demise. My reasoning is more practical.

A newspaper enables one to consume information with so much ease and so little dexterity that it cannot be duplicated. You just can't argue with good design. That is to say, is it conceivably easier or more satisfying to hold some wafer-thin (albeit newspaper-sized) screen and scroll through your daily pixels of news and pictures? Not for me. I'll never give up my pulp-based reading. Information technology can be a great enhancement to slake our thirst for information - and also a great waste of time.

For example, I've used two different handheld devices to support all of my phone, calendar, Internet and e-mail needs. The first device I loved because it was intuitive to learn and easy to use. I have a different device now that I detest for several reasons, not the least of which is that it is the most over-engineered contraption I have ever encountered. It was made by geeks for geeks who love the thing because it's state of the art, whatever that is.

But information technology and its beguiling ecosystem - the Internet - can't be judged so simply. It's a blessing, it's evil and it's a waste of time all at once. Creeps use the Internet to prey on children, but it also helps parents stay close to their children when separated by great distances. Porn sites proliferate, but so does some exceptional blogging and grass-roots reporting that help to equalize and make more transparent a very complex world.

Journalists are becoming increasingly reliant upon and held more accountable by just about any serious person with a modem and a hankering to share something important. Teens and adults fritter away countless hours playing games, but on the other hand . . . well, you get it.

It's the content that remains important - the digital and paper platforms will remain only as catalysts to slake our thirst for information, and they will continue to coexist. Whether you want news electronically or prefer to rattle those pages between your fingertips as I do, what's important is the quality of what we pull off of the platform.

Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it useful? So don't write off the newspaper. It may be an aged medium, but it's one as comfortable as those trusty pair of shoes you'll never part with.

Still weary about our punitive state tax burden

Published July 5, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Watching our state's political budget process is not easy. There are so many additional taxes - and some with such vast implications - all under discussion at once. One billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, 15 billion: all numbers I have seen to describe potential tax increases.

The characters involved mirror stereotypes of both political parties: Democrats are seeking a broader governmental role in fixing our problems through tax increases and government spending. The GOP is digging in its heels, wanting to hold the line on taxes and government spending and government's increased involvement in our affairs.

Reminiscent of the high stakes budget showdown that occurred between President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995, Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch stated he would block the process if the budget delivered to him contains tax increases. By any credible measure, we live in a high-tax state, and this budget season reminds me of the myriad ways government can tax us and how far Gov. Jim Doyle and his coterie of party faithful are prepared to go in order to exercise their views about what government ought to do. But what about the long-term picture beyond the current two-year budget cycle?

I was troubled by a June 24 column by John Tornius that referenced a credible third-party analysis of our state's annual "structural deficit" of $2.2 billion ("State's accounting doesn't pass muster"). The analysis revealed that relative to population, Wisconsin is at the top of all deficit-running states in the nation.

That's more than a little disconcerting if you or your children care about life in Wisconsin more than a couple years from now. Many of us grouse about the need to reduce taxes. That's personal income taxes, real estate taxes, corporate personal property taxes, gas taxes, home-selling taxes and they-don't-give-me-enough-space-to-list-all-the taxes. Others counter with, "That's not realistic; our needs have increased." Or my personal favorite, "But look at our fine educational system and park system and whatever system."

Even if I agreed that we derived an equivalent value from the punitive tax burden we've paid through the decades, we cannot afford everything any longer. As opposed to making more hard choices, I read about things like the governor's proposal to increase by some $55 million annually the cost of state-owned lands in "far-flung natural areas" beginning in 2011. What percentage of us has a desire, let alone need, to traverse additional land already owned by the state in the wilds of Douglas County when our long-term fiscal condition is so bleak?

Other troubling budgetary facts:
• The $15 billion universal health care plan is an 11th-hour power play, and whether you believe such a plan is the answer to our health care conundrum or not, the issues and implications are too complex, too far-reaching, too everything to contemplate now. That patient is dead.
• The new gas tax on oil companies that ostensibly would be borne by oil companies and not passed on to you and me has zero chance of success. If it makes its way into law, it will fail in practice or the courts.
• Lifting any real estate property tax cap will diminish any hope I have left in government.

What we will wind up with this budget season is anyone's guess. The only safe prediction is that if any tax increases get out of the Assembly, there will be a run on bumper stickers that read, "Don't blame me; I voted for Green."

Valor worth commemorating

Published 5.31.2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Why write about something that happened 12 years ago?"

So went part of a reader's e-mail critique of one of my prior columns. To some, there is little value today in citing dates, events or people from a mere decade ago, let alone 14 decades ago.

At this year's Memorial Day service in Delafield, about 100 observers begged to differ. The event was the Cushing Park Memorial Day service, with a speech delivered by Rick Gross, who along with a half-dozen or so other members of the Cushing Historical Association addressed a crowd to commemorate the military service of four brothers during the American Civil War.

Three of the Cushing brothers were born in southeastern Wisconsin (two in Delafield, one in Milwaukee), and a fourth was born in Columbus, Ohio. On a resplendent spring day at Cushing Park, Gross and his colleagues wore period costumes to portray the kind of Union soldiers they were honoring, to speak of sacrifices made long ago and to fire four thundering cannon blasts to commemorate the Cushings' military service.

Ron Aronis, who portrayed the Union battery commander, has been participating in re-enactments since 1965. I asked him why he felt it was important to re-create and memorialize the military service of those gone for so very long.

Aronis replied, "If we don't remember, we tend to repeat history, which isn't always the best; you need to know what your country's been through. Have we always loved each other? Have we always hated each other?"

Gross, who is a design engineer by trade and who mentioned that he had a bit part in the 1993 movie "Gettysburg," had a simpler answer: He gives his time for these events because he enjoys "preserving the memory" of the fallen.

On Memorial Day this year, the fallen included Milton, Howard and Alonzo Cushing. William Cushing, like his three brothers, fought valiantly for the Union but, unlike them, did not die in battle. (He died of illness while serving in the Navy.)

Those interested in learning more about the Cushing brothers or to support the Cushing Historical Association, which is a Wisconsin non-profit corporation, can e-mail James Benware at Cushing_recruiter@yahoo.com or phone (262) 306-1279. A related Web site of interest ( http://www.suvcw-wi.org/) is sponsored by the Sons of the Civil War and has a link to Wisconsin's Civil War heritage.

Last year, a Delafield resident complained to the city about the cannon blasts fired at the park. Apparently, the sounds of the charges were frightening the resident's dogs. The blasts, to be sure, are something to hear. The charges I witnessed stripped leaves off of a nearby tree and echoed throughout the park and beyond.

According to one member of the historical association, the permit to fire the blasts this year - a total of six discharged over about 30 minutes, two to begin the service and one for each of the four Cushing brothers - had to be defended before city representatives in order to continue the tradition.

Remembering events and sacrifices made so many years ago strikes me as a worthwhile endeavor, even if it means that I need to comfort my pets for a while or take them on a well-timed walk elsewhere in town.

But that's what makes our land so great; we can disagree on that point without fear of retribution. Unfortunately, such freedoms have never come without the ultimate price being paid by others, many of whom are long forgotten. Here's hoping our memories of war dead linger throughout the ages. Let freedom ring, and may the cannon of Cushing Park never be silenced.

Celebrities' political preening

Published: May 4, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

If the entertainment elite could remove the words "decorum" or "credentials" from Webster's Dictionary, many of them would assuredly do so.

Consider Sheryl Crow's April 21 performance during the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington. Crow decided to accost presidential adviser Karl Rove and, in the process, impress Lord knows who, about her passion for the topic of global warming.

Recounting this is not an indictment of anyone concerned about global warming. Rather, the issue is public behavior (or, more precisely, public misbehavior) by entertainers with dubious qualifications but plenty of pluck and A-list invitations to do their public preening.

To be honest, I do have a double standard. That is, I'd have less of a problem with the Crow-Rove ordeal if, instead of a musician, a renowned climatologist from Yale had cornered Rove and a heated debate ensued. At least such an altercation, while still socially awkward, would have taken place between people with depth and a useful angle. Crow? Precisely whom does she represent? All she wanted to do was have some fun, I thought.

I guess our Midwestern sensibilities come through differently at local entertainment outlets. I have attended many plays at the Sunset Playhouse and the Marcus Center over the years, and not once did an actor stop a performance, turn up the lights and pass the hat to save spotted owls. Maybe they know we didn't come to hear the political cause du jour.

The correspondents dinner has been a painful penance for every administration. And the casualties are chosen in a non-partisan manner.

I'm not referring to good-natured ribbing but rather the type of thing spewed by now-disgraced radio jock Don Imus, who took the podium in 1996 and proceeded to caricature a sexual encounter between President Clinton and someone other than his wife, Hillary. All this done, of course, with the first couple seated next to Imus' lectern on national television.

No, a successful entertainment career doesn't mean you forfeit a right to public debate on serious issues. But it should mean that you make sense, that you espouse your views at a proper time and place and that you thoroughly understand what you are talking about. Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, courts lawmakers for debt relief to impoverished nations, but he does so without making silly public displays or mindless pleas. Moreover, he has impressed government officials with a command of complicated issues. In short, he gets it. If you want to be taken seriously on world affairs, you need more than a Grammy and a choice table at the Washington Hilton.

Three years before the Imus debacle, we witnessed Richard Gere at the Academy Awards lapsing into a dreamy metaphysical trance to "send a message" to the people of Tibet, Deng Xiaoping and perhaps someone at a Dairy Queen in Vermont. We never heard what his message was, but afterward, 38 states wanted to revoke Gere's driving privileges.

Want another recent example? I never understood why Rosie O'Donnell occupies the airwaves, but after the Supreme Court upheld the federal partial-birth abortion ban, she decried on "The View" the lack of a "separation of church and state in America" because five Supreme Court justices happen to be Catholic.

With rigorous analytical thinking like that, who needs to stay in school? Not O'Donnell, who dropped out of college with a 1.62 grade-point average.

With O'Donnell vacating "The View," the state of political discourse in America just improved.

Don't read more into war opposition than what's there

Published: March 20, 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser . . . the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

So goes the famous quote from Gen. George S. Patton's 1944 D-Day address to his troops. That quote was later popularized in a 1970 masterpiece of a movie called "Patton." And Patton's words have relevance today when pondering President Bush's low approval ratings.

It is not the president's decision to go to war in Iraq that sunk his popularity. For many, it's the perceived lack of results stemming from the war, which began four years ago today. That means it isn't the inherent "morality" of the war that troubles many Bush critics; it's the practical yield from it, or lack thereof.

In pure theory, why wouldn't a plan to establish a democratic beachhead in a portion of the world fraught with violence and instability and depose an evil despot like Saddam Hussein, who had slaughtered his own country's citizens, strike millions of reasonable people as a worthy undertaking? Answer: It did.

The late President Nixon, who was arguably one of our most able presidents on foreign policy, put it saliently in his later books. Basically, Nixon asked questions like, "If America does not lead in the world, who will?"

After World War II, the United States successfully "exported democracy" to post-Imperial Japan. And by any measure, the U.S., Japan and the rest of the civilized world are better off for having done so.

But the notion of success in the Middle East is murkier. There is no tangible cliff to scale like there was at Omaha Beach. After the U.S. liberated Nazi-occupied Europe, implementation of the Marshall Plan wasn't paralyzed by legions of suicide bombers trying to derail new regimes or by sectarian fanatics trying to kill one another in the same country.

The frustration is understandable. With more than 3,200 American lives lost (including 70 Wisconsinites) and billions of dollars of our nation's treasure spent, it's difficult not to grieve or grow angry because we can't see an end to the whole depressing morass.

Even the president's staunchest supporters have grown increasingly restive. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll revealed that a full 73% of Americans are following the 2008 presidential race closely. That is either an astonishing level of interest for an election so far away or a clear reflection of popular restlessness.

Yet today's collective opposition to the war in Iraq does not come in one size or shape. Americans who have grown impatient with this war do not all want to join arms, sing John Lennon songs and pretend to act as one for a whole number of unrelated "causes."

Many calling for a troop withdrawal today would look contemptuously at fellow critics who are calling for the exact same thing. Contrary to an old Arab bromide, in the U.S., the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) would never share a stage with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, nor should he.

In a perfect life, we could airlift all peaceable, decent citizens of the Middle East, clothe them, feed them, give them better shelter than they could have possibly imagined and then proceed to bulldoze everyone and everything else in that part of the world. But since life is so imperfect, a 50-year, Korea-type occupation is possible and probably necessary.

We may all uniformly lament that prospect, but don't confuse common sentiment for a single voice concerning America's role in foreign affairs. Had we rid the Middle East of bomb-toting fanatics, Bush's popularity would have soared. Americans love a winner.