The Capital Times, Madison, Jan. 29
Mike Pence came to Wisconsin to attack our rural schools
Unless the Republican senators who are sitting as jurors in the current impeachment trial decide to put the Constitution ahead of their loyalty to Donald Trump and remove the scandal-plagued president from office, Mike Pence will never be president. The vice president is too predictably drab, too robotic and too uninspiring to win a national election. Incapable of thinking for himself, Pence parrots the talking points of the wealthy campaign donors he has always served - even when those talking points are profoundly wrongheaded.
That’s what Pence did Tuesday in Madison. The vice president flew into Wisconsin’s capital city to deliver a threat to Wisconsin, as part of an event celebrating National School Choice Week.
Pence was promoting ongoing efforts to undermine public education with the usual cabal of billionaire-funded advocates for the agenda of the Trump-Pence administration’s “school choice” agenda. If they get their way, taxpayer dollars will be diverted away from public schools and toward the vanity projects of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos - an uber-rich campaign donor who only holds her position because of the massive amount of money she gave to Republican candidates.
Out-of-state billionaires like DeVos and politicians like Pence have for years targeted Wisconsin in their efforts to promote “school choice” initiatives. They got traction when one of their lackeys, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, was in office. But Walker, a Pence crony, was swept out of office in 2018 by a supporter of public education, Democrat Tony Evers. And in the spring of 2019, critics of school choice and school privatization schemes swept school board elections in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city.
“The nine-member (Milwaukee) school board, long hospitable to private interests pushing vouchers and private charter schools, is now controlled by an eight-member pro-public-school majority,” explained Ruth Conniff in The Progressive. “That’s big news in a city that has had a giant target painted on it by the powerful national school-choice lobby.” Key to the pushback against the “school choice” advocates was the activism of African American and Latino Milwaukeeans, and the determination of groups such as Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) and Voces de la Frontera Action, Inc. to defend public education.
The fight to prevent the expansion of “school choice” schemes is not just an urban concern, however.
“School choice” initiatives pose a significant threat to rural schools, many of which struggle to survive in an era when state funding is tight. As a Newsweek headline declared in 2017, “For rural America, school choice could spell doom.”
“DeVos’s vision for American schools would wreak havoc on rural education,” noted the article, which explained, “Critics from rural America have been vociferous in their assessment of a school reformer who, they say, would not benefit their communities.”
Among those critics is Max Marchitello, who argued in a USA Today column that “Betsy DeVos has a rural problem.” Marchitello, a senior policy analyst at Bellwether Education Partners, wrote, “America’s rural schools face numerous educational and financial challenges. And unfortunately, expanding school choice will do little to solve them. Rural schools serve a greater proportion of students below the poverty line than schools in suburban areas, and most states provide less funding to the very districts that need the most support. High-poverty schools generally provide lower access to advanced curricula. Furthermore, rural schools struggle to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Stretching the already limited resources in rural communities to accommodate additional schools would likely hurt rather than help the situation.”
The threat posed by “school choice” is especially great for Wisconsin’s rural schools, which were badly battered by the agenda of former Gov. Scott Walker, who started his tenure by imposing deep cuts on education funding and who attacked the unions that have historically joined with rural school boards and administrators to advocate for a fair and equitable approach to elementary and secondary education in the state.
Walker’s governorship was all about gimmicks and slogans when it came to education. That’s one of the many reasons why voters removed him from office and replaced him with Evers. As a candidate, Evers warned against the expansion of “school choice” programs that steer money away from public education via taxpayer-funded vouchers schemes. As governor, the Plymouth native, who worked for many years as an educator and administrator of small-town and small-city schools, has sought to reduce the emphasis on the voucher programs that Walker promoted.
Walker was wrong, as is Pence. It’s as simple as that. And, thankfully, Wisconsinites are waking up to the fact that Tony Evers and the champions of public education in Milwaukee, and in rural communities across this state, are right.
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Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Jan. 29
Cop camera bill has broad support, deserves Senate vote
Here’s an easy win for the Republican-run state Senate, if only its leaders would allow a vote before adjourning this spring.
Senate Bill 50 would set reasonable guidelines for police agencies on how to use body cameras and when to release footage to the public. It also would require written policies and training.
The issue had been controversial two years ago, when some law enforcement officials sought broad exemptions from Wisconsin’s open records law. Media groups and the State Journal editorial board fought the unnecessary restrictions, insisting on public access to video of disputed police encounters.
The Legislature wisely created a study committee to research and develop a compromise, which resulted in SB 50. The proposal has drawn strong backing from newspapers and broadcasters as well as police chiefs, patrol officers, sheriffs and deputies. In fact, the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety - led by former police officer and Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine - voted unanimously in support last fall. Nobody registered in opposition at a public hearing.
So passage is all but assured in the full Senate, assuming a vote is scheduled before the Legislature adjourns its regular business for the year.
SB 50 doesn’t require police agencies to buy or equip patrol officers with cameras. That’s up to individual communities.
But for all of the modern police agencies that do use body cameras across Wisconsin, video images from most incidents would have to be retained for at least 120 days. And if the footage involved death, injury, arrests, searches or use of force, the video would be preserved until cases were resolved.
Yet the bill does make accommodations for privacy. Footage of minors, victims of sensitive or violent crimes, and people in places with “reasonable expectations of privacy” could be withheld unless a balancing test determined the public interest outweighed those concerns. Even then, police could blur faces in videos to protect identities.
SB 50 is the result of hard work and compromise by lawmakers from both parties, open-government advocates and law enforcement. It demands action so more agencies adopt police cameras with a clear understanding of how they will be used and when images will become public.
Cameras on patrol officers are neutral observers that can show what really happened when an incident is in dispute. Police body cameras have reduced complaints against officers and, in some cases, contradicted police claims and led to justice for the wrongly accused.
The Senate should quickly advance this sensible compromise so more police agencies across Wisconsin use their cameras in appropriate and consistent ways to improve public safety.
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The Janesville Gazette, Jan. 29
Rep. Bryan Steil, get moving on Rx prices
Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, fashions himself as a lawmaker eager to dispense with petty partisanship in pursuit of legislation that would benefit his constituents.
So far on prescription drug prices, he’s failed to deliver.
Steil favors a Republican bill, H.R. 19, introduced last month, which would lower drug prices by making it easier for generic drugs to come to market and would reform Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit.
H.R. 19 is a step in the right direction, and we support it. But here’s the problem: Democrats have lined up behind H.R. 3, which would allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, lifting the current negotiation ban.
To get something accomplished, lawmakers will need to compromise. This is how work used to get done before Congress devolved into a Game of Thrones-like drama.
Steil has swallowed the pharmaceutical industry’s doomsday predictions on H.R. 3, telling the Gazette Editorial Board last week it would “effectively kill R and D (research and development).”
(The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates H.R. 3 would have some effect - preventing up to eight new drugs from being developed over 10 years - but by no means would it “kill” R and D.)
To be sure, H.R. 3 isn’t perfect. It’s probably too punitive, but the concept of allowing Medicare to negotiate is a worthy one. A large majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, support the federal government negotiating prescription drug prices, with 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans in favor, according an October 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
And let’s not forget: President Trump seized on this issue in his 2016 presidential campaign, stating such negotiations could save Medicare $300 billion a year. “We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies,” he said.
As president, Trump no longer supports these negotiations and instead is spreading fears concocted by the pharmaceutical industry.
We encourage Steil and the rest of Congress to focus not on Big Pharma’s hypotheticals but on their constituents in the here and now. How many people are dying today because their medications are too expensive? That’s the crucial question.
We’ve applauded Steil’s criticisms of the partisan mindset that envelops Washington, D.C., tainting any effort to adopt meaningful reforms. But we must ask Steil: When have you broken out of this mindset to accomplish something your constituents care deeply about? Sorry, that bipartisan anti-human trafficking bill doesn’t count. Human trafficking is a sad thing, but it’s not what keeps your constituents up at night.
We want Steil to continue to advocate for H.R. 19 but to also pursue a compromise to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Gather Republicans and Democrats to back a single bill, and show the 1st Congressional District and this nation that Congress is capable of doing something more than trading partisan barbs and running for reelection.
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