Why Can't Real Life Be More Like Double Dragon?

"People get really tired of having all the tough villains front-loaded against them and resent getting short changed on play time because some fat mouth-breather's hogging it all with a stack of quarters that could knock out a Clydesdale. If that's all on offer, can you blame folks for staying home?"

Games are the repositories of our culture's most primal values.  As ostensible objects of complete fancy, they (can) deftly sidestep at will many of the extraneous ambiguities that force us to compromise our deepest values and thus help give clearest expression to our highest ideals. 

For starters, game consequences are not so final or existential as they are in real life.  You're typically given at least 3 initial 'lives' to perform strategy experiments and become comfortable with play options before you're fatally croaked.  And even then you're usually offered the option to restart the game.  You have an opportunity to weigh options with some level of maturity and develop a play style that suits you personally.

Not so in the real world.  Even if you're bright enough to have intuited that Ayn Rand and Niccolo Machiavelli wrote the cheat book at a fairly young age, you're faced with the ugly reality that there will be no restarts available for you.  Mainly because that fat kid who breathes through his mouth will just keep shoving quarters in the machine before you can get anywhere near it.

I'm sure I'm dating myself a bit here by referring to such an archaic feature of video gaming culture, but bear with me.  Way back in your great-grandfathers day, when I could still count my birthdays on my fingers and toes, most people encountered video games within public establishments known as 'arcades', large buildings or mall outlets where the hottest new games were available to anyone to play.  They'd be stacked next to each other at intervals of 3 feet or so, in mammoth cabinets that must strike anyone born after 1980 as hilariously kitsch symbols of antiquated technology, more akin to a Medieval armoire than a modern video game console.

Equality and entrepreneurship in the era of the video arcade
But a little context might be in order here:  the notion of selling copies of these games for play within the privacy of one's home hadn't been thought of yet--or at least wasn't yet feasible on a mass scale, as not enough people owned PC's or consoles.  As the marketing folks like to say, there was not yet an "installed base" from which to launch this type of distribution strategy.

So we were forced, more or less, to play the things wherever we could encounter them, generally in areas susceptible to high levels of youth foot traffic, like shopping malls.  This was a capitalist venture, no doubt about it.  Asymmetries of availability are the single indispensable enabling feature of capitalism. 

But the asymmetries weren't quite so glaring then, as the video game technology itself was something of a novelty that game producers, publishers and arcade owners had yet to fully explore and exploit.  If you young 'uns are having a hard time grasping the severity of this point, let me point out that Tetris (tm) was considered an exciting new property at the time.

Hundreds of small software and hardware development companies were entering the highly competitive fray almost daily.  Given the relatively low base of technology that I'd referred to earlier, almost anybody with enough pluck, brains and natural inclination could make a truly significant contribution to the state of the art.  Graphics, game play and even fundamental formatting (e.g., 1st person shooters, role playing, 3rd person strategy, etc.) were evolving at an exponentially increasing pace.

Of course, Joe Blow wouldn't have been able to turn his programming hobby into a commercially viable venture without capital.  Trust fund brats have never formed a significant percentage of programmers, so embarking upon an entrepreneurial venture has always represented a real personal risk.  The opportunity cost of stepping outside the settled career track of a more mature industry would have aborted these innovations outright were it not for a vibrant capital market that still needed to take risks on developing new markets and technologies, instead of relying on rents from automatic day trading algorithms.  Although the U.S. had only 6,000 independent banks in 2005, there had been nearly 10,000 in 1987--or a capital market roughly 66% larger than today.[1]

The availability of capital allowed a fairly broad spectrum of folks to go into arcade ownership, too.  So even though as a group arcade owners had a near monopoly on the availability of video games, they still had to make serious efforts to respond to public opinion and preferences.  If they wanted to beat out the competition, maximize revenues per square foot of their premises, they'd have to identify and obtain the hottest new games as soon as possible, and maintain an optimal diversity of titles.  If you walked by an arcade in 1989 and the only open games you saw were Whack-A-Mole(tm) or Pacman(tm) you'd just keep on walking to the next arcade.  To stay viable, they had to keep just one step ahead of popular trends, titillating their audiences with novelty and challenge--and not let the game be hogged all day by some lardy mouthbreather.

This was reflected in the core structure of the games themselves.  In order to entice newcomers designers had to ride the edge of players' comfort zones, providing just enough challenge to engage, without alienating them with impossible obstacles or clumsy, unfriendly game interface.  In my youthful recollections, this principle was nowhere more clearly reflected than in the carefully calibrated levels of difficulty of the level bosses in the hit game Double Dragon, a scrolling beat 'em up from the early golden age of video gaming.

Enter the dragon:  not perfect, but at least reasonable
The original version of Double Dragon came out in 1987 and spawned several highly popular sequels and spin-offs, including Double Dragon II in 1988.  To be sure, it was crude by today's standards, not only in terms of graphic resolution and the realization of the game world--movement was impossible outside of a narrowly defined track bounded by dystopic inner city landscapes and rusting industrial machinery and grim chain-link fences--but also in terms of play options. 

I think both playable characters, Billy Lee and Jimmy, were basically interchangeable clones with no distinguishing features beyond the colour of their hair and generic dojo outfits.  I think they may have had a total of 5 combat maneuvers--6 tops, if you want to include the ability to toss barrels at an enemy, on the rare screen where the game world was articulated enough to allow you to actually interact with it.

But at least the developers had the sense to stock each successive stage of game play with opponents of appropriate difficulty.  Level one offered you the beer-bellied, punch-throwing Brunov to hone your skills against before you encountered the monstrous Big Boss Willy wielding an automatic rifle in level five.  That graduated approach, and the cooperative 2-player option, gave you enough time to familiarize yourself with the various joystick and button options required to realize your character's full potential.

I don't think that's a trivial point.  These developers, arcade owners and players knew that they were just scraping the surface of the graphic wizardry the technology would later provide, so they had to come up with a basic structural paradigm that closely tracked our cultural notions of fairness and engagement.  If they wanted to draw you in, they'd have to present some villains that at least looked like bad-asses before you got to know their quirks; and they were never gonna keep you hooked unless they gave you a reasonable shot at defeating them.

So as crude as Double Dragon may seem today to kids raised on cinematic wonders the likes of L.A. Noire, the game clearly possessed a level of charm that the current crop of political and economic elites don't. 

Double flaggin': why current economic and political trends suck in comparison
I already alluded to the current hyper-concentration of capital in the nation's largest banks.  I don't think it'd take you long to draw up your own list of cultural casualties this restriction of opportunity has occasioned.  For starters, the very concept of a mom-and-pop grocery store or clothing outlet is now an absurdity clearly out of the question.  You can't blame radical new cabbage technologies or shoe paradigms for that.

But I think the lack of options in the political arena is even worse.  Even if you're able to convince yourself that there are real, significant differences between the plastic Mitt Romney and the automotonic Barack Obama with regard to a small, select set of policies, you have to admit that neither major party offers very exciting game play or meaningful challenges for the voter.

Which lemon did you pick:  Gingrich, Santorum or Romney?

The Republican primary was the most savagely futile game ever played.  The base essentially tore itself apart rooting for the one-dimensional Rick Santorum or comically ineffectual Newt Gingrich.  If I had to draw up a video gaming metaphor for those two non-entities, I'd say that Santorum's signature move would be to constantly shoot himself in the foot upon down-down-down-right-right-right, and Gingrich's would be to perpetually punch himself in the nuts upon up-up-up-right-right-right.

Hardly a surprise then that trust-funder Mitt Romney took the day, despite having a game vocabulary no more sophisticated than left-right-left-right.

Did the 2010 mid-term elections reveal Obama as a broken "leader"?

What of the great Barack Obama, then?  The story there is even sadder.  Even some of the reviewers who were most enthusiastic about him upon his initial release have admitted that the actual game play is far less varied and challenging than the promotional trailers suggested.  In fact, the whole national Democratic Party franchise seems so disappointed that they can't interest enough people in a primary.  The general election this fall looks to be a grim duke 'em out between two equally unappealing titles that haven't changed a lick since 1988.

L to R:  Barrett, Falk, Vinehout, La Follette

The situation in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary offers a little more prospect of actual engagement, however.  There are four candidates on the May 8 ballot, and while 2 of them don't have the name recognition or endorsements to be considered contenders, there is a real tete-a-tete brewing between front runners Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, and Kathleen Falk, former county executive of Dane County.

Distinctions might be lost on Republicans who haven't yet taken the time to scout out the opposition, but they are real.  Barrett, the former U.S. congressman and twice-failed Democratic candidate for governor clearly represents the party establishment.  He readily acknowledges his close relationship with Obama, "regaling" (not "regurgitating"?) audiences with his Super Bowl Day attendance at His Majesty's court.

While Kathleen Falk isn't some kind of freakish video game vixen with lightening-bolt attacks, she does represent a true contrast with Barrett.  Her entire career has been focused on state and local offices, including Wisconsin Attorney General.  She has garnered the endorsement of AFL-CIO, the largest umbrella labor union in the state, and a particularly valuable attribute considering that the current recall elections owe their very existence to Scott Walker's failed attempts to destroy unions.

Recent polls give Barrett a double-digit lead over Falk for the nomination.  Electoral politics (as opposed to actual governance policy) is a bit of a black box, to some extent, due to the heavily subjective nature of the voters' preferences.  So I maintain that what propels a candidate to success in an internal, primary election should not be taken unthinkingly to be indicative of their chances in a general election.  My gut instinct is that, despite, or maybe because of, Falk's limited connections to the highest levels of the state and national Democratic machines, she is actually the best candidate.

But I'm absolutely clear of one thing: This Wisconsin Democratic thing is a helluva lot more engaging than the rope-a-dope operation Walker has rigged up for himself.  Aside from policy matters, even if you aren't offended by what nearly 1 million recall petition signers seem to feel is cheating on his part, you have to admit that the Wisconsin Republican Party hasn't offered up a particularly wide range of options:  You can choose from either Scott Walker, criminal defendant, or Scott Walker, tool of East Coast establishment pols.

Chris Chrisite:  East Coast pol, Walker fan and mouth breather

You'd think that the very real prospect of Walker's term being cut short by jail time would prompt some more committed Republicans to set up a contingency plan, offer a variety of challenges to the Democrats, or at least test their own mettle a bit.  Instead they're lying down without a fight, locked into a disappointingly known quantity with little room for maneuver.

People get really tired of having all the tough villains front-loaded against them and resent getting short changed on play time because some fat mouth-breather's hogging it all with a stack of quarters that could knock out a Clydesdale[2].  If that's all on offer, can you blame folks for staying home?



Footnotes
[1] Table 1, page 2, "Changes in the Size Distribution of U.S. Banks 1960 to 2005", by Hubert P. Janicki and Edward Simpson Prescott, available at the linked document on the Federal Reserve Bank.

[2] Read here about how over $ 8 million or roughly 65% of Walker's total contributions came from out of state--with approximately 74% of his individual (i.e., non-institutional) donors not being Wisconsinites.

The “Curses o’ Whoredom”: Rome’s History Turns Into Wisconsin’s Misery In Phase 3 of The Madison Uprising

“Elections may be lost by failing to energize the base, but they are only won by charming non-ideological voters who form the majority.  Milwaukee and Madison are the state’s most left-leaning cities, but in the eyes of Wisconsin’s rural and suburban majority, they are also the darkest pits of Babylonish whoredom.”

Caligula:  a career model for the modern statesman?

The wheels seem rapidly to be coming off the runaway freight train that was the effort to recall troubled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  Nearly1,000,000 people affixed their names and addresses to a petition to initiate the unprecedented recall procedures against Walker.  But as of late April, Walker is polling at least 5 % HIGHER than his most likely opponent, Milwaukee’s mayor, Tom Barrett.  WTF?

Here is a brief recap of events since I last wrote about the Madison Uprising:

1.   Walker appointees refused to cooperate with a Federal John Doe investigation into Republican campaign violations.  To date several minions have been charged with felonies ranging from appropriation of public assets to promote Walker’s candidacy, to embezzlement of funds intended for the surviving families of veterans in the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, to enticing underage boys into sexual relationships over the internet.  Walker made some attempts to distance himself from the actions underlings took on his behalf, but those were undermined by the revelation that he had retained legal counsel from a firm renowned for its specialty in defending against white collar criminal cases.

2.   Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus resigned in her capacity as elections supervisor under severe public pressure.  Diligent readers may recall the Signs And Wonders attendant upon Nickolaus’ miraculous production of just barely the required number of votes to overturn the originally called results in the State Supreme Court race between JoAnne Kloppenberg and Nickolaus’ former boss, and Scott Walker darling, David Prosser.  No, the proximate causes of Nickolaus’ ouster didn’t include the broken seals, incorrect tracking batch numbers and torn ballot bags which were discovered during a contentious recount proceeding in the Kloppenberg race, but in the complete breakdown in the process of certifying the results of the recent Republican presidential primary.  Who’d have thought?  Public outrage does count for something, but only when it’s the outrage of Mitt Romney.

3.    Perhaps not incidentally, the self same Justice Prosser is currently the subject of disciplinary proceedings related to his alleged physical assault of another Supreme Court justice in chambers during deliberations.

4.   A Federal court has overturned the redistricting bills pushed through by Walker this last legislative session.  The court was unambiguous in decrying the GOP-drawn map as an effort to disenfranchise Milwaukee-area ethnic minorities.  In another case bearing upon voting rights, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has delayed implementation of Walker's controversial voter ID law until after the recall election, saying it will not be able to complete an adequate review before then.

5.   A Federal court has also overturned as unconstitutional many of the provisions of Walker’s stealth, union-busting bill that gave birth to this nest of monsters to begin with.  Critical union certification and funding provisions of that bill have been defeated, which is a big plus, but, pending possible repeal through the Wisconsin Legislature, severe limits regarding the scope of union negotiations remain.

This last point is a big (but note sole) cause of my discomfort.  Because, in my mind, it is a harbinger of doom for the Walker recall effort—though NOT for the reason most commenters think.

Veni, Vidi . . .

The preliminary procedural effort, the campaign to obtain 540k signatures to authorize the recall election, was in and of itself a spectacular and unqualified success.  Despite misgivings of professional pundits about the rarity of recall proceedings, and the timing of the campaign during the winter holidays, which typically curb turn-out at outdoor events of this sort, nearly million people signed the petition.  That means that, as of the dates they signed the petition, roughly 10% more voters wished to halt Scott Walker’s illegal power grab than actually voted for the Democratic candidate during the 2010 election.

Sic Transit Gloria One Day

That venom, that outrage is all just a memory now.  The Federal district court gave the public the sop they need to assuage their anger.  Public worker unions now have the right to nominal existence, albeit practically neutered by limits on its negotiating powers.  Wisconsin can now retire in dignity, having saved face, yet it has not really addressed the issue most offensive to right thinking people:  Scott Walker’s unrepentant disregard for democratic procedure.

Only a relative handful of the people signing the petitions are themselves union members, even fewer are members of public employee unions.  A statistically negligible portion are top-level union negotiators.  Apart from them, it seems, only the Righteous Before God feel any particular need to decisively defeat Evil.  And as Revelation 7 tells us, they total only 144,000 worldwide. 

Assuming an even geographic distribution proportionate to population density, that means roughly 0.000001 Righteous Voter in Wisconsin.  Not nearly enough to turn a Wisconsin election.  I highly doubt that Scott Walker loses much sleep over the hypothetical specter of a Righteous Voter upsetting the cart, not when he sees thousands of non-ideological voters deserting the recall effort daily.

Most pundits seem to feel that these defections were an unavoidable consequence of the Democratic Party’s stereotypical poor discipline, a confirmation that it is not so much an organized political faction as an ephemeral coalition of self-interested constituencies.

While I find that a plausible idea, it does seem curiously to make little of the notion that leaders are supposed to lead—that their failure to secure a stable following might be due to their lack of reliability and competence.  But then again, that proposition is at least 2,000 years old.  Perhaps that is why no one feels any particular need to call Tom Barrett out as a feckless whore.

Roman Precedent

In the five centuries of the Roman Republic, a sort of hierarchy of office eventually emerged whereby individuals in public service assumed ever greater responsibilities.  As they increased in age and experience, candidates were admitted to positions of more influence.  This succession of offices they termed the “Cursus Honorum”, that is, the “Honors Race”—the title of this article is a semi-satirical play on that term.

Over time Rome was called upon to intervene in the domestic affairs of neighboring city states, gradually and reluctantly at first, but then with increasing rapidity and eagerness.  The demands upon its leadership grew to such an extent that the pressures created a professional political class.

The Cursus Honorum now hardened into a definite, set progression of specific offices and requirements, whereas before it had merely been a pedagogical tradition for cultivating competent leadership, open to exception when need be to meet some immediate threat.  Few men could economically afford to devote themselves exclusively to public service.  Going forward, the top job, the consulship, would be open only to those of high aristocratic birth.  Outward, superficial qualifications became more important than deep intelligence or moral commitment.  The failed triumvir Mark Antony is literally the ultimate example of the Cursus’ shortcomings.

Mark Antony may have been a charming rogue, taken on his own terms: a drunken aristo given to hosting elaborate feasts and public spectacles.  Not a man you cross casually, but apparently willing to give and take within certain proscribed limits. Certainly diehard republicans in the Roman Senate saw him in this way.  There is good evidence that he was at least a passive participant in the plot to assassinate his controversial mentor, Julius Caesar.  This easy-going, pragmatic approach eventually sealed Antony’s doom and that of the Roman Republic.

Antony never had great respect for his younger rival, Gaius Octavius, and rarely made serious efforts to check the challenges Octavius offered him.  And why would he?  Antony himself had inherited command of Caesar’s most hardened troops and control of the financial resources of Egypt, the breadbasket of the Mediterranean.  Antony had already held the consulship, the pinnacle of the Cursus Honorum.  In the eyes of the world, he had achieved all these through unquestioned personal competence and success in the Cursus in the more-or-less traditional manner.

Gaius Octavius, on the other hand was little more than a grubby parvenu.  True, the patrician dictator Caesar had been his great uncle, but his paternal line was of very obscure equestrian origins.  During Antony’s first consulship he had not been of age even to assume the relatively junior position of quaestor.  And Octavius hardly distinguished himself by his conduct during the Battle of Philippi, where he is alleged to have hidden in the rear of his forces’ baggage train.  Not much of a challenge for Antony, in a direct mano-a-mano. 

But the ultimate showdown would NOT be a direct mano-a-mano.  Against all odds, this showdown was a comically desultory non-battle taking place in an obscure, strategically unimportant sea inlet in southern Greece:  Actium.  Antony was decisively defeated by what amounted to little more than a seaside dust up.

Modern military historians have a difficult time understanding just why Antony chose such an unpromising site for his final stand, but it seems obvious enough to political historians.  Seeing little danger in being overwhelmed by his inexperienced rival, Antony deemed it more important to maintain his dignity and make a show of the fact that he did not intend to attack Rome itself.  Therefore, he selected a battle site spectacularly unsuitable for launching such a campaign.  Antony was protecting the integrity of the Cursus Honorum.

Octavius’ stealthy contempt for convention and decorum secured him victory at Actium, and indeed served him well during his whole career.  Caesar raised Octavius above his native social station through a controversial posthumous adoption, and Octavius took full advantage, surrounding himself with a gang of ruthlessly competent conspirators who were bound to him by his newfound wealth and prestige, without regard to their pedigrees. 

One of these conspirators, Octavius’ best friend and future son-in-law, was Marcus Agrippa, perhaps the most spectacularly gifted general in Roman history, barring Caesar himself.  Although Octavius, now calling himself Augustus Caesar, was officially declared the victor of Actium in the celebrations that followed in Rome, it was clearly Agrippa who had been the true operational commander all along.

Wisconsin Decedent

How does any of this relate to Wisconsin’s 2012 recall election?  Quite simply, Wisconsin’s Democratic Party is showing a reverence for convention every bit as stupid and self-destructive as anything the doomed Mark Antony ever did at Actium.  They’re almost certain to nominate Tom Barrett, career politician from its largest in-state stronghold, Milwaukee. 

Anyone who knows Wisconsin knows that the mere mention of a Milwaukee mayor makes the vast majority of Wisconsinites cringe.  This state is overwhelmingly white, of northern European origins, and adherent to a vanilla Christian denomination like Lutheranism or Catholicism.  We are constitutionally conservative and bred for obedience to traditional authorities. 

In such a narrow world view, a Milwaukee mayor can only conjure up images of Mexican gangsters and big city greasebags--horrors to be resisted rather than novelties to be embraced.  Given any plausible excuse to abandon their awkward rebellion against a more familiar suburban greasebag like Scott Walker, we will.  We are not inclined to buck the system.

There is the supreme irony for you, because neither are Democratic activists.  They had the opportunity to nominate Peter Barca, the charismatic assemblyman from Kenosha, but that quickly received the kybosh.  Barca would have been a stunning candidate, maybe unbeatable in a general election. 

Barca could have commanded the loyalty of the unions in a way Barrett certainly won’t.  It was Barca who delivered the historic protest against Walker’s violation of the Open Meetings Law which inaugurated this whole sequence of events.  While Barca’s speech that night is immortalized for the ages on Youtube clips and newspaper accounts, Barrett might prefer to minimize his role in that little episode of Wisconsin history.  Barrett extracted piratical concessions from Milwaukee public service unions under the very Walker bill that he now pretends to disdain.

And who knows how many potential anti-Walker voters will fail to show up out of simple Barrett fatigue?  Barrett strung the media along for months, refusing to decisively commit to a gubernatorial candidacy until AFTER he’d taken the Milwaukee mayorship.  Will otherwise Democratic leaning Milwaukee voters be disgusted with this apparently premeditated and opportunistic turnaround?

There is another candidate running within striking distance of Barrett, former Dane County supervisor Kathleen Falk.  I plan to vote for her, though I do not think she will win.

Although Falk really doesn’t share Barrett’s substantive baggage, it’s still an open question whether she can overcome the perceived arrogance that clings to stereotypical images of Dane County / Madison people in the imagination of the average Wisconsinite.  As in all elections for at least the last 10 years, it is the non-ideological suburban and rural voter who will decide this race. 

Any objective review of Falk’s CV suggests that it is possible.  She is an accomplished woman.  The only problem being that politics are not objective.  Policy may be objective, but politics, never. 

It’s not a point of honor, but reality that Barca, a white male from outside of the Democratic charmed circles in Milwaukee or Madison, would have stood a much better chance of overcoming all of these obstacles and winning over flakey and unreliable “undecideds”.

That’s all water under the bridge now.  Barca announced, unequivocally that he had no intention of pursuing the nomination.  It’s an oddity that inevitably invites curious speculation but few satisfactory answers.  It’s understandable enough that the man may want to continue in his current position as assemblyman for Kenosha—he’s certainly demonstrated a particular zeal in that capacity.  I wouldn’t begrudge him or his constituents that.

Yet given the mediocrity of the leader of the pack, Barrett, I really have to wonder if that’s the whole story.  Barrett, like Barca, used to be a U.S. congressman.  The typical progression would have been to go on to the U.S. Senate—if one is willing to forego any theoretical presidential ambitions, given the historically poor performance of alumni as candidates.  Or, alternatively, if one is setting himself on a presidential track, a former congressman can run for governor of his state.  Which Barrett has actually done.  Twice already.  Failing both times.

Barca did neither of these things.  After working in public service and the private sector, he returned to the Wisconsin State Assembly and increased his involvement in local affairs.

My guess is that Barca received a polite “talking to”, by Wisconsin Democratic Party bigwigs, to discourage any notions union reps may have put into his head.  Like I said, Barca could have had tons of perfectly legitimate reasons to be reluctant, even before such a hypothetical “talk”, so it may not have taken much.  If Barca were sincere but perhaps more naïve man than I believe him to be, he may not even have been aware that this was a warning.

In any case, I’m sure that Barrett and the Democratic Machine are glad Barca didn’t run.  I’m sure that Scott Walker is, too.

Through the Eye of a Needle

And now a return to more traditional commentary-slash-re-reportage at the Dystopia Diaries . . .

Some unexpected good news here:  A Wisconsin judge has ruled that the passage of Governor Scott Walker's aggressive union-busting bill's, engineered late in the night without the statutorially required 24 hours notice or the quorum necessary for a budget bill, is a violation of the state's open meetings law.  An injunction is now in place to prevent the bill's enforcement.

You may recall the raucuous buildup to the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court election which was widely seen as a referendum on that un-precedented (and now apparently un-lawful) powergrab, an Orwellian abuse of rhetoric and procedure whose only certain purpose was to destroy any group to politcally organize outside the orbit of his Koch brothers patrons.  David Prosser, the Republican incumbent was and still is regarded as strongly in favour of Walker's dubious scheme, whereas his opponent, Madison-based JoAnne Kloppenberg ran on the ticket of the Democratic party who not unnaturally opposed it.

But if the buildup was a barn-burner, the prolonged aftermath was distinctly anti-climactic.  The 11th hour defection of one of Prosser's campaign managers seemed to deal a heavy blow to the Republican's judicial credibility.  Lazy or naive[1] commentators would have expected the hoary old chestnut about Wisconsin being the clean-government state, a la it's Robert La Follette heritage, to come into play here and cast Prosser's chances in doubt.

However, as so often happens, The Lord delivered a miracle unto his Chosen People.  One day after poll close, when current stats showed the candidates within .00001% of each other, a prodigy appeared unto Wisconsin:  an additional 14,000 votes which "mistakenly" did not appear in those original tallies, which eventually translated into a decisive 7,000+ vote "victory" for Prosser.

Now that's not the anticlimactic part;  I love a good make-believe fairy tale as much as anybody else.  No, the anticlimax came when you got to look closer at the Instrument of Divine Will that the Lord had chosen.  This was not exactly the Immaculate Conception that I had been raised to believe in as a young Roman Catholic child.  For starters, Kathy Nickolaus, the Waukesha County clerk who delivered these "votes" turned out to have been a former employee of Prosser's--who has a rather complicated "compliance" history vis-a-vis the Government Accountability Board.

Things only got more gruesome when the inevitable recall procedures got started in earnest. [2]  The control tag for the very first bag of "votes" selected for recount in Wauksha was incorrectly entered tracking log.  As this weary sham slogged on we were presented with the sight of numerous bags with loose seals or seals completely broken open. Yeah, no reason to suspect a "ballot" could have been crammed into there after certification.

That last bit was sarcasm, of course.  My breaking of the fourth wall here, if you will, isn't merely gratuitous.  I know that YOU, dear reader, are not a fucking idiot and don't need to be told outright that this is an outrage unto the very notion of electoral integrity.  But apparently Judge Maudsley, and many of the Democratic count observers need to be told that.  For they completely allowed all these votes to be entered into the ultimate and final official tally, setting the seal on Prosser's "win".  Yes, fortuna favet audaci [3], alright, and so do spineless fools who care more for casting themselves in a pleasing appearance of polite decorum than getting themselves lathered into a holy fury in the defense of virtue, a la Jesus before the money changers in the Temple.

And today the announcement that this bill's passing was procedurally unconstitutional.  Kenosha people have great reason to be proud of Representative Peter Barca, who immediately cried foul on the violation of the open meetings law, and seems to have been the driving force behind this legal challenge.  But the story is far from over. 

True, the July 12 recall elections of several republican senators (currently) appear poised to send a very strong message condemning Caudillo Walker's junta.  But I'm not personally optimistic about the odds of wresting control of the senate from Republicans--though Repbulican senate majority leader and Walker tool, Scotty "Big Fitz" Fitzgerald apparently IS frightened.  And despite the superhuman heroism of stalwarts for virtue like "Wisconsin 14" Senators Bob Wirch (Kenosha) and Chris Larson (Milwaukee), there simply are no procedural bullets available at this time to prevent Walker for steamrolling through a huge list of Christmas presents for his financial and ideological puppetmasters.

All that is assuming, however, that The Lord is unable to find any vessels as fit for his purpose as pliant as Kathy Nickolaus seems to have been.  The lack-lustre results of the GOP's own efforts to recall Democrats, give working people some reason to hope.  But then, since when have the opinions of working people counted in the eyes of the God of the Prosperity Gospel?  Jesus may have believed that it is more difficult for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle [4], but Scott Walker and David Prosser don't appear to be of the same opinion.  And then again, Jesus was just some slob from the shitty Gallilee Local777 of the Judean Carpenters Union--he didn't have nearly the money or connections of the Koch brothers.

The union-busting bill is expected to go before David Prosser's supreme court later this year.

Footnotes
[1]  Yeah, that's me: naive.  Of course the bad guys always win.  I'm over four decades on this weary old planet now, but I still can't get it through my skull that willingness to break any law,taboo, custom, oath or vow not only confers a nearly insurmountable tactical advantage over old-fashioned ideals like Honor, Justice or Truth, but is also seen as a positive virtue in a society so totally devoted to being "in it to win it".

[2]  Under Wisconsin law, any candidate may request a recount when he or she is within 0.02% of the "winning" candidate.  While 7,000 votes on a state-wide basis was within that 0.02%, the history of electoral recounts suggested that it would be very difficult, if not exactly statistically impossible, to overcome such a "lead".  Indeed, this turned out to be the case last week--though through a rather disappointing series of events as I've detailed above.

[3] Latin for "Fortune favors the bold."

[4] Mark 10:25

"Herr Prösser?!!": The Madison Uprising to Shift Gears on April 5th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQiXPHhZ4Go

The madness surrounding Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's efforts to destroy trade unionism continues apace, but outsiders are likely to be deceived into thinking momentum of the Madison Uprising has been dissipated from its previous well-defined orbit.  They couldn't be more wrong--and the turnout for Wisconsin's April 5th supreme court contest between Prosser (R) and Kloppenburg (D) will prove that.


Current reports from Madison consistently describe a hard core of about one to two dozen protestors haunting the capitol building these days.  Some Right Wing supporters of the union-busting tactics have publicly taken courage from this decrease since March 11th, when Walker signed the contententious bill.  That, however, would be to focus on the hole, rather than the doughnut, so to speak.

While massive 100+ person rallies like those that continued for 3+ weeks in the capitol building are hugely important for gathering momentum and mobilizing latent energies, they really only represent the tip of an ungodly horror being whipped up for Walker and his supporters in places where it will do some real damage--the home districts of Republican legislators.  Here is but a brief sampling of highlights from the blog TMPDC:

·     The wife of Senator Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) and their household help have signed petitions demanding Hopper’s recall in a very public way.

·    In a related development certain to have impacts on the electoral viability of all the Republican legislators, even if mainly due to their common enrollment in the “Brotherhood of the Bill”, Hopper’s wife explained that the “family-values” senator has been living in an illicit Madison love nest with the staffer of a corporate lobbying firm since may of last year.  The immediate fallout seems to have been the termination of Hopper’s 25 year-old lover from Persuasion Partners, a corporate lobbying firm.  Hopper himself is 45 years old.  Beyond the high pitch of phoniness and hypocrisy it broadcasts, it does also raise questions about the legality of his tenure and vote, considering Wisconsin’s legislative residency requirements[1].  As of March 17, polls showed hopper trailing a generic Democratic challenger by 49% to 44%.  I shall also be on the lookout for any rumours of prosecution of ethics laws relating to Persuasion Partners’ lobbying efforts.[2]

·    Overall, efforts to recall Republicans from other districts appear to be meeting with similar success.  Dan Kanapke (R- LaCrosse) and Luther Olsen (R- Ripon) were lagging in polls as of March 15th.  Indeed, the fury of Wisconsin voters seems to be spilling beyond the boundaries of the original programme to recall 8 Republican senators;  the current total being targeted is 14.  I myself can say anecdotally that I have been very impressed by Democrats' maintenance of strict adherence to ethical guidelines [3].

·    The "progress" of counter-efforts to recall Democratic senators appears to be a bit spottier, however.  I haven't been able to find much reliable data regarding their progress to date or reliable poll figures which might provide some additional insight.  That may be because recall drives don't require interim status reporting under Wisconsin law.  Or it might be a reflection of the lack of enthusiasm of Walker's anti-democratic top-down approach among rank and file voters.  Come to find out that several of the GOP's recall drives were spear-headed by out-of-state consulting firms, which is a no-no under the law.  There seems to have been some hold up in the campaigns whilst they sought an in-state partner to validate their efforts.

·    Recently released figures suggest that Walker's attempted putsch has actually revitalized unions as a political force, a thing that may not have happened if he'd been content to let sleeping dogs lie.  Apparently Democrats have already raised $250,000 more in the seven weeks from February 1, 2011 through March 21, 2011 than they did during the whole of 2010--which defies convention, given the fact that there (were) no regularly scheduled elections for statewide legislative or executive office for 2011. 

However, there is an even more urgent confrontation on the horizon:  The April 5th state supreme court election;  David Prosser (R-Sheboygan) vs. JoAnne Kloppenburg (D- Madison).  Recent events seem certain to shove this thing up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court (at least), and the position of the Republican candidate seems clear:  fearing that his incumbency will be defeated by the anger whipped up by the bill, Prosser along with the rest of the Republicans currently on the supreme court, is pushing to bring the case to the court's review before any successful Democratic challenger can be sworn in.

By now you've surely heard of Walker's continued efforts to up the ante in the already knuckle-biting game of injunction and counter-publication surrounding legal challenges to the union-busting law and extraordinary procedures by which it passed the legislature.  The final outcome still seems murky at this point, but it amounts to Governor Walker daring Wisconsin's courts to enforce their own injunctions; he's ordered publication of the bill despite a court forbidding such publication.  Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) may not be a lawyer, or even one of the sharper knives in the drawer, but he has gone on record stating that publication means the bill IS law, without regard to any action of the courts.  Not exactly the "checks-and-balances" sort of approach you'd expect from a constitutional scholar and limited government advocate, but many people don't really think that Big Fitz actually believes everything that he says; the only requirement is that you believe what he says.

With the myriad of issues surrounding this case is complex, including the legality of passing a bill which is ostensibly vital to the success of the budget plan without the necessary quorum required of budget bills, the lack of sufficient notice given for the vote under Wisconsin's open meetings law, and whether the bill might constitute some sort of violation of the unions' political rights given the U.S. Supreme Court's affirmation of the same in the controversial "Citizens United Case"--and now the revelation that some sitting Republicans may have been ineligible for the seats they held and the bill's publication contrary to court rulings.  I highly doubt that any effort to reach a final determination within Wisconsin's supreme court within one week will be successful.

It is, however, further confirmation, as if any were needed, of the Republicans' willingness to abandon all pretence of transparent, orderly proceeding under the state constitution in order to effect their personal power grabs.  Rather casts them in the light of some comically brutal Prussian burgomeister strutting about in a WWI pickelhaube and abusing his subordinates.  It's all like something out of "The Good Soldier

Šveijk".

Footnotes

[1] I'm no lawyer, though I have had some rudimentary legal training.  I have to wonder if Hopper truthfully responded to the required pre- and post-election reports per Wisconsin Statutes 11.20(3)(a) with regard to his living arrangements?  I don't think so.  Chapter 17.03 indicates that a legislative seat is vacated by a member's failure to meet residency requirements.  Bad mojo for Hopper.

[2]My first thoughts are regarding the ability of Persuasion Partners to continue its lobbying activities under Wisconsin Statutes Section 13.68(6) given possible implications of Hopper living in an apartment paid for by one of their employees.

[3]  I received an email setting out the set of guidelines for conducting recall efforts aimed against local Democrats.  These guidelines appear to be zealously communicated and enforced by the groups I've had occassion to visit, not only online, but by trained on-site directors through scheduled education sessions. 

Still Waters Run Deep: Phase 2 of the Madison Uprising

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch

The differences between Madison, Wisconsin and Tripoli, Libya should be obvious.  The fact that the Madison hasn’t been floated away on a crimson tide of gore should be encouraging—horrors on that atavistic scale happen only where there exists not even the nominal right to redress majoritarian excesses through protest.  And the contrast to America’s experience of 1968 is positive as well; I remind you that movement flamed out prematurely due to inexperience and lack of discipline.  The image created in my mind by this phase of the Madison Uprising is more like that evoked by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”—the silent edge of a rising shout.

The crowds in Madison seem to have leveled out at a steady 30,000-40,000 per day, according to most reports.  That is a pretty freakin’ huge # when put into context of the relatively sparse population of this section of Wisconsin and personal commitments being made by protesters in order to attend, in terms of time and money.  All the more so when you consider the scanty number of counter-demonstrators that the dilettante Koch brothers have been able to scare up from out of state, even with literally billions of dollars at their disposal.

And the theatre isn't over by a long shot.  There are ongoing recall efforts on both sides.  And beyond recent Hollywood fly-bys, there is a plan for thousands of Wisconsin farmers to show their solidarity with a tractor convoy to the capitol on Saturday, March 12th. 

Nonetheless, it has to be admitted that the two camps have pretty well defined their positions, and the recent encounters between them seem limited to procedural skirmishes rather than the sort of rooftop todeskampf that our infamously short-attention span media crave.  Here are a few of the highlights:

-Courts ruled that Walker’s attempt to close off the Capitol building to protesters is unconstitutional—but also placed restrictions on the hours that protesters may access the building, including a prohibition on overnight stays.

-Authorities discover live ammunition left at the entrance to the Capitol building.  Given his breezy contemplation of hiring undercover goons to start a ruckus within the protesters’ ranks, some speculate that Walker is using this as a black op of some sort to ratchet up the tension. 

-If so, the balance of the evidence suggest that this is a MAJOR miscalculation on Walker’s part.  The peaceful conduct of the protesters was formally commended by a local judge, and the single confirmed incident of which I have become aware seems to have been resolved quickly and quietly with no disruption to the peaceful conduct of the protests.[1]  Although police are dutifully maintaining their mandate to oversee public order, they don’t seem inclined to violate citizens’ rights in the name of Walker’s power grab.  In fact, the police have gone on national record as declaring solidarity with the protesters.

-Senate Majority Leader, Republican Scott Fitzgerald, called for vigilante action to apprehend the Wisconsin 14.  Jim Palmer, the president of a major police union, decries the action as an abuse of power, being neither in accordance with the state’s constitution nor statutory law.

-Walker didn’t really unleash any surprises in his official budget unveiling  last Tuesday, either.  There are suspicions that Walker may have coordinated with Koch in order to bus in ringers to applaud his highness’s speech.   But no surprises.  The substantive detail drawing the most public attention are the devastating cuts contemplated to the state’s education programs—not generally considered a wise workforce development strategy.

These actions all seem par for the course, and few, in the short term, are likely to be swayed out of their current positions.  But that would be to ignore the tremors rumbling beneath the surface, the silent scream rising within.  The opposition is beginning to get organized.  Walker’s stupid, scattershot intransigence has done the single thing that Clinton- or Obama-esque triangulations could never do, which is to meet together and formulate coordinated structures, strategies and tactics to actively promote a truly moral agenda.

Getting’ Organized

I don’t think the terms “Left”, “liberal”, “Democrat” or “progressive” are much use here, because even if they are widely associated in the public mind with the stated platform of the Democratic Party, their high-flying connotations don’t match the recent history of its actual policy.  I’ve written at length about this phenomenon and why I think it spells the end of Obama’s career elsewhere, so I’ll just limit myself here to mentioning that, for the purposes of this article, I intend to refer to as “moral” all aspects of the genuine, since and active promotion of policies supporting what heretofore has been commonly known as the “Democratic” platform.   Feel free to write to me with comment, protest or counter-suggestion at your leisure.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that while the spark that lit this whole conflagration was Walker’s insistence on depriving unions of their collective bargaining rights, as time wore on a legion of other spooks came crawling out of this bill that aroused even deeper public ire and distrust, being total prima facie betrayals of even the Tea Party’s minimalist ideals[2]:  

1.  Destruction of collective bargaining rights.

2.  DHS takeover of Medicaid, which some are calling Walker's de facto "Death Panels"

3.  Severe restriction on women's contraceptive options

4.  The destruction of the Wisconsin educational system, at both the primary and secondary levels.

5.  Scott Walker's $60 million per annum corporate tax give away.

Could any one of these items in isolation have pulled tens of thousands protesters onto Walker’s back daily for over two weeks?   Or sparked similar outrage in Ohio and Indiana?  I doubt it.  Certainly it would not have created a rallying point for advocates of civil rights, peace, fiscal responsibility and economic equity.  In a previous blog post  I wondered aloud whether Richard Trumka and Jerry McEntee, the presidents of two of this country’s largest trade union federations understood this.  I haven't heard anything from them to that effect, but certainly others ARE taking big strides in this direction.

American Dream Movement

On 22^nd February a piece by Van Jones in the Huffington Post announced the launch of the “American Dream Movement” by Moveon.Org and others to harness the energy of Madison Uprising into a formal platform and statement of policy goals.  Basically it’s a call to unity and a conscious attempt to avoid the pragmatist splits that peeled off the civil rights, peace, fiscal responsibility and economic equity wings of the Democratic Party under Clinton and Obama.  They, too, appear to be abandoning the tired, co-opted language of the DNC in favor of a purer distillation of their philosophy—MORALITY.  Just what I was groping for in my more experimental meditations posted here and at Disinformation.

I find this to be totally frickin’ aweseome—it could just be the framework that a new alternative party could be built around.  I had pretty much announced the demise of the national Democratic Party in another blogpost, noting that Obama’s worthless inactivity in face of the crisis and the energy Madison had garnered in spite of it greatly appealed to my sense of history and emerging possibility.  I was unaware at that time that the American Dream Movement had already been around for a week previous, yet I still don’t think my article was really redundant since the nascent American Dream Movement appears conspicuously to be missing some key components discussed in my blogpost:  the scale and existential commitment of the unions, and identified leadership. 

The Moveon approach is great; it cleverly leverages the media in a way that is truly responsive to the zeitgeist.  But it is a very informal network of extremely loose affiliations whose effectiveness, many argue, has been diluted by a structure that advocates around individual, specific issues as selected by a plebescite rather than a coordinated long-term plan.  One might be tempted to call it the counterpart to the Tea Party movement in its populism, but I’d say that the Moveon approach, lacking a slate of charismatic candidates of their own, they’re at a severe communications disadvantage.  The American Dream Movement adds a formal platform, but still lacks a formal list of candidates and real physical infrastructure.

Distant Rumblings:  An Awakening Giant or Merely the Re-Emergence of Old Intramural Rivalries?

The unions, however, DO HAVE the physical infrastructure that is needed.  Their problem was an exhausted complacency, given the deceptive appearance of “prosperity” in the economy at large for the last 30 years, gradual erosion of their apparent relevance in the tide of globalism, and the end of vicious internecine warfare between the so-called “Left” and “Right” wings of the movement.  I hope that the general contours of collapsed bubbles and the impact of outsourcing are well enough understood by my audience to preclude the need to address them in depth here.  But if you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t know much about the recent history of the labor movement in the United States or why the International Workers of the World’s (“IWW”) general strike campaign in Madison should shock you.

America is not an environment that has long tolerated radical movements.  My overseas friends might be surprised to hear that, given the truly jaw-dropping stupidity on display by Tea Partiers the likes of Sarah Palin or Christine O’Donnell, but it’s true.  There have been comparable radical bumblers in American history, like the John Birch Society and the Know Nothing Party, but they’ve generally been flashes in the pan, so to speak, because they inevitably offend two core American values:  personal liberties and social mobility.  We’re less than three months into the new session of Congress or any of the state legislative sessions, but recent polls suggest that the Tea Party’s refusal to confront difficult realities during the campaign, and therefore to develop an approach to government respectful of those core principles, is already coming back to haunt it.[3]

And in the eyes of many, the IWW was simply a Left-wing counterpart, par excellence, of the Birchers, a bunch of crazies just as unrealistic in their refusal to accomodate American values.  On the face of it, the IWW’s constitution does seem openly hostile to the notion of social mobility.  They were physically harassed by U.S. government agents for their efforts to oppose American involvement in WWI and they were practically rubbed out of existence by the anti-Communist Taft-Harley Act of 1950.  Today their numbers in the U.S. are estimated at about 900 (i.e., about 0.02% of the AFL-CIO federation and 0.10% of Andy Stern’s “Change to Win” organization, which includes the Teamsters).  Recent achievements include and some organizing some Chicago bicycle messengers.

Yah, I know what you’re saying, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME WITH THIS IWW CRAP?!  Nine hundred dudes?!  That’s a slow weekend for Paris Hilton!”  But that’s precisely my point:  the truly ideological Left has been so utterly marginalized in this country that top leadership of traditional trade unionism may well be in as bad a fix as the Democratic Party leadership, bereft of much more than a few populist-sounding platitudes that it has no intention of pursuing forcefully. 

I’m not a union guy myself, let alone with any serious access to the top echelons of that rarified crowd, so I couldn’t say to you that this is a universal fact.  Certainly there are more than a few rank and file union members who are willing to vilify individual leaders—Andy Stern, in particular, is seen as being a sellout, closely allied to the unreliable Barack Obama, a frequent visitor to the White House and serving with the desultory National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.   While that does seem damaging to me, let’s remember that the issues are complicated.  Stern led a major revolt against the AFL-CIO by creating the “Change to Win” federation, peeling off perhaps as many as 5 million members from their rolls in 2005 in an effort to divert priorities towards membership recruitment rather than political campaigning or lobbying.  Although many of the unions that defected to “Change to Win” have since returned to the AFL-CIO, there are some lingering animosities; some say that the AFL-CIO’s reluctance to pursue more aggressive recruitment goals was due to xenophobic reluctance to seriously expand out of its white, rustbelt heartland.

And Madison, February 2011 is where the IWW comes back into the picture, advocating for a general strike.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/05/iww-general-strike-p.html

Posters like these and pamphlets like these have been circulating in Madison, trying to stir up more dramatic action than the well-ordered marches that have regularly taken place on the Capitol these past three weeks.  I myself don’t quite know what to make of them yet.  My first reaction was to dismiss them as an irrelevant self-promotion, given the paltry numbers that the IWW itself is capable of mustering, and the massive practical difficulties confronting any general strike (e.g., their illegality, the high degree of discipline required, the likely depleted condition of strike funds, etc.).  [4]  Remember:  general strikes are attempts to shut down an entire economy, so they’re no small joke.

But now even if the IWW is not really a mover-and-shaker, there IS reason to wonder if a general strike may not be in the offing:  Some members of the traditional labor establishment seem to be rising to the challenge.  According to a Huffington Post article of 3^rd March, Kenny Riley, president of a South Carolina longshoremen’s local, was expected to call for a NATION-WIDE general strike during an emergency meeting of various labor representatives in Cleveland, Ohio.  Given what many perceive as decades of neglect of unions and a sclerotic shift to the right by their top leadership, how feasible is this notion?  Could its primary importance, like that of the IWW pamphlets, really be as a signal that a new generation is beginning to challenge the old guard?

Footnotes

[1]  One incident involved the tackling of a Democratic assemblyman, Nick Milroy as he attempted to enter the Capitol building.  However, the matter doesn’t seem to have created any lingering ill will, and Milroy chalked it up to an understandable consequence of the heightened tensions brought on by Walker’s extraordinary security measures and related breakdown in communications in such unusual circumstances.  This explanation is a lot more plausible than outsiders might first think, especially in context of the administration’s refusal to allow fire fighters access to the building in response to an emergency call.

[2] I’ve discussed all of these earlier at this link.  The only item new to me since that time, I believe is Walker’s subterfuge to severely limit contraception options through his takeover of healthcare.

[3]  Authoritarianism and austerity aren’t nearly appealing in reality as they sounded in the abstract:  Nearly two thirds of Wisconsinites believe Scott Walker is being too inflexible with regard to unions.   Nation wide, there seems to be a growing call to increase taxes on the rich closer to their historic norms, to make them “carry their own weight”.

[4] In a previous post (paragraph # 8), I touched briefly on these how these difficulties were reflected in recent news articles here and here.