Commentary Update for June 24, 2002: Jay Heck, Northwestern Goes After Hentz, McCarthyism on the Editorial Page, Frings on Sykes, McCabe Op-Ed, McCain-Feingold, Meeting With Feingold

Dear Friends of Commentary,

Jay Heck, Executive Director of Common Cause Wisconsin, is the guest on this week's Commentary. Mr. Heck has been an active and often quoted critic of the Wisconsin legislature's recent follies and scandals. On the program he confirms what most people in Wisconsin who follow politics closely have long known: that only 3 people (the governor, assembly speaker Jensen, Senate majority leader Chvala) have any real power at the moment. A full-time legislature of over 130 elected officials essentially "fiddling while the dome burns" (as the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign put it) is nothing short of a national embarrassment.

The mood in Madison in pretty somber, it is true, but when I want a good laugh I go to the Oshkosh Northwestern (ON) editorial page. Last week, when the city's Zoning Appeals Board had the audacity to vote against one of the newspaper's favorite developers, the paper trashed Board member Cheryl Hentz and argued that the Oshkosh Common Council should be more careful in making appointments to the Board:
http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/news/archive/opinion_4654847.shtml

• Finding it difficult to believe that Hentz's reasoning could have been as simplistic as the editorial suggests, I asked her to provide her side of the story. Here it is:
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/44hentz.htm

Yesterday, the newspaper lashed out at critics of Tax Incremental Financing, especially those who complain that TIFs are nothing more than corporate welfare. They actually resorted to McCarthyite tactics, going after unnamed critics and comparing TIF criticisms to "something like what Fidel Castro might be spouting on a parade espousing the value of communism in Cuba" . Here's the entire editorial:
http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/news/archive/opinion_4676292.shtml

• The editorial writers would do well to brush up on the history of old tail gunner Joe. The Outagamie County Historical Society has created a nice online McCarthy exhibit:
  http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/mccarthy/index.htm
• In all seriousness, if anyone is aware of TIF criticisms that identify them as corporate welfare, would you please forward that information on to me? Other than my "TIF I was a Rich Man" satire in the last update, I am aware of no printed criticisms of TIF on corporate welfare grounds. Could the Northwestern's paranoia, hostility, and McCarthyite smears been based solely on my little satirical song? Amazing.
  

Commentary viewer Jon Frings listened to Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes recently, and here's what he has to say about his experience:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/jfonhcandcm.htm
I will happily post responses to Fring's piece.

Being an aggressive fundraiser has become an important part of being successful in Wisconsin politics. The politicians insist there is no connection between their actions and the funding. To that shibboleth the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's Mike McCabe has an insightful response:
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/opinion_4530186.shtml

Speaking of campaign financing, the New York Times today accused the Federal Elections Commission of being involved in a "coup" to undermine the Feingold-McCain-Shays-Meehan legislation:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/coup.htm
For those of you who wonder why so many former Democrats find Nader and the Greens so appealing, consider this statement from the editorial:
"But it is not Mr. Toner's [note from Tony: Toner is one of 3 Republicans on the FEC] job to make "carve outs" at whim. He and the other G.O.P. members could not have succeeded without the support of one of the Democrats, Karl Sandstrom, whose term has expired but who still sits on the commission."

And this statement:
"The sponsors of campaign reform - Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold and Representatives Christopher Shays and Martin Meehan - deplored what the commission did. But the silence of other reform champions - notably the Democratic leaders, Representative Richard Gephardt and Senator Tom Daschle - is conspicuous."

I met Senator Feingold at one of his "listening sessions" in 2001 and told him that as long Terry McCauliffe (former Clinton soft-money bag man) is Democratic National Committee chair, the Democrats will ultimately join the Republicans in sabotaging reform, with the difference being that the Republicans will be more honest about it. Turns out I was not that far off base:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/sabotage.htm

Again, for the Democrats concerned about Nader and the Greens, check out these quotes:

"In a letter sent today to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, the president of Common Cause, Scott Harshbarger, said, 'You and other party leaders cannot take public credit for enacting important reforms supported by the American people on the one hand, while sending your lawyers into court and into the F.E.C. to undermine the law, on the other.'"

and:

"A longtime advocate of campaign finance reform, Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, added that it was an 'extraordinary spectacle to see Democratic Party lawyers hard at work to drive huge loopholes into the new landmark campaign finance law that the Democratic leaders they represent played a central role in enacting just months ago.'"

This week's Commentary Update will close with an ethnic celebration, specifically of one Italian-American. When I was in graduate school at Wayne State University in Detroit in the mid 1980s, I found a used book about Italian-Americans. In it, I learned that the actual inventor of the telephone was not Alexander Graham Bell, as we have all been taught in school, but an Italian named Antonio Meucci. Believe it or not, the United States Congress is now on record, thanks to the efforts of the Sons of Italy and New York member of Congress Vito Fassella, as recognizing Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone. I'm not sure that any major American newspaper has reported this yet; I received the information from the London Guardian:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/meucci.htm
Meucci was a fascinating fellow--here's a brief biography.
http://www.italianhistorical.org/MeucciStory.htm

Arrivederci,

-Tony Palmeri