Commentary Update for August 5, 2002: Fox Valley Fellowship of Reconciliation, Breuer on Peace, Politics 2002 Guide, Lance Link's Links, Lake Winnebago B2B, Green Party News, WAMCO, Reclaiming the Commons

Dear Friends of Commentary:

Have you noticed that the public discussion about a possible attack on Iraq has been extremely one-sided? Even when anti-war positions are presented, they tend to be those opposed to war for practical reasons (e.g. "it will be a quagmire," "the Europeans won't support us," "the entire Middle East will explode," etc.). Views of pacifists or others opposed to war on principle are virtually absent from mainstream media. To try to provide at least some semblance of balance, Commentary this week features two members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Donna Van Grinsven and Barbara Hoffman. The FOR is a pacifist organization that for more than 80 years has advocated peace and nonviolence. A little bit about the organization's history can be found here:
http://www.forusa.org/about/history.html

• Barbara Hoffman recently traveled to Iraq on an 18-day peace mission. The Appleton Post-Crescent covered the trip:
  http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/local_4095061.shtml

Tom Breuer wrote a piece for the Valley Scene late in 2001 called "Is Peace Passe?" in which Donna Van Grinsven is quoted: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/peacepasses_.htm

There are two new features on the Commentary website. The first is a "Politics 2002" guide, featuring websites of the major candidates for governor and other offices, links to other resources, and opinion pieces. I would encourage people who have opinions about any of the races to submit them to me for posting. If we rely only on the Oshkosh Northwestern Editorial Brigade (ONEB) and other Fox Valley media for coverage of political races, it's going to be a dull campaign season indeed. Here's the guide:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/politics2002.htm

One piece of depressing Politics 2002 is the fact that incumbents currently have a 14:1 money advantage over challengers, as reported by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:
http://www.wisdc.org/pr080102.html

The second feature is a new links page, which I am calling "Lancelot Link's Links," in honor of one of my favorite TV characters of all time, Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. You baby boomers out there will remember that Lance Link was a Saturday morning feature in the early 1970s. I actually started thinking about Lance Link again after President Bush's speech on terrorism in October of 2001 in which he reduced the world to the good guys and the evil doers. Lance Link Secret Chimp worked for A.P.E (Agency to Prevent Evil), and every week Commander Darwin sent Lance and his mate Mata Hairi on some mission to defeat the evildoers from C.H.U.M.P (Criminal Headquarters for the Underworld Master Plan). Perhaps influenced by the Monkees, the Lance Link producers even had a band of chimps in the show, the "Psychedelic Evolution Revolution."

• True Story: While I was updating the Lance Link's Links page, retired UW Oshkosh emeritus professor of Theatre Gloria Link stopped by to say hello and talk about some great books she's read lately (including playwright Arthur Miller's delightful little Viking Press publication from 2001 On Politics and the Art of Acting). I thought wouldn't it be great if I could get Dr. Link to lend a link to Lance Link's Links page? Say this 10 times fast: The Laudable Dr. Link lent a link to Lance Link's links page.
• The links are divided into the following categories: Right Leaning Sources, Left Leaning Sources, "Independent" Sources,
  Media Criticism, Wisconsin Media, and Wisconsin Activism. If you would like to suggest a link to be added to Lance Link's Links, please email them to me. Here's the links:
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/links.htm
• One of the links in Media Criticism is to "Media Rants," a new column I will be writing each month for the Valley Scene. In the debut, I try to show that when actor Cliff Robertson was recently given the "key to the city" in Oshkosh, the Valley Media somehow neglected to point out Cliff's whistleblower past:
  http://www.valleyscene.com/mediarants.html
• One of the Wisconsin Media Links is to a new local publication, Lake Winnebago B2B ("Building Bridges Between Businesses"). LWB2B was founded by Sean Fitzgerald, former Business Page Editor of the Oshkosh Northwestern. Unlike most business page editors, Sean wasn't/isn't just a stenographer for CEOs and Chamber of Commerce flacks. He wrote some excellent columns for the Northwestern, including "Planning is difficult when there is no plan" (which ought to be framed in Oshkosh City Hall):
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/fitz.htm
  and a December 16, 2001 piece on gubernatorial candidate Kathy Falk's economic plan:
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/fitzonfalk.htm

We may have an online interview with Sean in a future update. For now, here's information about Lake Winnebago B2B:
http://www.winnebagob2b.com/about.htm

Speaking of Lake Winnebago, the Lake Winnebago Green Party recently announced that one of their members, Jake Schneider of Menasha, was recently elected to serve as Treasurer of the Green Party of the United States:
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/greenrelease1.htm

Greens, Republicans, Democrats, and all other partisans claim to be concerned about the relationship between government and business. Candidates from each party should be asked how they feel about situations such as that which happened in Oshkosh recently when Wisconsin Automated Machinery Corporation (WAMCO), after getting the city to subsidize relocation expenses, announced they were moving to Wabash, Indiana which will result in the loss of at least 35 Oshkosh jobs:
http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/news/archive/local_5346006.shtml

• If you look at the minutes of Oshkosh Common Council meetings where WAMCO was discussed, you find that the elected officials seemed oblivious to the possible consequences of the subsidy:
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/wamcominutes.htm
• Only Councilor Paul Esslinger voted against the deal. I asked him why:
  http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/44paul.htm

Finally, I was forwarded an essay today from the Boston Review by David Bollier ("Reclaiming the Commons: Why we need to protect our public resources from private encroachment") that is somewhat lengthy and probably a bit too "scholarly" for some tastes, but well worth the read:
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR27.3/bollier.html
Here's an excerpt:
"It's time to stop granting private entities free access to and use of public resources. Although this idea is conceptually simple, it presents a large political challenge. In case after case, this reckless privatization of public resources has resulted in demonstrable harm to taxpayers, consumers, and the environment. While these costs are well-documented, political resistance to meaningful reform continues in Washington, aggravated by our corrupt system of campaign financing. But press exposure and citizen mobilization can go a long way toward reclaiming the public assets that our government is mismanaging."

Best,

-Tony