Liberal Imagination

Liberal Imagination

March 21, 2011Promo

Child Labor in Wisconsin- Not much school a lot of brutal work

Gov. Walker has not suggested we close the public schools and put the idle children to work in our factories in order to balance the budget and be globally competitive. But there are some children in Wisconsin who are working long hours in harsh conditions and sometimes spend little time in school. Children under age 14 cannot generally be employed in Wisconsin, but there are exceptions. Children 12 and over can be “employed in farming” if a parent consents, though the type of farming is not defined, and that is the problem. There is the usually benign and wholesome “family…

March 14, 2011Promo

Open for the Business of War

The State of Wisconsin may be “broke”, according to Gov. Scott Walker and the Republicans in Madison, but one sector of government is doing very well and providing a lot of money to Wisconsinites. But because not one Wisconsin Republican, as far as I know, has denounced this massive government pay-out, I suppose I’ll have to do it. The Department of Defense gave almost $10 billion to Wisconsin corporations in 2010. And as the Journal Sentinel reports, Wisconsin went from 48th in terms of defense funding received to number 16 per capita in a matter of three years. Some, perhaps…

March 7, 2011Voices

In Support of Wisconsin’s Public Unions and a Milwaukee Farmer

Though the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board still can’t quite grasp how doing away with state employee union collective bargaining is essentially busting public unions, the Board is at least willing to say that the state unions should not be busted: “But no matter how deep the budget hole, Walker and his Republican allies in the Legislature were wrong to try to bust public-employee unions. Workers have a fundamental right to organize, even when it’s inconvenient for the rest of us.” Yes, but what good is the “right to organize” if the right to bargain is removed? The democratic power…

February 24, 2011Voices

Revisiting A Dirty Power Deal

Half of Wisconsin may now be rebelling against Gov. Scott Walker’s radical remodeling of state government (corporate tax breaks good, public unions bad) but not long ago many of the state’s elected leaders, including Democrats former Gov. Jim Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and even the progressive-minded former Sen. Russ Feingold, were united in an uproar concerning what the U.S. Export-Import Bank was doing to mining equipment manufacturer Bucyrus International. It was not Wisconsin’s finest hour. You may recall that the Export-Import Bank had denied U.S. taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to Reliance Power of India which was seeking to build a…

February 17, 2011Voices

A Welcome to Liberal Imagination

In the preface to his 1950 book “The Liberal Imagination,” literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote that the conservative and reactionary tendencies in our society “do not express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” This astute observation was not meant to underestimate the influence of conservatives nor to give American liberals a false sense of security. Trilling notes approvingly a prayer of the British political philosopher John Stuart Mill– “Lord, enlighten thou our enemies.” A more intelligent debate, says Trilling, will “force liberals to examine their position for its weaknesses…