LCDP General Party Meeting
Monday, January 21, 2008
6:30 P.M.
Ho Chunk Nation 3 Rivers House
724 Main St.
La Crosse
Meeting will precede the City-wide Martin Luther King Jr. event at 7:00 P.M. at the English Lutheran Church, 1509 King St., in La Crosse.(Keith Belzer, speaker). The LCDP meeting will adjourn early to encourage members to attend the MLK event.

Coulee Progressive's State of the Union
Friday, February 1, 2008
5:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M.
Concordia Ballroom
1129 La Crosse St.
La Crosse

LCDP General Party Meeting
Monday, February 18, 2008
7:00 to 9:00 P.M.
Ho Chunk Nation 3 Rivers House
724 Main St.
La Crosse
Topic: Single Payer Health Care

Wisconsin Presidential Primary
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
PLEASE REMEMBER TO VOTE

By Rep. Jennifer Shilling

Now that the holiday season has passed and members of the Legislature are turning their attention to the upcoming spring floor period, I would like to take this opportunity to make a New Year's resolution for the State Assembly: let's get to work and make the most of the short time we have left in this session.

After twelve months of session that was marked by a four month budget delay, we are left with only a handful of session days remaining. Yet some of the biggest issues facing our state have not been tackled. Too many people still don't have access to quality, affordable health care, too many middle-class families are still living paycheck to paycheck, on the edge of financial disaster, and too many dangerous toxins continue to be released into our natural environment.

While I remain skeptical that the Republican- controlled Assembly will make a serious effort to address these issues, I am hopeful that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will understand the importance of passing a few key pieces of legislation.

For example, these three common sense proposals are a good place to start:

· Catastrophic Care Pool for Small Businesses One of the Governor's proposals that was not included in the final budget compromise was the creation of a statewide catastrophic care pool for small businesses. This pool would allow small business owners to enroll their highest cost employees in the statewide pool which would significantly lower the premium costs for the rest of their employees. Similar programs in other states have reduced premiums by as much as 30%.

· The Home Owners Property tax Exemption (AB 452), or HOPE, is an attempt to rebalance an unfair tax system in Wisconsin that has prioritized tax loopholes for corporations over property tax relief for middle class families. The HOPE plan would crack down on corporate tax evaders and ensure they pay their fair share. By doing so the state can afford to reduce the property tax burden for every homeowner in the state by at least $600 per homeowner.

· Combat the causes of Climate Change (AB 157) Currently there is no federal law restricting the emission of green houses gases. The Bush Administration has failed to take action to address the problem of climate change. In the absence of federal action, Wisconsin must step up and be a leader. The threat to the well-being of our children and future generations is too great to simply do nothing.

Helping small businesses provide health insurance to their employees, restoring fairness to our tax system, reducing the property tax burden on homeowners, and restricting the amount of dangerous chemicals that are being dumped into our air, water, and land are important steps for improving the overall quality of life for everyone living in Wisconsin.

Dear Wisconsin Progressive,

I hope that everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. While I will continue to stand up for the values we share, the New Year brings with it increased opportunity to get our country moving in the right direction.

And while we must fight hard this year to take back the State Assembly, increase our seats in the State Senate, get veto-proof majorities in Congress, and elect a Democrat to the White House in November, there is an election in April that deserves our attention.

If last year's volatile State Supreme Court race was any glimpse of things to come, outside special interests will do everything they can to unseat Justice Louis Butler.

Justice Butler is a highly regarded legal scholar who attended Lawrence University in Appleton and law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the last 11 years, he has served with distinction as a faculty member of the National Judicial College, where he teaches criminal law to judges from across the country and around the world. Justice Butler has spent the last 15 years as a judge, building a record we can all be proud of as he's worked to make our state stronger and safer.

There are so many important issues that the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules on every year, and the Justices that serve on the Court make decisions that can have a dramatic influence on our state for generations to come. We need leaders like Justice Butler to continue to bring his values, experience and independence to the highest court in Wisconsin.

I'm going to fight to keep him on the State Supreme Court and I hope you will join me. For more information, or to join our effort to support Justice Butler, please contact Butler Campaign Coordinator Peter Knudson at peter@louisbutler.com or (414) 755- 2067.

With high hopes,

The Iowa caucases should make plain that America wants an end to far right governance. Participation in the Democratic Caucus was 236,000 -- more than double that of the Republican Caucus and four times the amount of participants as compared to 2000, the last open presidential year. This bodes well for the February 19 Wisconsin primary.

I would urge all party members to attend the city-wide Martin Luther King Jr. event on January 21 and also to attend the progressive's State of the Union on February 1. Building bridges to all like minded people in the area can only help elect Democrats in the fall. Among Dr. Martin Luther King's many legacies is a simple one: the need to act with urgency in the present and on a personal level to force change on a national level. Dr. King did not wait for other political leaders or count on the simple passage of time to weaken Jim Crow -- he simply followed his conscience.

While we can and should ask for the same courage in our political leaders, each of us should be prepared to do our part to take this nation back from radical right-wing that is today's Republican Party.

Fabio Burgos
Chair
La Crosse County Democratic Party

We know one of these three men will be out of a job in January, 2009. Let's do our best to make sure that the other two get to join him in retirement.

The way to do this is to get involved. The LCDP needs volunteers now for party building and 2008 election preparation. 2008 is not just a presidential election year. We need a special effort in '08, particularly in the 94th Assembly District and in the 32nd State Senate District.

The membership committee will coordinate this effort. Please contact either:

Vicki Burke at 781-0737 or irelandv icki@aim.c om

Hank Zumach at 457-2545 or zumach@m wt.net

by Ellis Weiner (via the Huffington Post)

Say it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
It's the Party of Make-Believe
It's called the G.O.P.

First Ann Coulter tells us Joseph McCarthy was a national hero. Now Jonah Goldberg tells us the Nazis were leftists (never mind all those socialists and communists they killed, or their close collaboration with private industry,), and that liberals are fascists because some of them, like Hitler, are vegetarians. "The Nazis took food very, very seriously," Goldberg writes, in case any of us thought the Nazis didn't take food seriously.

First President Bush tells us Osama Bin Laden is our mortal enemy. Then he tells us he doesn't think about him very much. We were attacked by Saudi Arabians living in Afghanistan, so under Bush's command we attack Iraq and declare "Mission Accomplished."

First Dick Cheney says we'll be welcomed as liberators; then he says the insurgency is in its "last throes" when, really, it's in its first throes. And we're not allowed to know which energy companies are helping him to write energy policy so that they feel secure.

Bush says God speaks to him, then he vetoes health insurance for children. Pat Robertson says God caused Hurricane Katrina because homosexuals are wicked (and Jerry Falwell agrees), but fails to explain why God didn't send a hurricane at New York, L.A., or San Francisco, where the real homosexuals live.

Alberto Gonzalez (not the Attorney Corporal or the Attorney Captain -- the Attorney General) can't remember anything and can't remember what he said he can't remember. Clarence Thomas, the greatest beneficiary of affirmative action in history and a man who has risen to literally the highest position possible for someone in his profession, is against affirmative action, feels victimized and sorry for himself, is angry at almost everybody, and doesn't really "like" the job.

Condoleezza Rice warns us that Saddam has nuclear weapons ready to create a "mushroom cloud" when, as intelligence reports said, he didn't. Meanwhile Pakistan, which does have nuclear weapons, is paid billions of dollars and its military dictator is coddled and proclaimed a "good friend" while one of his physicists sells nukes to all comers and Al Qaeda is allowed to frolic free on his border. Now Musharraf and his government face collapse and chaos while Rice worries about her "legacy."

Larry Craig says he's not gay but is caught soliciting gay sex. Mark Foley says he's not gay but is caught flirting with and hustling male Congressional pages. David Vitter is vigorously in favor of "abstinence education" but is caught cavorting (in a diaper) with prostitutes.

William Bennett, who pontificates about "virtue," is an avid gambler.

Rush Limbaugh, who has said that the way to treat people who illegally use drugs is to "find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river," is caught illegally using drugs (and admits to it) but is not, himself, sent up the river.

And now look: of the two leading Republican candidates for president, one is a man who takes the Bible literally and doesn't "believe in" evolution, while the other is a man whose religion holds that Jesus came to America, that Native Americans are descendants of the Hebrews of Israel, and that early (2200 BC-600 BC) inhabitants of North America migrated here from the Middle East. With chariots.

Mike Huckabee believes in the Rapture. Mitt Romney believes in the transparently-fraudulent Book of Mormon. And these two cartoon characters, Mike 'n' Mitt, are the GOP front-runners for the White House.

Take one step back from this carnival of make-believe and let's-pretend, and it becomes clear: The Republican Party has become an aggregation of people who prefer to live in a world of fantasy -- and their first fantasy, the Ur-myth on which the entire conceit rests, is (classically) "we are the realists."

It degrades, into farce and Newspeak, from there. The perpetrators and defenders of the outing of a CIA agent are "patriots." Tom DeLay is a "leader" and Newt Gingrich is a "visionary." The President plays guitar while New Orleans drowns, causes a hundred thousand Americans and Iraqis to be killed or injured, and outsources torture, and it's the Democrats who, per the repellent Ramesh Ponnuru, are the "party of death."

It's one thing to praise "faith." It's another to be, not only indifferent to the idea of objective truth, but actively hostile to it -- unless, of course, like any other good psychopath, they're not aware of their condition. Who knows what they really think is going on in the U.S., in the world, and in their own heads?

Does George W. Bush really believe that he is a good Christian? Does he really believe he's a "compassionate conservative"? Does Ann Coulter mean what she writes? Does Dick Cheney think he's done a good job? Does Rudy Giuliani mean well?

We don't know. We probably can't know. They probably don't know. They don't want to know. Do we want to know? I don't know.

I do know this: When the Supreme Court halted the vote-counting in Florida in 2000 and anointed Bush president, it was the equivalent of dropping that gang of boys on that island in Lord of the Flies. Actually, it was worse: they didn't have any adult supervision. The administration, supposedly, did. But the adults, in the form of the Democrats and the media, were too intimidated (by the tragedy of 9-11, by their corporate masters, by careerist insecurity) to do any supervising. And so for seven years, under the watchful eye of the genial, soulless Karl Rove, Republicans from sea to shining sea pigged out, yielding to their most gluttonous impulses and indulging their pettiest proclivities. The result? Like Saddam Hussein's (evil, awful) sons, the Republican Party, drunk on power and unmediated by any sensible outside force, went insane.

Yes, we've all enjoyed an easy laugh or two, identifying their obvious hypocrisies and compiling mile-long lists of their lies. But let's not be disingenuous: The sex scandals and the corruption; the no-bid contracts and the sweetheart deals; the payoffs and the fired U.S. Attorneys, the missing billions in Iraq and the incriminating emails that either are or aren't destroyed -- look, nobody's perfect. The Democrats have their own skeletons rattling around in their own walk-in closets.

But read the above rundown and add the ten thousand things there isn't room enough to cite... Factor out the witting lies and brute propaganda... Take out the deceptions they committed on purpose (or think they did), and just leave the stuff about which they are (or think they are) sincere, and you get a picture of mass pathology.

It has gotten so that you have to muster all the compassion and understanding of which you are capable just to think of the Republicans as a party of greedy corporatists manipulating the credulous, the provincial, and the bigoted. That's the nice way of putting it. But it doesn't capture the full picture of the sheer moral and intellectual decay of these people and this institution.

Are you happy now, Bill Buckley? Is this your idea of an honorable and worthy political party, Newt Gingrich? Is this what you mean by "conservative," Bill Kristol? Does it make you proud to be their apologist, David Brooks? Is there anything here you'd like to defend, Peggy Noonan? Glad to be one of the gang, Fred Barnes? Pleased with what you've accomplished, Brit Hume?

Please renew your memberships!! If you have not done so, you can find our 08 membership form at laxdems.com. (Left side of front page).

Our goal is to push party membership over 400 people. Please check our website at laxdems.com, which has a membership form or email laxde ms if you cannot come to our future party meetings.

Membership rates, effective October 1, 2006, as established by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, are as follows:

Students, Senior Citizens: $10.00
General: $25.00
Pairs (two memberships): $35.00
Activist (up to three): $45.00
Family(includes all family members: $75.00
Supporter: $120.00
Friend: $240.00
Patron: $600.00
Investor: $1200.00
Benefactor $2400.00
 

Half of the above membership dues go to the State party, with the exception of the Family membership, where $45.00 of $75.00 goes to the local party. Those who join at the higher levels of membership ($120.00 and above) should remember that only $50.00 of those memberships will stay with the local party.

If your intention is to become a new member or renew your membership with the Democratic Party and you want more of your contribution to go to the Local County Party, I encourage you to join at the single $25 or $75 Family membership level and make additional contributions to the county party directly.