Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, March 15
Homeless bills deserve Senate votes
The Republican-controlled state Senate has one more shot this year to do the right thing and pass a smart package of bills to help the homeless across Wisconsin.
The Senate has no excuse for inaction.
All of the proposals have plenty of bipartisan support to clear the Legislature, if only Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and a handful of his stubborn colleagues would allow votes.
We know the bills would pass because they cleared the Republican-dominated Assembly by wide if not unanimous margins. All of the proposals have Republicans co-sponsors. Even some critics of the bills who have raised vague concerns have said they support most of the ideas.
So let’s finally get this done. The public can help by calling their state senator and demanding action this month before the Senate adjourns its regular business for the year.
When Assembly Bill 119, which steers $500,000 more per year to homeless shelters, was taken up last month, the Senate approved it unanimously. Seven more bills remain, all of which have funding in the current state budget, which the Legislature approved last summer.
The remaining bills would help desperate people find and keep stable housing, help the homeless develop skills for employment, and assist landlords with repairs to low-cost housing. Fitzgerald and others have questioned the cost, which is $6.5 million over two years. But that’s an infinitesimal part of the state’s $81 billion budget.
Even if the entire package is approved, Wisconsin would continue to spend far less than what cold-winter states such as Minnesota commit to the problem. In some cases, the bills would save money by helping more people to improve their lives and become more self-sufficient. If the state can’t afford these bills, then why are the names of Senate Republican budget committee leaders Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, on several of them?
Moreover, all of the bills are the result of hard work by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, with Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, and former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch championing the cause.
The State Journal invited three GOP senators - Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg, Chris Kapenga of Delafield, and Steve Nass of the town of La Grange - to meet with our editorial board and explain their concerns. They didn’t respond.
Fitzgerald was happy to rush a sweetheart deal through the state Senate to lure Foxconn to Wisconsin. Taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $3 billion in direct payments from the state treasury to the Taiwanese-based manufacture if its plant lives up to its hype, which so far it hasn’t.
Compared to the Foxconn splurge, the seven remaining homeless bills are bread crumbs. They would provide a modest hand up, not a handout, for struggling people including many single mothers with children.
If Fitzgerald and a few of his colleagues want to snub this noble cause, that’s their prerogative. They can vote “no.” But they should at least allow an honest vote so those with more compassion can have their say, too.
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The Capital Times, March 11
When will we get around to smashing the political patriarchy?
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway delivered the best speech of her tenure Saturday, when she addressed the International Women’s Day celebration on the University of Wisconsin campus. The mayor read the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Alice Walker and embraced the idea of “women being celebrated just for being women.” But she also expressed her frustration at the end of a week that saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts end her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Rhodes-Conway spoke of her own journey as an observer of presidential politics from the time when her elementary school friends dared to suggest that she might seek the presidency.
“It was only a month or two after I was born that Shirley Chisholm became the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination,” she said, recalling the New York representative’s “un-bought and un-bossed” 1972 bid. “So the notion wasn’t entirely foreign, but it was definitely a stretch.” A stretch she recognized as “a small step forward when a girl and her friends can see her in the White House.”
“Then when I was 13, Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate. … The idea of a woman vice president, at least, entered the world of possibility,” the mayor said with regard the 1984 election. “The night of the election, I stayed up late listening to the radio - hoping against hope that she would win. And I was so, so angry when she didn’t.”
It was, she recalled, “a step back, and a disappointment, for so many of us.”
Eventually, she spoke of the last presidential election, when an exceptionally well-qualified woman was defeated by an exceptionally awful man.
“And, then, then, the 2016 election. A step backwards: ’but her emails’ and ’her baggage’ and ’her husband’ and ’her pantsuits,’” recalled the mayor. “And so here we are.”
But that was not the source of her immediate frustration.
“Last year, for the first time in the United States, more than two women competed in the same major party’s presidential primary process. And one, by one, they dropped out: Kirsten, Kamala, Marianne, Amy, and Elizabeth.”
Rhodes-Conway paused after repeating the first names of the contenders: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, author Marianne Williamson, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Warren. When she finished, she paused. The room filled with women of every background and experience was silent. Then the mayor raised her voice.
“And, so, yes, I’m angry,” she declared. “Because, really, how long is it going to take? How hard do we have to work? When do we get to move from the present tense of smashing the damn patriarchy to the past tense of patriarchy - smashed?”
That is the right question.
It is true that Elizabeth Warren made mistakes as a presidential contender, as did the other women who sought the Democratic nomination. But, so, too did every man who was in the running. It is starkly absurd to suggest that Warren was a more flawed candidate than former Vice President Joe Biden. And, while it is certainly true that Sen. Bernie Sanders has often been a superior contender when compared with Biden, it is equally true that Warren often performed as ably, and often more ably, than Sanders during the course of the campaign. There is something wrong, something fundamentally flawed, about a politics that will put Biden and Sanders on the final debate stages of the Democratic contest, but that will leave no place for this remarkable woman.
Anyone who is not angry with the process that has brought us to a circumstance where all of the qualified women who sought the presidency are out of the running before the Democratic race has concluded is missing the point. As the 2020 race was getting started, author Rebecca Solnit wrote, “Unconscious Bias is running for president again. Unconscious Bias has always been in the race, and Unconscious Bias’s best buddy, Institutional Discrimination, has always helped him along, and as a result all of our presidents have been men and all but one white, and that was not even questionable until lately. This makes who ’seems presidential’ a tautological ouroboros chomping hard on its own tail. The Republican Party has celebrated its status as the fraternity of bias that’s conscious till it blacks out and becomes unconscious bias. But this also affects the Democratic Party and its voters, where maybe bias should not be so welcome.”
Solnit described Warren as her “dream candidate,” as did a good many other women and men who shared the writer’s view that, “the depth with which she understands the economic system - taxes, banks, bankruptcies, credit cards, home and student loans, redlining - is the depth with which she can change it.”
The withdrawal of Elizabeth Warren from the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is a loss for the country and for its future. But it is also a reminder that women who bring even the greatest strengths to our politics keep getting denied a chance to transform it.
It is good, and necessary, to be angry about the combination of Unconscious Bias and Institutional Discrimination that shapes this circumstance. And the discourse in Madison and Wisconsin is enriched by Mayor Rhodes-Conway, who expresses that anger so powerfully. We hope that this power, merged with the energy and enthusiasm of people across this country for a new politics, will be sufficient to finally smash the patriarchy.
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The Journal Times of Racine, March 11
Legislature helps cancer patients participate in clinical trials
Among the flurry of bills signed into law last week by Gov. Tony Evers, one that didn’t get much attention stands to help cancer patients and their families throughout Wisconsin.
The bill, SB 489, passed on voice votes in both the Assembly and Senate with full bipartisan support, addresses economic barriers faced by cancer patients to participate in life-sustaining clinical trials.
Recent national studies have found that cancer patients from households making less than $50,000 annually were about 30% less likely to seek clinical trials, which depend on broad and diverse participation for their very future. And about 20% of the trials fail because of insufficient enrollment.
Holding patients back have been out-of-pocket and travel costs that aren’t covered by the clinical trials.
This bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Kulp, R-Stratford, and Sen. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, allows patients reimbursement of expenses with their participation in a trial. It clarifies that providing reimbursement is not considered undue inducement to participate, and it allows organizations and others to offer financial support to the patients.
“Our bill will help open the door to cancer patients who want to participate in a clinical trial, but who can’t because they don’t have the personal funds to cover expenses like travel and lodging during their treatment,” Kulp said.
Among supporters of the bill were the American Cancer Society Action Network, the Medical College of Wisconsin, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the Wisconsin Medical Society and the Wisconsin Nurses Association.
An organization that helps patients cover out-of-pocket expenses throughout the country is the Lazarex Cancer Foundation, located in California. The foundation worked with the sponsors to raise awareness of this issue in Wisconsin.
Similar legislation has been passed in California, Texas and Pennsylvania, according to the foundation.
All new cancer treatments must complete a clinical trial before becoming FDA approved, according to the foundation, and the trials must have patients enrolled to be successful. But, the foundation notes that an estimated 97% of cancer patients don’t enroll because trial sites are often far from home, making travel and costs difficult for patients and their families.
“If we don’t have fully enrolled clinical trials with a diverse pool of patients, treatments new treatments are not possible,” said Dana Dornsife, Lazarex Cancer Foundation founder. “Clinical trials are the pathway to new treatments. But when you have only 3% of cancer patients enrolling in clinical trials and about 50% of clinical trials failing because they can’t enroll patients, the pathway is blocked. That’s why Lazarex raised this issue in Wisconsin.”
Andrew Wernicke, 21, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has a rare cancer (since age 12) and for years traveled to Augusta, Georgia, monthly for a clinical trial. His family was able to cover expenses, but now he may receive help. And he’s fortunate in that he now can participate in a clinical trial in Milwaukee.
“Clinical trials have saved my life,” he said.
When the bill was introduced in September 2019, Kulp said: “Cancer patients shouldn’t have to decide between living expenses and hope.”
This legislation may go a long way in taking away a barrier for Wisconsin cancer patients and their families moving forward.
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