CREATE POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE IN WISCONSIN? CAN'T DO IT

Welcome to Wisconsin, the "Can't Do" state.

That might be the highway sign greeting tourists in the near future.
You have to admit, it's kind of catchy, and it does reflect the
growing punitive nature of the Dairyland capital.

Let's check the list:

You can't get welfare here anymore.

We ended that because too many folks were fed up with stereotypes of
single mothers with five children sitting home watching television and
stuffing their faces with lobster and steak.

That wasn't the reality, of course; the vast majority of people who
received welfare lived hard lives with nowhere near enough money to
get by.

But our politicians in Wisconsin realized you can win elections by
pandering to the masses, and they ran with it.

You can't get parole in Wisconsin anymore, either.

People convicted of a felony here no longer get time reduced from
their sentence, regardless of the particular situation.

It's an outgrowth of the "truth in sentencing" movement, a widespread
frustration with revolving-door justice that places hardened criminals
back on the street with little time served.

This is a policy sure to make an impression on anyone who feels
threatened by the possibility of being the victim of a crime,
including a large number of folks who don't live anywhere near
high-crime neighborhoods.

It also means a growing prison population, one disproportionately
African-American, many of them convicted for non-violent crimes under
laws considered unfair because of the harsher sentences handed out to
black and Hispanic offenders than to whites convicted of the same thing.

And, of course, it ignores the absence of any significant
rehabilitation for these parole-deprived inmates.

We will keep them in prison longer, but do nothing to guarantee their
eventual return to society gets any easier.

The latest "can't do" was the "coke mom" bill, which means a pregnant
woman in Wisconsin can't have control over her own body if the system
judges her actions to be detrimental to a fetus living inside her.

This bill was inspired by one highly publicized criminal case of a
Waukesha woman addicted to cocaine who made the mistake of getting
pregnant not once, but twice.

The end result was another piece of social engineering designed as
legislation from Madison, where a legion of deep thinkers sits around
a boiling cauldron of sound bites and newspaper clippings and emerges
from the dungeon to present their latest concoction to their king,
Tommy Thompson of Elroy.

Thompson sifts through each offering -- no more welfare, no more
parole, no more coke moms -- with an eye toward which will sell best
in the less populous regions of the state.

The places where they don't have many welfare recipients, convicts or
coke moms, places where they look on an urban center such as Milwaukee
as the equivalent of the biblical communities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Who knows what else we can expect if the direction of these social
initiatives continues, what are the logical extensions?

For example, how about taking the step a lot of social engineers have
proposed for more than a decade now, and restrict the number of
children poor mothers are allowed to have?

Or a penalty for any child over a certain number would work, or maybe
even some sort of sterilizing device placed into the bodies of women
who make less than $20,000 a year?

Too wild, you say? Well, how many steps from that is the "coke mom"
bill, which considers a poor woman the landlord in her own body and
not the main tenant?

Or, why not just pass a bill requiring poor people to stay off the

streets altogether?

After all, it seems the main purpose of these laws is to create an
environment where most tax-paying citizens have the freedom to walk
around without ever being reminded there are less fortunate people
living among us.

The imminent danger of all this punitive legislation coming out of
Madison under Thompson's direction is how easy everyone seems to
accept the concept of using government as a hammer on the poor.

You'd think Thompson, as a Republican, would be averse to the idea of
government taking such a major role in the lives of its citizens.

Apparently, that's a philosophy with a lot of give to it if you are a
convict, or addicted to drugs, or out of a job.

The eyes of a nation are upon us. Thompson is off on a national
barnstorming tour to persuade other states to join in the campaign of
legislating social behavior with a broad-sweeping stroke of the pen,
as opposed to dealing with these cases on an individual basis with the
merit they deserve.

Soon, we might have lots of competition for the title of "Can't Do"
state.

But we can all find pride in the fact we were the first.

Or can't we?

Checked-by: (trikydik)