Ron Johnson shook things up last year when he ousted 18 year incumbent U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on a reformist platform.  Johnson's campaign put Senator Feingold on the chopping block for his support of Obamacare and a stimulus bill that didn't create sustainable jobs nor stop rising unemployment rates.  In November of 2010, a great champion of the progressive cause fell in defeat to a political unknown as a wave of Republicans "occupied" much of Washington.

El Conquistador met with U.S. Senator Ron Johnson at the "Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Gala" to discuss health care, jobs, education, and immigration reform.  The good Senator was kind enough to give us some of his time, something our readers most certainly appreciate.

Health care is one of the top concerns among Hispanics in the United States.  Diabetes, for instance, is a disease prevalent among Latinos that when left unmanaged can lead to cardiovascular problems, renal failure, and in some cases amputation.  The trick then with health care reform is finding a pragmatic way to keep premium costs down without sacrificing coverage, patient accessibility, and free market competition.  While Senator Johnson agreed that our health care system needs reform, Obamacare only exacerbated the problem.

Obamacare was sold as a bill of goods on the premise that it would reduce our federal deficit.  It was an argument that Washington Democrats needed to make in order to get enough votes to override a Republican filibuster.  However, we later learned that cost projections were unrealistically low as the number of American employees thought to lose their employer-sponsored coverage was seriously low-balled.

Without getting delving into the details, Obamacare would make it very expensive for employers to provide private sector health care coverage.  As a result, there was a significant cost incentive for employers to drop employee coverage despite incurring a fiscal penalty for doing so.

For this reason, Senator Johnson told us that "Obamacare was designed for people to lose their employer-sponsored health care."  These were the same pronouncements made by Congressman Paul Ryan when Democrats lobbied for Obamacare over the cries of the high profile "angry town halls."  Johnson projects that at least 30-40% of employers will drop their employees' health care coverage.

Wisconsin Recall Elections

We asked the Senator what he thought about Wisconsin's tumultuous recall elections.  Current Wisconsin law allows for recalls, however, Johnson believes some updates are needed to prevent abuses.  Johnson said, "I don't think it was ever anticipated they would be recalling elected officials because they didn't agree with their votes.  That is what general elections are about.  Recall elections should be generally reserved for people that did some odious things in office like committing crimes."

Johnson was also concerned about setting a bad precedent that awarded elected officials - those who had identified the problems and had made the hard choices - by turning them out of office before their term is up.  Johnson's reference was to Republican lawmakers currently facing recalls because they had dared to cross swords with big labor.  "Courage," Johnson said, "by and large is not an attribute generally seen in politicians.  We don't want to harm an ability to attract people that have that kind of courage."

Immigration

We asked Johnson if Latinos can expect immigration reform to be a top priority if Republicans were to control Congress.  Johnson's response was intriguing.

First, he acknowledged that President Obama had punted on immigration reform.  During his campaign for president, Obama promised Latinos immigration reform would be a top priority in his first year as president.  And yet even with a super-majority of Democrats in Congress, they still couldn't tackle any part of the country's immigration problem.

Johnson also said that Speaker Newt Gingrich had made positive contributions during a recent presidential debate.  Of all the Republicans running for president, Gingrich had provided easily the most comprehensive immigration plan including a guest worker program.  The point that Johnson seemed to tag onto was Gingrich's claim that it was unrealistic to implement any deportation policy that uproots entire families.

Johnson told El Conquistador, "We are a compassionate society.  We're not going to separate families and implement mass deportations."  He said, "The history of immigrant populations, including the Hispanic population, are people who came here to build a good life for their families.  Those are the types of people you want in America."  Johnson reiterated, as not to be misunderstood, that America is a nation of laws, and that people need to respect those laws, but we can do it in a humane way.

School Choice

One issue of great import to the Hispanic community is school choice.  Nationwide, polls show that Latinos support school choice as a good alternative to traditional public schools.  In Milwaukee, choice schools have been a great help to Latinos yielding impressive academic results, especially at St. Anthony's and Bruce Guadalupe.

Before Johnson was elected to the U.S. Senate, he spent 10 years volunteering in the private school system.  Johnson told us, "You need competition in education, and school choice provides that type of competition."  "The free market," Johnson said, "provides a phenomenal discipline to guarantee the lowest possible price for the highest possible quality customer services."

Johnson explained that as long as he's been alive, they've been trying to improve education, but haven't made much progress.  "It's because we have a public school monopoly," Johnson stated.  "Private schools have a difficult time surviving because the parent that sends their children to those private schools is paying taxes to support the public school system and also paying tuition for the private school system."

Conclusion

It was refreshing to hear a Republican Legislator talk about an immigration reform in a way that didn't disjoin entire families.  And it was equally refreshing to know we have an advocate in the U.S. Senate that believes in free market based reforms and is willing to fight to keep our country's fiscal house in order.

Last week, a Racine high-school teacher turned his back on Paul Ryan as the Congressman tried to present him with a Martin Luther King Jr. humanitarian award.  The snub was caught on video and has since gone viral on YouTube.  Al Levie, the teacher in question, said Ryan had no business attending a Martin Luther King Jr. event since "Ryan is a lackey for the 1%" and "has absolutely no affinity for the working class."

It was Martin Luther King Jr. that once said the purpose of life was not to be happy, was not to achieve pleasure, and was not to avoid pain, but to do the will of God.  As an educated Baptist minister with a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology, King would have known the Apostle Paul's pronouncement that governments were established by divine rule and that "the one in authority is God's servant for your good."

So our question to Mr. Levie is, would Martin Luther King Jr. turn his back on a servant of God?

Background on Allen Levie

For more than a decade, Congressman Paul Ryan has attended the Gateway Technical College ceremony to celebrate the life, legacy, and accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr.  If event organizers believed that Ryan's record on civil rights was a failure, it's unlikely they would continue to invite him back fourteen times to present their awards.

It's important to note that Al Levie is an executive board member of Voces de la Frontera, an active immigrant rights group based out of Milwaukee.  He also counsels Youth Empowered in a Struggle (YES), a student arm of Voces de la Frontera that has fifteen chapters throughout the Racine Unified School District.  As we're finding out, Levie's political participation moves well beyond transforming Horlick high-school students into agents of social change.

Last June, during a Senate Finance Committee Hearing, Mr. Levie was physically carried out by state troopers as he attempted to obstruct the expansion of the School Choice program.  In 2009, Levie participated in an immigration rights protest outside of Congressman Ryan's Racine office - in coordination with YES - to oppose Ryan's efforts to strengthen the border.  And in 2008, Levie was fined $200 for obstructing Racine police as they tried to walk a student out of his classroom for questioning.

We think it's remarkable that with Levie's history of unlawful obstruction and civil disobedience, he was chosen to receive a humanitarian award to be presented by the very Congressman he had previously protested.  That be as it may, Mr. Levie had sufficient time to make his objections known about Ran before the ceremony had begun, but instead waited until he had shared the stage with the Congressman before publicly airing his grievance.

Levie told TMJ4 that he knew in advance that he didn't want to accept the award from Ryan.  Additionally, Voces de la Frontera released a statement in support of Levie's actions at the ceremony.  Given Voces' history of civil disobedience and Levie's position on their executive board, it's not entirely surprising the event transpired the way it did.

Conclusion

It is the position of El Conquistador Latino Newspaper that Voces de la Frontera needs to avoid schemes that further divide our community.  A plot to embarrass a sitting U.S. Representative for political points doesn't change immigration policy, and it certainly doesn't heal a partisan divide.  It would be difficult to believe that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would mock the Congressional guests of events meant to honor humanitarians.

We recognize that Voces has worked hard on behalf of Latinos in our community, but we must draw the line to oppose political radicalism where we see it.  Martin Luther King Jr. once believed that the best way to destroy your enemy was to make him your friend.  Mr. Levie and Voces de la Frontera would do good to use this sage advice in a manner consistent with the leadership of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.  Being a true humanitarian is more than being a political activist.  It means having the compassion and kindness in your heart to do the right thing for everyone, not just those who share your political ideology.

An interview we conducted with Chris Abele a few weeks back revealed sides to the young Executive not previously known to the general public.  For instance, did you know that Abele is quite the policy wonk?  Yes, to our surprise, he has an unusual fondness for data, analyses, and everything else that make a bar full of accountants a fascinating company to keep.

Yet, Abele's saving grace from this dingy underworld of numbers, symbols, and metadata is his encyclopedic knowledge of, well, everything else.  Some people are talkers; some are storytellers; but Abele is a skilled conversationalist.  He genuinely enjoys the company of others.

Voter ID

Considering Abele's non-partisan M.O., we thought it would be interesting to get his take on issues like Voter ID and School Choice.  Abele said that any good Voter ID law will protect against fraud while also providing access to the ballot box.  Sounds simple, right?  The trick, however, is adding adequate voter safeguards without losing voter access.  Traditionally, this has been a rather tough balance to achieve.

Abele cited a 2004 gubernatorial election statistic in Washington showing that the instances of voter fraud are more infrequent than people may think - somewhere in the neighborhood of .0009%.  Abele said that examples of voter fraud cited by proponents of Voter ID laws are often non-existent or overblown.  We agree.  However, in a race as close as, say, Wisconsin's recent Supreme Court election, 1,676 votes (the amount of illegal ballots cast in Washington's gubernatorial election) could have swung our Supreme Court in a radically different direction.

Abele was careful not to accuse Wisconsin Republicans for a law that deliberately repressed minority voters, but added that it would be an insult to their intelligence to suggest these authors were completely unaware of the impact it would have on minority voters.  At the very least, Abele said, that Wisconsin's Voter ID law wasn't a proactive measure meant to ensure more access for eligible minority voters.

School Choice

Since it's school choice week, we asked Abele if parents should have more freedom to send their kids to the schools of their choosing, or if bureaucracies - such as school districts, should reserve such rights.  Although he didn't answer our questions with the specificity that we had hoped, he laid out some important steps he thought, if followed, would make choice schools more marketable.

To Abele, school choice is one-third of a good idea.  There are several steps that need to take place before "education value is to be consistently improved."  First, Abele says there needs to be significant market incentive for schools to be started.  Typically, companies succeed in a free market system when they find ways to convert market demand into profit, which is necessary before choice schools can be truly successful.

Second, Abele said that parents must be able to make informed and accurate decisions about the effectiveness of competing schools.  In an ideal marketplace, consumers learn about products through advertisements, word of mouth, and personal experience.  Many times, however, consumers are duped before they discover quality products.  Advertisements come from biased sources, and testimonials are highly subjective.  There needs to be a system in place to help inform parents about the schools that best fit their children.

And third, Abele said a solution ought to be found that ensures schools continue to improve despite having a "captive market" or families that live in such areas where their range of options are substantially reduced.  Abele had intimated that these steps may not be fully realized as long as education reform becomes an issue of which team wins or whose ideological views are validated.

Interestingly, Abele pointed out that he's a board member of "Schools that Can," a Milwaukee non-profit organization dedicated to expanding access for low-income families to high-performing inner-city schools.  The reason Abele is working with Schools that Can - despite its intrinsic value of increasing the public good - is because they are more interested in sharing best academic practices than worrying about who wins.  It's a slight change of pace from the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism.

Unfortunately, there is a reality that we cannot circumvent.  Republicans predominately support choice schools, and Democrats largely oppose them.  The lines drawn in the sand are less about the proficiency of choice schools and more about whether they are unionized.  Republicans will say that choice schools produce the same or better academic results as public schools, but do so for a fraction of the cost to taxpayers.  Democrats argue that choice schools are untested and unaccountable.  These are talking points, not an honest discussion between different groups.

Abele, not taking either tactic, says that if incontrovertible evidence were shown that the strategies implemented by choice schools worked, he will be the first in line to kick down the doors in support of the cause.  His concern, however, is that free markets are good at improving the lot of things, but aren't good at fixing everything.  Abele sees school choice as a mixed bag - at least for now - having parts that show promise and parts that show vulnerability.

Conclusion

In the year that Chris Abele has been the Milwaukee County Executive, he's done an excellent job steering away from issues that have strong partisan overtones.  And this is not to say that he's unwilling to discuss issues that interest voters.  Abele is a unique brand of politician because he refuses to get caught in the political fray, which we believe the vast majority of constituents find quite refreshing.

At this point, Abele's only goal is steering Milwaukee County away from it's historic downward fiscal trajectory.  His first budget has largely been viewed by the public as a succes - despite veto overrides by the County Board.  With gladness, we give him high scores for balancing a tough budget, staying above the political fray, and striving to reform our county government.