A Prayer

Great Spirit,

We pray this evening for

Ever greater meaning and

Purpose in our lives.

Please great Spirit, give us

A purpose for Being.

We pray for the Will and courage

To commit to something

Larger than ourselves.

Great Spirit, we are ready

To risk, to serve and to commit

To the greater well being of our Universe.

As your prophet, Matthew Fox

Pleaded,

Let us Thunder for Social Justice together!

Amen

I wish to speak regarding: Lincoln School land sale and lakeshore access issue

City of Madison Parks Commission Meeting

I emphatically and enthusiastically agree with the Madison Park Commission decision not to sell the half acre of city land beneath the Lincoln School apartments. I enthusiastically endorse the recent statement by the Commission’s chair which stated:
“We should not limit our options relating to land we own publicly or waver from our vision of greater access to city lakeshores, and adding open space in an increasingly dense urban area.”

When I first arrived in Dane County now almost 35 years ago, I was struck by two main impressions of the City of Madison. First, how richly blessed Madison was to lie in the midst of so many miles of beautiful lake shore land. Secondly, how sad and unjust, it seemed, that so many Madisonians had public access to so little of it.

My dream and vision for Madison is that when this city celebrates its bicentennial in 2056 its citizens can proudly boast that they reclaimed their natural right to greater public access to Madison’s lake shores. I know with out any doubt that if there was a referendum to this effect, the people of Madison would overwhelmingly support it. One way to help ensure that the citizens of Madison begin take back part of their shore line would be to measure the public’s existing shore line, and then publicly announce at our spring sesquicentennial celebration a goal to significantly increase public access to our lakes.

Martin Luther King, when talking about the need to change our values, said, “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation (I would add here, ‘and as a city’) must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. He then went on to say that when profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Let us support “the people’s revolution” and say no to the further diminishment of the people’s access to this beautiful and enticing lake shore. Let us begin, as a city, to say no to the further privatization and degradation of our planet earth.

If we succeed, then we can triumphantly acclaim “our radiant city of Madison on the lakes,” and mean it!

William R. Benedict
Resident of Madison/Eastside

“Wake Up America” – Letter to the Editor

Did the Journal’s editorial department and the readers of the Journal not read about the First Amendment violation which Leonard Pitts Jr. reported on in his Monday column? Inasmuch as I have not read one printed word about this “homeland security incident in our local papers,” I have to say that I am dismayed and alarmed. Benjamin Franklin warned us that, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Leonard Pitts Jr., columnist for the Miami Herald, and regularly featured in the Journal’s Your Opinion page, reported a February 9th County Homeland Security incident in a Montgomery County Public Library. It seems that two Homeland Security officers in uniform entered the Little Falls branch of the county library and informed the patrons that it was forbidden to use the library’s computers to view Internet pornography.

It was later reported by the Gazette.Net, Maryland County Newspaper Online, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006, when confronted by the library staff and informed that they themselves were acting in violation of Montgomery County Public Library policy “the veteran officers continued to press their case.” Fortunately the library staff then called the police and the unwelcome intruders left.

The Gazette quoted County Councilman Michael J. Knapp, who heads the council’s Homeland Security Committee, “It was probably a good learning experience for everybody.” The Gazette also reported that Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, after learning of the incident, as calling “the guards’ actions highly inappropriate, unauthorized and in violation of county policy.” The county has since reprimanded and reassigned the guards.

Mr. Pitts reminded his readers that this incident did not happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. It happened “right here in freedom’s land.” He went on to say that he was appalled that “an agent of the government literally read over a man’s shoulder, Big Brother like, and tried to prevent him form seeing what he had chosen to see.” Pitts then went on to fully express my own exact reactions to this incident. Mainly, the fact that we are at war doesn’t make this OK, nor the fact that the library material involved was unsavory doesn’t make it OK.

When I read Pitts’ story, a chill went down my back. I am flabbergasted that I have not read or heard another word about this incident. If this incident is not an early warning signal, a clear harbinger of what is to come, I don’t know what is. If the local press in liberal Madison ignores this incident and chooses to treat it as simply a pornography story, or because the “homeland security officers” were later duly reprimanded, I believe the American people are in deep, deep denial.

The question that we should all be asking right now is, What conditions now exist in our “land of the free,” that would allow such Gestapo-like behavior to happen? What was the current context in which this incident occurred? Time magazine recently reported, “The President’s secret directive to let the NSA snoop without warrants sets off a furor.” US citizens being detained without charges, counsel or recourse, and illegal eavesdropping now being accepted by the American people as OK now that we are at war…

What will it take before Americans wake up? Now we are only being watched by big brother as we use our libraries. Will we soon need government approval to use our libraries, or to take a trip or watch a movie? Wake up America!

State must direct science with care

Wisconsin State Journal
Guest Column

Governor Jim created an emotional moment in his recent State of the State address when he recognized a mother and her 9-year-old son who has juvenile diabetes.

This was his way of calling attention to his recent stem-cell research initiative in which he proposed the aim of capturing one-tenth of the stem-cell market for research and medical therapies by 2015.

“As long as I am governor, Wisconsin will never allow politics to stand in the way of curing disease,” the governor declared.

I recalled the fraud, lies and cover-up that ended the career of a prominent South Korean stem-cell scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, along with a collaborating California-based stem-cell scientist. It is clear now that Hwang’s ground breaking discoveries over the last two years were totally fabricated.

Hwang had publicly promised a 10 year-old boy in a wheelchair that he would soon walk.

What has happened in South Korea and California can also happen in Wisconsin. World wide hopes for a quick cure are inflated. These hopes are created and stoked by both scientists and the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. The competition to be first with the most is tremendously intense

Our Governor deserves our support and respect for his wise leadership in this very competitive market. Indeed Wisconsin’s success, stature and leadership in this field as of this time is truly remarkable.

My concern however is that Wisconsin adopts the proper accountability safeguards and standards that will ensure that we do not stumble.

For 30 years I have been in the business of program evaluation and accountability. The precarious stem-cell culture includes the mixing of scientific objectives with potentially huge profits. The line between scientists and entrepreneurs and other stakeholders are being blurred. This seems to me to be fertile soil for creating more fraud, lies and corruption.

What’s needed is strict public financial and management accountability, compliance with intellectual property policy and standards, and an open and transparent organization and management process.

If there was ever a genuine need for an independent and nonpartisan oversight body to act as a watchdog, this is it.

Finally, we need to have agreements in place that will prevent Wisconsin taxpayers from paying twice---once to help finance the stem-cell initiative, and again later, as taxpayers or consumers when they have to pay for the very expensive medical products the initiative produced.

For example, the results of state-funded science, when later converted into commercial therapies, should be sold to the state and to patients, who can’t afford them, at the lowest possible cost. Significant cures resulting from stem-cell research are an eventual certainty, as will be the huge financial profit windfall for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Both taxpayers and consumers, through their state legislature, should take control of their future and forthrightly and proudly stake out their claim.

With immediate attention to these issues, Wisconsin can become a shining star in the stem-sell research world for many years to come.

Letter to “Your Views”

I trust most lawmakers. Unfortunately a few break the law. The caucus scandal is especially bad because it was so wide spread and lasted so long before justice was done.

What puzzles and disturbs me however is that I am not aware of any action what so ever that has yet been taken to prosecute the lobbyists and corporations involved. As a citizen I would like to know whether there is any law that punishes the lobbyists and the corporations they represent in a situation like we have here? If there is no such law, there certainly should be. If there is, I want to know what is going on here.

I have been following this story for over three years and have yet to see this newspaper’s editors raise this issue. Should there not be the same standard for both the legislators and the lobbyists and organizations involved? You bet there should!

Private Property – A new land use ethic urged!

I read Brian McCombi’s article in the Ithsmus, “Open Wounds,” on September 2, 2005. McCombie presented a rather broad and impartial view as to the extent that the race card was played in this tragic incident. Now that the trial is behind us, it seems clear to me that a much more important causal factor in this incident has to do with how many American’s view private property rights in this country. We got our most important clue on this fact when reading Wisconsin’s assistant state attorney’s opening remarks at the trial, when he describes and justifies the hunters’ response to the trespassing as being “natural.” Some readers may not have any trouble with this remark. I do!

Such a statement, at worse, has the effect of implicitly giving institutional sanction to how the hunter group responded. This statement suggested that the group’s behavior was without fault. Our right to private property is a fundamental principle in our Constitution and my intent is not in any way to impugn this right, but to ask us to re-think and change our private land use ethic. After all, life on planet earth is changing. There are more people and greater diversity and we increasingly interact with each other in smaller and smaller spaces.

For these reasons I believe it is time we begin a discussion of a new land use ethic for the twenty-first century by identifying how we can mitigate the most negative aspects of private property rights. For example it’s clear that private property tends to further separate, divide and establish barriers. It limits our freedom of movement and choices. At the same time there is an increasing need, both locally and globally, for more porous and fluid boundaries that will lesson potential conflicts and help to govern access to increasingly limited community resources.

What would this new land use ethic look like? We need to begin by emphasizing greater stewardship and responsibility on both sides, the land owner and hunters. After all, our environment is for all the people. Clearly the public’s demand for greater access to this increasingly imperiled resource will need to be more creatively and equitably managed in the future. It is in this spirit and context that I would like to propose for discussion that farmers and other land owners consider opening up their land for hunting and certain recreational uses by voluntarily “adopting” or “sponsoring” one or more urban dwellers who wish to hunt and fish.

Most of all, a new land use ethic emphasizes that all land is on loan to us from our Creator and thus its care and use is more of a shared responsibility and privilege than a sacred right. Such an ethic would help ensure that both sides would treat each other with greater respect and dignity. Rather than relating in an uneven power status, the emphasis would be upon their mutual love of the land and its fruits. Such a paradigm shift that respects this axiom will serve as a sound basis for future land use planning and management for the twenty-first century.

In the same spirit that Americans have recently opened up their homes to evacuees from the Gulf Coast states, Wisconsin rural land owners via their own voluntary associations could participate in a self-created, managed and operated “hunt-share” program.

Land owners would voluntarily set aside certain parcels of land during the hunting season. This also would be a self-directed and self-managed program. To get this program started it would only take two or three land-owners to volunteer and the press to write about it. Informally of course, such voluntary sharing of hunting land already exists. What is needed perhaps is a further expansion and formalization of this practice perhaps through a volunteer association.

More importantly than any single idea however for better moderating access to private property is the need for greater dialogue and voluntary, creative experimentation of new ways to address these kinds of conflicts. To ignore, or to further postpone or delay such a search for more peaceful and creative solutions is only risking another tragedy.

Also before many more hunting seasons pass I respectfully suggest that the DNR’s section of the bureau of law enforcement carefully reexamine their use of Wisconsin citizens as “undercover agents” to report trespassers. If such a reporting procedure is to continue, it should be modified. If the landowner elects to report the trespasser, he or she should do so without informing the trespasser. This incident should put the State on notice that its current position is not working and that future DNR educational programs need to explicitly expect civility from all parties involved. Our present land-use ethic is badly out-dated for the twenty-first century, and that to continue to ignore this will likely result in further confrontational, “I gottcha,” kind of situations.

God forbid that we ever have another such incident, but if we do, hopefully it will not be viewed by the State of Wisconsin’s law enforcement and prosecution officials as “natural” for landowners in a future incident to respond as they did here. Surely no trespassing incident or taking of deer or other game should result in the death of six human beings, and condemn the seventh to life imprisonment.

Submitted by Bill Benedict, Madison Resident

Private Property – A new land use ethic urged!

Part three

Mr. Vang’s sentencing is scheduled for November eighth, less than two weeks away. I read Brian McCombi’s article, Open Wounds, on September 2, 2005. McCombie presented, I thought, a rather broad and impartial view into the role that race played in this tragic incident. Now that the trial is behind us, it seems clear to me that a much more important causal factor in this incident has to do with how many American’s view private property rights in this country. We got our most important clue on this fact when reading Wisconsin’s assistant state attorney’s opening remarks at the trial, when he explains and justifies the hunters’ response to the trespassing as being “natural” under these circumstances. Many readers will not have any trouble with this remark. I do!

Such a statement, at worse, has the effect of implicitly giving institutional sanction to how the hunter group responded. At best, this statement suggested that the group’s behavior was totally without fault. Our right to private property is a fundamental principle in our Constitution and my intent is not in any way to impugn this sacred right, but to ask us to re-think and change our private land use ethic. After all, life on planet earth is changing. There are more people and greater diversity and we increasingly interact with each other in smaller and smaller spaces.

I believe it is time we begin a discussion of a new land use ethic for the twenty-first century by identifying how we can mitigate the most negative aspects of private property rights. For example it’s clear that private property tends to further separate, divide and establish barriers. It limits our freedom of movement and choices. At the same time there is an increasing need, both locally and globally, for more porous and fluid boundaries that will lesson potential conflicts and help more equitably to govern access to increasingly limited community resources.

What would this new land use ethic look like? We need to begin by emphasizing greater stewardship and responsibility on both sides, the land owner and hunters. After all, our environment is for all the people. Clearly the public’s demand for greater access to this increasingly imperiled resource will need to be more creatively and equitably managed in the future. I know that this is not a politically correct statement to make – but without being more straight-forward tensions will only continue to grow.

It is in this spirit and context that I would like to propose for discussion that farmers and other land owners consider opening up their land for hunting and certain recreational uses by voluntarily adopting or sponsoring one or more urban dwellers who wish to hunt and fish.

Most of all, a new land use ethic emphasizes that all land is on loan to us from our Creator and thus its care and use is a shared sacred responsibility and privilege than a sacred right. Such an ethic would help ensure that both sides would treat each other with greater respect and dignity. Rather than relating in an uneven power basis, the emphasis would be upon their mutual love of the land and its fruits. Such a paradigm shift that respects this axiom will serve as a sound basis for future land use planning and management for the twenty-first century.

In the same spirit that Americans have recently opened up their homes to evacuees from the Gulf Coast states, Wisconsin rural land owners could voluntarily participate in a self-created, managed and operated “hunt-share” program.

A related approach would be for such land owners to voluntarily set aside certain parcels of land during the hunting season. This also would be a voluntary, self-conceived, self-directed and self-managed program. To get this program started it would only take two or three land-owners to volunteer and the press to write about it. Informally of course, such a voluntary sharing of hunting land already exists. What is needed perhaps is a further expansion and formalization of this practice along with more equitable access to such land.

More importantly than any single idea however for better moderating access to private property is the need for greater dialogue and voluntary and creative experimentation of new ways to address these growing conflicts. To ignore, to further postpone or delay such a search for more peaceful and creative solutions is only risking another such tragedy.

Also before many more hunting seasons pass I respectfully suggest that the DNR’s section of the bureau of law enforcement carefully reexamine their use of Wisconsin citizens as “undercover agents” to report trespassers. It seems to me that this incident should give us pause and prompt the state to develop a DNR educational program that recognizes that our present land-use ethic is badly out-dated for the twenty-first century, and that to continue to ignore this will likely result in further confrontational, “I gottcha,” kind of situations.

God forbid that we ever have another such incident, but if we do, hopefully it will not be viewed by the State of Wisconsin’s law enforcement officials as “natural” for landowners in a future incident to respond as they did here. Surely no trespassing incident or taking of deer or other game should result in the death of six human beings, and condemn the seventh to life imprisonment.