Rabbi Bradley Artson, Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies at the American Jewish University, wrote:
“How we treat the weakest in our midst … is still the irreplaceable core of our identity. None of this should imply that the other mitzvot [commandments] are not important. All mitzvot, both ritual and ethical, reflect the commandments of God as understood by the Jewish people throughout history.
“That having been said, it remains … that ethics and a passion for justice [are] the engines driving the entire Jewish enterprise. Rituals are essential and beautiful, but they remain frosting. Goodness, justice and decency form the base. As the Torah insists, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue’ [Deuteronomy 16:20].”
As we consider whom to vote for in the races for local, state and federal offices this November, let us analyze which party expresses a “passion for justice” and how it proposes to “treat the weakest in our midst.”
There is a crisis in Wisconsin and in America. Real wages have not risen in more than 30 years. Living costs have risen substantially. Working, middle and upper middle class families are economically insecure.
What has the response of the Republican-controlled government of Wisconsin been to this crisis?
• Reducing the state earned income tax credit while cutting taxes for the very wealthy.
• Refusing federal Medicaid expansion funds to cover more of the working poor.
• Refusing to accept increased federal food stamp assistance.
• Refusing to even consider increasing the minimum wage.
• Eliminating protections that tenants had from predatory landlords.
• Enhancing the ability of payday lenders to prey on the working poor.
• Adopting economic policies that have made Wisconsin last among Midwestern states in job growth over the past three years.
• Undermining the right to vote by limiting early voting and requiring identification cards that many elderly and low-income people do not have and will have trouble getting.
And what does incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker propose to do in a second term?
• Spend millions of dollars to drug test applicants for food stamps.
• Continue failed economic policies that are undermining every family except those that are super rich.
We have all heard how “there was only one generation between the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and the American Medical Association.” We know what that means: the union helped our great-grandparents and grandparents earn a living wage and have stable work hours which allowed their children to study and create the upper middle class lives that many of us enjoy today.
What do Walker and his legislative acolytes think about unions? They want to destroy them. Act 10 decimated Wisconsin’s public employee unions.
In the next term a Republican-controlled legislature will pass and Walker will sign a so-called “Right to Work” law which will undermine private sector labor unions, further weaken our economy and hurt all of us, poor and middle class alike.
And, although women are not the “weakest in our midst,” they are vulnerable. Shortly after he took office, Walker and his legislative allies eliminated the right to seek civil damages in state court for sex discrimination.
They also attacked a woman’s right to choose by enacting laws that further restrict access to reproductive health services.
Restrictions on access to birth control are coming as Walker has already announced that he will not enforce Wisconsin’s long standing law that all health insurance policies in our state must cover contraceptives.
Ask yourselves this as you consider for whom to vote in November:
Would a Democratic governor continue to refuse to expand Medicaid, decline to raise the minimum wage, ignore the opportunity to expand the availability of food stamps, kowtow to predatory payday lenders, drug test applicants for government benefits, attack the right of working people to form and maintain labor unions and restrict access to birth control and abortion services?
The answer: Of course not. It would be unthinkable because these policies are not just foolish, they are cruel.
As a people for whom a passion for justice is at the core of our faith, we must not stand idly by while our state government, now controlled by Republicans who respond only to the dictates and whims of multi-billionaires, undermine the security of working and middle class families and continue to make the lives of the poor worse each day.
We need to return “goodness, justice and decency” to our state’s government. To achieve that, we must vote to elect a Democratic governor, attorney general and legislature.
Lester A. Pines, an attorney, is a past president of the Jewish Federation of Madison and a senior partner at the law firm of Cullen Weston Pines & Bach LLP.
Loading ...