Friday, May 14, 2004

Bush will be paying for campaign costs

In more ways than one.

The King made a royal visit to Wisconsin last week, and as is common when monarchs travel, individual liberties were suspended.

King George Bush's bus trip across western Wisconsin closed schools and roads, prevented residents from moving freely in their own communities, and prevented citizens from exercising their free speech rights.

All in all, it was a typical George W. Bush visit.

But there's a slight twist.

People in western Wisconsin, who hold to the refreshingly naive notion that they live in a republic as opposed to an imperial realm, are objecting.

...Along the route of the Bush bus trip from Dubuque to La Crosse, the Bush team created a "no-free-speech" zone that excluded any expressions of the dissent that is the lifeblood of democracy.

..."There's a pattern of harassment of free speech here that really concerns me," says Guy Wolf, the student services coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. "If they're going to call it a presidential visit, then it should be a presidential visit - where we can hear from him and he can hear from us. But that's not what happened here, not at all."

Wolf and other La Crosse area residents who wanted to let the president know their feelings about critical issues came face to face with the reality that, when King George travels, he is not actually interested in a two-way conversation.

...Wolf and hundreds of other Wisconsinites and Minnesotans who sought to express dissents were videotaped by authorities, told they could not make noise, ordered not to display certain signs and forced to stand out of eyesight of Bush and his entourage. Again and again, they were told that if they expressed themselves in ways that were entirely protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, they would be "subject to arrest."

"Everyone understood the need for basic security for the president, but none of us could understand why we had to give up our free speech rights," explained Wolf.
  article

Ve are now liffink in a new vurld, Mr. Wolf. Willkommen to Amerika.

La Crosse Mayor John Medinger shares that concern. The Bush-Cheney campaign leased a portion of a local park where the royal rally was held. Yet, Wisconsinites who wanted to protest Bush's visit were told they could not use a sound system in a completely different section of the park.

"I want to find out why the whole park was used when only a portion was leased," Medinger told the La Crosse Tribune. "So when demonstrators were told they couldn't have (sound) systems, the question is why."


The city is going to bill the Bush/Cheney campaign nearly $50,000 for expenses incurred during the president's visit here for a rally last week. The total includes charges for police officers and the use of a Municipal Transit Utility bus to take them and some Secret Service agents to help with security in Prairie du Chien, Wis.

..."If I drove in a police car to run for mayor, they would lock me up. All those people in Madison are charged with felonies because they used their offices for campaign-related activities. This has nothing to do with me not liking George Bush."

...The mayor said his determination to charge for the visit is not a matter of partisan politics. "What if Bush comes back? What if Kerry comes to visit? We do not have those slush funds. This year, we had to leave 13 positions, including four police officers, open. If we are in a deficit at the end of the year, we will have less money to fill positions. Do we want less officers on the streets because we are spending it on campaigns?

"If this was John Kerry, I suspect that Republicans would be furious if we subsidized (his visit)," he said. "These are rallies, and we have to treat them the same."
  article