Early in his professional life, the greatinvestigative reporter Seymour Hersh served as a campaign aide to the late Sen.Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war presidential candidate who forced DemocraticPresident Lyndon Johnson to abandon a bid for a second term.
McCarthy was a bemused, intellectual, Minnesotapolitician who wrote poetry. McCarthy was so unlike the larger-than-lifepolitical villains he battled back thennot only Johnson, but also theshifty-eyed Richard Nixonhe was called “Clean Gene.”
If ever there were a time when working for apolitician could be considered a positive experience in pursuit of a righteouscause, working for McCarthy in 1968 would seem to be it.
Hersh says he had to quit because he couldn’t standlying every day. And that was for one of the good guys.
Politics as usual is often an exercise indishonesty. Politicians pretend to be outraged over issues they really couldn’tcare less about and have no intention of doing anything about.
With such rampant dishonesty and in far too manycases outright criminality, whenever a political body considers censuring oneof its own, it must be for some truly egregious violation of all that is holyand decent, right?
Wrong. The Milwaukee County Board this week willconsider a resolution to censure Supervisor Lynne De Bruin for publiclyrevealing details about the county’s failure to protect patients from sexualassault at its mental health complex.
What could possibly be wrong with alerting thepublic about seemingly callous indifference at the top toward protectingextremely vulnerable women housed in mixed-sex dorms with sexually violent malepatients?
According to County Board Chairman Lee Holloway, DeBruin’s horrendous ethical violation was that the discussion took place behindclosed doors in a private session called under state law to discuss possiblelegal issues.
Holloway is grieved by the public airing of what wassaid in a supposedly private meeting. It violates some kind of honor code amongpoliticians when people find out what county officials say when the publicisn’t around.
It is the same rationale corrupt presidents use totry to prevent public disclosure of what they’re up to. Vice President DickCheney went to court to try to prevent disclosure of which oil companyexecutives he allowed to write the nation’s energy regulations.
Serving the Public Interest
Even if state law allows public officials to meet insecret to discuss certain subjects, that doesn’t mean the public doesn’t havean interest in what their elected officials are doing behind closed doors.
They aren’t talking about Justin Bieber in there oranything else that doesn’t matter. They are talking about the public’sbusiness.
In the case of the county’s mental health complex,the issue of patient sexual assaults was first raised in January after aninvestigation by the federal and state governments placed Milwaukee County in“immediate jeopardy” of losing millions of dollars in Medicare funding for thefacility.
It was the second major embarrassment calling intoquestion the competence of County Executive Scott Walker’s government, comingat the particularly awkward time when Walker is campaigning for governor.
A year earlier, the state took over management ofMilwaukee County’s public assistance programs because of the county’s“sustained inability to successfully provide services” to poor and workingfamilies.
Failure to protect mentally ill patients from sexualassault and failure to deliver government services to people who need them bothcan be tied to Walker’s tax-cutting political promises. Understaffing countydepartments to hold down taxes can make it impossible for even competentprofessionals to do their jobs adequately.
When that was just forcing poor people to wait inline all day at 12th and Vliet streets and run a gauntlet of humiliation, itdidn’t bother the majority of middle-class voters.
But the reality of mental illness is that it cutsacross all classes. Wealthy families experience the heartache just like poorones.
Although steps were taken to remove the county’s“immediate jeopardy” status, Disability Rights Wisconsin, the independentdesignated protection agency for the mentally ill at the facility, iscompleting an investigation to address “much broader and deeper problems” atthe facility.
A defensive response by county behavioral healthofficials is correct when it says the majority of mental health facilitiesaround the country include mixed-sex dorms. That does not excuse failure toprovide adequate security to keep all patients safe.
County officials also claim sexual assaults at thefacility are infinitesimal compared to the national average. The actual numbersneed to be closely examined by Disability Rights Wisconsin before they can beaccepted as credible.
Protecting vulnerable individuals in need oftreatment is an important public issue. We shouldn’t be censuring a politicianfor putting it before the public.
We should be censuring any politician who doesn’twant to get government’s shortcomings out in the open.
