This Labor Day, it will take more than prayer to protect us from the gathering storm

Tea Party members and their Republican enablers talk a lot about freedom and the free market, but actually, fewer and fewer things are free. A growing list of police and fire emergency services, for example, are not. The Sunday NYT had a story about the so-called "crash tax."

ABOUT a year ago Cary Feldman was surprised to find himself sprawled on the pavement in an intersection in Chicago Heights, Ill., having been knocked off his motor scooter by the car behind him. Five months later he got another surprise: a bill from the fire department for responding to the scene of the accident.

“I had no idea what the fire truck was there for,” said Mr. Feldman, of nearby Matteson. “It came, it looked and it left. I was not hurt badly. I had scratches and bruises. I did not go to the hospital.”

These scenarios are being repeated moreand more often throughout an America deeply divided on economic grounds in which the rich can buy anything they need or want, while everyone else has had to cut back -- not just on what they want but, incresingly, on what they need. And the rich resent any of their tax dollars going to fill the gap. Call it a plutocracy, or call it a banana republic -- the result is the same. The Haves are getting richer and the Have Nots are getting poorer.

A few months back, Roger Ebert wrote a powerful blog post that he titled "The Gathering Storm" and illustrated with dramatic photos of approaching bad weather. This Labor Day seems an appropriate time to link to it.

Ebert also began by discussing the rapid growth in fees for municipal services as cash-strapped municipalities are unable or reluctant to raise enough tax revenue to pay for needed services. He went on to talk about the growing divisions between the Haves and Have Nots, and the unfairness of the way the pie gets divided.

We're in for some hard times. We need to pull in our belts, pay more taxes, demand more value for our taxes, and say no to an ideology that requires converting our health money into corporate profits. We should to raise the lowest wages, and lower the highest ones. We have to return to the saying my father quoted to me a hundred times: "A fair day's work for fair day's pay." No, I don't think everyone should be paid the same wage. If you earn a lot of money, you have a right to a lot of money. If you earn it. But when Wall Street bosses are paid millions in bonuses for bankrupting their firms, and their political tools in Congress oppose a better minimum wage, that's plain wrong. It's rotten. People who defend it with ideology are strapped to a cruel ideology.

I took this photo in Janesvilla a few years ago during a time when we were having a lot of bad weather, and at the time I thought I was taking a picure of an approaching thunderstorm. Since then, Janesville's economy has been further decimated by the closure of the GM factory there, and it's looking less like a photograph about meteorology and more like one about economics.

The American middle class was built on the notion of "a fair day's work for fair day's pay." Henry Ford jump-started the 20th century American middle class economy by paying wages sufficient for his workers to buy the products they produced. Ford was no progressive, but he knew that if a small group of people are allowed to accumulate most of the wealth in a society, there won't be enough money left in circulation to promote healthy economic activity.

That used to be just plain common sense. These days it's considered controversial. As the storms clouds keep gathering this Labor Day, we need to decide how this country went wrong and what to do about it. Prayer is not enough. Besides, they say God helps those who help themselves.

Big Dipper keeping watch over Wingra Park

I've always sort of used the Big Dipper to get my bearings. Geographically, if you take the right edge of the ladle, extend its length upward five times in the same direction, you're at Polaris, the North Star. Emotionally, the constellation a familiar constant presence in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere. It reconciles change with continuity as it rotates gracefully around Polaris with the turning of the seasons. Now is when it's especially low in the sky, reaching down practically to treetop level.

My eyes were too big for my stomach at the Taste of Madison last night. I came home feeling like a big lead balloon, and walked into the darkness of Wingra Park to get some fresh air and look at the stars in the clear night sky. I was struck by how serene the Big Dipper seemed, set off by the darkness of Wingra Park and the warm lights in the distance. It seemed to watch over the park like a protective presence. I walked back home to get the camera and tripod.

Sometimes when you're feeling crappy, the best thing to do is to try to make something beautiful -- or at least try to borrow some of the beauty of the universe.

Playing Buckyball by myself the day Wisconsin Badgers play Buckyball in Vegas

While the Wisconsin Badgers open their season today by playing Buckyball in Las Vegas, I'm playing Buckyball by myself at home -- courtesy of Google. They marked the 25th anniversary of the Buckyball -- the eponymous and now ubiquitous carbon molecule whose discovery led to the whole nanotechnology industry -- by incorporating one into their logo. It's an interactive animation that you control with your cursor. The faster you swipe across it, the faster it spins. You can also slow it down, make it change direction or make it stop entirely. Go Bucky(ball)!

The city's $312,000 McDonald's settlement: What if it had been a local small business?

A lot of people, including Emily Mills, wondered about the city's $312,000 eminent domain settlement with McDonald's on East Washington Ave. The case arose from access problems during construction of the bike and pedestrian bridge at this location, as well as McDonald's claim that the bridge obstructed the view of its Golden Arches from the road. The real eyebrow-raiser for Mills and others was the size of the award.

What I have a problem with are their tactics and the precedent they might set for other large corporations looking to fight city improvements.

I’m also curious -- if it had been a small, independent business filing the suit, would the city have settled for such a high payout?

Many people were curious. As it turns out, the McDonald's settlement can be compared with another settlement with a small, independent local business. Although the issues raised by the two cases are not identical, both involved eminent domain, and the local business also happened to be in the burger business -- the Dotty Dumpling's Dowry near the Square on N. Fairchild Street that was torn down to make way for the Overture Center.

Owner Jeff Stanley fought a long court battle to keep Dotty's open on Fairchild St. before being forced to take a $583,680 settlement, plus additional funds for relocation. That's in 2001 dollars -- more than twice what McDonald's got, adjusted for inflation.

However, Stanley not only lost his property and a thriving downtown business, but he also was forced to shut down and take on the risks of relocating. Although Dotty's appears to have done well in its Frances St. location, success in a new location was by no means a sure thing. In contrast, McDonald's still has its building, is doing business at the same location and is being reimbursed for a loss that is difficult to quantify. And how much was MacDonald's really harmed? It's not as if they'r located on the interstate, where people flying by at 75mph might easily miss them if construction obscured the entrance. But the East Wash McDonald's is basically a neighborhood restaurant supported by a national brand. People on the East Side didn't exactly forget where it was when the bridge went up.

Two burger joints, two settlements -- were they fair? Who got the best deal? What do you think?

The Ansel Adams fiasco reminded me of the famous P.T. Barnum words that are not really his

I've has enjoyed watching the "lost Ansel Adams negatives" fiasco play itself out. A bunch of the things just happened to show up in a garage sale, and experts were quick to jump in and say they were real. More skeptical experts, including the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, disagreed and the Trust went to court to try to stop the sale of prints from the alleged Adams negatives.

When it comes to collecting expensive art objects, there's a sucker born every minute -- and usually an expert can be found to lead them on. It's ridiculous to think the meticulous Adams would have misplaced dozens of negatives. And even more ridiculous to assume that a print from an unknown Adams negative could be authentic in any way. So much of his signature style was created in the darkroom. If you don't have an original Adams print to guide the printing of a negative, there's no point -- the result isn't an Ansel Adams.

After I wrote this, I decided to check out the "sucker born every minute" quote, which I had always heard attributed to P. T. Barnum, a man well versed in the ways of suckers and the ways to exploit them. But according to HistoryBuff.com, it wasn't Barnum who said it, but rather a competitor of his, David Hannum, who was exhibiting an archaeological fraud that newspapers dubbed the "Cardiff Giant" in Syracuse, NY in the late 1860s. Barnum made his own copy of the Cardiff Giant and then had the audacity to pass his copy off as genuine and accuse Hannum of exhibiting a fraud.

It is at this point that Hannum -- NOT BARNUM -- was quoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." Hannum, still under the impression that HIS giant was authentic, was referring to the thousands of "fools" that paid money to see Barnum's fake and not his authentic one.

Hannum brought a lawsuit against Barnum for calling his giant a fake. When it came to trial, Hull stepped forward and confessed that the Cardiff Giant was a hoax and the entire story. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling Hannum's giant a fake since it was a fake after all. Thereafter, Hannum's name was lost to history while Barnum was left with the misplaced stigma of being the one to say "There's a sucker born every minute."

Authenticity is a funny thing, in history as well as the arts. Sometimes it consists of distinctions as subtle as that between a "fake fake" and a "real fake."