Milwaukee County is sick, with a disease that could be fatal for our beautiful city.

When sick, it does matter how you respond. Chest pain can be heart burn or heart attack. We might deny the fatal symptom because Tums are handy and appear to bring relief.

The symptom is our wretched discussion of transportation. Freeway, bus, bicycle, automobile, rollerblade, rail, truck, skateboard, foot, boat.

When a symptom is fed with palliatives we feel better because the pain goes away, but not the problem. This virus spreads with illusions - those pleasantries devoid of research.

One illusion is our happy belief that the Market will iron out the wrinkles in our economy and we will live happily ever after, well-fed and housed, in a fairy tale kingdom ruled by a kind king and a cute queen.

From the Right (that implacable sales squad of privatization) there is a supermarket of products they will deliver for a buck. Drinking water is flying off the shelves. Blackwater Inc. flying to distant cities armed but likely violating Section 8 of the Constitution. You can buy parks, fire and police protection, garbage collection, environmental safeguards. We are so accustomed to privatization that the following statements are not considered narrow minded:

"I don't use the bus, why should I pay for it?"

"Let the market play itself out [charge bus riders the full cost of their ride] and we will all prosper."

"Why should I subsidize someone who doesn't want a car?"

This is privatization. This is a virus, draining our health and energy, sapping what we could do together, for each other, as a community. With that fairy tale comes the illusion that we are doing "enough" - happily ever after utopian nonsense.

Whatever.

From the Left (that's you, dear reader of Uppity Wisconsin ), we hear arguments that leave the privatizers ice cold and rigid: what level of sales tax, how big the reduction in property taxes, veto-proof majorities on the County Board, and lobbying Madison in a climate where the state is unfairly hostile to the City. (more on that another day).

These arguments are quite like explaining to a child why she will love the dentist's drill.

A smart parent starts with the goal, healthy teeth, wonderful smiles, maybe a photo of a kid who did it wrong.

And Milwaukee is doing it wrong. Even Scott Walker knows now. Last summer Michael Cudahy took him riding the rails in Denver and Portland. He could see if he looked; but he saw only what he was looking for.

Mr. Walker has something on his mind. In addition to his adoration of Privatization, he may have personal illusions afflicting his skills (no kidding).

We protectors of public transportation need to get a grip on The Goal - the city-wide benefits of modern, more efficient transportation technologies. The benefits to All who live in the metro area, that engine of the Wisconsin economy.

If you want public transportation you are up against an implacable foe that obsessively scratches "The What's-In-It-For-Me Itch?" There is no first person plural - no "we." Just that "me" and maybe that loathsome "other" - you've heard the phrases - "that element," "you people," "they only need education (and privatized schools) to figure it out."

In this blog I will defend my belief that there is no "They." We are in this together. And the bed is full of some rather ornery people, (and from our delicately educated latte-sipping point of view) ugly people. (I got an on-the-bus lecture from a fashion plate about my beret; he was appropriately dressed with the Packers coat and the stylish but long-gone TV6 Albert the Alley Cat stocking cap. He demanded that I admit I was cold.)

Deal with it.

If you ride the bus and sit next to the workforce of Milwaukee County, you can feel in that wide butt, donating to you only half a seat, how your job is enmeshed in a web larger than your office politics.

We can't have manufacturing without low paid restaurant workers, cabbies, sweepers, students grubbing late hours to fund school. Why? Because the geniuses who design the modern manufacturing process and get paid the big bucks will not choose to live in a city without restaurant life, which absolutely depends on public transportation.

The "we're all in this together" attitude is the trump card of the metropolis that effectively supports public transportation.

Play it; play it again, play it often. Look at your cards. You have a whole deck.

We are a community.

Or, if we are breaking apart, we are dying.

The Privatization virus might be taking control of our discussion. If you want to be the doctor treating this virus, wash your hands of this infection and find a new language that joins us as a community.

The new language is at hand and it starts with the following principles:

1. The common goal is dinner for everyone. You can't have a potluck all by yourself.

2. You need the bus even if you won't ride the bus.

3. Public transportation, especially rail, bring dollars from outside the community.

4. Public transportation, including the bus, pays for itself.

5. Bus and rail are cheaper than no plan, Mr. Walker.

6. Citizen visions of Milwaukee are important to its future. Tell us how Milwaukee looks to you, with a modern transit system.

7. Scott Walker has a better chance of being governor (appalling as the idea may seem) if he ever figures out how to manage the County buses - and his political opponents must teach him how. Walker's management literacy cannot wait any longer.

8. Finally, buses are not for losers. Abolish Transit TV noise so we can work on our way to work.

I gotta go - my bus is coming.

Bill Sell

Next: My affair with Route 15