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Government should be by and for the people

Reader says state budget slashes vital public programs
Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled state Legislature are slashing public programs from schools to infrastructure to the research core of the Department of Natural Resources, public radio and television, public parks and prisons.

They are cutting the number of public servants, and they don’t want to pay public servants enough to keep the best people. To add to that, they are busy restricting the freedoms of voters, invading women’s privacy, and limiting food choices for those receiving a public help.

They like to tell you it’s a choice between small government and big government. But the real choice is between good government and poor government, between public concerns and private interests. It’s between all of us as the government (in a democracy, the people are the government) doing the best we can for all of us, or each of us going our own way.

It’s between “United We Stand or Divided We Fall” and, as the governor himself said, “Divide and conquer.”

To put it another way, would you want your favorite sports team to be run by a manager who thinks we could get by with a few less players on the field, who cuts salaries until the players leave for other teams? Would you prefer a manager who’s idol said that teamwork is the problem, not the solution? Would you go for a manager who says the team will do better when each player does whatever he wants?

Why would you want a government run by managers who want to dismantle the government and let everyone go it alone?
All private enterprise and citizens benefit from the support and protection given by the public, that is, the government. Without that public support and protection, without that good leadership, our state is like a team without good managing and coaching, guaranteed to lose.

We’re all in this together, we can do better.

Kevin M. Kuehl
Waupaca

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