The political power battle
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
To the Editor: I grew up in a home with a father who was an Eisenhower Republican and a mother who was a Stevenson Democrat. They talked about the problems of the day at the dinner table. Topics of conversation ranged from public education, Wisconsin’s university system, medicine, infrastructure, taxes, unemployment, foreign policy, etc.
Liberals and conservatives in those times rooted their political positions in pragmatic solutions to the problems faced by Wisconsin people. Conservatives posed solutions more from the market and individual perspective where liberals were oriented toward social and government action. These political positions overlapped in their concern for the welfare of the state. It was instructive to hear the give and take of my parent’s political talk.
Why don’t we have those discussions any more? In the current political atmosphere there would have been no learning from discussions, just yelling about who was correct.
Wisconsin’s Republican Party is no longer the conservative party it was before the 1990s. Neoliberalism, libertarianism and tea party extremism have become their dominant ideology. Instead of seeing the state of Wisconsin as a society that needs active maintenance order to function well, ideologues try to mold a state in their image. Both neoliberalism and libertarianism look on the free market as the main arbiter of what is right or wrong.
If the government that governs best governs least, who then does govern? The wealthy winners of the market economy will be freed of government oversight. Big corporations and private equity firms buy out the smaller and weaker businesses, break them up, and sell their assets. A local example is when the hedge fund, Starboard Value, bought out and dismantled Brokaw Papers. This shows that not all of our jobs have been lost to Asian industries.
Mix these philosophies with Newt Gingrich’s tea party demonization of the opposition and you have the recipe for a party that will not communicate, much less work, with the party on the other side of the aisle. Family dinner discussions have degenerated into family members demonizing those who disagree, or a stoney silence about political topics that desperately need to be solved.
How have we arrived at this situation of willful non-communication? How have Americans come to believe that society would be composed of the small number of winners and the masses of losers who deserve nothing from the government?
Fox TV sends out a 24/7 message denigrating the government and any positive role it can play in society. Wealthy business scions, Charles and David Koch, have lavished money on their political minions in Wisconsin’s political and judicial races. They created the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute as think tanks to spread the radical libertarian ideology, attempting to make opposition to government activity, at any level, feel normal.
Government must not interfere with businesses. That means no regulations on worker’s rights, the environment, consumer protections, etc. Not only should the government stay out of businesses, but functions such as public education, postal service, medicine and the military should be privatized and run for profit. There would be no Medicare or Medicaid, no Social Security and no help for those who need it. All these functions would be run by unregulated for-profit private businesses. The oligarchs, who would run this society through corporate bureaucracies, would, of course, be free of regulation and progressive taxation.
Liberals and conservatives do not represent ideologies. They are general tendencies people have toward solving political problems. When a party leaves pragmatism and problem solving behind to bind themselves to an ideology, they become radicalized. After all, one either accepts or rejects the ideology. Compromise is only possible for the pragmatists, which are traditional conservatives and liberals.
If one is tired of government bureaucracy, where one has some representation, wait until our country is run through corporate officials whose deci- sion making will be based on the “law of the market,” profit and loss.
We need to elect pragmatic politicians who look at Wisconsin through practical eyes and who are capable of working with others to form workable compromises. We also need to start discussing, and learning, about solutions to political problems without hiding behind animosity and dysfunctional labels. We need to make the dinner table safe for politics again.
Rick Lohr Marathon
South Korea better at Covid
To the Editor: The United States and South Korea were both introduced to COVID-19 by single cases on Jan. 19, 2020. The two countries reacted quite differently.
By late January. Korea had developed a fast, reliable test. The U.S. approved a test developed by the CDC in early February that proved to be slow and unreliable. By Feb. 29, the U.S. had tested 3,300 people and President Trump told America, “The coronavirus is going to disappear. One day, like a miracle it will disappear.” That same day, South Korea had tested 12,800 people and was planning to test its 100,000th person. It hit its peak daily infection rate of 909. In March, Korea recognized “community spread” and implemented “test and trace.” On March 3, the U.S. had identifi ed 118 cases compared to Korea’s nearly 4,000, but by March 18, the U.S. reported 2,853 new cases while Korea reported 93. In early March, while Trump was saying he did not “take responsibility at all,” forcing states to go it alone, the South Koreans were closing their schools and canceling public events in an organized national effort.
April saw Trump refusing to take the lead in securing medical supplies, forcing states to bid against each other. Trump declared himself to be “number one on Facebook” and things went downhill from there with the death rate first falling, then rising back to 1,000 a day, the number of unemployed people rose to just under 50 million, the economy is closing down for the second time and the school year is in limbo.
South Korean schools and businesses are open, their daily death rate is often zero, but a testing program persists. The comparison of the two countries magnifi es several shortcomings of President Trump, but his failed leadership most of all.
Bryce Luchterhand Unity
Vindman huge military loss
To the Editor: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was forced to resign from the military.
In years of service to the country, he commanded both infantry and antiarmor platoon in the Korean War?, did overseas deployments to both South Korea and Germany, and is a combat veteran of the Iraq War, where he sustained an injury from a roadside bomb and received the Purple Heart. He earned the following awards in addition to the Purple Heart: the Ranger Tab, Combat Infantry Badge, Parachutist Badge, as well as four Army Commendation Medals, and two Defense Meritorious Service Medals.
While serving as director for European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, he was called to testify before Congress in relation to the Trump-Ukraine scandal. He honored his oath to defend the Constitution and he told the trust about the president and his administrator’s efforts to sell out our Ukrainian allies to Russia.
Our president — you know, the one with bone spurs — was unhappy with the truths the lieutenant colonel told. So steps were taken to ruin his career. It is the country’s loss, for with his future in the military ruined, Lt. Col. Vindman has resigned. Where will we find another so knowledgeable, so devoted and so courageous to serve in that capacity again?
Our president, bone spurs and all, is a small, mean-spirited man who refuses to take responsibility for this misdeeds, and who can be counted on to punish those who speak the truth about him, regardless of the cost to the country.
Lt. Col. Vindman — brave, ethical, responsible man that he is — said that he didn’t fear testifying against one of the most powerful men in the world because, he said, “In America, right matters.”
Apparently it doesn’t matter all that much! Phylis N. Goeke Greenwood
Poor leader gets bad result
To the Editor: Leaders of the European Common Market and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have several things in common that leave them, and the current condition of their countries, in stark contrast to President Trump.
They have had national requirements for wearing face masks and have enforced social distancing. They instituted economic recovery plans that kept people employed and they enjoyed universal health care that paid medical bills. They have the trust and respect of a majority of their citizens while they work together to defeat a common enemy.
Finally, they invest in, believe in, and work with science.
President Trump said he believes face masks are not important and encouraged people in several states to protest social distancing. The $2 trillion U.S. Economic Recovery plan encouraged extended unemployment and Trump has consistently attempted to gut the Affordable Care Act which provides health care for millions of Americans.
Trump is a “nationalist” and has refused to work with other countries to defeat COVID-19, first defunding the World Health Organization and then withdrawing from it. He abolished the National Security Council’s Pandemic Response Team in 2018, cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control by $690 million, and has never relied on science to help fight COVID-19.
The result of these differences and more is that Canadian and European economies are opening back up while ours is closing down. Coronavirus transmission rates in Canada and Europe are less than 20 per 100,000 while in the U.S. they are greater than 120 per 100,000!
We are still fighting over face masks, enduring an increase in daily deaths and are a nation divided with our economy in chaos with no recovery plan while much of the industrialized world is slowly moving forward. COVID-19 is out of control, our economy is a disaster, and both are due in large part to a terrible lack of leadership by President Trump.
Darlene and Dennis Bucheger Greenwood
Does Trump care about us?
To the Editor: Is it too much to think a vaccine that could stop a pandemic would be immediately shared with every country? International cooperation on resolving a world pandemic that has cost 150,000 American lives is a foreign concept for President Trump. For him, it is all about money and power.
In March, President Trump tried to convince a German firm working on a coronavirus vaccine to move to the United States. He failed, but the effort was widely viewed as a brazen attempt to “corner the market” so U.S. citizens would be the first to receive it and he could control dispersing it to the rest of the world. Exclusive ownership of a vaccine would bring tremendous world power and be worth billions, if not trillions, of dollars.
When a group of countries and celebrities joined together in May and raised $8 billion dedicated to finding a vaccine, the U.S. was conspicuously absent. When the World Health Organization developed highly accurate tests, Trump refused to request them, and has discouraged the use of any test. Medical experts claim our failure to have proper testing has allowed the spread of COVID-19 to be out of control.
Trump has not prioritized testing or international cooperation. He is prioritizing private research, recently awarding a $1.9 billion contract to Pfizer for 100 million doses. This is where the money is and Trump’s Big Pharma friends are already raking it in.
Vaxart Corporation stock holders made several hundred million dollars overnight by falsely suggesting they had been selected for further trials. Moderna has received about half a billion dollars from the government to develop a coronavirus vaccine, says it will sell the vaccine for profit.
Trump does not accept responsibility for any part of the COVID-19 pandemic or the growing American death rate but you can bet he will be front and center wherever the money leads.
Linda Osegard Neillsville
Manipulation against Trump
To the Editor: The media in this country is largely biased and not doing its job. Some surveys show an over 80 percent liberal bias.
The media reports negatively concerning President Trump:
_ Job stats from “experts” were projected low and quietly revised up. (President Obama’s stats were projected high then quietly revised down.)
_ They pushed “Trump/Russia collusion” for two years. This was proven false and the unverified “Trump dossier” paid for by the Clinton campaign.
_ They criticized Mr. Trump and called him names for stopping airline travel with COVID 19 countries in January, later complaining he didn’t take action soon enough.
The media props up Democrats:
_ They failed to report or just gave Mr. Obama a pass on numerous lies. (Keep your doctor/medical plan.)
_ They had no problem with the Obama administration testifying to the Supreme Court that the Obamacare individual mandate was a legal tax, while telling the American people it was a penalty.
_ They ignore racists Democrats (Sen. Byrd (D) in the KKK.)
_ Support Democrat’s destruction and removal of historical figures/monuments and revision of our history.
The media “creates facts” (CBS’s Dan Rather) and lies to us by omission:
_ The Democrat National Committee took Payment Protection Program (PPP) money.
_ Democrat officials, such as NY Gov. Cuomo (D), forced nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients, where 45 percent of the deaths occurred.
_ NY Mayor De Blasio (D) kept the city largely shut down but made exceptions for BLM protests.
_ Police in many cities are busy rearresting criminals released by Democrats.
_ The historical figure statues Speaker Pelosi (D) proposed taking down were almost all Democrats. (Two had no party preference.)
_ BLM mobs destroying statues of people who supported blacks.
_ Democrat officials restricting religious services but encouraged BLM protests. (Some COVID-19 “experts” said protesting was more important.) They again called for lockdowns after protests subsided.
_ Democrat officials across the country instituting gun control laws.
_ The COVID-19 death rate in the U.S. dropped for 12 straight weeks.
_ Multiple instances of voter fraud (tampering with mail, stealing and falsifying ballots, etc.) go unreported. A 2018 Congressional election in N.C. was decertifi ed and a new election ordered due to absentee ballot fraud.
_ Two national gun control groups received hundreds of thousands of PPP dollars while vowing to spend millions promoting anti-gun candidates.
_ Universities punishing conservative students (and professors) just for exercising their First Amendment rights goes unreported.
_ They filter many of Mr. Trump’s briefings, not even broadcasting some. We only hear their negativity.
_ More youth support socialism, but few understand it. Many think it’s “being social.”
This is a small sample of media manipulation... it continues daily.
We no longer have a free and unbiased press. Most of the media in our country supports one political party (Democrats) akin to that of Nazi Germany or the party-run press of communist countries. This makes them not worthy of our trust and threatens our republic.
Tim Kapfhamer Colby
