If it ain’t broke, break it!
August 8, 2012
We frequently apply the word “destructive” to policy prescriptions from Democrats and the Left in general. And as glad as we were to think we were done with Tom Barrett for a good long while, last Thursday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on a Barrett policy position in a way that perfectly illustrates what we so often mean.
People are probably baffled by Milwaukee’s seemingly petty refusal to begin negotiations with the City of Waukesha on Waukesha’s desire to purchase Lake Michigan water from Milwaukee.
Milwaukee has it, Waukesha wants it and can afford it, Milwaukee would profit—with revenues estimated at $3 million annually—and Milwaukee needs revenue, so what’s the problem?
The Journal Sentinel has the answer.
The short version is, the mayor of a city in decline thinks he’s found a way to hamstring a city on the go.
June’s unemployment rate for Waukesha was 8.4 percent. (In the Obama economy, that’s “on the go.”) June unemployment for Milwaukee was 11.2 percent.
Milwaukee is in decline because of failed Liberal economics, a failed Liberal education system and the failure to hold Liberals accountable. West of the county line things are different and whatever works there is a standing rebuke to the culture that dominates the city of Milwaukee.
So Barrett wants to reach across that line and in his small way, diminish success. The newspaper reports that Barrett has made clear his belief that growth in Waukesha is bad for Milwaukee. He might better serve his city by treating a neighbor’s growth as an opportunity to learn something, rather than a threat to be smothered.
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