Letters to the Editor: Kevin McCarthy is the kind of politician who lets democracy die in its current state.
The news that former Gov. Tommy Thompson has stepped down from the race for governor of Wisconsin is a big deal. The next governor will have tremendous power in making sure our state doesn’t have the kind of gridlock that leads to bankruptcy and the loss of jobs to other states.
Mr. Thompson’s actions were, in a word, “partisan.”
Mr. Thompson had a number of things going in his campaign that will be remembered by historians and Wisconsin conservatives.
For instance, he used the state’s power of eminent domain to allow for private gain by developers of a rail line to be built between Milwaukee and Madison.
Mr. Thompson did this after a battle between him, then-Gov. Jim Doyle and the citizens of the state about the “right to the public” land. It seems most of the residents of the state don’t want the public to have their land taken to build a railway line that will be used to ship Wisconsinites back to the city they were born in.
The line was never built. So, Mr. Thompson and Gov. Doyle went ahead, using their power of eminent domain, to give the private land owner — whose name is unknown — a large chunk of the state, for the private benefit of private land owners, who never asked for a rail line to be built.
And Mr. Thompson sold off a small portion of the state to a private developer for private benefit after he said the developer hadn’t done enough to pay for the project. All while saying the citizens of the state would not get their land back if the developers were denied state help in paying for the project.
It’s easy to look back in hindsight and see the good things that were done, but, to do that, you have to look at a number of things without allowing them to become self-congratulatory:
1.