Dear Editor,
Do you remember two years ago when the Liberal Democrats were telling us that the sky would fall because of Act 10. They urged us to vote against Governor Walker or our schools would collapse. Exactly the opposite has happened in our school district where we have incorporated Act 10. They’ve put a different face on the falsehood this time around accusing the Governor of robbing the schools of money and raising student expenses. The facts are different. Act 10 took wasted money from the public employee union bosses with the money saved schools are free to reward teachers and improve curriculum. Teachers are also no longer required to pay union dues of up to $800 dollars/year.
Governor Walker has also frozen tuition in the UW system and will keep it frozen. When Mary Burke was working for Jim Doyle tuition went up yearly. Why didn’t they freeze it? The Governor has also put money into the Technical Education Schools to provide sorely needed training.
It is the height of hypocrisy when Mary Burke and the Liberal Democrats criticize Governor Walker for creating “only’ 100,000+ jobs. Under President Obama the US labor participation rate is the lowest it’s been in 35 years. With a President Reagan kind of US recovery we would have had many thousands of more jobs. Under Burke/Doyle we lost 135,000 jobs. In addition they left us with a 3.5 Billion deficit that Governor Walker has fixed. They also took 1.3 Billion from the highway fund and illegally took 200 million from the crime victims compensation fund. At the same time they increased taxes.
Take a look at what Mary Burke has done in the short periods she has held a public office. When working for Jim Doyle we lost 135,000 jobs while running a deficit and raised taxes. In her short stint on the Madison school board she denied the Madison citizens the benefits of Act 10. A lawsuit is pending over her actions. Other than that she worked for her father’s company and took a year or more off to snowboard in South America.
Mary Burke would push us to the bad old Jim Doyle days.
Charlie Gullan, Eagle River