Letters to the Editor

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Governor's veto aided public schools

Dear Editor:

State Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, and state Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, are angry because Gov. Jim Doyle made creative use of his veto pen to channel more money in the state budget to public schools.

Rhoades thinks the governor is heartless and cruel because, in order to get more money to schools, he reduced funding for Medicaid. The untold story is that Rhoades herself voted to increase the co-pay for generic drugs for Medicaid recipients to the same level as brand-name drugs, thus reducing the incentive for Medicaid recipients to get the lower-cost generic drugs and raising the overall cost of Medicaid while increasing the profits of drug companies.

Harsdorf is so peeved over the governor's creative use of the veto that she's ready to rewrite the state Constitution to prevent it from happening again. But ask her if she's ready to give time and effort to fixing the state's outdated and convoluted school financing formula that unfairly punishes school districts with surging property values and declining enrollments. Harsdorf's answer is no.

Harsdorf, Rhoades and their friends in the Legislature have reaped a lot of political hay by keeping their constituents stirred up over their property taxes. That's why they've turned a deaf ear to the many cries for school funding reform. If the system were fixed, they would lose their platform for re-election. In the meantime, school kids are paying the price.

To his credit, Doyle's use of the veto has given local taxpayers a break by channeling more state money to public schools, thus reducing the need to raise property taxes.

Harlen Menk

Ellsworth

Commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Dear Editor:

For weeks, Phyllis Goldin, with Community Arts Base of River Falls, led artists, children, parents, students and elders in reincarnating discarded construction Styrofoam, shish-kabob skewers and vellum into floatable lanterns carrying colorful designs, symbols and words of peace. On Aug. 9, my husband Earl and I attended the ceremony in River Falls for which they were made, commemorating the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Each lantern's personal message conveyed a wish to never repeat the source of this remembrance: the first unleashings of the destructive forces of atomic energy 60 years ago, to quell an enemy in war. What could justify using these WMDs? If they end the war, ultimately annihilating fewer lives than conventional warfare? But such reckonings must count not only immediate casualties and strategic gains but also the fallout, literal and figurative, damaging targeted people and land for generations.

We gathered to mourn our continued dependency on warfare, rather than dialogue and diplomacy, to resolve international disagreements; to remind ourselves that impacts of destructive force at any level is not just an abstraction of statistics; and to consider the impacts of our own actions, both politically and at home.

Through speeches, poetry and music, community members recounted the horrific impacts of A-bombs on civilian populations - the physical, emotional and social suffering that continues decades later; affirmed our community's commitment to peaceful resolution of conflicts, beginning at home; and revived the energy of compassion.

The skies cleared enough for an impromptu procession down to the river, where we tied 55 lanterns in a train to a canoe. Their candles lit, the 150-plus hands carefully lowered the line of lights, one at a time, onto the water, as four hands paddled across the wide, slow-current segment of the Kinnickinnic River. Gliding gently over the water, lanterns glowed through dusk dropping into night. Songs of peace and hope flowed from shore, under the rising silver moon.

How do we prevent more wars? Perhaps gathering by the river, a coherent community voicing hope through glimmering beauty, is a start.

Returning to shore, we watched lanterns rise, float into the woods, blink behind trees, then away

I wished you were with us, inspired and illuminated by the gentle night and silent light, to share the peace. We gratefully congratulated Phyllis for this gift - unique moment or new tradition - through her creative faith and organizational determination.

Like lights shinning at the interface of water and air, let's you and I illuminate the dark interface between ideas, people and faiths, in peace.

Vera Ming Wong

River Falls

Politicians all sound the same

Dear Editor:

State Sen. Sheila Harsdorf proposes a constitutional amendment to trim back the governor's partial veto authority. In a prepared statement she said that Wisconsin residents would be shocked if they saw how major funding decisions are made in the budget signed by Gov. Jim Doyle.

"The governor mastered the art of the 'Frankenstein Veto' by stitching together parts of sentences to make a whole new sentence that the Legislature never intended."

Everything that Doyle learned about using the partial veto authority he was taught by Republican Tommy Thompson, who made more than 1,500 partial vetoes to the state budget over 14 years, including a record 457 vetoes in 1991.

Did Harsdorf complain when a Republican was governor and then propose a constitutional amendment to curb the line-item veto power?

When a Republican governor, Democrats complain. When Doyle, a Democrat, is governor, Republicans complain. The result is predictable - a proposed constitutional amendment to trim back the partial veto authority.

All politicians, including Harsdorf, sound the same.

Ray Anderson

River Falls

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