The Milwaukee Post

10 • Milwaukee County Post • August 24, 2018 MILWAUKEE | OZAUKEE | WASHINGTON | WAUKESHA M A R K E T I N F O R M AT I O N AVA I L A B L E MILWAUKEE POST • GMTODAY.COM (website) • WAUKESHA FREEMAN • OCONOMOWOC ENTERPRISE • HOMES PLUS • BROOKFIELD & ELM GROVE THIS MONTH • GREATER MILWAUKEE JOBS • MKE LIFESTYLE • LAKE COUNTRY THIS MONTH • OZAUKEE NEWS GRAPHIC • OZAUKEE COUNTY GUIDE HARTFORD TIMES PRESS • WASHINGTON COUNTY DAILY NEWS • WASHINGTON COUNTY POST L E A D I N G T H E W A Y I N C O M M U N I T Y J O U R N A L I S M F O R N E A R L Y 5 0 Y E A R S Did You Know We Are a Part of… OPINION Whatever happened to the left's model socialist country of Venezuela? To the editor: Six years ago, the left praised socialist Venezuela as a model country. New York Times contributor Mark Weisbrot praised socialist Venezuela in 2012 saying, "Poverty has been cut by half, college enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the num- ber of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled." Just six years later, Venezuela's infla- tion is predicted to hit 1 million percent by the end of the year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The Daily Signal reported on Venezuela's staggering collapse. The economy has halved since 2013 and unem- ployment has now reached 30 percent. Basic items like baby formula and toilet paper can't be found on store shelves. The policy of nationalization to give back to the people has left those very people des- titute. No country has fallen farther and faster than Venezuela. Economic freedom has evaporated, and Venezuela is now the second most economically repressed country in the world. The American left continues to praise socialism. Millennials in particular are embracing it. Socialist policies undermine individ- ual responsibility and the rule of law, and create a destructive race to the bottom to prove that you are the one most in need. Proponents of socialism claim to want to lift up the poor, but all socialism does is drag everyone down, creating economic misery for rich and poor alike. Socialism has proven to be ideological- ly bankrupt, having failed to produce any- thing close to a free-market system. Amy Holterman Milton Belling's attack against union leader misses the mark on right-to-work To the editor: I'm not a big fan of the Operating Engineers union and its leader, Terry McGowan, but he deserves a defense against Mark Belling's Aug. 3 column attacking him. As he often does, Belling fails to tell the whole story. First, by calling McGowan a "typical hack," Belling lets most of his readers assume McGowan and his union back Democrats down the line. The facts are that the Operating Engineers endorsed Scott Walker in his first election as governor and remained neutral during his recall and his 2014 re-election. Second, Belling says that McGowan is angry that Walker signed a right-to-work law and pretends to wonder why he's upset. McGowan has publicly stated that Walker personally assured him that a right-to- work law would never be enacted while he was governor. I'd be "steamed" too if I was lied to. Finally, Belling mockingly claims the only result of this law will be "less money for doughnuts in the union office." If that's all it means, why would the Koch brothers, Dick Uihlein and Diane Hendricks shovel tens of millions of dollars into campaigns for candidates who support right-to-work? The answer is simple. Studies have shown that right-to-work states have weaker unions, and workers in those states earn less money. It's an investment for the Kochs, Uihlein and Hendricks that pays for itself. Bill Kurtz South Milwaukee LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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