Curmudgeon's Corner

Where Do We Go? How Do We Get There?

Posted by Al Campbell on Feb. 13, 2010

Economy, Political, Quality of Life, Wisconsin, U.S., Taxes

Where do we go and how do we get there?  Where do we want our government to go and how do we propose to get it from here to there?  Can we afford all the government we have or should we find ways to curtail the pure cost of government?  Do we have too many layers of government, or do we need all the representation we have?

All this ‘wondering’ is caused by a number of things including my reading this morning of the decision taken in Menomonee Falls between the village and the school district.  The district will be moving its operations into spare space in the Village Hall.

It has seemed to me for some time that we have too many layers of government, that there is redundancy that could be diminished.  This is something on the order of term limits, however.  Reduction in the size of government is nearly as threatening to politicians as is the thought that there needs be some limit to terms other than the ballot box.

We have periodic discussions about both, but there seems no lasting result other than the near-certainty that there’ll be further discussions somewhere in our future.

There are probably too many counties, by twice, in our state.  We could probably have half the number of members of the Assembly and not suffer a loss of representation.  We could live with half as many people as we now send to West Bend to represent us in county government.  Given the overlap, there does not seem a real reason for both a City of Milwaukee and a Milwaukee County to exist, nor a Madison and Dane County for that matter.

Each of these things is relatively minor in terms of cost savings, but maybe that is, at least, a beginning.

Maybe there needs be a limit to the sheer number of bills that can be mounted in any legislative period.  Maybe there needs be a return to the part-time nature of representation in Wisconsin. Even though there are periods when the two representative bodies are not in session, it seems that this has been filled with continual activity and even with “emergency” sessions.

We have reached a point where we simply are not able to sustain all the governance we have.  The various parts of government, including the federal government, are consuming such a large portion of the economic engine as to make us citizens subservient to the government and to limit our abilities to lift ourselves by the proverbial ‘boot straps’…that is not at all something that government dislikes.

We are moving inexorably toward the socialist state that some have dreamed of over time.  As we are made to become more and more dependent upon government for our daily needs, we lose our ability to control that government.  Instead, it controls us in absolute defiance of our founding documents.