Ron Johnson Would Oppose The Bucyrus Aid Package

I heard GOP Senate candidate Ron Johnson speak off the script of a new TV ad today when he opined to AM 620 WTMJ radio talker Jeff Wagner that Wisconsin jobs won't come back until government gets out of the private sector's way.

So Johnson - - whose plastics firm in Oshkosh took a public grant to build a rail spur and more money in low-interest public loans - - would oppose the 515 jobs added at Bucyrus in South Milwaukee through federal and state assistance?

The truth is we live in a mixed economy, where public-private partnerships are routine and beneficial, where laws and tax codes and infrastructure spending regularly influence business decisions, and in which government assistance is far more than, as Johnson says, a matter of picking winners and losers.

Ideologues - - like Johnson - - live in a black-and-white, one-dimensional delusion, where sloganeering doesn't cut it as a public policy template.