Dave Zweifel in The Capital Times, on today's corporate greed:
...[H]ere in Wisconsin all we need do is take a look at our two U.S. senators, who both happen to be successful businessmen. Together, they epitomize the two different worlds that Collins paints.
One, the soon-to-retire Herb Kohl, built a highly successful empire of grocery stores, all the while following the rules, contributing his fair share of taxes and helping promote the state's social and cultural life.
Then there's the new senator, Ron Johnson, who built a plastics business in no small part thanks to some well-placed tax breaks, and who now spends his time in Washington complaining about taxes, insisting that government needs to "get out of the way," and opposing any kind of health care reform that might benefit the uninsured.
Kohl spent his entire career espousing the belief that business and government could partner to make this a better world. Johnson wants no such partnership. Business needs to be left alone, no matter what means it must use to achieve its ends.
Johnson represents today's culture of corporate greed, which includes doing everything possible to get out of paying a fair share. Kohl represents what it meant to share the costs to help build a stronger and more just America.