PUBLIC, ENEMY #1 by Barn Owl

In America’s past, groups of people cooperated to get through the hard times of daily life and the costs of living.

They shared food, helped with the harvest, built cooperative grain silos and creameries. They also started community banks and credit unions to support each other. These were not run make a profit but to give services and support to people. Businesses could not start such services because they were not profitable. When people on farms needed electricity in the 1930s, the government helped.  Stringing a wire to every small farm was not going to make money for a big business.

There has always been a public part to our lives.
There have been public hospitals, public libraries, community banks, public health, public pools, county nursing homes, public schools, electric co-ops, public radio and television, town parks, public highways, public utilities and so much more. Public health, for example, is a public service. It cannot be run for a profit by “Private Health.” There is no money in making sure that everyone is vaccinated. There’s no money in preventing exposure to tuberculosis or making sure our drinking water is clean.

Private institutions have to make a profit for somebody. If they don’t make a profit, they are cast aside. Wisconsin has lost city hospitals in the last year when, even though they were still needed, they didn’t fit into a corporate plan.

As the smoke clears from the first hundred days of the new administration in Washington, we begin to see what we are really up against. For our aging president and those who run the show behind him, “public” is not just impractical or unprofitable.

“Public” is an adversary. It is the enemy.

But in reality, public institutions encourage people to work together to get what they need rather than seeking out a business and buying what they need from them.

Have you noticed what is being destroyed? Since January, public services that are offered to the people of the United States are being destroyed. Social Security is being cut apart. Public radio and TV are defunded. Public schools have to send their money to private schools.

There are many more examples.

The government treats what we have built as a public – as a community – as if it were garbage, to be destroyed and replaced by private business.

 The Public has become enemy number one.

[Published in local newspapers Sept 2025 by Ben Boardmen and friends; shared on this website with permission.]