To the editor:

QUESTION: Why did the governor of Wisconsin refuse 17 requests to meet with public-sector employees to discuss his budget-repair proposal, and then, when they agreed to concede on pension cuts and benefits, he still refused to drop his plan to gut their collective bargaining rights?

ANSWER: According to Wisconsin campaign finance reports, the governor’s 2010 election campaign received $43,000 from the Koch brothers, who support eliminating public-sector unions in this country.

The protest in Wisconsin is not about the state budget. This governor has been hired by some billionaires to destroy a 50-year-old tradition of labor negotiations in that state, and his ill-considered plan has now backfired. Instead of the word “courage,” which the Journal-World editor used to describe the governor, it looks like the more appropriate descriptors should be “cowardly, capricious and cruel.”