At The Bottom Of Wisconsin's Business Climate

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Thursday’s Janesville Gazette ran the Buchen/WMC written offensive against American values and free speech rights on their opinion page. The article was no different than the one posted in the Capital Times and almost lost my attention except for one small detail. You see, the Gazette opinion page print copy posts a category title at the very top of each written perspective. For instance, their own newspaper editorials are categorized as “Our Views” and letters to the editor are titled “Your Views,” syndicated columnists and others as “Other Views.” Instead of listing the perspective written by the private citizen Buchen under something like “Lobbyist Views” or “Other Views,” the Gazette posted it under “State Views,” thereby giving it a more official and credible stature than it deserved.

Perhaps I’m being a little too sensitive here, but considering the Gazette is owned by a WMC board member, it obviously could have been much worse. They could have titled it “God’s Views.”

Just a few days earlier, the Capital Times editorialized their views on the WMC.

Capital Times Editorial Excerpt:

WMC Winning Race to the bottom
WMC, once a credible group, turned into a destructive entity years ago. In the 1980s, as the traditional link between corporations and the states in which they were located began to fray, WMC abandoned its long-term commitment to growth and progress in Wisconsin. It opted, instead, for strategies that provided short-term rewards to investors, most of whom do not live in the state. Those investors favored "race-to-the-bottom" economic strategies -- in which corporations reject any commitment to workers and communities in order to skip from state to state, and ultimately from country to country, in search of situations that allow them to shift the tax burden to working families, pollute at will, eschew public health and safety regulations, lower wages for workers and cut benefits.

This is consistent with, and expands on the idea that joining the WMC could hinder rather than enhance one's business prospects. Easily one the best newspaper editorials on the WMC. A must-read.