Janesville Planning For Economic Reality

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JG Editorial Excerpt:
Do you care about Janesville’s future? Are you concerned about our community’s economic health beyond the expected closure of the GM plant? Do you want our city to keep prospering without skyrocketing property taxes? One last question: Do you have plans for Thursday afternoon?

No, these questions were not asked by the Janesville Gazette when the Janesville GM factory just missed the corporate chopping block less than two years ago. Or when Feingold and Ryan were making the rounds taking their positions on CAFE and how urgent things were back then to coerce GM to bring a gas miser vehicle into production at the Janesville plant. And these questions weren’t asked, much less considered when the UAW was striking outside the plant in September of 2007. No, no. These questions were finally asked in Tuesday's Janesville Gazette editorial. But before this for the past ten years at least, the Gazette did what they always do. They ran vicious anonymous comments against the workers twice a week, editorialized against the workers to do whatever it takes for the strike to end, all the while remaining willfully complacent about gasoline mileage issues.

Back in July of last year, I was one among a very few vocal others who insisted that GM should not wait for Congress to impose better gas mileage standards through stricter CAFE standards. Back then, after the Gazette wrongly accused Sen. Russ Feingold of turning his back on Janesville for voting for CAFE, I wrote this…..

Rock Netroots Excerpt:
If autoworkers really believe gas guzzling trucks and SUV’s are the future, stick with Paul Ryan. If anyone thinks that gasoline will never pop to five dollars a gallon or more within the next ten years, stick with Paul Ryan. Building EnergyStar Trucks and SUV’s will be the future market and to the contrary, Janesville can be the future if we don’t turn our backs on this reality. Don’t be fooled by the satisfaction of complacency or the blindness of a partisan newspaper.

Now the Janesville newspaper is promoting a city sponsored pep rally of ideas to reform the local economy?

I can’t even begin to imagine how different things might be, had the city’s only newspaper taken a philosophical U-turn from their wingnut propaganda and took on an activist’s role like this in support of the GM workers for the sake of the Janesville economy, if not, at least for themselves.

Can you imagine the impact had the newspaper sponsored a media campaign asking 25,000 Janesville area residents to flood Delavan to Kellogg and the surrounding streets around the Janesville GM factory on a Thursday evening in July or September of 2007 marching in support of demanding corporate GM to do whatever it takes to keep the doors open for business? High oil/gasoline prices were the best reason to bring in a new model and the poorest excuse to betray the workers. I can imagine only because it's the right town. Reality tells me it's the wrong newspaper.