Gazette, Forward Janesville Scream Support For RTW With Silence

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With Gov. Scott Walker's office announcing he will sign the controversial so-called Right-To-Work regulations into law if when the bill arrives on his desk, came an absent series of deafening editorials from both the Walker-endorsing Janesville Gazette and the local "divide and conquer" booster group Forward Janesville.

Besides their devotion to Scott Walker, Forward Janesville you might recall, lobbied successfully for manufacturing and "enterprise zone" tax credits including transferable "portable" income tax credits for businesses that create zero jobs.

In Wisconsin, the "doubling" of cut-wage jobs resulting from RTW for just one manufacturer can lead to getting thousands of dollars per employee in state tax credits, thus doubling the extraction rate of capital from wage-earning taxpayers.

Forward Janesville also played a major role in changing the state aid dollars ratio split between local road maintenance/repairs and interstate expansion money. That shift alone created a greater burden on communities to cope with existing revenues to fix local roads. Crumbling local roads replaced by dirt and gravel or huge tax hikes on declining wages are the expected remedies.

Make no mistake. When it comes to public policies of Rock County's economic development, Forward Janesville and the Gazette are the area's top two bloviators. Yet, with the ramming of the immensely wrong-headed right to work regulations, their silence is equal to screaming support for it from the rooftops.