Where Does WMC, Where Does WMC Watch, Go From Here?

When I posted Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Downsizes for Elections and Image noting that the reduced presence of WMC in this fall's elections could be the result of a number of factors, Xoff pointed out that:

WMC, with its image taking a battering, decides to run a token amount of positive advertising and quietly give its big bucks to one of the other right-wing groups that's running untruthful negative ads against Dems all across the state. No requirement to report it, since it's not PAC money, and WMC lets someone else take the heat. Can I prove it? No. But it's plausible, given how much money WMC was raising and how little it appears to have spent directly.

Absolutely correct.

My guess is that WMC and WMC-sourced funds are down significantly this year. However, even if the they did not  redirect political funds into groups like the Club for Growth in this election cycle, the extreme right wing forces will do so in the spring 2009 Supreme Court race.

There are a number of scenarios:

• Money will continue to pour into WMC from US Chamber of Commerce backed sources and WMC will buy the ads.
• Money will pour into WMC from US Chamber sources and WMC will pass the money on to the Club for Growth, and other fronts.
• Money will pour into the Club for Growth and its clones directly from the US Chamber of Commerce, completely by-passing WMC.

All of these scenarios can have different outcomes in that some will be less effective than others.

All of these scenarios are designed to do the same thing - advance a right wing agenda utilizing a Willie Horton media campaign, for the purpose of undermining public education and eliminating reasonable government regulation that protects consumers and the environment.

The studies due after next Tuesday that look at the purchase of television time by these reactionary groups may give us some clue as to which tactic they are pursuing.

In any case, WMC Watch has much to do. Not only will we continue to monitor WMC's election activities, but we willl continue to expose its anti-environmental record, its anti-education record, its distortions about the nature of taxation in Wisconsin, and its plans for the 2010 gubernatorial election.

Comments

[jim guilfoil]

I hope 'waxing america' can address the issue of corporate speech and personhood(Santa Clara v Southern Pacific and Buckley v Valeo) in corrupting Wisconsin politics. Issue ads are presently before the Public Accountability Board and there is hope that corporations and wealthy individuals can be brought to justice for hiding behind loopholes created by their own corporate lawyers and abetted by corrupt legislators.
Corporate speech is an oxymoron for only human being can speak, question, dialogue etc. about matter of the common good. 'Corporate persons' is a fiction created by corporate speech on pursuit of greater concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer real persons. Democracy demands the greatest possible distribution of power and wealth among the citizenry...the very opposite of a corporate polity.
Corporatism in essence is authoritarian and totalitarian, requiring a large military to protect its acquisitions. Fascism, Nazism, Sovietism...are recent examples of this ideology. What will we call US corporatism?
Americanism is a good start.