Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), craving attention and affection, showed up Monday morning with a press release announcing that everyone loved them. WMC Calls for Renewed Focus on Moving Wisconsin Forward.

The self-centered and self-appointed arbiter of all things appropriate for the state of Wisconsin launched its Moving Forward program last winter, which included creating an agenda by carefully screening an invited cadre of businesses and business organizations. Labor organizations, academicians, and other community leaders (including yours truly) were asked for input, but were carefully screened out of the process that lead to the final recommendations.

Now WMC tells us the

...plan was developed with input from more than a dozen local chamber of commerce boards, 24 statewide business associations, political leaders, University of Wisconsin System leaders, vocational and technical system leaders, and other educators.

Over the past two years, in conducting my work for WMC Watch, which is designed to discredit that organization, my

...plan was developed with input from local chamber of commerce boards, statewide business associations, political leaders, labor leaders, University of Wisconsin System leaders, vocational and technical system leaders, and other educators.

I did not meet with as many chamber of commerce boards and business associations as WMC.

I am sure that my entire collection of interviewees, which included a number of WMC board members, have no more commitment to my intergalactic struggle to disarm and discredit WMC as they are committed to WMC's Moving Wisconsin Forward.

Almost as much fun as ridiculing WMC on this point is noting the credit WMC takes for the adopted state budget, where they claim: "...Recently, Governor Jim Doyle and the Legislature approved elements of the “Moving Wisconsin Forward Plan..."  As WMC was left in the dust in both last fall and spring elections they are now rushing to the front of the parade to take credit.