Brew City Brawler

New chairman at WMC -- same rightwing direction?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Thomas J. Boldt, Chairman and CEO of Appleton's Boldt Co., has been elected chairman of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

As Paul Soglin and others have written, WMC undermines Wisconsin's business environment by endlessly harping on "issues" -- such as taxes -- that rank higher as GOP talking points than they do as actual concerns of real live business leaders. Its service to its members is also dubious: WMC's late-in-the-game endorsement of Mark Green was a truly boneheaded move.

Will Boldt lead the WMC in a better direction? Based on the pattern of his political donations -- including $3,500 in 2004 to the Republican National Committee -- the safe answer is "No."

UPDATE: In comments, KR makes an interesting point about Boldt's support for stem cell research and work in green construction.

Widening schism between big business and SE WI movement conservatives?

Is a schism looming between Wisconsin big business and southeastern Wisconsin movement conservatives? The Brawler poses that as an actual, not a rhetorical, question.  And the answer could, in fact, be no. But it's a question motivated by a few observations over the past week.

1. The fact that Barack Obama is leading the presidential field in fundraising among Wisconsin business executives and that the three leading Ds are ahead of Rudy Giuliani(Milwaukee Business Journal, subscription only.) True, this is not a powerful indicator as it no doubt reflects some GOP biz leaders trying to figure out where to park their bucks now that Tommy! is out of the race (though one would have to question the investment decisions of execs who contributed to Tommy!). And of course it's early and the cash money could (will?) move to the bad guys quickly and in overwhelming force, etc. But, still: interesting.
2. The fact that the business community appears to support a sales tax to revive the KRM -- something that Charlie Sykes was griping about on Friday. (Again, the Biz Journal.)
3. And, of course, the fact that leaders of some of the state's biggest businesses are calling for universal health coverage financed through payroll taxes -- a move that outraged Ol Lady Owen Robinson, among others.

In the past, Cory Liebmann and Paul Soglin (and the Brawler) have pointed out dubious strategic decisions of the WMC and suggested its ideological zealotry was driving a wedge between it and the everyday concerns of its constituents. Are these contradictions heightening?

Dunno. But it's an iron law of journalism that three data points make a trend. And we got three data points here.

Again, observation #1 could change, almost literally overnight. And, to be sure, the right likes to periodically take issue with the machinations of big business, particulary (and correctly) on issues such as subsidies, etc. But Nos. 2 and 3 are, it seems to the Brawler (and he could be mistaken) examples where the muckity mucks are taking positions that are more at variance than usual with some deeply held positions of the movement right.

Is more to come?

WMC racebaits on health care reform

The Brawler (and this guy and this guy) had a fine time making sport of the WMC/CfG's clownlike attack on Healthy Wisconsin. Bogus polling, empty talking points, a half-decade old "plan" masked as something new .... a veritable three-ring circus of buffoonery!

Still, one part of the WMC's poll literally made the Brawler's blood boil. It was this part:

Seventy-seven percent are likely to oppose the plan when they find out "the plan is expected to attract new residents to Wisconsin who do not work, but want health care benefits."

First off: The use of passive voice -- "the plan is expected to" -- irritated the Brawler. Why? Because it doesn't say who exactly expects this to happen. So far as the Brawler can tell, the people who expect this to happen are a formerly anonymous, moderately amusing blogger who now flacks for the WPRI; a MU law professor who played off him; and a Journal Sentinel columnist who thinks the aforementioned professor is, like totally, smart. Not exactly a Rand study! And Seth Zlotocha, in his cold-blooded nuanced manner, neatly dispatched this argument a while back.

It's true: obfuscatory use of the passive voice does irritate the Brawler.

But it's the second half of that sentence that set the Brawler's blood boiling: "attract new residents to Wisconsin who do not work, but want health care benefits."

This is transparently racist code. Utter these words to more than a few voters -- particularly, the Brawler suspects, the Republican base -- and you conjure visions of black and brown people. Shiftless black and brown people whose only ambition is to pack up everything and move to Wisconsin to live off our fat benefits.

Why does the Brawler say this? Did he read it in a book? No. The Brawler heard the original version of this slur literally dozens of times growing up in Milwaukee in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then it was: "Black people move up here because of welfare." Though of course, the people who said it didn't say "black people." There was no evidence for this of course -- but it sounded good to a certain kind of person and an urban legend was born.

Tommy Thompson then injected a watered-down, but still fundamentally racist version, of this vile slur into the public discourse during the debate over welfare reform.

There never was any proof that Wisconsin's welfare benefits played any meaningful role in attracting people to the state. (Indeed, the Brawler has heard the "Blacks come up here for the benefits" argument in Minnesota, which, of course, was one of the states from which we were allegedly attracting welfare mothers. Truly a smear without borders.) In fact, more evidence argued to the contrary. It is the definition of a big lie, repeated to this day by the likes of Deb Jordahl.

And now by the WMC.

WMC clown show takes on health care

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, in cahoots with Wisconsin's Club for Growth and others, came out today guns blazing against Healthy Wisconsin and pimping "Healthier Choices."

Unfortunately for them, they were firing squirt guns.

WMC's survey claiming a majority of  Wisconsinites oppose Healthy WI is an absolute joke. Its "Healthier Choices" plan should be translated as "Pay more for fewer choices." In a true marketplace of ideas the WMC's broadside it would be laughed out of the discourse.

Sadly, we're in a marketplace where the WMC and CfG have millions to spend and a marketplace where Charlie Sykes will flog the thing endlessly as he  denounces Healthy WI as "a complete government takeover of health care." That's not spin, Chuck; that's a lie.

While the Brawler is disheartened that this tripe could play some role in the coming health care debate, some items still managed to "illicit" a mordant chuckle.

Such as...

... The way the survey claims a majority of Wisconsin voters disapprove of Healthy Wisconsin based on responses to survey question that says the system "will replace Wisconsin's current private health insurance system with a universal health insurance system managed by the state government." Weird, because Healthy WI does not replace the "current private health insurance system" and it won't create a regime "managed by the state government." Or did I miss the part about how the state government is going to seize the headquarters of different insurers?

... The way flack Jim Pugh claims WMC, the Wisconsin Hospital Association and the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans will "encourage the continued development of a consumer-driven health care environment in Wisconsin. Promising collaborative efforts to collect and report information related to quality, safety and cost should continue, without government interference (nice touch, guys -- Brawler), among providers and health plans." Uh huh. Can't wait to see the WHA's vigorous drive for greater disclosure. And if these groups are begging for greater disclosure, why isn't it on the Assembly GOP's agenda.

... The way the Republican polling firm responsible for this travesty, Public Opinion Strategies, appropriately has as its acronym POS.

... The way Healthier Choices is presented as something new when it feels like a rehash of past WMC calls for shifting cost and risk onto employees who can't afford it. Then you realize it's not a rehash. It's the same old hash! On page 7, it offers proposals for the 2003-05 biennium.

Is the WMC really doing its dues-paying members a service by entering the health care debate with a proposal that's been gathering dust for four years?

Its members deserve better than this clown show.

As, of course, does Wisconsin.

Now the big question: Will John Torinus write this up in his Sunday column for the Journal Sentinel?

WMC=Wasting Manufacturers' Cash

Here's a definition of return on investment, or, as the MBA kids call it, ROI:

- For a given use of money in an enterprise, the ROI (return on investment) is how much profit or cost saving is realized. An ROI calculation is sometimes used along with other approaches to develop a business case for a given proposal. The overall ROI for an enterprise is sometimes used as a way to grade how well a company is managed.

This simple business concept ran through the Brawler's head when he read this piece last week in the JSOnline Politics Watch (dated May 17) about the reason the WMC ran attack ads against Gov. Jim Doyle in his triumphant reelection campaign:

Madison -- Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce ran issue ads against Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle last fall even though its polling data consistently showed he was safely leading Republican challenger Mark Green, a WMC spokesman told an online news conference today.

Jim Pugh, spokesman for WMC, said polls all fall showed Doyle comfortably ahead of Green.

"Our research showed Doyle up and the lines never crossed," Pugh said of the polls, adding that the anti-Republican surge didn't help Green. ...

Doyle, who pushed much legislation that promoted business development in Wisconsin during his first term that he thought helped WMC, was angered by the negative ads the state's largest business lobby ran against him.

Pugh said the ads WMC ran -- on issues such as funding for nursing homes, the property tax freeze and tort reform -- represented the business point of view.

"Those are issues where the governor didn't stand with the business community, and we used our First Amendment right to explain those issues," Pugh told the audience, adding in an interview, "it's about the issues."

So it wasn't about trying to defeat Doyle -- it was about using their First Amendment rights to attack a politician because they disagreed with him on "the issues."

The Brawler didn't go to lobbying school, but he suspects if a trade association disagrees with a politician it expects to be elected, it's better to be civil than be belligerent. It's also better to stay on the sidelines if you suggest you're going to stay on the sidelines than jump in late in the game with a quixotic assault of attack ads. (Businessmen frown on quixotic allocation of capital, by the by.)

And the Brawler doesn't have an MBA, but he knows that the WMC's decision to blindside Doyle with attack ads was bad business. Rather than creating value, every dollar the WMC invested in those ads destroyed the WMC's goodwill with the Doyle Administration -- even though the WMC had strong reason to believe he was going to win.

In the business world, a manager who pissed away the company's capital on a value-destroying boondoggle like the WMC's attack on Doyle would, at a minimum, be called on to the carpet. And he or she had better have a better excuse than "it's about the issues."

As they say, a helluva way to run a business.

One of the healthier developments in Wisconsin's political climate is growing awareness that WMC is not so much a business advocacy group as it is (as Cory Liebmann said) the "sugar daddy arm of the Republican party." Liebmann notes that during the same speech described by the JSOnline report above, media representatives laughed out loud when Pugh described the WMC as an "issues group."

That's not good for the WMC's constituents. The state's business community is not well served having its interests represented by the WMC. It handicaps you with the governor. It handicaps you with the Senate. After 2008 it likely will handicap you with the Assembly.

And as the Capital Times reported last month, some businesses -- including officers within the WMC -- are starting to wonder if the WMC does more harm than good.

The Brawler hopes that more reporters will explore this question. Are state businesses, who often try to recruit from out of state, well served by a trade group that constantly talks about how much the state sucks and is a "tax hell?" Does that help with recruiting?

And here's an easy angle: Check for businesses/executives that donated to Doyle (even if they donated to Green) before WMC ran its ads. Ask them what they think of that shrewd use of their dues. The answers may surprise!

The Brawler would be remiss in writing about the WMC if he didn't note that Paul Soglin is the heavyweight champ of exposing the WMC's malfeasance.