The WMC's True Colors Are On Full Display

So let's fill in the current Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce scorecard and see how the state's largest business organization is approaching recent public policy debates in our state.

Here's a hint: The word "No" is pretty operative:

Supporting the Great Lakes Compact - - a regional water management and conservation agreement - - as approved by the State Senate and four of eight Great Lakes legislatures: Against.

Backing clean air monitoring and effective regulation in southeastern Wisconsin, where asthma rates are already high: Against.

Requiring state insurance plans to cover autism and related-illness treatment: Against.

Universal health care coverage in Wisconsin: Against.

Supporting State Supreme Court candidates with long experience or the public interest at heart: Against.

Instituting tax fairness in Wisconsin so that businesses pay an equitable share: Against.

So let's play this out.

The WMC spent millions last year and helped pro-business candidate Annette Ziegler onto the Court.

This year, the WMC is doing the same thing with Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Mike Gableman. His election could give the WMC a working majority on the Court.

So how do you think these senior jurists, our State Supreme Court justices, will rule if clean air, water management, Great Lakes regional issues, health care, or tax fairness/corporate welfare (thanks, Paul Soglin) and development questions come before them, especially if there is a WMC member, or Big Business side to the case?

Let's not be naive: that's why the WMC is pouring millions into State Supreme Court races.

It couldn't knock out Gov. Jim Doyle in 2006. And along with State Senate losses by the GOP that year, too, there is a good chance that the WMC-supported margin in the GOP-controlled State Assembly could fall in November, too.

So packing the State Supreme Court with WMC sycophants is more than an accident, or a fall-back strategy.

It's an effort to get through activist justices - - and let's not let the right co-opt and twist that phrase any longer - - what WMC's lobbyists will have a harder time winning in the more openly-partisan wings of the State Capitol.

If Wisconsin residents want to retain any shred of government-for-the-common good in our state, the WMC's scheme to install Gableman on the State Supreme Court has got to be blocked with the election of incumbent justice Louis Butler of Milwaukee.

Or get ready to have the state's clean air, fresh water and monetary assets given away per the WMC's welfare-for-the-rich agenda.