Businesses keep dropping away from the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce as they realize their dues are being spent on reactionary politics that are not in Wisconsin's best interests.
A leading Wisconsin high-tech business, Epic Systems, Verona, ratchets up the pressure, declining to do business with firms that are WMC members.
Wisconsin Democracy Coalition takes note, too.
Conservative third-party ads from the WMC and other organizations were featured in the recent State Supreme Court election, where conservative challenger Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman unseated incumbent Justice Louis Butler.
After the race, a WMC board member resigned after receiving a letter of complaint from a consumer; projects by One Wisconsin Now, Milwaukee, and another by former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin are carrying out progressive educational efforts statewide about the WMC and its activities.
Some information about One Wisconsin Now (I am on one of its boards) and the WMC effort is here.
Soglin has some interesting background to report, too, here.
The only way "negative comments in the media" hinder anything is if elected officials in Milwaukee County have their eye on higher offices and are afraid to do their job and represent their constituents' interests and clear desires.
ReplyDeleteOf course it wouldn't hurt if their supporters would show more potent handling of the media themselves and help organize on-the-ground support instead of dancing to the tune called by Mark Belling, Charlie Sykes, and other bogeymen.
And it wouldn't hurt if the metropolitan media were more diverse, more invested in local, city issues and residents.
Do what you can where you can and don't wring your hands over "unfairness"--it just announces a real weakness that you'd be better off fixing yourself instead of hoping your opposition will "make nice." Really, what is the point of protests that Belling is "mean?" It's politics man, what counts is whether you can do what it takes to win your own objectives. A little more "by whatever means necessary" spirit please.
"The mean" are not going to change. For their own part, the talking heads of "mean" are confused and aimless. At some point you have to ask what people are really about if all they do is look for validation that Milwaukee is intractably screwed up, and transit plans or public transit as a whole is a pure evil. I fear they're intractably screwed up, and I wish they could rise above their sense of rage and betrayal but the demonstrated corruption, spinlessness, and see-no-evil spirit that may finally be on its way out of city hall (nevermind the county board) has made its own bed.
The fact is that a large part of metro-Milwaukee lost confidence in City leadership when it started looking the other way, or failing to resist dividers who play the race card as a defense for rampany dysfunction. If you break faith with a large chunk of stakeholders in your social contract, you can expect pain, rage, reaction, and daggers being drawn.
The only remarkable thing worthy and capable of constructive analysis is why some people don't understand where the meanness comes from and those infected with it don't see that it is as pointless and self-defeating as an alderman extorting crappy store owners as a political act rather than a blind, self-serving and self-defeating expression of powerlessness, anger, and self-hate.
Who stands for honor and an unswerving eye on what is practically achievable to secure the greatest good for the greatest number?