Plaudits to developer Gary Grunau for saying what the Milwaukee business community had - - to its lasting shame - - failed to articulate: that Scott Walker made a "generational mistake" in rejecting high-speed rail connections and funding, and was overly-aggressively undoing years of progress.
This should have been the position months ago from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, and the Greater Milwaukee Committee, but these establishment groups are too ideologically-committed to Walker's agenda, and worse, afraid of their own shadows to stand up to the Republican leadership in and around the State Capitol.
Give Grunau credit. He's earned it.
The question is will anyone else in the business community be farsighted enough to listen to Grunau and be more critical of Walker's other proposals that are bad for business community...particularly small businesses.
ReplyDeleteThe political alliances between the MMAC and GMC with Republicans and Walker make that unlikely. Milwaukee could use a more city-focused business group, like Madison's Downtown Committee.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget, the original rail plan that got funded by the federal government was a Wisconsin plan developed with input from business, government and individuals alike over the course of a couple of decades.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it was the plan we all agreed we needed, until someone started playing politics with it. Now Milwaukee business is fessing up that we needed a plan like this for our future. Too bad they spoke up too late. Maybe they didn't believe Scotty would really turn away all the funds.