WMC’s President Haney Digs anti-consumer and Anti-small business hole Deeper

Wisconsin is blessed with the most overt, pro-business, anti everything else lobby in the country. They have found that buying the courts is a game they can win. They depend on low information voters to sway to the tune of anti-consumer laws and doing away with unfair business taxes that provide low paying, temperary jobs, untill they relocate to another state or country.

A number of companies are starting to fight back, along with citizens groups, newspapers and bloggers, to bring back the idea of "the good corporate citizen." That has rankled the status quote and prompted a comment from Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce’s VP James Bucher. I commented on that in a previous blog.

Now, the president of WMC is throwing his two cents in to the mix. As usual, everything they advocate are purely Republican talking points, blurring the line between legislator and business lobbyists. Jim Haney in his own “right wingnut” words:

WMC is 4,000 state businesses dedicated to making Wisconsin the most
competitive state in the nation. It's that simple. WMC promotes public policies
aimed at achieving our goal of making Wisconsin the most competitive state in
the nation. (How about making Wisconsin the most family friendly state in the nation?-me) Our agenda is broad, and deep.

As deep as anything Republican. Let me see if I’ve got this down yet: Business first, people and their safety second? Here’s Haney’s agenda, with my comments thrown () in for balance.

The agenda promotes tax relief (for business), rational environmental regulation (lifting costly controls on pollutants that take years to kill people, thus preventing lawsuits), regulatory fairness (remove regulations), quality transportation (but we don’t want to pay for replacing infrastructure, let the taxpayer do that), reliable energy, and high-quality education (wasting taxpayer money on unaccountable private schools) from kindergarten through technical schools and colleges … promote property tax relief (because it looks good for us), civil justice reform (injury reform, remove or limit corporate liability to consumers), school choice (already proven ineffective and often times worse than public schools), regulatory relief and welfare reform (cheap help and no time to attend tech or college due to strict work requirements) .

We opposed Gov. Jim Doyle vetoes of property tax freezes (formulaic and like TABOR, a dramatic failure) and civil justice reforms (you won’t be able to sue us). Again, promoting good economic policies, opposing bad economic policies (according to whom?). WMC … like the umpire in a baseball game … calling it like we see it ... (who likes the umpire). We compete with opposing groups daily to have our views prevail among policymakers (we lobby and spend more money, and prevail).

I hope my interpretations didn’t distract from the overall message: We’re getting screwed.