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Saturday, April 18, 2009

WMC: Promote Corporate Royalty, Citizen Subservience and a Buyer Beware Market

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a business lobbying group, took a little time out of their busy schedule and offered to help the governor and legislature make the state more attractive to the few remaining corporations able to survive the current economic depression. Having succeeded in shipping manufacturing jobs overseas for cheap slave labor, which in turn destroyed Wisconsin's manufacturing base, their next step involves whining about the loss of jobs and advocating a similar employee climate like India and China to attract big business.

So what would the business lobby in Wisconsin want changed, with my response first in parenthesis:

Harmonize Regulation (Get rid of tighter state regulations for a one-size-fits all Federal standards. This flies in the face of the conservative’s hard rhetoric involving “states rights"): We should attempt to harmonize regulatory statutes and administrative rules with those imposed under federal law.

Promoting Quality Health Care (Not affordable universal coverage like competing global nations, but expanding the failed dysfunctional private for profit care. More corporate rationing): We should focus our efforts on improving the current private sector health care delivery system ... improving quality and reducing unnecessary or inappropriate treatment.

Enhance Fairness in our Legal System (Perpetuate the myth of outlandish and unfair jury awards/allow companies to make unsafe products with no penalties): We should adopt comprehensive product liability reforms.

Ensure Uniform Employment Regulations (Prevent the labor movement from advancing fairness incrementally in the workplace by again, putting in place a one-size-fits-all set of rules/employee fairness “confusing”): State law should preclude the adoption of a patchwork of confusing and conflicting employment regulations by local units of government.


Keep Wisconsin Competitive (Do away with business taxes altogether/race to the bottom/detach corporate responsibility from local communities): We should strive to maintain the progress made in reducing Wisconsin’s overall state and local tax burden to keep us competitive among the 50 states in terms of taxation.

Encourage Balanced Budgeting (State budgeting that reduces funding flexibility of essential programs with generally accepted accounting approved by Republicans): Encourage balanced budgeting through adherence to generally accepted accounting principles.

Control Property Taxes (Again, a one-size-fits-all artificial cap on taxes unrelated to the economy, market and community need): Control property taxes imposed by municipalities, counties, technical college districts and other special districts, allowing for reasonable growth while keeping Wisconsin competitive with other states.

Understand and Manage Benefit Costs (Privatize government and do away with health benefits and retirement programs/be like the private sector and dump people off into under funded government programs/then cut funding for programs): Provide school districts and local governments with maximum flexibility in managing costs associated with health care and retirement plans, and encourage them to be competitive with the best plans available in the private sector.

Reduce Cost Shifting (Raise the cost of Medicaid by increasing payments to private insurers, making it insolvent): Support sufficient reimbursement for hospitals and clinics under the existing Medicaid program, and the leveraging of the state's fair share of federal matching funds in order to reduce the cost shift that currently occurs to patients and private insurers because of underpayment in that program.
Hey, wait a minute. Isn't this is the same plan that got us into this economic mess in the first place?

1 comment:

  1. Great post. In a nutshall, "Let's eliminate everything that makes Wisconsin a great place to live in and turn it into a wasteland of crumbling public institutions, infrastructure and social services."

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