The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that a University of Chicago based researcher is enthusiastic about Milwaukee’s paid sick days ordinance. Inexplicably the business page reporter described it as “controversial.” A strange use of words since it was overwhelmingly passed by nearly 70 percent of Milwaukee voters. The only people that are creating a controversy are the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and their mouthpiece Steve Baas.

The researcher referenced in the story is Susan Lambert, a professor in the School of Social Service Administration and an authority on the relationship between employment and the well-being of those that are employed. Lambert says that she thinks that Milwaukee’s Paid Sick Days ordinance is “great overall.” She went on to point out the following:

A key barrier to sustained employment is having the opportunity to take time off when you or your child is ill," said Lambert, who's speaking Sunday in Milwaukee as part of an annual lecture for alumni and friends of the University of Chicago. "That certainly is reported by workers, especially in low-level hourly jobs, as something that prevents them from sustained employment.

The Wisconsin Institute for Leadership (WIL), called for an economic stimulus plan today. How shocking that the corporate lobbyist mouthpiece completely ignored the needs of working families in it! Their policy proposals are nothing more than a big biz wish list that completely locks out the average Wisconsinite. If WIL wasn’t such a shill for these powerful interests, wouldn’t they have at least mentioned the critical role that the average family plays in our economy and account for it? Wouldn’t any legitimate economic stimulus package include help for struggling working people that are barely getting by?

Apparently WIL still hasn’t learned the lessons of the last eight years that ignoring the economic needs of the average person only sets us all up for long-term failure. WIL isn’t offering a serious proposal here, but they are giving us a prime example of what corporate lobbyists do best: look out for their own narrow interests while ignoring the needs of everyone else.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) has been awfully quiet both just before the November 4 election and immediately after it. Although they had named keeping the state Assembly in Republican hands as being a priority and tried to raise $1 million by Labor Day, they apparently ended up doing very little.

One can reasonably look at the election and consider it a clear repudiation of WMC and their legislative agenda. After all, they did run television ads promoting three Assembly challengers (in the 49th, 88th, and 91st districts) and all three went down to defeat. Of the 5 candidates they supported with radio ads, only one (in the 47th district) won, and that one is headed for a recount. Two of the incumbents who were defeated at the polls, Hines and Moulton, were attacked in part for their 100% adherence to the WMC agenda and they both lost. Also, in both districts 57 and 92 voters elected candidates to replace faithful WMC rubber stamps.

There are only a few answers for WMC’s complete failure in this election cycle and none of them are very flattering. Either they were not able to actually raise the amount of money that they needed, or they raised it but funneled it through other groups as to avoid culpability for producing more negative ads, or they simply spent their money and their message was soundly rejected by voters. Whatever the exact explanation, don’t look for WMC to tell us about it. Who could blame them? No one would want to discuss the last several months which have been a complete WMC train wreck.

Steve Baas, the government affairs director for the Milwaukee big business association has been a vocal mouthpiece for his special interests and against the effort in Milwaukee to require paid sick day benefits. He has fought allowing more than 120,000 hard-working Milwaukee citizens to earn modest paid sick leave benefits, even though he was not shy about collecting a whole lot more when he had a job at the state legislature. While there from 1994 to 2005, Steve Baas accumulated 150 full sick days totaling nearly 1,250 hours. Baas used one-third of those taxpayer-financed sick days as an aide to Assembly Republicans such as convicted former Speaker Scott Jensen.

If Steve Baas is so opposed to paid sick days for Milwaukee workers perhaps he should return the 51 days of sick pay that taxpayers footed for him while he was working in the state legislature. Anything short of paying back taxpayers would be the height of hypocrisy. Baas received a much more generous paid sick day benefit from taxpayers than the one that he is fighting now. Apparently he feels that the same hard working taxpayers in Milwaukee that were helping pay for his benefits don’t deserve even a small portion of them.

One Wisconsin Now has filed a complaint with the state’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) against Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and its seven-member special interest army for failure to report lobbying activities. In an August 20, 2008 memo authored by WMC’s chief lobbyist Jim Buchen claims “WMC actively lobbied for final passage of the UW budget,” yet no lobbying activity was reported by WMC to the GAB for the University of Wisconsin budget, as required under law.

This WMC memo was released shortly after out-going UW Chancellor John Wiley criticized them for the “toxic” political atmosphere that they have created in Wisconsin. In the memo, Buchen claims that WMC tried to influence legislation on the UW budget but it does not list the UW as a budget bill subject in which it lobbied in 2007-2008. In addition, GAB’s listing for lobbying activities for the UW budget does not include WMC as having registered any lobbying. When a lobbying entity files with the GAB they are also required by statute to list the general areas of legislative action that they are trying to influence. WMC’s own website does not indicate that it lobbies on higher education or funding the UW.

WMC may have undue influence with conservatives in the state legislature, but it still can’t ignore the same laws that every other lobbying group must follow. This situation should force WMC to finally come clean. Did they fail to follow the law, or was their chief lobbyist being dishonest when he suggested that the group tried to help the UW? WMC should be required to answer the question and be held accountable for their actions.

Today One Wisconsin Now is debuting the new comic series “McCain and Unable.” (McCainAndUnable.com)It will highlight the Bush-McCain follies, showing what would happen if the wealthy ideological soulmates were forced to go out into the real world and deal with the consequences of their failed policies.

The first episode, “McCain and Unable Go to the Gas Station,” brings the duo face to face with the record gas prices Americans have endured. In July, gas prices topped $4.11 a gallon in Wisconsin and diesel was nearly $4.80 a gallon. Average folks were suffering while John McCain and George W. Bush stood arm and arm to pass $5 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Apparently that wasn’t enough for John McCain and now he wants to give Big Oil another $4 billion in tax giveaways. Also consider the impact of these additional McCain-Bush policies when it comes to energy:

McCain has 29 Big Oil lobbyists working for him. At least 29 top advisers or fundraisers for McCain have lobbied for Big Oil. They have represented 4 of the 9 oil companies in the 2008 Fortune 200, including: McCain’s senior campaign adviser, Charlie Black, who is a registered lobbyist for two Russian oil companies whose firm was hired by the China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation. [Roll Call 7/18/05, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

Just over a week ago, the Institute for One Wisconsin launched an email campaign asking concerned citizens to send a message to the board members of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC). To date over 10,000 communications have been generated in that very short time. This is just another example of how people all across the state are sick of their increasingly partisan behavior. Outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley accurately stated that WMC has been taken over by “political extremists” and that they have created a “toxic” political environment in Wisconsin. Obviously he is not alone in making that assessment as evidenced by large numbers of emails sent out by concerned Wisconsinites.

The “political extremists” that Wiley describes are apparently so concerned about the email campaign that one of them decided to send his own communication to the WMC board members. In it he pleads that they should not let the emails disrupt their fundraising drive for the ads that they plan to run in the coming months. In an email to WMC board members, WMC Vice President for Government Relations James Buchen said the following:

It appears that the email campaign is an effort to disrupt WMC's fundraising drive for the WMC Issues Mobilization Council, Inc. We hope that this will not be the case. We hope that Directors will continue to show the resolve and fortitude demonstrated at the June Board Retreat when the Board voted unanimously to launch our fall issue campaign.

Yesterday we told you about the early success of our email campaign to the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) board. Since then many more people have responded and thousands more emails have been sent flooding the inboxes of those that sit on the WMC Board. If you have not yet had the opportunity to speak your mind to the WMC Board of Directors, now is the time to take your stand. WMC has been rightfully on the receiving end of much criticism lately by some of the most respected people in our state.

Most recently the outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley called out WMC for allowing itself to be “hijacked by highly partisan, ideologically driven staff.” The senior staff at WMC have ignored very similar statements in the recent past by other prominent Wisconsinites and all indications seem to show that they will also ignore Chancellor Wiley’s as well. WMC Vice President Jim Buchen responded to the comments claiming that he and the other staff “is not ideologically fixated.” A laughable comment considering just some of the following facts available at WMCWatch.org:

Many of the staff have worked in or come directly out of Republican Party politics.

Only Republicans receive a high rank on their phony “scorecard”.

They have spent millions of dollars to support Republican candidates.

Last week Rep. Frank Lasee announced his latest harebrained scheme, to drill for oil in the Great Lakes. There is nothing like handing over your most precious resource to an industry that can’t be trusted. And for what? For the remote chance that they will find (or spill) oil in 15 years and possibly save a few cents off gas prices? As if that is not enough for one month, now Lasee is cheering his Republican friends on the Natural Resources Committee who voted to block a reasonable rule to protect us from mercury contamination.

Almost every Wisconsin lake is under warning for mercury pollution but Lasee and his friends on the committee would rather obey the corporate interests that pull their strings. The rule was proposed by the Department of Natural Resources as crafted by an independent group of experts. It would have required large coal-fired plants to reduce mercury by 90 percent by the beginning of 2015. Over 437,000 Wisconsinites are exposed to higher-than-safe levels of mercury and six percent of Wisconsin women of childbearing age have elevated levels of mercury.

Health problems caused by mercury include neurological damage for babies and children, as well as hearing and vision loss and impaired coordination and speech for adults. Seniors are at risk from mercury for heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. Mercury is most commonly ingested by humans through fish consumption. The state has issued advisories about fish consumption due to mercury contamination for nearly every Wisconsin water body. Still Lasee cheers the status quo and its defenders in the Assembly. Apparently in the wacky world of Frank Lasee, poisoning your neighbors is not only praiseworthy but is the highest act of civic engagement.

The staff and leadership of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) have proven that they are drunk with partisanship. The only hope is for both the rank and file and higher profile members to have a long overdue intervention. The long list of events over the last several months should finally inspire the legitimate business interests to take back their organization from the partisans that now control it. In a relatively short period of time WMC has lost board members and was on the receiving end of a well deserved rebuke from one of the leading businesses in the state, Epic Systems. Their successful effort to fill another seat on the state Supreme Court with an ethically challenged intellectual lightweight brought the scorn of a wide cross-section of independant observers. Now yet another Wisconsin leader is sounding the alarm over the direction and toxic influence of WMC.

Outgoing UW-Madison chancellor, John D. Wiley penned a forceful piece in Madison Magazine this week. In it he observes that “We’ve lost touch with our traditions and values. Our politics has become a poisonous swill, and the most influential voice for the business community has been taken hostage by partisan ideologues.” He then goes on to thoroughly debunk many of WMC’s favorite talking points around the issue of taxes and regulation. He also confirms what many observers and activists have been saying for some time.

We have seen the Bush energy policy at work now for nearly eight years, it seems to be a plan based on not leaving any big oil and gas company behind. The policy appears to be the following simple formula: give a free pass to these massive special interests in any way possible, give them record amounts of handouts from the public and then allow them to “thank” the public by gouging them at every possible turn. This energy free-for-all has most definitely had an impact, unfortunately it has been a hugely negative one for individual citizens and the entire economy.

Consumers are paying record amounts at the pump, while Big Oil pulls in record profits. This has a major impact on the price of things like food and other essentials. In many ways it is responsible for a 17 year record high in inflation. As if working people weren’t hurting enough in this Bush economy, now we are getting early warnings about just how much more it will take to heat our homes this winter. Estimates from the Department of Energy project that heating costs will climb 21 percent in the Midwest this year. There is an expected 26 percent increase for homes that stay warm with heating oil.

Even with all of the bad news, John McCain has decided to follow the Bush economic and energy “plans”. As it has been previously documented, McCain has already learned how to roll over for Big Oil interests by reversing his own positions. Actually, McCain plans to go even further than Bush in many ways when it comes to appeasing Big Oil. He has not only decided to back Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy but he also gives away the treasury on even more tax cuts for big corporations. Big Oil would receive some $4 billion in additional handouts. It would be difficult to imagine, but such a McCain economy could make a terribly bad situation much worse.

Over the weekend the Wisconsin State Journal ran a story about the search for a new head for the Department of Commerce. It addresses how the right choice for the job is particularly important right now, during a challenging economy. The story goes on to quote state Senator Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield) who trots out the right wing's one trick pony on the economy, endless corporate tax cuts. We have seen how good that approach has worked nationally, but apparently old habits (and knee jerk reactions) die hard for the Brookfield Senator. OWN Executive Director Scot Ross was also quoted shortly after Kanavas saying that tax cuts shouldn't be the first choice in creating a strong economy. He went on to say the following:

"The next commerce secretary needs to support spending on roads, schools, universities and municipal services because that infrastructure makes businesses want to stay and move here. Experience shows both in the state of Wisconsin and the rest of the country that tax cuts won't buy loyalty from corporations."

Most corporations rely on a decent infrastructure to carry out their normal operations (roads, educated workforce, safety ect) . Most of that infrastructure is provided as a result of taxpayer investment. Blindly cutting away at it or finding ways to keep corporations from paying their fair share is actually counter productive for everyone. There are countless areas where public investment has spurred both the development of new technology and entire industries. Hopefully the new Secretary of Commerce will be a person that approaches the economy from a fresh perspective. Hopefully they will be an advocate for bold and broad solutions rather than joining the overly simplistic "tax cut choir" headed by partisans like Kanavas.

It looks like we can all expect the races for the state Assembly to get really ugly this year, primarily because Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) plans on buying up as much ad time as possible. Some observers expect them to spend as much as $7 million to keep their iron fisted control of the state Assembly and its agenda. Wisconsin is still recovering from the dishonest and disgusting attacks that they helped launch earlier this year against Louis Butler. Their actions helped draw very negative national attention to Wisconsin. The vast majority of independent observers condemned their actions in that race and the nonpartisan Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee described the WMC ads as “deceiving the public”. Why would we expect anything else from them when their gravy train in the Assembly may be at stake?

Whenever WMC prepares to spend record amounts of money to influence elections, they often send out their resident joke man Jim Pugh. It is his job to serve up the real whoppers that can sometimes get him laughed out of a room. His most often joke is that WMC’s nonstop flow of deceptive ads are merely an effort to “educate the public.” The Milwaukee Journal has reported the contents of a July fund-raising solicitation from WMC that appears to very clearly state their real goal for the fall, retaining Republican control of the Assembly. The story describes this as their “top priority.” It also reports that they would like to raise some $1 million by Labor Day to use for political ads that would serve that underlying goal. Flooding the public airwaves with deceptive ads is merely a vehicle for WMC’s real goal of maintaining their control over the Assembly.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today that all the usual business suspects are going to pump cash into an effort to fight the paid sick day referendum. The story further reveals that if they don’t get the result that they want on the referendum, that they will spend even more money by challenging the will of the people in the courts. So what is a person supposed to take from this news? That business interests are willing to invest their money in an expensive ad campaign and possibly a protracted lawsuit but not in their own employees and the public health? Are they really going to launch such an effort to keep some of the poorest workers in the city from having a benefit that most people take for granted?

The business interests involved in the fight against paid sick days list all of the same talking points that they have always used when asked to invest more into their employees and the common good. This story is no exception, once again they claim that requiring paid sick days will put people out of business and chase others businesses from the city. How many times have we had to endure this tired old argument? It is straight out of central casting but they have simply replaced the last issue with paid sick days.

Last Thursday I found myself at a press conference held by local McCain supporters. The topic was generally about the economy and “small business” and was hosted at a company that had just moved to Milwaukee’s Fifth Ward. When I arrived at the location I was given a packet of information and led to the waiting area for the press. While waiting, I shared an OWN press release with the media on how McCain votes have been a disaster for women and the economy in general.

First Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker spoke and then handed it off to the host CEO. The last scheduled speaker at the press conference was former State Senator Cathy Stepp. She largely focused on her business and how the out of control gas prices are hurting it. Frankly, I was surprised that she would make energy policy her central theme at this press conference given John McCain’s awful record in both the U.S. Senate and in recent policy statements.

In a 4-3 decision the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against the State of Wisconsin in the Department of Revenue v. Menasha Corporation case. Of all people, ethically challenged Justice Annette Ziegler wrote the majority opinion. Last year hundreds of Wisconsinites called for her to recuse herself from the case because it was a major priority for her benefactors at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Who could forget that they spent some $2 million helping to get her elected? That was more than she spent on her own campaign and almost more than both campaigns combined. She refused to recuse herself and now has delivered a big victory to her benefactors.

It looks like WMC just won a $265 million return on a $2 million investment in just one year. Unfortunately this special interest gain is a big loss for Wisconsin. During this troubling economy and a time of tough budgets, Ziegler’s decision gives us $265 million less to invest in schools, public safety, or to fix our crumbling infrastructure.

Although she chose to step down from many cases last year, oddly this was one that she refused to leave. At the time she said that she would only consider recusing herself if one of the parties in the case requested it. The person that was supposed to represent Wisconsin in the case was Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who also owes his current job to WMC’s deep pockets. Naturally Van Hollen didn’t cross them by asking for their latest installation to step aside. WMC really covered their bases on this one and it got what it paid for, meanwhile the rest of us just get the shaft.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the prospect of $200 a barrel price for oil by the end of the year. The price has shot up over the last 7 years but that increase has been much more rapid in the last six months. During that time we have seen it go up from $100 to $150 a barrel. If the price actually hits the $200 prediction, that will translate to well over $6 a gallon for gasoline at the pump.

The pain at the pump is only the beginning of the budget crunch for the average working family. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today that natural gas is also at a high for this time of year. Experts in that industry are predicting major sticker shock for energy customers, especially when we try to heat our homes in winter. Natural gas futures have jumped 82 percent since just the start of the year. The story reports that increases in the price of natural gas have already driven up electricity bills twice since March.

All of these costs are overburdening working families and impacting our already fragile economy. This is where the failed Bush policies of irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy, coddling Big Oil, and lacking a forward thinking energy policy has brought us. U.S. Senator John McCain has been a rubber stamp for those polices in the Senate. He supported Bush as much as 100 percent in 2008 and 95 percent in 2007. In addition, McCain now says that he will make Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent. Actually he will go even further by offering unprecedented tax giveaways to some of the biggest corporations in the country. Under this economic scheme, Big Oil would get some $3.8 billion in tax giveaways. To the average person, such a massive giveaway to the very industry that has us over a barrel makes no sense at all. To John McCain it’s just business as usual.