Taking Care of Business
Unfortunately, in Wisconsin, business leadership appears to be an oxymoron.
That became glaringly obvious when Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, announced one of his organization's top priorities for public funding in these troubled economic times. No, it's not creating good jobs for all those currently unemployed or reversing the threatened devastation of public education so future generations will be prepared to achieve economic success.
The MMAC wants to convince already struggling taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new sports arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Forget about family-supporting jobs. What's important is building a luxurious, new basketball arena when we already have one (two, counting the old Arena) and hiring a few more minimum-wage ushers directing CEOs to higher-priced seats.
This is the same business lobby that didn't raise a word of objection when the governor it supports, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, turned down $810 million in federal funds for high-speed rail development that would have created jobs all over the state.
The MMAC even turned its back on Talgo, the Spanish train car company it recently helped lure to the economically depressed North Side of Milwaukee.
The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and other professional business organizations around the state fought against Walker's ignorant, tea-party-pleasing rejection of nearly a billion dollars in economic development.
But Sheehy and the MMAC publicly declared it was more important to support Walker's budget priorities—code for, "Wahoo! More tax cuts for business!"
Education and Transportation
Never mind that the federal funds Walker threw away included not only rail development that would have been a boon to Madison and northern Wisconsin, but also upgrades to the Hiawatha line between Chicago and Milwaukee, which would have directly benefited Milwaukee business.
You can only imagine the reaction of Obama administration officials when Walker, with support from the MMAC, then submitted an application for federal rail funds that would be limited to the Hiawatha line.
Instead of scrawling "You gotta be kidding!" across the application, the federal Department of Transportation simply announced it was awarding rail funds to "reliable" partners in the construction of a nationwide high-speed rail network.
If you could believe Sheehy's public statements, and clearly you can't, he and the MMAC know exactly what the state should be doing to encourage economic development and job creation.
I've interviewed Sheehy on the radio in recent years and heard him give public speeches in which he's disarmingly candid about what's really important for a healthy business climate.
Surprisingly, Sheehy says the most important issue for attracting successful businesses to the Milwaukee area is not taxes. It's education and transportation.
Despite the constant propaganda out of the Republican Party, no one can seriously argue that corporate tax rates are too high in Wisconsin when so many companies pay little or nothing.
More important than tax rates, Sheehy argues, are high-school graduation rates. Employers need to know they will have qualified employees working for them. And they need a good transportation system to get those people to work.
So why in the world are Sheehy and the MMAC giving both their unqualified support and enormous campaign contributions to Walker, who is making devastating cuts to education and transportation?
Maybe tax cuts aren't the most important factor in attracting new businesses to Wisconsin, but they sure appear to be the only thing that matters to the Republican businessmen who are already here.
With all of Sheehy's pretty words about the importance of high-school graduation rates for the long-term success of Milwaukee business, wouldn't it be nice if he and other corporate leaders would speak out to try to stop their governor's billion-dollar gutting of public education?
Walker so despises funding education that even when he learned Wisconsin would receive hundreds of millions of dollars more in state tax revenues than expected, he refused to consider using any of that bonanza to reduce the drastic cuts to schools.
When Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Gregory Thornton first came to town, he said the children of MPS needed support from everyone, including the governor and the business community.
Instead, a new governor kicked Thornton and those children in the teeth by proposing the biggest cut in education funding in state history.
That makes it even more important for business leadership to step up to first save and then improve education, which Sheehy says will determine the future success of Milwaukee business and the state economy.
Instead, the silence from Sheehy and other MMAC leaders is deafening. They're too busy trying to convince taxpayers in dire economic straits to buy them nicer seats for Bucks games.
First the economy is booming and jobs are always and everywhere. Unemployment is a personal lifestyle choice and a sign of cowardness. Talk of an econiminc crisis is soooo 2008.
The Federal goverment should support high speed rail to Chicago where it is needed because of traffic and parking issues. Not to small cities with minimal ridership. Not giving Wisconsin funds as requested is a sign of spite and jealousy of the Obama adminitration.
MPS will be just fine with less money. The teachers union has stolen millions of dollars over the year under the guise of salary, benefits, and collective bargaining. Using public money to fund pensions, six figure salaries, and health care premiums was going too far and getting out of hand. Low graduation rates compared to private schools shows we need to focus more on private schools.
Corporate tax rates are too high. There should be no corporate tax at all. Busineses want low taxes and cheap labor. You could give MPS a tirllion dollars and they still couldn't educate the unmotivated types. The whole reason to moving to the bad areas of Milwaukee is to live the life of welfare and drugs. Otherwise people would opt into good jobs and better school districts.
Enough with this nonsense, I think I will now choose to get back to work make a little cash today.
The train to Madison was a stupid idea because he would cost millions to maintain and riders would be very low. 90 percent of the oassenger trains need fed money because they can't break even. Thank you Gov, people in 72 counties didn't need to spend tax money on the empty train to Madison.
McNally just can't get over this train thing. He is in some dreamland where he thinkgs some benevelent train and track building company would give all his wefare and freeloader friends high paying make-work jobs building a train to Madison. Even if we ever do build a medium speed train, don't count on any welfarites will be step up and offer to work. We will bring in trained specialist from out of state who know something about tain building.
McNally has this fantacy that the reason his freeloader friend don't have jobs is because there is just this horrible economy and his friends just can't find work. What he doesn't realize is that his buddies don't want to work.
There is work everywhere. I was visiting a large southern city recently and I saw a minority man standing under a freeway overpass selling fresh fruit. I admired how he "manned up" and created his own job. Go to National and 19th, you should see plenty of ladies out there "working." Work is work. McNally just wants to coddle his cowardly friends that want to steal our tax dollars under guiese of welfare, food stamps, and public assistance.
Good people will put good kids in good schools. They will learn despite the shortcomings of their teachers. Throwing extra money at bad schools to teach the bad kids produced by bad people is pointless. It will only be stolen and pocketed by people who feel it is owed to them. One way to crack down of single parenthood disease is to have mandetory paternal custody. Fathers must my law provide for their children or face prison and castration. If we had this kind of law, I'm willing to be that a lot of the unemployed would opt back into the workforce.
We will suffer quite a bit from Walker's lack of vision. He and the teabaggers have no ideas for large cities and the higher quality of life policies that rail and public education provide for all. Walker's policies are most likely good for corporate managers and/or young men who still live in their parent's basement. For the rest of us who have children and homes, Walker and the Republicans are a disaster. High speed rail would have created high paying jobs. Our real estate values are plummeting with no end in site. High speed rail would have increased the value of real estate especially around the stations. The first link between Milwaukee and Madison would eventually be connected to a Midwest high speed network with additional cities like Minneapolis and St. Louis. We would have transportation options like the rest of the industrialised world. Now, we will be behind the rest of the Midwest and these same business leaders and teabaggers will moan and cry as they always do about no one wanting to live in Wisconsin after they finish college. High speed and (I might add) light rail like the rest of the industrialised world might make us a little more hip. Otherwise..... under the teabaggers, Wisconsin will be one endless strip mall with a few big box stores and a water slide or two.
I doubt high speed rail would have created any jobs other than make-work. We could accomplish the same by not building the train and just paying people to watch the grass grow. Trains lost out 60-70 years ago. The cars and planes won excect in high density areas. When Madison gets dense like Chicago, Washington or New York, then we can build a train.
Property value are finally getting back to where they should be. They got overinflated when we allowed poor people to buy houses. Overall propery values are up over where they were 10-12 years ago.
I do agree we could use some light rail connecting downton, the airport, Miller Park, and the near suburbs.
I also wish we could have high speed rail to Chicago with trains departing hourly. Now those would get some good use.
Building a high speed rail network between Milwaukee and Madison would have just been part of a start to a high speed rail network that would have covered the whole nation. Milwaukee to Chicago, Madison to Minneapolis would have been the next connections. Wisconsin would have been a part of the system! But thanks to Gov. Walker Wisconsin will be left behind.
Look at history. When the interstate highway system was created Wisconsin chose to be left out. Then when Wisconsin decided to get into the system, without federal money, it only cost Wisconsin taxpayers more money to get involved.
If history repeats itself, we can thank Gov. Walker for costing us more tax dollars to Wisconsin citizens than it would have if we had gotten in right away when the federal money was offered.
Does anyone REALLY think that the price of gasoline is ever going to drop below $2 a gallon?
That time is over. Gasoline will probably never be really cheap again.
Improved mass transit is one of our best options and should not be rejected for payback to campaign contributors. Not by a politician who claims to be looking out for the taxpayers.
But then, Gov. Walker is really only looking out for the future of Scott Walker. The voters/taxpayers of Wisconsin are just a stepping stone to a higher office.
We already have cheap mass transit to Minneapolis. Its called Air Tran and Delta. Will get you there several times a day for just a couple of hundred bucks. We used to have nationwide network of trains but the planes won out. Why spend twice as much to take 8 times as long to get there with few options of the train breaks?
Who cares about the price of gas? Just buy a hybrid car if you need one. In a few years we will switch to electric cars. If trains were the best thing, railroads would be getting into the passenger business to make a profit. Obviously passenger trains are not profitable.