Progressive Thinking

What happens if we turn our educational system into a supply chain of workers to fit our jobs, a place to manufacture workforce competent doers, but not critical thinkers? Company President and former Chair of the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce examines the shortsightedness of business leaders and politicians who attack our K-12 and university systems.

GREEN BAY - Having been in business my whole career, I found most business people to have relatively good intentions. Obviously, there are the bad actors, but the same can be said for any sector in our community.

However, I find that most business people abdicate their voices to organizations like the Chambers of Commerce and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce when it comes to issues of substance, like education. That is not only unfortunate, but it is done at their peril. When it comes to education, the sustainability of their business future and the future of the communities they serve is at stake if they do not get it right.

I know a bit about what I speak as I was Chair of the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce in 2003. I chaired the Bay Area Workforce Development Board for 8 years, the Employers Workforce Development Network for over 4 years, the Wisconsin Workforce Development Association for about 2 years, and the Wisconsin Council on Workforce Investment for about 4 years.

One of the things that was very clear to me not only as a company president, but also as one deeply immersed in the challenges of our economy was that we have an education system that is only somewhat designed to give the workforce competent “doers”, but was somewhat challenged in creating quality “thinkers”.

It is not that the graduates of our technical colleges and universities didn’t go in with a desire to learn and explore, it is that the system is no longer designed to generate quality thinkers, but rather doers with various levels of quality.

In some cases, the university system really made an error when they made the student the customer, as that resulted in some students with high debt and somewhat worthless degrees (but I digress as this is for another day). In other words, we have designed a system that is intended to feed the workforce needs of employers rather than the various needs of the both the employer, the community, and the environment which supports both.

And, because our government leaders continuously attack the K-12 system and heavily promote ideas like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), we are getting people who only have developed the left side of their brain. Thus, they may be ok at doing, but because they haven’t developed the right side of their brain where innovation and creativity flourish and they never become great thinkers.

Furthermore, even those that are good thinkers are soon institutionalized by the companies and organizations that employ them and soon become completely disengaged. Instead, we need to think of STEAM where we insert the Arts as a very integral part of education. STEAM will give us an innovation economy which will make us globally competitive while supporting the long-term viability and richness of our communities.

The concept of “institutionalizing their people” is important because this may help explain the business leaders’ ambivalence to what our current governor, legislature and WMC are supporting when it comes to education.

When I had my Sustainability consulting company, I would ask my clients in the “C” Suite (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) what was their most important asset and they would always respond the same “our people”. I would respond “then why do you treat them so poorly if that is the case”. They were genuinely hurt and offended because they truly believed what they said that their people were so important.

I then painted a picture of how it could look. Have you ever had a real two-way dialogue with your employees to determine what they thought was important, what they value in life, what they want to really do. Have you thought of focusing less on profits and more on purpose? Have you ever invested in your employees in things that they want even if it doesn’t have a line item benefit to the company; like running for a school board, or volunteering for a community board, etc. Have you ever considered allowing your employees to be involved in the community in a meaningful way on company time? Have you ever brought in the arts into your organization to rekindle the use of the right side of the brain?

At my last company, they prided themselves on the success they had with process. I had the opportunity to address their board last year, and I said this: “you are ok with process, but terrible with people. If you were great with people, you would blow process out of the water”. This was received well which showed that it clearly fell on deaf ears.

For business to allow Governor Walker and the current legislature to attack K-12 and the university system with funding cuts and other onerous policies is mind boggling. When we need high degrees of innovation and creativity in our economy to be competitive in a global sense, to defund the arts and other right brained curriculum in our public K-12 system and only focus on work related skills is not only troubling, but it is going to further increase the dearth of talent that the community and companies truly need.

And to try to destroy our world class public university system by not only drastically cutting funding, but by denigrating our talented professors and researchers is wrong headed on so many levels and will prove to be disastrous to the Wisconsin Idea. This tacit attack on people who are educated in critical thinking and instead fostering an atmosphere where our education system is only meant to be a supply chain of workers for business is undemocratic, myopic, and dysfunctional.

This kind of thinking and policy will in very short order not only kill our economy and middle class, but it will also lead to a dearth of the leadership that is much needed in our communities; whether volunteer, governmental, business, or NGO.

I am not enough of a conspiracy theorist to think that may be a sinister motive. But, for business and other leaders to sit quietly by and allow this to happen, will create a very negative legacy that will take mega-investments to reverse. We are all better than this.

MADISON - When Donald Trump came to Wisconsin on Tuesday, we noticed that he went to a fundraiser sponsored by the owners of Kwik Trip. So we wondered who else those owners supported, right here in Wisconsin. Here’s the answer:

Kwik Trip owners boost Trump, Wisconsin GOP

Another big story this week was the filing by Attorney General Brad Schimel, who urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take the John Doe II appeal. His filing was, to say the least, galling:

Schimel has WMC dirt on his hands in John Doe II filing

We also posted two items on some of the consequences of the disastrous rewrite of the campaign finance law enacted last December. One story noted that the increase in donation limits allowed some of the richest people in Wisconsin to give even more than ever:

Higher contribution limits net $251K more for legislative, statewide officeholders

And the other one noted how the new law has made it harder to figure out who may be getting sweetheart deals from our elected officials:

New campaign finance reporting laws shroud, mock transparency

I hope you like this week’s offerings.

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P.S. If you appreciate our dogged pursuit of the money trail, please send us a tax-deductible donation by clicking here or by mailing it to 203 S. Paterson St, Suite 100, Madison, WI 53703.

MILWAUKEE - Over the weekend, another young black man lost his life and civil unrest exploded in MIlwaukee.

Our hearts go out to all the residents of Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood who have experienced this weekend’s civil unrest, to the family of the young man who lost his life, and to the peace officers who have put their lives on the line to protect public safety. As public order is restored, it is important we take stock of what happened, and what we have to do together to create a Wisconsin where everyone has an equal chance to live a fulfilling life.

Although the violence and property destruction seemed spontaneous to outsiders, for many African American residents it was a predictable outpouring of frustration flowing from unbearable racial inequality and exclusion. Shocking statistics support this, as the Milwaukee metro area has for many years consistently ranked among the worst in the country for African Americans across a variety of indicators including, segregation, incarceration rates, black male nonemployment, child poverty, and many others.

African Americans in Milwaukee, who came during the Great Migration to work and work hard and claim their piece of the American Dream, where drawn by the plentiful opportunities to work in union manufacturing jobs. They have borne the brunt of deindustrialization since the late 1970s. According to the UWM Center for Economic Development, the percentage of African Americans working in manufacturing declined from 54.3% in 1970 to 14.7% in 2009.

Many leaders in the Milwaukee area seem to see this as a natural phenomenon beyond our control. But the economy is not a natural disaster or an extreme weather event beyond our agency to influence, it is human made. What has been lacking in Milwaukee is the courage and vision to fight for solutions up to the scale of the problem. Once the dust is settled in Sherman Park, the question will be which public officials, which community leaders, which corporate leaders are willing to stand up and fight for public interventions at the scale necessary to end Wisconsin’s system of economic apartheid and truly guarantee full opportunity for everyone in our great state. This means striving to create an economy where everyone who wants a good jobs can find one near their local community.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin and our over 12,000 members in the Milwaukee area look forward to continuing to work with everyone in the community who wants to work toward economic and social transformation.

$472.1 million in awards to businesses through August 1 this year produce fewer new jobs, but would go far in covering the cost of reforming our state’s flawed school funding formula or funding repairs for local roads.

ALMA, WI - “Where did all that money go?” Dennis asked me during a recent visit to the Jackson County Fair.

Dennis is one of many constituents who ask where the money for schools and roads is as our state recovers from the recession. Economic recovery means more money and more money should equal more resources for the public. Instead, state funds are very tight. For example, state aid to local public schools is less now than in 2006.

One reason is that the state is not collecting tax money from some large, and in several cases, very profitable companies. Recently I received a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau detailing the awards given out for one large tax credit known as the Enterprise Zone Tax Credit. This credit – originally conceived to help rural communities – has morphed into large credits for single companies.

The memo contained a list of the total awards made and the companies that received them:

Amazon.com $10.3 million

Bucyrus International, Inc. $20.0 million

Direct Supply $22.5 million

Dollar General Corporation $ 5.5 million

Exact Sciences Corporation $ 9.0 million

Fincantieri Marine Group, LLC $28.0 million

InSinkErator $15.5 million

Kestrel Aircraft Company, Inc. $18.0 million

Kohl’s Corporation $62.5 million

Mercury Marine $65.0 million

MKE Electric Tool Corporation $18.0 million

Northstar Med. Radioisotopes, LLC $14.0 million

Oshkosh Corporation $47.0 million

Plexus Corporation $15.0 million

Quad/Graphics, Inc. $61.7 million

Trane US Incorporated $ 5.5 million

Uline, Incorporated $18.6 million

W Solar Group, Incorporated $28.0 million

Weather Shield Mfg, Incorporated $ 8.0 million

TOTAL (through Aug. 1, 2016) $472.1 million

All of those award amounts are refundable tax credits. This means a company can claim the credit directly against taxes owed. If the company owes little or nothing in taxes and claims the credit, they can receive a payment from the state in the form of a refund.

Owing little or nothing in state taxes is made possible, in part, by changes in tax law for corporations that date back to 2011. Majority legislators passed the Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit that resulted in very low tax liability for some. A recent study released by the Wisconsin Budget Project found most of this credit goes to reducing taxes for millionaires, including “some tax filers with incomes of over $1 million receiving tax cuts of more than $100,000.”

That list of Enterprise Zone Tax Credit awards includes the total credits that can be claimed over a 16-year period (2009-2024). Different companies are on different schedules. One company’s contract began in 2009. Seven of the listed companies have contracts that go back to 2010. The remaining contracts were written since 2011. The credits are awarded for various business activities. Some credits are given for jobs created or retained, for training or buying from Wisconsin companies. In every case, the “Enterprise Zone” created is the footprint of the company itself.

Credit compliance is overseen by the troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which does not have a good track record for independently verifying that jobs were created. Three separate audits by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau showed that not one single job created was independently verified.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that WEDC’s claims of jobs created were based on “faulty calculations”. They went on to report, “The agency gave out almost $90 million more in awards, but the total number of related jobs fell by nearly 6,000.”

The cost of the Enterprise Zone Tax Credit and the Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit would go far in covering the cost of reforming our state’s flawed school funding formula or funding repairs for local roads.

Funding for road repair is something on the minds of many in Wisconsin. We were reminded once again that in a short time the power of Mother Nature and water can demolish our roads. I offer my heartfelt thanks to the road crews, law enforcement, emergency management, the Red Cross and county officials all of whom worked tirelessly to keep the people safe in the aftermath of the torrential rains and flooding that hit western Wisconsin. We will not be back to normal for a while but we are all safe. If you need help please call 211. And read Rep. Danou’s column this week.

Many Americans distrust both of the country’s major political parties this year, especially young voters, but is there another option?

ALTOONA, WI - Here we sit, with most Americans deeply dissatisfied with and alienated from both of the country’s major political parties. This condition is likely to worsen before it gets better, as young Americans are especially disgusted with the two major parties.

For the time being, the clear majority of Americans are feeling doomed to either sit out elections and surrender their vote or engage in the distasteful exercise of Lesser Evil Voting. The only alternative to LEV they can see is voting for a minor party like the Greens or Libertarians, and visions of spoiler candidates and wasted votes dance in their heads at the thought.

There is another option, but it is one scarcely remembered because it hasn’t been tried in a very long time despite proving successful in the past.

In the early 1900s, farmers in North Dakota were at the mercy of powerful cartels and couldn’t get fair prices for their grain or credit at a reasonable interest rate. They were at the mercy of powerful cartels. In hopes of getting out from under the thumb of the out-of-state tycoons who were gouging them, they banded together to form a political organization called the Nonpartisan League (NPL).

Some say the NPL was the idea of a former Socialist Party organizer named Albert Bowen. Others figure it was the brainchild of flax farmer-turned-political agitator A.C. Townley. One way or the other, Townley and Bowen teamed up and Townley was soon driving across the state in a Model T Ford spreading the word about the NPL. Bowen and Townley enlisted tens of thousands of followers.

The NPL gained power by making use of a creation of the late-19th Century Progressives: the primary election. The primary system adopted in North Dakota and other states like Wisconsin not only gave voters the power to nominate major-party candidates, but most importantly allowed voters to participate in a party’s primary even if they did not belong to that party. By putting NPL-endorsed candidates up against those favored by the state’s political machine, the NPL took over North Dakota’s dominant Republican Party in 1916. A wheat farmer and NPL member named Lynn Frazier was elected governor with almost 80% of the vote and NPL-backed candidates won every other statewide office except one as well as a majority in the state assembly.

Upon gaining power, the NPL acted, giving farmers credit at significantly lower interest rates through the establishment of the state-run Bank of North Dakota opened in 1919. A state mill and grain elevator was completed in 1922, providing a fair market for grain and a source of feed and seed. Insurance was provided against fire, tornado and hail damage.

The NPL’s enduring legacy in North Dakota stands as an inspiring example of what is possible when people declare themselves free of unresponsive major parties while simultaneously using elements of the two-party framework to force change. The NPL stands as proof that the dismal choice between Lesser Evil Voting and wasted votes cast for spoiler candidates from minor parties is a false choice. There is another way.