WMC Fact Check: Environment
WMC Fact Check
Environment: Dirty Profits over Clean Air and Water
The self-described mission of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce is to create “meaningful, well paying jobs [to provide] economic security and dignity to Wisconsin citizens. A strong economy provides the tax base necessary to support government’s role in education, building infrastructure, protecting the environment, and caring for the needy.”
Does the lofty rhetoric meet the reality?
One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch has compiled a series of reports to fact check the many fictions advocated by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Consider the following when WMC uses its network of resources and subservient elected officials to advocate for more corporate tax breaks, less funds for education, inaction in the face of skyrocketing health care costs.
WMC Fact Check: Environment
- Every lake in Wisconsin is under an advisory for fish consumption. This is due to mercury contamination, which most likely comes from coal-burning power plant emissions – emissions which get even more toxic an irreversible when it enters a lake. Mercury exposure causes brain damage in children as well as birth defects and disabilities for in utero fetuses. [Source: Wisconsin State Journal, 5/1/09; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]
- The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act will generate $150 billion a year new clear-energy investment, according to analysis by the non-partisan Center for American Progress. Wisconsin could expect nearly $3 billion in investment and more than 35,000 jobs created. [Source: Center for American Progress, 6/18/09]
- Over 50 percent of wells have unsafe ‘brown water’ in some Wisconsin communities. This contamination of groundwater comes from industrial sludge being spread on porous land, where it can enter fissures and holes in the ground and directly enter the water system and the water we drink. Moderate to serious stomach infections can be the result, leading to missed work, lost wages and increased medical bills. [Source: Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, 11/15/08]
- Profits from Consumer Gouging Got Big Oil Execs Doubled Compensation Packages. In 2004, oil executives benefited from massive price increases to double their annual compensation packages to an average of $16 million a year – the highest median for any industry in America. Big Oil raked in an additional $80 billion in profits from 2000 to 2004 by sticking consumers with about $250 billion in price increases. WMC opposed Governor Doyle’s oil tax proposal which would have raised $272 million this biennium to pay for public services like transportation. The plan included penalties for executives who attempted to raise gas prices to offset the tax. [Source: Hostile Takeover, 2006]
Examining WMC’s legislative positions, one might ask exactly what WMC’s definition of “government’s role” actually is. When it comes to government overseeing a fair redistribution of shared tax dollars, protecting water, air and open spaces and particularly, “caring for the needy,” the role of government, appears to be in WMC’s opinion corporate rights before individual liberties and profit before people.
Ensuring the interests of working families, seniors, children and people in every corner of Wisconsin come before the narrow special interests at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce requires your action. You can make a difference and protect the priorities we share.
Visit the WMC Watch action center for more information about the steps you can take to counter the WMC agenda.
