By Charlie Dee and Michael Rosen
The proposal to dissolve the Milwaukee Public School Board and replace it with Mayoral control will not lead to improved student achievement because it does not correctly identify the problems facing MPS nor does it offer any educational solutions to those problems.
There are numerous reasons to oppose this, some that are very obvious.
• Citizens of Milwaukee just voted for a board with three new members, and that board selected a new Board Chair, Michael Bonds. This board should be given a chance to make necessary reforms in MPS.
• The proposal is not an educational plan. Takeover proponents have not proposed even one idea as to what they would do differently to improve the schools. They have ONLY proposed that the Mayor be allowed to take over the governance of them.
• Milwaukee's Mayor Tom Barrett has no qualifications, expertise or experience that would indicate a capacity to increase student achievement in Milwaukee.
The mayor has cited only two specific reasons for why he should be in charge of MPS: gaining increased federal dollars and the closing the “racial achievement gap” in Milwaukee.
He and the supporters of this take-over claim that the Obama administration will only consider Milwaukee for Race to the Top money if the mayor is in charge of the public schools. But Congresswoman Gwen Moore has put to rest that argument by revealing that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan specifically told her that mayoral control is in no way a precondition to receiving federal money.
Milwaukee certainly has a racial achievement gap in education. But it also has a racial income gap, racial unemployment gap, racial teen pregnancy gap, racial neighborhood crime gap, and racial home lending gap. Yet Mayor Barrett has done little to solve those in his five years in office. Why would anyone think he can turn the education gap around with no plan but much power?
Then, on September 4, the mayor offered his first analysis of the racial gap in education in his “Barrett Report,” and, incredibly enough, Barrett blamed the gap on too many students going to the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC)! Barrett claimed as evidence of the “the Black-White workforce gap” and “the lack of workforce skills” the fact that twice as many MPS grads go “to MATC as compared to UW-Milwaukee.”
It is reprehensible that Mayor Barrett would so demean MATC and our students. At MATC, we close the workforce gap; we don’t increase it. This shows conclusively that Barrett shouldn’t be trusted to solve this gap by taking over MPS because he doesn’t have a clue about what the causes are.
Just as disturbing are the political forces that are pushing this change in governance for MPS. Put simply, they are enemies of public education that have lost the control they once had over the MPS. They now view a change in governance as the best way to get back in power.
Foremost among those pushing governance changes are the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJ-S) editorial board and Tim Sheehy, President of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce (MMAC). In the shadows lurks the right wing Bradley Foundation and its various tentacles, the Wisconsin Public Research Institute and Wisconsin Interest Magazine.
The Journal-Sentinel (MJ-S), Bradley Foundation and the MMAC have been major champions of the school voucher movement for twenty years, a movement that has drained many millions of dollars from the MPS without producing the promised educational improvements in its own schools or gains in MPS that were supposed to result from the “free market competition” of voucher schools.
The MJ-S, Bradley Foundation and Sheehy have either endorsed or financed pro-privatization candidates for the school board. For much of the past 16 years, their candidates had a majority on the MPS Board. They are the ones who hired the current MPS Superintendant, William Adrekopolous, and labeled any board member who tried to hold Adrekopolous accountable “as anti-reform.” They also promoted the hugely expensive Neighborhood Schools Initiative that has been a failure by every measure.
So the forces most vigorously pushing this governance change have a miserable but expensive track record when it comes to educational reform.
But they have very clear political agendas. Put simply, they don’t like the majority of the members of the Milwaukee School Board democratically elected by the citizens of Milwaukee. Keep in mind, the MJ-S and the MMAC made no critique of MPS governance when the candidates they endorsed, selected or funded were the elected majority of the MPS Board. When Bruce Thompson, Ken Johnson, Joe Danneker and Jeff Spence held the board chair, the MJ-S and the MMAC thought the governance system was working just fine.
So it is clear that their support for a governance change is not a principled stand – one predicated on a genuine researched-based belief that governance changes would result in delivering more effective education. Rather, it is a stand of sheer political opportunism: they haven’t been able to get their candidates elected democratically, so they want to change the rules of the game.
Further evidence of this opportunism is the fact that three of these forces, the MJ-S, Sheehy and the Bradley Foundation through its propaganda organ, Wisconsin Interest, joined by a cadre of Republican legislators, have called for a change in governance for MATC. Only in this case, they want to move from a board appointed by elected officials to a board elected by the public. Obviously, this is exactly the opposite from the change they want for MPS.
The only consistency in their position on elected versus appointed boards at MPS and MATC is that Sheehy and the MMAC, with editorial and reportorial support from the MJ-S, have tried and failed to get people hand-picked by Sheehy appointed to the MATC Board. Right on cue, Wisconsin Interest just published an attack on the appointed MATC Board, and Republican Senator Alberta Darling introduced a bill to change MATC governance. Their hope is that elections will provide them the opportunity to gain control of MATC just as they want to move away from elections in order to control the MPS Board.
Governance changes will not improve academic performance or close the racial achievement gap. Nor will politically motivated sound bites.
If the Mayor and Governor are sincere about their desire to improve the academic performance of Milwaukee children they should abandon their ill conceived governance proposal and focus on helping our beleaguered school system get the resources it needs to meet the challenges of educating a largely economically and educationally disadvantaged student body.
If we want to improve student achievement we need to empower students, parents and teachers, not disenfranchise them.
Charlie Dee is a professor of history and English at Milwaukee Area Technical College and the Executive Vice President of AFT Local 212
Michael Rosen is a professor of economics at MATC and the President of AFT Local 212
Showing posts with label MMAC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MMAC. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Miwaukee suburbs protect their citizens from paid sick days
Last week the New York Times noted that 60 million American workers, almost half of all private sector workers, do not have paid sick leave. This made it virtually impossible for them to stay home, as the President had advised, if they experienced flu like symptoms last week.
The Times wrote:
...more than 160 countries ensure that all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness.
If President Obama is serious about responsible action to control infectious disease threats, he should back legislation to grant Americans at least seven paid sick days a year — long enough to stay home until an influenza infection subsides. Then virtually all Americans could heed his advice, and we would all be safer.
In November Milwaukee voters voted overwhelmingly (69% to 31%) that all Milwaukee employers should provide their employees with paid sick leave benefits.
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce (MMAC) has opposed the measure and used the courts to delay its implementation. It argued that providing employees with paid sick day benefits would be bad for business. An MMAC spokesman even called the law "a sort of terrorism."
Several Milwaukee suburbs, genuflecting to the laissez faire gods, have legislated away their citizens right to pass such laws.
Presumably the free market will protect these communities from future pandemics just as their city councils have protected the free market from one more onerous regulation.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper will rule on the referendum's legality later today.
The New York Times editorial is linked.
The Times wrote:
...more than 160 countries ensure that all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness.
If President Obama is serious about responsible action to control infectious disease threats, he should back legislation to grant Americans at least seven paid sick days a year — long enough to stay home until an influenza infection subsides. Then virtually all Americans could heed his advice, and we would all be safer.
In November Milwaukee voters voted overwhelmingly (69% to 31%) that all Milwaukee employers should provide their employees with paid sick leave benefits.
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce (MMAC) has opposed the measure and used the courts to delay its implementation. It argued that providing employees with paid sick day benefits would be bad for business. An MMAC spokesman even called the law "a sort of terrorism."
Several Milwaukee suburbs, genuflecting to the laissez faire gods, have legislated away their citizens right to pass such laws.
Presumably the free market will protect these communities from future pandemics just as their city councils have protected the free market from one more onerous regulation.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper will rule on the referendum's legality later today.
The New York Times editorial is linked.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
MMAC's lawsuit will not create family supporting jobs or shared properity
In November Milwaukee voters overwhelmingly passed an ordinance that guarantees workers the right to earn paid sick days. Milwaukee joined San Francisco and Washington DC as the third city to require these benefits. The referendum passed by a margin of almost 70% to 30%.
Despite the overwhelming margin of victory, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (MMAC) has aggressively opposed the measure.
Two weeks ago the organization filed a lawsuit against the city seeking to strike down the law. The MMAC is also asking for a temporary injunction to block the city from enforcing the legislation that is scheduled to go into effect on February 10, 2009.
The MMAC's opposition, while short-sighted, is not unexpected. Business organizations have consistently opposed social legislation like laws outlawing child labor and discrimination or regulating business behavior like the Clean Air Act. For the past three decades they have aggressively opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage even as its real real value has fallen to historic lows. Their consistent opposition makes some sense since such legislature imposes costs or at least prevents businesses from externalizing their costs, thus reducing rates of profit. The long-term benefits of increased employee loyalty and productivity and reduced hiring and retraining costs are seldom acknowledged.
But Tim Sheehy and other MMAC spokesman have stooped to new a new low in their desperate attempt to discredit Milwaukee's new ordinance.
The MMAC's Steve Bass, a former Republican assembly operative , labeled the new law "a sort of terrorism."
It is perverse to equate providing employees with time off when they or a child is ill with suicide bombings. The former provides workers with a humane benefit so that they no longer need to choose between their job and caring for their family, while the latter uses murder to terrorize the general population. Additionally, Bass's rhetoric belittles the lives and sacrifice of the victims of terrorist attacks and those who have died trying to bring the perpetrators of political violence to justice.
Not to be outdone, the MMAC's President Tim Sheehy claims the ordinance is affecting job growth in Milwaukee and predicts "dire economic consequences."
But Milwaukee's labor market had collapsed and the city's workers were experiencing what the UWM Center for Economic Development has characterized as "a stealth depression" long before this ordinance was passed.
Exactly what job growth is Mr. Sheehy claiming the City has lost?
The country is experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression. We lost half a million jobs last month and 2 million in the last year. Business investment has collapsed, a victim of the housing bubble's collapse and the resulting financial sector's meltdown.
Last year, Wisconsin lost 32,4000 jobs. The Department of Revenue is projecting that Wisconsin will lose another 37,700 manufacturing jobs (7.7% of the state's total) and 121,000 construction jobs( 5% of all construction jobs) next year.
Milwaukee is hemorrhaging jobs. Two thousand two-hundred and sixty-six (2,266) more Milwaukeans were unemployed in September 2008 than a year ago, long before the sick day ordinance was passed. Milwaukee ranks a dismal 34th among 50 cities in the annual rate of employment growth, has the 2nd worst rate of black male unemployment and the worst black-white unemployment ratio in the nation.
The simple fact is that long before the sick day referendum passed, business investment in new plant and equipment had collapsed and companies were laying off workers at an alarming rate. In addition, many of the firms like Crazy Water, Outpost Natural Foods, and Lackey and Joys, whose spokesmen have opposed the ordinance, won't abandon their Milwaukee location in response to a marginal cost increase because they require access to the city's market. As realtors always tell us: "location, location, location!"
Mr. Sheehy's concern over Milwaukee job loss is also hard to take seriously since the MMAC has consistently promoted policies that have destroy local jobs and drive down wages.
The MMAC was a vocal proponent of NAFTA and other free trade agreements that have contributed to a reduction of employment in high-wage traded-goods industries, growing wage inequality, and a steady decline in demand for workers without a college education.
NAFTA alone cost Wisconsin 25,403 (-0.9%) jobs between 1994 and 2006.
The MMAC has also aggressively promoted trade with China. The organization's China Business Council has even sponsored tours of China. Yet, between 2001 and 2006 Wisconsin lost 38,000 jobs because of the growing trade deficit with China.
And Mr. Sheehy actively opposed the County's advisory sales tax referendum aimed at providing a dedicated source of revenue to the County's beleaguered transit system. Sheehy actually authored a letter to Milwaukee's County Board members urging them to uphold County Executive Walker's veto of the referendum.
Mr. Sheehy surely knows that one of the major impediments to economic development in Southeastern Wisconsin is the spacial mismatch between large numbers of unemployed workers, disproportionately African-American, living in Milwaukee's central city, and employers located in suburban and ex-urban locations who have had difficulty finding qualified workers. Key to addressing this problem is a mass transit system that links people to jobs. Yet Sheehy and the MMAC opposed the County's advisory referendum designed to address this mismatch. Republican partisan politics trumped investing in the regional economy. The economic consequences of the MCTS's deterioration is nothing short of "dire."
The "stealth depression" in the city of Milwaukee's labor market calls for bold, new departures in public policy. Yet the MMAC has opposed initiatives in public investment, regional cooperation, reducing metro-wide racial segregation, industrial policy, and community benefits agreements that should be part of an aggressive anti-unemployment strategy in the city.
The MMAC's use of scare tactics to oppose the sick pay legislation is consistent with this dismal record. Rather than waste the city's scarce tax dollars in a lengthy court case, the MMAC and the firms it represents should obey the law. They might just discover that when businesses treat their workers humanely, their employees will be more loyal and productive and replacement and training costs will decline.
Despite the overwhelming margin of victory, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (MMAC) has aggressively opposed the measure.
Two weeks ago the organization filed a lawsuit against the city seeking to strike down the law. The MMAC is also asking for a temporary injunction to block the city from enforcing the legislation that is scheduled to go into effect on February 10, 2009.
The MMAC's opposition, while short-sighted, is not unexpected. Business organizations have consistently opposed social legislation like laws outlawing child labor and discrimination or regulating business behavior like the Clean Air Act. For the past three decades they have aggressively opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage even as its real real value has fallen to historic lows. Their consistent opposition makes some sense since such legislature imposes costs or at least prevents businesses from externalizing their costs, thus reducing rates of profit. The long-term benefits of increased employee loyalty and productivity and reduced hiring and retraining costs are seldom acknowledged.
But Tim Sheehy and other MMAC spokesman have stooped to new a new low in their desperate attempt to discredit Milwaukee's new ordinance.
The MMAC's Steve Bass, a former Republican assembly operative , labeled the new law "a sort of terrorism."
It is perverse to equate providing employees with time off when they or a child is ill with suicide bombings. The former provides workers with a humane benefit so that they no longer need to choose between their job and caring for their family, while the latter uses murder to terrorize the general population. Additionally, Bass's rhetoric belittles the lives and sacrifice of the victims of terrorist attacks and those who have died trying to bring the perpetrators of political violence to justice.
Not to be outdone, the MMAC's President Tim Sheehy claims the ordinance is affecting job growth in Milwaukee and predicts "dire economic consequences."
But Milwaukee's labor market had collapsed and the city's workers were experiencing what the UWM Center for Economic Development has characterized as "a stealth depression" long before this ordinance was passed.
Exactly what job growth is Mr. Sheehy claiming the City has lost?
The country is experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression. We lost half a million jobs last month and 2 million in the last year. Business investment has collapsed, a victim of the housing bubble's collapse and the resulting financial sector's meltdown.
Last year, Wisconsin lost 32,4000 jobs. The Department of Revenue is projecting that Wisconsin will lose another 37,700 manufacturing jobs (7.7% of the state's total) and 121,000 construction jobs( 5% of all construction jobs) next year.
Milwaukee is hemorrhaging jobs. Two thousand two-hundred and sixty-six (2,266) more Milwaukeans were unemployed in September 2008 than a year ago, long before the sick day ordinance was passed. Milwaukee ranks a dismal 34th among 50 cities in the annual rate of employment growth, has the 2nd worst rate of black male unemployment and the worst black-white unemployment ratio in the nation.
The simple fact is that long before the sick day referendum passed, business investment in new plant and equipment had collapsed and companies were laying off workers at an alarming rate. In addition, many of the firms like Crazy Water, Outpost Natural Foods, and Lackey and Joys, whose spokesmen have opposed the ordinance, won't abandon their Milwaukee location in response to a marginal cost increase because they require access to the city's market. As realtors always tell us: "location, location, location!"
Mr. Sheehy's concern over Milwaukee job loss is also hard to take seriously since the MMAC has consistently promoted policies that have destroy local jobs and drive down wages.
The MMAC was a vocal proponent of NAFTA and other free trade agreements that have contributed to a reduction of employment in high-wage traded-goods industries, growing wage inequality, and a steady decline in demand for workers without a college education.
NAFTA alone cost Wisconsin 25,403 (-0.9%) jobs between 1994 and 2006.
The MMAC has also aggressively promoted trade with China. The organization's China Business Council has even sponsored tours of China. Yet, between 2001 and 2006 Wisconsin lost 38,000 jobs because of the growing trade deficit with China.
And Mr. Sheehy actively opposed the County's advisory sales tax referendum aimed at providing a dedicated source of revenue to the County's beleaguered transit system. Sheehy actually authored a letter to Milwaukee's County Board members urging them to uphold County Executive Walker's veto of the referendum.
Mr. Sheehy surely knows that one of the major impediments to economic development in Southeastern Wisconsin is the spacial mismatch between large numbers of unemployed workers, disproportionately African-American, living in Milwaukee's central city, and employers located in suburban and ex-urban locations who have had difficulty finding qualified workers. Key to addressing this problem is a mass transit system that links people to jobs. Yet Sheehy and the MMAC opposed the County's advisory referendum designed to address this mismatch. Republican partisan politics trumped investing in the regional economy. The economic consequences of the MCTS's deterioration is nothing short of "dire."
The "stealth depression" in the city of Milwaukee's labor market calls for bold, new departures in public policy. Yet the MMAC has opposed initiatives in public investment, regional cooperation, reducing metro-wide racial segregation, industrial policy, and community benefits agreements that should be part of an aggressive anti-unemployment strategy in the city.
The MMAC's use of scare tactics to oppose the sick pay legislation is consistent with this dismal record. Rather than waste the city's scarce tax dollars in a lengthy court case, the MMAC and the firms it represents should obey the law. They might just discover that when businesses treat their workers humanely, their employees will be more loyal and productive and replacement and training costs will decline.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
MMAC designed the Neighborhood Schools Initiative
Two weeks ago the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) exposed the Neighborhood Schools Initiative (NSI) as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars. A few days alter the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (MMAC) and selected voucher advocates met behind closed doors to discuss how to reform the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and Mayor Barrett called for an audit of MPS's finances declaring every option should be explored.
But as Joel McNally and Barbara Miner point out it in two separate articles, the MMAC and MPS voucher advocates, including former Mayor John Norquist, designed and promoted, with the support of the MJS, the NSI, not the current MPS board's leadership.
The MPS Board members who supported the NSI were the very same folks, John Gardner, Bruce Thompson and Jeff Spence, who sold voucher schools as the market solution to the failures of Milwaukee's Public Schools in the early 1990's.
They have now admitted that voucher schools are not the panacea they originally claimed. The Journal ran a series on this a few years ago. But rather than dismantle this multi-million dollar, failed experiment and focus the state's scare educational resources on improving MPS, they now argue Milwaukee has a system of schools which face the common challenge of educating Milwaukee's largely poor and minority children.
In recent articles, the MJS has failed to acknowledge that current the current MPS Board leadership, including its President Peter Blewett, newly elected MPS Finance Chair Michael Bonds and Jennifer Morales were opponents of the NSI and vouchers.
A review of the record suggests that it is politically more palatable to Milwaukee's elites to beat up on this struggling urban school district, scapegoat teachers, their unions, and the elected MPS board of directors, and promote changes in governance than it is to provide MPS with the resources it needs to serve the children who depend on it.
Read Joel McNally and Barbara Miner's columns before you drink the MMAC's latest Kool Aid.
But as Joel McNally and Barbara Miner point out it in two separate articles, the MMAC and MPS voucher advocates, including former Mayor John Norquist, designed and promoted, with the support of the MJS, the NSI, not the current MPS board's leadership.
The MPS Board members who supported the NSI were the very same folks, John Gardner, Bruce Thompson and Jeff Spence, who sold voucher schools as the market solution to the failures of Milwaukee's Public Schools in the early 1990's.
They have now admitted that voucher schools are not the panacea they originally claimed. The Journal ran a series on this a few years ago. But rather than dismantle this multi-million dollar, failed experiment and focus the state's scare educational resources on improving MPS, they now argue Milwaukee has a system of schools which face the common challenge of educating Milwaukee's largely poor and minority children.
In recent articles, the MJS has failed to acknowledge that current the current MPS Board leadership, including its President Peter Blewett, newly elected MPS Finance Chair Michael Bonds and Jennifer Morales were opponents of the NSI and vouchers.
A review of the record suggests that it is politically more palatable to Milwaukee's elites to beat up on this struggling urban school district, scapegoat teachers, their unions, and the elected MPS board of directors, and promote changes in governance than it is to provide MPS with the resources it needs to serve the children who depend on it.
Read Joel McNally and Barbara Miner's columns before you drink the MMAC's latest Kool Aid.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Does the Yi trade doom Milwaukee?
The Yi Jianlian experiment is over in Milwaukee, just one year in the making.
The seven footer from China, the cornerstone of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's (MMAC) "China policy," has been traded to the New Jersey Nets!
It was only a year ago that MMAC's China Business Council Co-chair, Bob Craft, CEO of a Milwaukee based private equity firm offering residency rights for dollars, said: This is a massive opportunity – people have no clue what will hit us. There is so much work for anyone in this community that has an interest in China. They’re already (Wisconsin’s) third-largest business partner. I don’t know what path it will take, but it will be big.”
John Schmidt, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's economics writer was equally effusive:"To a handful of Milwaukee entrepreneurs, Yi's rock-star status back home amounts to a potential gold mine...
Yi's arrival provides a fresh opportunity to make Milwaukee a more globalized city, one that draws international residents, investment and culture. In May, the Department of Homeland Security approved southeastern Wisconsin as a special economic zone that offers coveted U.S. residency rights to qualified foreign investors." I'm going to package the opportunity," said Bob Kraft...."
Amid all of the cheerleading, and growth of business with China, neither the MMAC nor Schmidt ever mentioned that China's sales to the state (imports) were growing much faster than our exports.. The result of this trade imbalance - Wisconsin lost 39,668 jobs, 1.43% of total employment, between 1989 and 2003.
Now that the Bucks have shipped Yi out of town in much the same way that Milwaukee's corporate leaders have shipped thousands of manufacturing jobs to China and other low-wage havens, what will become of the MMAC's China-based development policy?
Are the city's hopes for investment, increased international residents and culture over?
Or was the euphoria over Yi's signing just another example of corporate Milwaukee's promotion of hype over real economic development strategy?
Fear not. The Bucks second round draft choice is the 6-foot-8 forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute from Yaounde, Cameroon. The 21-year-old Mbah a Moute is a prince. His father is a king! Talk about prestigious international residents!
Maybe Kraft will offer residency to Cameroonian monarchs if they cough up $500,000?
Milwaukee's corporate titans may find the Cameroon an attractive place to invest. Average wages are 45 cents a day, even less than China's. At those wages, Harley won't sell many motorcycles. But then, that's not really what the global labor arbitrage is about.
The seven footer from China, the cornerstone of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's (MMAC) "China policy," has been traded to the New Jersey Nets!
It was only a year ago that MMAC's China Business Council Co-chair, Bob Craft, CEO of a Milwaukee based private equity firm offering residency rights for dollars, said: This is a massive opportunity – people have no clue what will hit us. There is so much work for anyone in this community that has an interest in China. They’re already (Wisconsin’s) third-largest business partner. I don’t know what path it will take, but it will be big.”
John Schmidt, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's economics writer was equally effusive:"To a handful of Milwaukee entrepreneurs, Yi's rock-star status back home amounts to a potential gold mine...
Yi's arrival provides a fresh opportunity to make Milwaukee a more globalized city, one that draws international residents, investment and culture. In May, the Department of Homeland Security approved southeastern Wisconsin as a special economic zone that offers coveted U.S. residency rights to qualified foreign investors." I'm going to package the opportunity," said Bob Kraft...."
Amid all of the cheerleading, and growth of business with China, neither the MMAC nor Schmidt ever mentioned that China's sales to the state (imports) were growing much faster than our exports.. The result of this trade imbalance - Wisconsin lost 39,668 jobs, 1.43% of total employment, between 1989 and 2003.
Now that the Bucks have shipped Yi out of town in much the same way that Milwaukee's corporate leaders have shipped thousands of manufacturing jobs to China and other low-wage havens, what will become of the MMAC's China-based development policy?
Are the city's hopes for investment, increased international residents and culture over?
Or was the euphoria over Yi's signing just another example of corporate Milwaukee's promotion of hype over real economic development strategy?
Fear not. The Bucks second round draft choice is the 6-foot-8 forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute from Yaounde, Cameroon. The 21-year-old Mbah a Moute is a prince. His father is a king! Talk about prestigious international residents!
Maybe Kraft will offer residency to Cameroonian monarchs if they cough up $500,000?
Milwaukee's corporate titans may find the Cameroon an attractive place to invest. Average wages are 45 cents a day, even less than China's. At those wages, Harley won't sell many motorcycles. But then, that's not really what the global labor arbitrage is about.
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