The Milwaukee Public School District responded to a study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program that was featured prominently in a front page Journal Sentinel article and editorial.
The Journal's editors characterized the report as "groundbreaking" and the findings preliminary, but "tantalizing." But they cautioned against drawing any hard and fast conclusions.
The article was entitled "Voucher study finds parity." But MPS argued that there is no parity in how the private school voucher program is funded. Nor is there parity between MPS and the private schools in providing special education. The MPS release is reprinted in its entirely below:
Voucher school study exposes funding flaws, imbalance in special education
The first findings have been released in a study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program by University of Arkansas researchers in the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP).
What the researchers said about the financial impact of the voucher program – and what they don’t say about special education – is the significant news.
Researchers state that the arrangement for financing voucher schools adversely affects Milwaukee taxpayers.
The State of Wisconsin reimburses just 55% for a voucher student, but provides 73% for an MPS student. "It’s the Milwaukee taxpayer who makes up the difference. Taxpayers in the rest of the state do not share in the cost," explained MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos. "This report once again demonstrates that in essence, there is an extra private school tax that is placed on the residents of Milwaukee."
As a result, Milwaukee taxpayers are paying $54 million this year and will likely have to pay $59 million in private school taxes for the 2008-09 school year. "Funding inequities caused by this program are creating a strain on Milwaukee taxpayers, and we are sensitive to this," said MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos. "The inequities are also causing tough financial choices for the district."
The reports released this week also appear to underestimate the significant differences between MPS and the voucher schools in the area of special education.
Eighteen percent of students (17,300 students) in Milwaukee Public Schools receive special services through Individual Education Plans (IEPs) while MPS data shows that less than 2.5% of voucher school students have Service Plans for students with identified special needs. Service Plans for special needs, private school students are the equivalent of IEPs for students in public schools.
As the lead educational agency for the City of Milwaukee, MPS is required to maintain records for students with special needs in private schools. Current records show that there are 209 active service plans for private school students and another 241 private school students who are eligible for Service Plans but who have opted not to receive services. While there may be students in private schools who have not been formally identified through the Service Plan process, it is likely reasonable to assume that students with the need for more significant assistance are accounted for in this data.
This significant element of MPS student population (the special needs students) is not recognized fully in the study, according to Superintendent Andrekopoulos, who says that it should be. "We’re happy that thousands of families choose us first for special education services and we do a great job with their children in our schools," said Andrekopoulos. "However, special needs students require additional resources, and we’ve had to shift funds to meet these needs. As the enrollments rise in voucher schools, we’ve seen the number of regular education students decrease in MPS while our numbers of higher-cost students in special education have gone up.
This trend is real and it’s a costly one."
The Superintendent said that any long-term view of the voucher program should chart the numbers of special education children in the city, and it should track how their educational needs are met.
For additional information, contact Roseann St. Aubin, MPS Communications Director, at (414) 475-8237.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Briggs' CEO denies consequences of low road strategy
Several weeks ago, John Sheily responded to my Crossroads article that criticized his comments at a Public Policy Forum luncheon and Briggs and Stratton's' high-volume, low-cost business strategy with a piece that blogger Jim Rowen rightly called a "counter productive meltdown."
Sheily, Briggs' CEO, criticized the former mayor, Milwaukee's religious community, the Catholic archbishop, my sister, reporters, MPS students, MATC (my employer) the Briggs union, the great grandson of a former Milwaukee mayor and yours truly.
Mr. Sheily's startling response was almost twice as long as the article it was answering. Yet, he never answered its principle criticism- that Briggs’ decision to compete at the low end of the small engine market led to the loss of family supporting jobs in Milwaukee.
Instead he engaged in personal attacks and innuendo.
Sheily wrote, “Rosen has described himself as chairman of the Economics Department at Milwaukee Area Technical College.” For the record I have not described myself as the chairman of the MATC economics department for more than three years since I resigned from the position.
He also wrote, “According to Rosen, prosperity only comes to a political economy when it increases taxes, promulgates more burdensome regulations and nationalizes various industries. If this Hugo Chavez brand of 'economics' is what MATC is teaching the next generation work force, it's no wonder we have a problem. This is the same MATC that runs two taxpayer-financed business incubators that a recent Journal Sentinel report revealed as hopeless failures.”
The first sentence is simply not true. I did not prescribe any of the policies he ascribes to me.
The second sentence is an attack on me as a professional educator and an attempt to discredit me through my association with an activity of my employer, MATC, which I have absolutely nothing to do with.
Mr. Sheily actually suggests that MATC is responsible for the area's labor shortage. He never acknowledges that Briggs, like many area manufacturing firms, downsized its apprenticeship programs in the 1980s, contributing to this very shortage. Nor does he appreciate the fact that Briggs' antagonistic approach to its employees and frequent layoffs make it unattractive to workers who have legitimate concerns about economic security.
Mr. Sheily defends Briggs' decision to move thousands of family supporting jobs to southern college towns where it employs students at low wages and without benefits. He seems pleased that in right to work states like Georgia and Alabama, no one, according to him, worries about inequality, poverty and low wages. The thousands who marched and sacrificed in Montgomery and Selma, including the late Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, would surely find that an interesting observation!
Perhaps feeling a tad bit guilty over his multi-million dollar salary, Sheily defends excessive CEO salaries which were not addressed in my critique of Briggs' low road strategy and makes short shift of the nation's growing economic divide, calling it "the rhetoric of two Americas." That is, of course, because the one he inhabits, a world of soaring CEO compensation and corporate profits, is doing just fine.
Sheily even has the audacity to suggest that his work hosting a board meeting of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Board in Milwaukee is an adequate economic development response to Briggs' decision to move 10,000 jobs out of the region!
Rather than accepting responsibility for Briggs' decision to move jobs to low-wage, non-union states, he blames my sister, a long time Briggs' employee and elected union official, and his former employees for fighting to protect their jobs after Briggs started moving them.
Sheily dismisses Germany's successful economic model as "a welfare state with high rates of unemployment."
The facts: the German economy, Europe's largest and third in the world, is booming. Germany has been the world’s largest exporter of goods for four straight years. Unemployment and corporate bankruptcies are down and investor confidence is soaring. Germany has greater economic mobility than the United States. His suggestion that Alabama or Georgia, states with lower average hourly wages, per capita income and educational achievement than Germany, or Wisconsin for that matter, are models indicates that what Mr. Sheily really finds attractive is low wages!
But Mr. Sheily never responds to my principle contention that his firm ignored premium and emerging green markets, focusing its production on high-volume, low cost engines that necessitated large concessions and the relocation of thousands of jobs to low wage regions. Yet, it was this strategic decision that led Briggs to abandon Milwaukee and its employees.
And he resorts to old fashioned red-baiting, attempting to discredit my ideas by inaccurately comparing them to those of Venezuela's socialist President, Hugo Chavez.
But Chavez is the President of a country with a nationalized oil industry. I criticized Briggs' decision to abandon Milwaukee, but never discussed Venezuela's approach to economic development or nationalizing industry.
Chavez was elected and re-elected by the people of his country. I teach economics to the people Sheily laid off and their kids.
I don't need to teach them about the consequences of capital flight or "two Americas theory" Mr. Sheily blithely dismisses. They live in a city which has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, with the nation's 8th highest poverty rate and 7th high child poverty rate.
Milwaukee didn't lose these jobs because it treated CEOs poorly or over-regulated and taxed businesses. It lost them because beginning in the early '70's many of the city's corporate leaders abandoned the social compact between labor-management that had helped Milwaukee and its people prosper in the decades after the World War II. They declared war on their employees and unions in an effort to reduce labor costs and increase rates of profit.
This new approach became apparent when the Milwaukee Meatpackers Association hired non-union labor to cross the Amalgamated Meatcutters picket line the day that Local 248 went on strike in 1974. By 1978, even Master Lock, a United Auto Workers shop, was hiring scabs, an unheard of event during the post World War II period when Milwaukee was a "union town" with a relatively prosperous blue collar middle class.
Douglas Fraser, President of the UAW, wrote about these developments in his 1978 resignation from the Labor Management Group: "I believe the leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society. The leaders of industry, commerce and finance in the United States have broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a past period of growth and progress."
John Sheily and other Briggs leaders made a conscious decision to compete based on low wages and union avoidance. This meant abandoning their workers and the Milwaukee area in pursuit of low-cost labor. Name calling and factual distortions won't change what they did. Nor will it bring back the 10,000 jobs they moved from Milwaukee. Examining the consequences of their failed business model is necessary, however, if Milwaukee and its businesses are to develop alternative competitive paradigms for the Twenty-First Century.
Sheily, Briggs' CEO, criticized the former mayor, Milwaukee's religious community, the Catholic archbishop, my sister, reporters, MPS students, MATC (my employer) the Briggs union, the great grandson of a former Milwaukee mayor and yours truly.
Mr. Sheily's startling response was almost twice as long as the article it was answering. Yet, he never answered its principle criticism- that Briggs’ decision to compete at the low end of the small engine market led to the loss of family supporting jobs in Milwaukee.
Instead he engaged in personal attacks and innuendo.
Sheily wrote, “Rosen has described himself as chairman of the Economics Department at Milwaukee Area Technical College.” For the record I have not described myself as the chairman of the MATC economics department for more than three years since I resigned from the position.
He also wrote, “According to Rosen, prosperity only comes to a political economy when it increases taxes, promulgates more burdensome regulations and nationalizes various industries. If this Hugo Chavez brand of 'economics' is what MATC is teaching the next generation work force, it's no wonder we have a problem. This is the same MATC that runs two taxpayer-financed business incubators that a recent Journal Sentinel report revealed as hopeless failures.”
The first sentence is simply not true. I did not prescribe any of the policies he ascribes to me.
The second sentence is an attack on me as a professional educator and an attempt to discredit me through my association with an activity of my employer, MATC, which I have absolutely nothing to do with.
Mr. Sheily actually suggests that MATC is responsible for the area's labor shortage. He never acknowledges that Briggs, like many area manufacturing firms, downsized its apprenticeship programs in the 1980s, contributing to this very shortage. Nor does he appreciate the fact that Briggs' antagonistic approach to its employees and frequent layoffs make it unattractive to workers who have legitimate concerns about economic security.
Mr. Sheily defends Briggs' decision to move thousands of family supporting jobs to southern college towns where it employs students at low wages and without benefits. He seems pleased that in right to work states like Georgia and Alabama, no one, according to him, worries about inequality, poverty and low wages. The thousands who marched and sacrificed in Montgomery and Selma, including the late Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, would surely find that an interesting observation!
Perhaps feeling a tad bit guilty over his multi-million dollar salary, Sheily defends excessive CEO salaries which were not addressed in my critique of Briggs' low road strategy and makes short shift of the nation's growing economic divide, calling it "the rhetoric of two Americas." That is, of course, because the one he inhabits, a world of soaring CEO compensation and corporate profits, is doing just fine.
Sheily even has the audacity to suggest that his work hosting a board meeting of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Board in Milwaukee is an adequate economic development response to Briggs' decision to move 10,000 jobs out of the region!
Rather than accepting responsibility for Briggs' decision to move jobs to low-wage, non-union states, he blames my sister, a long time Briggs' employee and elected union official, and his former employees for fighting to protect their jobs after Briggs started moving them.
Sheily dismisses Germany's successful economic model as "a welfare state with high rates of unemployment."
The facts: the German economy, Europe's largest and third in the world, is booming. Germany has been the world’s largest exporter of goods for four straight years. Unemployment and corporate bankruptcies are down and investor confidence is soaring. Germany has greater economic mobility than the United States. His suggestion that Alabama or Georgia, states with lower average hourly wages, per capita income and educational achievement than Germany, or Wisconsin for that matter, are models indicates that what Mr. Sheily really finds attractive is low wages!
But Mr. Sheily never responds to my principle contention that his firm ignored premium and emerging green markets, focusing its production on high-volume, low cost engines that necessitated large concessions and the relocation of thousands of jobs to low wage regions. Yet, it was this strategic decision that led Briggs to abandon Milwaukee and its employees.
And he resorts to old fashioned red-baiting, attempting to discredit my ideas by inaccurately comparing them to those of Venezuela's socialist President, Hugo Chavez.
But Chavez is the President of a country with a nationalized oil industry. I criticized Briggs' decision to abandon Milwaukee, but never discussed Venezuela's approach to economic development or nationalizing industry.
Chavez was elected and re-elected by the people of his country. I teach economics to the people Sheily laid off and their kids.
I don't need to teach them about the consequences of capital flight or "two Americas theory" Mr. Sheily blithely dismisses. They live in a city which has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, with the nation's 8th highest poverty rate and 7th high child poverty rate.
Milwaukee didn't lose these jobs because it treated CEOs poorly or over-regulated and taxed businesses. It lost them because beginning in the early '70's many of the city's corporate leaders abandoned the social compact between labor-management that had helped Milwaukee and its people prosper in the decades after the World War II. They declared war on their employees and unions in an effort to reduce labor costs and increase rates of profit.
This new approach became apparent when the Milwaukee Meatpackers Association hired non-union labor to cross the Amalgamated Meatcutters picket line the day that Local 248 went on strike in 1974. By 1978, even Master Lock, a United Auto Workers shop, was hiring scabs, an unheard of event during the post World War II period when Milwaukee was a "union town" with a relatively prosperous blue collar middle class.
Douglas Fraser, President of the UAW, wrote about these developments in his 1978 resignation from the Labor Management Group: "I believe the leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society. The leaders of industry, commerce and finance in the United States have broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a past period of growth and progress."
John Sheily and other Briggs leaders made a conscious decision to compete based on low wages and union avoidance. This meant abandoning their workers and the Milwaukee area in pursuit of low-cost labor. Name calling and factual distortions won't change what they did. Nor will it bring back the 10,000 jobs they moved from Milwaukee. Examining the consequences of their failed business model is necessary, however, if Milwaukee and its businesses are to develop alternative competitive paradigms for the Twenty-First Century.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The (electoral) times they are a changing
Barack Obama's campaign has generated tremendous excitement among young and new voters..
New York Times columnist Frank Rich observes that:
Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book "Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.
Rich also notes that McCain's appeal to the critical block of independent voters may be overstated:
The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich observes that:
Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book "Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.
Rich also notes that McCain's appeal to the critical block of independent voters may be overstated:
The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wal-Mart heirs bankroll Scott Walker; Milwaukee taxpayers pay the bills
Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker, received his largest campaign contributions from the founding family of the notoriously anti-employee, but taxpayer subsidzed, Wal-Mart Corporation.
Jim, Christy and Lynne Walton, residents of Arkansas, contributed $7,500 to Walker. The trio is bankrolling Walker because of his support for the Milwaukee private school voucher program according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Walton’s $7,500 contribution pales in comparison to the $54,120,825 million Milwaukee’s taxpayers are shelling out for this program in fiscal year 2008.
That’s a return on investment that would make even Warren Buffet salivate!
The voucher program is partially financed by a reduction in state aids to MPS of 45% of the total cost of the program. But MPS is allowed to levy property taxes to make up for the amount of aid lost due to this reduction. So the state pays 55%, the voucher program takes the other 45% from MPS, and MPS turns around and raises the lost 45% by increasing local property taxes on some of Milwaukee County's poorest residents. In effect, Milwaukee's property taxpayers are financing two school systems!
Walker poses as a friend of the taxpayer. But his support for the Milwaukee voucher program has caused property taxes to soar. Next year, the city’s taxpayers will be forced to raise their taxes another $5 million as the program's cost to MPS grows to $59.5 million.
It’s not surprising that heirs to the founder of Wal-Mart are Walker backers. Wal-Mart is one of the world’s most profitable corporations, generating $315 billion in revenue and $11.2 billion in profits in 2006. Yet, the company is notorious for using legal loopholes to avoid taxes and regularly feeds at the public trough!
Wal-Mart sticks it to Wisconsin’s beleaguered taxpayers by transferring ownership of its stores to in-house real-estate investment trusts (REITS). It then cuts its taxes by taking deductions for rent payments that never leave the company. A North Carolina Judge recently ruled that Wal-Mart owed that state millions in back taxes because REITs were little more than tax avoidance schemes.
It is well documented that Wal-Mart’s employees are poorly paid, part timers. As a result, 1,673 of Wal-Mart's Wisconsin employees and their dependents are enrolled in BadgerCare, the taxpayer financed medical care program for low-income families. The cost-$3.7 million dollars!
Wisconsin taxpayers have also shelled out $22 million in various subsidies to Wal-Mart.
The Walton trio aren’t the only ones from outside Milwaukee County financing the County Executive who is being challenged by State Senator Lena Taylor.
Fully 62% of the $360,000 Walker raised in the second half of last year came from outside the county. Taylor, on the other hand, raised more than 80% of her campaign funds from Milwaukee County residents!
Republicans like Walker talk about local control and holding the line on taxes. But they don't walk the walk!
It's not locals who control the Walker campaign. But, it's locals who pay the bills he runs up.
Jim, Christy and Lynne Walton, residents of Arkansas, contributed $7,500 to Walker. The trio is bankrolling Walker because of his support for the Milwaukee private school voucher program according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Walton’s $7,500 contribution pales in comparison to the $54,120,825 million Milwaukee’s taxpayers are shelling out for this program in fiscal year 2008.
That’s a return on investment that would make even Warren Buffet salivate!
The voucher program is partially financed by a reduction in state aids to MPS of 45% of the total cost of the program. But MPS is allowed to levy property taxes to make up for the amount of aid lost due to this reduction. So the state pays 55%, the voucher program takes the other 45% from MPS, and MPS turns around and raises the lost 45% by increasing local property taxes on some of Milwaukee County's poorest residents. In effect, Milwaukee's property taxpayers are financing two school systems!
Walker poses as a friend of the taxpayer. But his support for the Milwaukee voucher program has caused property taxes to soar. Next year, the city’s taxpayers will be forced to raise their taxes another $5 million as the program's cost to MPS grows to $59.5 million.
It’s not surprising that heirs to the founder of Wal-Mart are Walker backers. Wal-Mart is one of the world’s most profitable corporations, generating $315 billion in revenue and $11.2 billion in profits in 2006. Yet, the company is notorious for using legal loopholes to avoid taxes and regularly feeds at the public trough!
Wal-Mart sticks it to Wisconsin’s beleaguered taxpayers by transferring ownership of its stores to in-house real-estate investment trusts (REITS). It then cuts its taxes by taking deductions for rent payments that never leave the company. A North Carolina Judge recently ruled that Wal-Mart owed that state millions in back taxes because REITs were little more than tax avoidance schemes.
It is well documented that Wal-Mart’s employees are poorly paid, part timers. As a result, 1,673 of Wal-Mart's Wisconsin employees and their dependents are enrolled in BadgerCare, the taxpayer financed medical care program for low-income families. The cost-$3.7 million dollars!
Wisconsin taxpayers have also shelled out $22 million in various subsidies to Wal-Mart.
The Walton trio aren’t the only ones from outside Milwaukee County financing the County Executive who is being challenged by State Senator Lena Taylor.
Fully 62% of the $360,000 Walker raised in the second half of last year came from outside the county. Taylor, on the other hand, raised more than 80% of her campaign funds from Milwaukee County residents!
Republicans like Walker talk about local control and holding the line on taxes. But they don't walk the walk!
It's not locals who control the Walker campaign. But, it's locals who pay the bills he runs up.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
US credit bubble bursts generating widespread economic problems
The New York Times reports today that the nation's economic problems have spread well beyond the collapse of the subprime housing market:
"'Subprime was a symptom of the problem,' said James F. Keegan, a bond portfolio manager at American Century Investments, a mutual fund company. 'The problem was we had a debt or credit bubble.'”
The bursting of that bubble has led to steep losses across the financial industry. American International Group said on Monday that auditors found it may have understated losses on complex financial instruments linked to mortgages and corporate loans.
The running turmoil is also stirring fears that some hedge funds may run into trouble. At the end of September, nearly 4 percent of prime mortgages were past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association...
And it is not just first-mortgage default rates that are rising. About 5.7 percent of home equity lines of credit were delinquent or in default at the end of last year, up from 4.5 percent a year earlier, according to Moody’s Economy.com and Equifax, the credit bureau.
About 7.1 percent of auto loans were in trouble, up from 6.1 percent. Personal bankruptcy filings, which fell significantly after a 2005 federal law made it harder to wipe out debts in bankruptcy, are starting to inch up.
Read the entire article.
"'Subprime was a symptom of the problem,' said James F. Keegan, a bond portfolio manager at American Century Investments, a mutual fund company. 'The problem was we had a debt or credit bubble.'”
The bursting of that bubble has led to steep losses across the financial industry. American International Group said on Monday that auditors found it may have understated losses on complex financial instruments linked to mortgages and corporate loans.
The running turmoil is also stirring fears that some hedge funds may run into trouble. At the end of September, nearly 4 percent of prime mortgages were past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association...
And it is not just first-mortgage default rates that are rising. About 5.7 percent of home equity lines of credit were delinquent or in default at the end of last year, up from 4.5 percent a year earlier, according to Moody’s Economy.com and Equifax, the credit bureau.
About 7.1 percent of auto loans were in trouble, up from 6.1 percent. Personal bankruptcy filings, which fell significantly after a 2005 federal law made it harder to wipe out debts in bankruptcy, are starting to inch up.
Read the entire article.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Johnson Control's embrace of green markets: an alternative to low-wage production
Johnson Controls’ new contract to make lithium-ion batteries for hybrid cars demonstrates that manufacturing companies can successfully compete at the high end of the global economy by embracing green markets, high performance technologies, advanced manufacturing, quality and service.
As David Haynes, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel deputy editorial page editor, wrote: "Johnson Controls' new contract …is another example of how a Milwaukee company with cutting-edge technology is competing globally with a portfolio of new ideas. Johnson Controls will make up to 5,000 battery packs a year for us in Mercedes-Benz S-class luxury hybrids, the Journal Sentinel's Thomas Content reports. It also proves again how much green there is in 'clean and green' technologies."
Johnson Controls' expansion into green markets contrasts with Briggs and Stratton's response to California's effort to increase clean air standards in 2006.
Rather than embrace enhanced regulations designed to tighten emission requirements for small engines, cutting 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the California air daily, or the equivalent of more than 800,000 cars a day, Briggs' management fought them.
Briggs, which dominants the small engine market, joined forces with a powerful Republican Senator, Christopher S. Bond, from Missouri where it has two plants employing almost over 1,750 employees. Together they opposed the measure that would have required small engines to have catalytic converters which pull smog-forming chemicals and carbon monoxide out of the exhaust.
Briggs argued that the converters could add a dangerous amount of heat to already hot engines, creating a fire hazard. It was an argument similar to one U.S. automakers made before the government required the devices three decades ago. But four small-engine makers said that their engineers have figured out how to meet the pollution standards safely, with or without the devices.
Briggs' failure to grasp the economic potential of California's clean air initiative was a byproduct of the firm's inflexible commitment to a high-volume. low-cost production strategy which led the firm to demand major concessions from its Milwaukee employees and eventually move almost 10,000 family supporting jobs from Southeastern Wisconsin over the past two decades.
The New York Times wrote: "Senator Bond and Briggs & Stratton are making an enormous mistake. Their resistance to California's new standards — and to the adoption of catalytic converters — makes them look troglodytic. What's worse is that they're missing an enormous opportunity. Americans do love their lawns. But at the moment, we're trapped in something of a paradox: to keep the grass trimmed we depend on heavily polluting engines. The manufacturer that offers an environmentally sound mower will almost certainly find a nation of willing buyers."
Unlike Briggs, Johnson Controls has recognized that emerging green markets have significant growth potential.
And instead of sourcing the production of hybrid batteries to low-wage China, this joint venture will sell them there- to the Chinese automaker Chery in China.
Unfortunately, the batteries won't be produced in Milwaukee. They will be produced in a new $22.2 million Johnson Controls-Saft factory in Nersac, France. French manufacturing compensation costs are $4 more an hour ($33.73) than in the US ($29.60), demonstrating that firms can pay family supporting wages and compete in the global economy.
Taxes are also significantly steeper, additional evidence that business location decisions are not determined by tax rates.
Johnson Controls' joint venture demonstrates that firms can sucessfully compete through high road strategies based on innovation, advanced technologies, quality, and service -that there is an alternative to reducing wages and benefits and outsourcing jobs and production!
As David Haynes, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel deputy editorial page editor, wrote: "Johnson Controls' new contract …is another example of how a Milwaukee company with cutting-edge technology is competing globally with a portfolio of new ideas. Johnson Controls will make up to 5,000 battery packs a year for us in Mercedes-Benz S-class luxury hybrids, the Journal Sentinel's Thomas Content reports. It also proves again how much green there is in 'clean and green' technologies."
Johnson Controls' expansion into green markets contrasts with Briggs and Stratton's response to California's effort to increase clean air standards in 2006.
Rather than embrace enhanced regulations designed to tighten emission requirements for small engines, cutting 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the California air daily, or the equivalent of more than 800,000 cars a day, Briggs' management fought them.
Briggs, which dominants the small engine market, joined forces with a powerful Republican Senator, Christopher S. Bond, from Missouri where it has two plants employing almost over 1,750 employees. Together they opposed the measure that would have required small engines to have catalytic converters which pull smog-forming chemicals and carbon monoxide out of the exhaust.
Briggs argued that the converters could add a dangerous amount of heat to already hot engines, creating a fire hazard. It was an argument similar to one U.S. automakers made before the government required the devices three decades ago. But four small-engine makers said that their engineers have figured out how to meet the pollution standards safely, with or without the devices.
Briggs' failure to grasp the economic potential of California's clean air initiative was a byproduct of the firm's inflexible commitment to a high-volume. low-cost production strategy which led the firm to demand major concessions from its Milwaukee employees and eventually move almost 10,000 family supporting jobs from Southeastern Wisconsin over the past two decades.
The New York Times wrote: "Senator Bond and Briggs & Stratton are making an enormous mistake. Their resistance to California's new standards — and to the adoption of catalytic converters — makes them look troglodytic. What's worse is that they're missing an enormous opportunity. Americans do love their lawns. But at the moment, we're trapped in something of a paradox: to keep the grass trimmed we depend on heavily polluting engines. The manufacturer that offers an environmentally sound mower will almost certainly find a nation of willing buyers."
Unlike Briggs, Johnson Controls has recognized that emerging green markets have significant growth potential.
And instead of sourcing the production of hybrid batteries to low-wage China, this joint venture will sell them there- to the Chinese automaker Chery in China.
Unfortunately, the batteries won't be produced in Milwaukee. They will be produced in a new $22.2 million Johnson Controls-Saft factory in Nersac, France. French manufacturing compensation costs are $4 more an hour ($33.73) than in the US ($29.60), demonstrating that firms can pay family supporting wages and compete in the global economy.
Taxes are also significantly steeper, additional evidence that business location decisions are not determined by tax rates.
Johnson Controls' joint venture demonstrates that firms can sucessfully compete through high road strategies based on innovation, advanced technologies, quality, and service -that there is an alternative to reducing wages and benefits and outsourcing jobs and production!
Friday, February 8, 2008
Bush budget: misguided priorities and fiscally irresponsible
President Bush's last budget, writes the New York Times, "...is a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president. And even that requires you to accept the White House’s optimistic accounting, which seven years of experience tells us would be foolish in the extreme...
What will definitely outlast Mr. Bush for years to come are big deficits, a military so battered by the Iraq war that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to repair it and stunted social programs that have been squeezed to pay for Mr. Bush’s misguided military adventure and his misguided tax cuts for the wealthy.
The president claimed on Monday that his plan would put the country on the path to balancing the budget by 2012. That is nonsense. His own proposal projects a $410 billion deficit for 2008 and a $407 billion deficit next year. Even more disingenuous, Mr. Bush’s projection for a balanced budget in 2012 assumes only partial funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2009, and no such spending — zero — starting in 2010.
It also assumes that there will be no long-running relief from the alternative minimum tax — which would be ruinous for the middle class — and that there will be deep cuts in Medicare and other health care spending that have proved to be politically impossible to enact.
Read the entire editorial here.
What will definitely outlast Mr. Bush for years to come are big deficits, a military so battered by the Iraq war that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to repair it and stunted social programs that have been squeezed to pay for Mr. Bush’s misguided military adventure and his misguided tax cuts for the wealthy.
The president claimed on Monday that his plan would put the country on the path to balancing the budget by 2012. That is nonsense. His own proposal projects a $410 billion deficit for 2008 and a $407 billion deficit next year. Even more disingenuous, Mr. Bush’s projection for a balanced budget in 2012 assumes only partial funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2009, and no such spending — zero — starting in 2010.
It also assumes that there will be no long-running relief from the alternative minimum tax — which would be ruinous for the middle class — and that there will be deep cuts in Medicare and other health care spending that have proved to be politically impossible to enact.
Read the entire editorial here.
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