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WMC's speech smothers others
The vice president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, James Buchen, drew more than a few guffaws with an op-ed column he penned for these pages and other newspapers across the state this week.
Poor WMC, Buchen griped, is paying the price for speaking out on Supreme Court and other election campaigns.
Because it has used its right of "free speech" to promote candidates, big bad people like former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, The Capital Times' Dave Zweifel and the software company Epic are ganging up on it and attempting to stifle its right to free speech.
WMC's free speech rights are a little different from the average citizen's, however. It can speak out time and time again by routinely shelling out millions of dollars on political campaigns -- the money's true sources conveniently hidden from the public -- to effectively smother the other side's speech.
During the two most recent Supreme Court races, it spent more than $2 million each to finance a vicious TV campaign to elect its lackeys Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman to the state's highest court.
Now WMC, the mouthpiece for Wisconsin's largest corporations, claims that those who question its tactics and its unending stream of anonymous money are trying to intimidate it.
If they weren't so sad, Buchen's comments would be funny.
Submitted
WMC vice president James Buchen
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