Uppity Wisconsin

I have a story today that comes from my predilection to “self-syndicate”, meaning that I post my stories far and wide, in the same way a newspaper columnist is syndicated nationally—or beyond.

After I post, I know others will also post my stories to their sites, a topic that was itself the subject of a recent conversation.

To keep track of it all, I use the Google...but I recently wondered if that’s actually the most effective tool for the job—or not—so as an experiment I recently challenged several search engines to go out and seek the same search term.

We find out today...and the results are, indeed, interesting.

This is going to in some way sound like a petty complaint, but bear with me.  According to this story on WISN,  Scott Walker's  new campaign web site was developed by Ohio-based firm Midnet Media.  Oddly enough, it appears it's actually hosted in New Jersey. So - this same Scott Walker who is complaining about the drain of jobs in the state doesn't want to hire a Wisconsin web developer or host  to do his own web site -either because they couldn't find a Wisconsin company capable of doing it, or because Wisconsin companies are too expensive, depending on which spokesperson for the campaign you believe.

So there’s a lot of conversation out there about car dealerships being told they won’t be selling cars for Chrysler and GM any more.

The idea, we are told, is to save the auto manufacturers money by reducing the number of dealerships with whom they do business.

I don’t really know that much about the car business; and I really didn’t understand where these cost savings would come from, but I was able to have a conversation with the one person I do know who actually could offer some useful insight.

Follow along, Gentle Reader, and you’ll get a bit of an education at a time when we all need to know a bit more about these companies we suddenly seem to own…and about the closure of thousands of local businesses that will make the news about our bad job market worse.

We know, at the moment, that Chrysler wants to close more or less 800 of its 3181 dealerships, and that the list of dealerships was disclosed as part of the company’s bankruptcy filing.

On Wednesday, South Central Federation of Labor President Jim Cavanaugh moderated a discussion among Madison area small business owners and managers.  The panel came to together to voice their support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

For additional video and photos from this discussion visit:

http://employeefreechoice.typepad.com/wi/2009/05/madison-small-businesse...

Dardanelles Restaurant hosted the event.  In the attached video, Owner Barbara Wright explains the potential economic benefits for her industry and the larger economy if the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law.

Operating Manager Chris Vinson says having a union has helped his print shop stay in business for over fifty years.  In his video, Vinson describes how having a union has enhanced labor/management relationships at Wells Printing.

“Because my workers are part of a union, I am able to fund their pensions at a level which will provide a high standard of living in retirement,” says Larry Statz, Owner of Statz Painting and Decorating.  Statz also stated that the training provided through the union helps him maintain a competitive advantage.

We've used  Amazon Associate's rather lovely API for years now to provide an online book store on this web site.  Yes, I know that Amazon has had a history of fairly right-leaning political contributions, but the fact that they are the only book provider giving us a straightforward way to implement this was an overwhelming consideration.  I'll for the moment ignore how few of you have ever actually bought any of these recommended books from the site.

However - Amazon has recently apparently set a policy of manipulating their sales records to demote the sales ranking of any books they consider "adult" in nature.  This has primarily affected the rankings of gay-themed books, but has also dropped the sales ranks of multiple hetero books, including Lady Chatterly's Lover.  Mind you, they still sell all these books, they've just made it impossible for any of them to appear to be selling well, and therefore are discouraging people from finding them in searches and discouraging people from buying them. At the moment, Amazon is apparently calling this policy change a "mistake" that they are going to correct.  

The Washington Post highlights Timothy Geithner’s past efforts to monitor the selling of “financial instruments known as credit derivatives”.

But the prevailing regulatory culture prevented much in the way of real reform. Say Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Jeff Gerth:

“Geithner defended his tenure as New York Fed president in an interview last week. He said he had been "deeply concerned about risk in the system" and worked assiduously behind the scenes to cajole banking institutions to do more to identify weaknesses and protect the financial system. But he also took some responsibility for falling short.”

I certainly do not drink all the time.

This isn't political (well, maybe it is) but I watched The Simpsons last night, much of which revolved around Mapple Computers, Mypods, and the president of the company, Steve Mobs.  There was a trip to the Mapple store, a very funny reference to the initial Mac commercials - and this, a visit to Mapple headquarters.  The Mapple Cult was exposed. I recognized a lot of these people along the way: