A brief visit to the One Wisconsin Now website reveals an anti-capitalist, anti-business ideological fervor not all that different from the rhetoric that came out of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. OWN’s pernicious and snarky disdain for profit cannot be missed in its screeds against anyone who subscribes to a private-sector worldview.
Being a socialist is all well and good – except for the fact that this philosophy has destroyed multitudes of economies and, directly or indirectly, caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people over the last 100 years in places like Eastern Europe, the USSR, Southeast Asia and, most visibly in recent years, Zimbabwe.
But OWN has a problem… Despite their anti-corporate rhetoric, OWN is bankrolling their operation with cash from wealthy corporate titans and the scions of prominent corporate families and fortunes.
Said Otto von Bismarck, “When you say that you agree with a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.”
Let’s start with one of OWN’s primary benefactors of the present day, Judy Faulkner. Faulkner is the incredibly wealthy owner of a large corporation known as Epic Systems, located near Madison . By any measure, Epic has been a magnificently profitable and successful capitalist enterprise since Faulkner founded it in 1979. Personally, I am happy that Faulkner has been able to create wealth and jobs both here and overseas. Surely, the existence of her large corporation has made lives better on many different levels, including her own personal wealth and that of her board members and employees, as well as her clients who have purchased her products and, in turn, their customers who benefit from it.
That is the beauty of capitalism – free people engaging in free trade to better themselves financially and serve customers who want to voluntarily purchase a good product for a fee.
But Faulkner is also a player of political hardball and went so far as to essentially threaten to fire a major Janesville commercial builder – J.P. Cullen and Sons – from the massive Epic project in Verona if they didn’t renounce their affiliation with Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
Here’s how FindLaw.com describes extortion:
“Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force, or threat of 1) violence, 2) property damage, 3) harm to reputation, or 4) unfavorable government action.
I’m no lawyer, but I would consider Faulkner’s actions a form of extortion. Should it be legal in Wisconsin to essentially threaten to destroy an individual’s livelihood because of that individual’s association with a specific political group or movement? Faulkner may not have engaged in this for personal gain, but it was most certainly for someone else’s loss – and for the gain of her political allies.
If you have ever general contracted anything and tried to get paid for it, you know that you have to sink a ton of money into it before getting any money out of it. I don’t doubt that Faulkner knew exactly the financial position Cullen was in – especially with the savage economic conditions for commercial builders – and strategically placed her extortion attempt at a time when Cullen could least afford to lose her business. I am making an assumption here but, considering Cullen’s response to her demand, I think I am right.
The Faulkner-Cullen episode provides a window into how the radical left is willing to play. They have a different set of rules and standards with only one true principle: the end justifies the means.
Faulkner has become the darling of the Wisconsin liberal fringe, and one can see why. She is one of the top donors to Democratic political candidates in Wisconsin and frequently drops money bombs on liberal groups like OWN who, incidentally, has an entire program dedicated to destroying WMC.
How ironic that OWN is bankrolled by corporate greenbacks.
More to come on OWN’s corporate-backed financing in a future edition…
I must say, your approach is quite original: take some group you don’t agree with and call them Communist! That is quite the critique, after all, who wants to be called a Commie?
I look forward to more thought-provoking material from you in which you compare those with whom you don’t agree with al-qaeda, Hitler and/or nazis, Fidel Castro, Scientologists, facists, druids, pirates, or Minnesotans.
Thank you for your comment. If you don’t mind, I plan to address your comment in another post. You’re right – I gave the analysis of OWN’s political ideology short shrift without providing much backup. I look forward to fully addressing that point and providing hard comparisons of their rhetoric with concrete examples from the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union and other worker paradises over history.
Yeah but you’re forgetting pirates. Can you do an expose on how OWN is like pirates? Cause I heard they hate land-lubbers even more than corporate greed.
You’ve proved that OWN is not against corporation or capitalism, but against one of the two undermining the other.
“That is the beauty of capitalism – free people engaging in free trade to better themselves financially and serve customers who want to voluntarily purchase a good product for a fee.” … just don’t muddy it with free speech and the exercise thereof, otherwise you’re a socialist.
Can you do a piece on that Liberal fringe and whether it would look better on a Communist vest or a Sandanista serape?
‘Should it be legal in Wisconsin to essentially threaten to destroy an individual’s livelihood because of that individual’s association with a specific political group or movement?’
I presume you are suggesting that private transactions should be reviewed by government officials to ensure that one’s business is nonpartisan. What kind of a position is that for a rightwinger to take?
Actually, I don’t remember suggesting that. Giving that kind of power to the government would be like, well, what is happening in Washington today – or in Moscow yesteryear. Put yourself in Cullen’s position and ask yourself if what Faulkner did to him is not criminal. All I’m asking is that people don’t extort other people over their political opinions and associations. I don’t think that’s too much to ask in America. Perhaps I could have better worded the question to avoid the misunderstanding.
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