Labor Day COW Mooing

Googling the phrase “The State of Working Wisconsin” correctly lists the University of Wisconsin Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) as the lead source – with the Google warning that “This site might harm your computer”. Why Google is tagging this warning to a taxpayer funded website is a mystery to me, but following Joel Rogers and his COWS for several years now, it is clear to me that his think tank might harm our country.

Each Labor Day, the socialists at COWS put out a report to serve their agenda. They alternate between years of full reports and updates and 2007 is an update year. WisPolitics (of the timed out links) dutifully posts the party line.

COWS Press Release: From 2005 to 2006, the Wisconsin economy added 18,600 jobs, but wages were down slightly, and private health insurance coverage declined, according to The State of Working Wisconsin, Update 2007, a report by the UW-Madison-based Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS). The report also documents continuing racial disparity in the state: Blacks have half the median income of whites, and one in three of the state’s black residents lived in poverty in 2006.

The COWS website is loaded with proposed solutions involving increasing government oversight, regulation and control of the private sector. Reading them makes it clear these form the intellectual foundation of the Democratic Party public policy initiatives. Joel Rogers actively supports John Edwards in the primaries for the 2004 election and there is every reason to believe his heart still lies with the ambitious pretty boy who is unlikely to critically analyze complex academic proposals.

This Labor Day, candidate John Edwards picks up two big private sector union endorsements as he holds on to the hope the Democrats come to realize that Hillary could loose to a familiar friendly avuncular face from television. Of course, big is a relative term when discussing private sector union membership.