Get Bucky Off of WTMJ!

It was recently announced that the University of Wisconsin will be dropping all contractual relations with Nike due to Nike's ongoing problems with sweatshops and generally treating their employees like dirt.

Jake, at Jakes' Economic TA's Funhouse, wants UW take it even further with their spring cleaning. He suggests that UW end their relationship with WTMJ 620 AM as well:

In addition, WTMJ constantly denigrates this great unviersity on their airwaves. Daily shows hosted by people such as Charles Sykes and Jeff Wagner mock the unviersity's culture and academic a`cheivements. Those of us that love this university and all that it is associated with are insulted when we hear a Charles Sykes promo in the middle of our Badger games, and do not need to hear those loudmouths disrupt our enjoyment of listeneing to Badger games.

Sykes and Wagner also act as a favorable front group for politicans such as Scott Walker and Glenn Grothmann, who are in favor of drastically cutting state funding to the university, which drives up to tuition to unaffordable levels for many Wisconsinites and Badger fans. TMJ talk show hosts are also are heavily associated with the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), an institution that threatened the UW's commitment to fair and quality research by signing a contract with faculty member Ken Goldstein. WPRI further sullied the UW's reputation when Goldstein had to back out of the contract because WPRI was manipulating the results of his research to fit their anti-UW and public services agenda. This great unviersity does not need to be associated with a station that uses itself as a platform to constantly knock down the UW.

And if they needed something to fill that missing airtime, we already gave them a fine suggestion that they could start on a part-time basis: Xoff on WTMJ!

Bar Talk

Throw in the high-falutin' ways of outgoing UW Chancellor John Wiley and out pops astute observations from that which is the Charlie Sykes audience.

9:56 AM Whitefish Bay Mike wrote ...
I'm not a business owner, but when I look at WMC I see a group devoted to making Wisconsin a great place in which to work, live and do business. To have our Governor be against such a noble group of people is alarming.

9:48 AM Kurt/Elkhorn wrote ...
All the college degrees in the world don't give you practical experience. An engineer who never leaves the drafting room never knows how it really works because all he knows is theory, not unexpected conditions. Maybe Mr.Wiley needs some time in the real world. Education gives basic concepts to learn from, not superior knowledge gained by dirtying your hands.

7:19 AM Dan Baggott wrote ...
Mr. Wiley should keep his mouth shut especially with wasteful spending in the UW-System. Some of these academics are only book smart with paper degrees but when it comes to common sense and logic they are dumb as a doorknob.

6:47 AM Kevin Binversie wrote ...
I read that yesterday and the only thought after I shrugged it off to "Wiley shoulda stayed a Physics Professor..." was "What do you expect from a man who saw the business community as a cash cow to be milked, not as the potential future employers of his school's graduates?"

That oughta learn Wiley for opening his liberal pie hole.

Missing The Point

On Tuesday, the MSJ ran this editorial discussing why Madison is doing better at drawing businesses to its area than Milwaukee.

McBride, of course, misses the gist of the column. As one well-spoken and sensiblecommentator (obviously not one of McBride's students) points out:

Actually, that's not exactly what the article is saying. Rather, the editorial is making a point that many profs, deans, and other higher-ups at UWM have been making for years: Because UW Madison is the state's flagship research university, it is able to attract top notch researchers, lots of big grants,lots of state funding, etc. in a way that UWM or Marquette is not. As a result, more tech and other businesses come to Madison because the research infrastructre there (as a result of UW Madison) is the best in the state. And the more Madison grows as a center of private and university research, the more grants it will attract, the more funding it will receive, and the more businesses will want to move there.

But it is necessary to point out, UW-Madison is smarter that Milwaukee in one sense-They didn't hire McBride.