One Wisconsin Now Launches Redesigned WMC Watch Website

MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now launched an update and redesigned version of its WMC Watch – a comprehensive watchdog website of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Located at www.WMCWatch.org, the site includes new contributions, revenue and expenditure totals, as well as additional research and analysis of the influence of Wisconsin’s most powerful pro-corporate lobby.

“Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce remains the most powerful lobbying and spending force in Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “WMC Watch tracks that influence and shows the ways and the amounts of money WMC spends to pass its pro-corporate, anti-working families agenda.”

At WMC Watch, visitors are provided comprehensive information about WMC, and they can access state-of-the-art social networking tools to help One Wisconsin Now and its hundreds of volunteer “WMC Watchers” rein in the influence of WMC and its pro-corporate agenda. The redesigned WMC Watch website includes information detailing:

• The $30 million raised and spent in recent history by WMC’s three main boards including its tax filings, WMC’s history, WMC’s boards’ directors and its staff;
• The $10 million WMC’s issue campaigns, including TV and radio ads and fact checks on its claims;
• The $1.1 million its boards and staff have donated to political candidates – 83 percent which went to Republicans and conservative candidates;
• The $7 million WMC spent lobbying nearly 60,000 hours in the past decade;
• WMC’s agenda on taxes, jobs, education, environment and health care and the legislation it has supported and opposed;
• Research reports including analysis about legislative fealty to the WMC agenda;
• A fully-integrated WMC Watch Action Center that offers users the ability to help rein in WMC’s influence.

“We know what happens when a government enacts WMC’s agenda of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the financial markets and reduced workers’ rights,” said Ross. “George W. Bush did it and it bankrupted America, destroyed our economy and devastated millions of families.”

Previous actions undertaken by WMC Watch include an email campaign which generated 15,000 communications to the companies of the board of directors of WMC.

“One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch has one goal,” said Ross. “To give Wisconsin the tools to battle back against WMC’s war on the middle class.”

One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch is available at www.WMCWatch.org.