Growing in Wisconsin

by folkbum

I get a lot of email in a day. I'm not entirely sure how I end up on so many lists, but my spam filters generally keep the worst stuff safely sequestered in its own little circle of email hell.

But somehow the spam filter failed and let this one through the other day:



I've blocked out a lot of the particulars, including the email addresses not just of bloggers but of real people exposed because the sender here has no idea, apparently, what the BCC field is for. If you want to find the blog, two (conservative, natch) blogs have already blogrolled it, and I'm sure more Wisconsin-haters will be on board with it soon enough, so you can find it wherever.

The blog itself is nothing but a bunch of links to stories in news sources, with not commentary--not even an "interesting" or "heh" or "oh, crap, this one's going to hurt." Its blogroll is a who's who of who likes trash-talking Wisconsin, including media luminaries (dimunaries?) like Belling, McKenna, and Sykes.

Regardless, I've been doing kind of what this guy (assuming; the blogonym is gender-neutral) has asked for, and keeping some stories about Wisconsin business in mind the last week or so. I share a few now, since it seems this blogger missed all of them:

• Menasha Packaging will expand its wide-web printing plant in Neenah by about 44,000 square feet and add a new press, the firm said today. The addition will mean a small number of new jobs, a spokeswoman said. Construction is expected to begin within a few weeks and be done by the end of the year.
  
• The Carver Boat Corp. said Tuesday that it will spend $27 million to build a plant to make a new line of yachts in Green Bay and add 450 jobs.
  
• Manitowoc Co.'s $2.1 billion offer for a British food-equipment manufacturer would create the largest company of its kind for products such as ice machines and restaurant fryers, Manitowoc CEO Glen Tellock said Monday. Combined, the two companies would have manufacturing plants in 10 countries and a customer list that includes some of the world's biggest restaurant chains, such as McDonald's and Subway.
  
• The first Woodman's grocery store in Milwaukee County is open for business, bringing a new low-price competitor to the area. Woodman's is looking for more locations in the metro area.

And that's just a week or so of casual reading of the jsonline business coverage. Imagine what I could find if I cared to pore over the Business Journal, Small Business Times, other state papers, and so on.

Look, I know the economy is not great. If things were humming along, I think we'd all be a lot happier and (many of us, anyway) even more willing to part with our taxes this week. But to suggest that Wisconsin is somehow circling the bowl, and that any second now we'll all be suffocated by the vacuum of a mass exodus is ridiculous. It seems a little like watching NASCAR for the crashes--and it is certainly not constructive or productive in any way.