Friday, July 31, 2009

Briggs CEO Shiely to retire

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that John S. Shiely will retire at year's end as head of small-engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton. He recounts how difficult it has been to keep producing engines here in the Milwaukee area.

One part of the difficulty is a local culture of hostility to business. He described this at some length in an op-ed in January 2008, Somehow, we have to put an end to Milwaukee's zero-sum culture.

In the op-ed, he mentions the involvement of local religious leaders in the anti-Briggs & Stratton campaign of the 1990s. Back in 2002 he described a less visible part of that campaign in a piece in The Wall Street Journal, Weakland's Strong Hand: My encounter with the former archbishop and his tactics.

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