Senator makes mark in first 8 months

With a message of responsible spending, Johnson is beginning to gain a national audience

Less than eight months into his new role in the capitol building, Wisconsin’s newest senator is already making a noticible mark on Washington, looking and sounding like a legislative leader with more experience in pulic policy than he actally has on his resume.

A newcomer to politics altogether, Oshkosh business owner Sen. Ron Johnson – the Republican junior senate for the state – has captured a segment of the nation’s attention when talking about the budget and federal debt limit discussions this past summer. He’s appeared on Fox News a handful of times, written editorials for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and became a well-heeled and outspoken critic of efforts to increase the federal debt. An acountant by trade, Johnson ultimately voted against the measure to increase the nation’s deficit, believing the threats of massive financial crisis illustrated by supporters of the measure were inflated themselves.

Johnson was back in the state during most of August where he attended a cluster of functions in northeast Wisconsin, particularly those events reaching out to the region’s business community. I had the opportunity in early August to moderate a discussion with Sen. Johnson in front of a group of more than 120 professionals during an event hosted by First National Bank-Fox Valley in Neenah.

Audiences attending these events had to admire Johnson’s message - he didn’t show up to offer a shiny, white toothpaste commercial about the status of America’s debt and recent spending habits.

In much a lesson taken from running businesses, Johnson’s commentary to many of his audiences focused on the unsuccessful business model of continually spending more than is taken in. With the nation’s debt reaching five times that of a generation ago, Johnson shared a genuine concern that the downward progress of the nation’s credit rating and value of our currency could have a longstanding adverse affect on generations to come.

There is hope to change that scenario, the senator acknowledged, but it has to start immediately with dramatic changes to government spending. With entitlement programs taking up an inordinate portion  of the federal budget, he indicated those efforts would likely be the first to be cut. Liberals and conservatives alike are wise to keep an eye on Johnson during the next few years as he coninues to voice his common sense approach to sensible government spending.

New online capabilities

It’s with a great deal of pride here at New North B2B that we announce the roll out of our new and improved Web site. Please take a moment to visit at newnorthb2b.com.

With the gracious help and expertise of Stellar Blue Web Design, we crafted a new online presence that’s more attractive, easier to navigate, and includes much more content from the actual print edition of B2B for an easy online read. Of course, we still maintain our virtual turn-page version of B2B, which can be accessed directly through the link on our home page.

Perhaps the most powerful feature of the magazine’s new Web site is a search feature programmed through the ingenuity of the folks at Stellar Blue. The feature allows readers to look up articles of interest from past editions of B2B quickly and easily by simply typing in words related to the article, like a business name, person or topic.

Readers will also notice the new site is supported by outstanding local advertisers who appear on the banner ads at the top and left side of each Web page. While at the site, please take a moment to click through to their Web site to learn more about the valuable products and services they provide.

Lastly, the B2B blog is now resident on the site itself. The previous version of the New North B2B Blog v.1.0 was set up through Wordpress, and while it served its purpose for us, did come with a host of limitations. I’ll fess up to falling short of our promise when we launched the blog initially back in mid-2010. I said at the time that we’d provide daily updates of news and issues occurring in the northeast Wisconsin business community.

Like any number of bloggers who have the best of intentions when rolling out a new online initiative, we just ran into a number of other priorities that cast our good intentions aside. A lesson learned, we’re committing to updates twice a week at this point, bringing you news in between each edition of B2B.

If you’d like a link to these updates sent directly to your email in-box, please take a moment to visit www.newnorthb2b.com/blog and subscribe to automated updates. All you need is an email address to sign up.

As always, thank you for reading B2B, and enjoy the new Web site.