Response to Nolan Finley in "Teacher perks bleed budget dry" in the Detroit News on October 4, 2009.
Nolan Finley, like his most recent predecessors at the News, is a shrewd man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen.
When Finley openly admits, yet again, that his source for facts and projections, concerning anything to do with public education, comes from that corporatist ideological cathouse, the Mackinac Center, so well-known as the far right's animal house for political antics and wild abandon and factual hyperbole, he reveals his bias and lack of credulity.
Can the Michigan teachers match the easy access that the Mackinac Center has to the major papers, the electronic media, the inner sanctum of the Michigan Republican Party, and the GOP legislative crew? NO.
Millions of dollars from tightly sphinctered, vested corporations, ideologues, and miserly trusticants, have fed this group of fact-twisting-ferrets a rich diet of hulls and shells, washed down with a slithering dash of anti-public service/privatization Kool-Aid.
Time and again, it is the threatening pronouncements and entrapping art of Mackinac Center that has carried out the vengeful goals of John Engler and his shrewd legislative tactics henchmen: Richard D. McLellan and Larry Reed, emeritus head of Mackinac.
It was Reed who exposed his tar-pitched bias during the 1993 Republican Senate Hearings on the shutdown of all school operating funding, when he characterized the MEA as "a Leninist organization", his chosen, passionate statement of belief. Larry would later deny, by lying, he ever said such a thing at Hope College in Holland, when he was on a road trip pushing privatization and the decertification of MEA in front of aspiring teachers.
The influence of predigested talking points and prefab legislation in opposition to MEA has been circulating for decades. During that major funding crisis, the summer of 1993, the News had a rollicking field day. They were so close to their so-called Right-to-work nocturnal dream that they were elated and delirious with verbiage and puffery. Nolan is still chained to the bench from which such venom and spite was set to type.
House Speaker Paul Hillegonds was asked during the '93 crisis where the facts and figures source for the kinds of harsh measures he and the radicalized Republicans of that time were espousing, his source: The Heritage Foundation. What a tight little circle! The big player in both the Mackinac Center and in the Heritage Foundation (brought on line in the time of Reagan, well-known for PATCO and much anti-union angst and activity) is the Amway clan.
Young Dick DeVos was put on the board of Mackinac and the Amway crowd has been a generous supporter and funder of its nefarious missions against MEA.
It was the DeVos family, in particular, that pushed ahead with anti-public service campaigns nationwide and harsh political attack activity, spectacular failed efforts, in which they have wasted millions of their billions in profits.
Say again will you, Nolan, who are the real "bullies" and the perennial rock throwers in this classic battle?
We didn't see Mackinac Center backed Dick DeVos chain himself to the exit gates of to any failing manufacturing operation in Michigan, such as Greenville, as Dick frittered away his personal tens of millions on a disastrous gubernatorial campaign, did we? NO.
Have we seen a well-tuned, pro-active program to keep manufacturing alive in Michigan or make the kind of systemic and tax supported efforts to intelligently and wholeheartedly pave the way for new industry in Michigan--in the manner of say, Chattanooga and the state of Tennessee?
Cry over the fact that John Engler killed the concept--proposed by Gov. James Blanchard--to put in place and develop a university anchored high tech corridor in Michigan 19 years ago. Just imagine what an advantage that would have given us and how it could have saved us from our lack of diversification in industry.
So we are left with milquetoast sophistry about how teachers--with 5 years of undergraduate training and apprenticeship and the continuing responsibilities for even more costly post graduate training--should be relegated to what Nolan describes as the wage of "an ordinary worker" because as he states, "teacher perks have bled the budget dry." This is the same device used by Sen. Wayne Kuipers when he led the move to shut down state government exactly two years ago.
Does Finley really see teachers as ordinary workers? Is that how Nolan appreciates--"as a father and father-in-law of public school teachers", (Teacher perks bleed budget dry, Finley Editorial, DN, 10/4/09) the role and work of professional educators, even those in his immediate family circle? If so, how sad.
And as for the benefits Nolan and the Mackinac/Heritage howlers rage on about: Where are those health dollars spent? In Wisconsin?
What value do MESSA dollars add to the entire medical economy? To what degree do school employees continue to underwrite the under-insured and the uninsured, who seek emergency care in places like the Amway invested medical operation in Grand Rapids--a billion dollar health complex?
How many teachers do you think, holding a MESSA administrated Michigan Blue Cross health package, are turned away from admission by Amway's endorsed and sponsored Spectrum Health? None of course, they are VERY WELCOME. MESSA clients help pay the bills for those unable to pay their way.
The local economies of so many of our communities and towns are greatly enriched and sustained by the local dollars spent and invested by school employees and their ancillary efforts to build other community organizations, volunteer undertakings, and churches.
Nolan, it's time you think for yourself and step up to the plate for Michigan's future in a positive and helpful way.
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