Hatred of public school teachers has been a constant underlying theme of the organized, hateful ideologues for a very long time. It didn't start with Ronald Reagan's commitment to abolish the U.S. Department of Education (just established by Pres. Carter), but that sentiment and the "bold-but-brash" actions of Reagan in PATCO spiked the direction things would go from there on. Ginned up on the anti-unionism that is part of radicals' cherished "Freedom," this mindset is "Give us the freedom to do things that are off the scale of civic good, if that's what we demand."
Many of the "Republican" radicals and near anarchist Libertarians have sought to go the distance on outrageous legislated reprisals: e.g. Eradicate the public school teachers' unions and now, as under, Rick Snyder, abolish Detroit's public school system entirely.
No place has seen as much bitterness and vituperation and anti-teacher unionism "gotcha" come into play than Michigan in the last 30 years. The poster boy for this raw reprisal and the bone-ugly has been John Mathias Engler, a rural farm boy from Beal City, who serves as the crude archetype of "in-your-face" legislation and bitter rhetoric. Engler is the prototype, mold, from which such curmudgeons and bullies as N.J.'s Chris Christie, mirroring Engler, have emerged.
Add in major monies: Amway's cash-flushed aggressive anti-teacher/union darling-Betsy DeVos, the community-busters: right-wing Think Tanks-- the Koch brothers CATO and sub-group Americans for Prosperity, and foundations of the Scaife, Olin, Bradley, Smith-Richardson, and Walton families--whose leaders have publicly indicated their desire to completely eradicate taxpayer-financed public education. And there are dozens more.
Add in religious groups against mainstream American beliefs: the zealot Christian Re Reconstructionist movement, James Dobson (who trumpeted long and loud: "Take your children out of public schools." Expand the list with wild-eyed radicals such as disgraced and criminally indicted extreme-right savant, Mark Siljander, the former Jerry Falwell, and a host of others who misuse the public's interest in religion for private political purposes revolved around personal power and control of wealth. Much of this movement had apartheid, a revival of the old segregationist academies of the Jim Crow South as its highest priority.
Add in the disinformation factories of Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Michigan's Mackinac Center, the Center for Free Enterprise, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh's daily rants, and many, many more and hate becomes the basis of published fact.
So now one party, the TeaPublicans of Michigan, has a strangle hold on all four (4) branches of state government. There has been unleashed a grand scheme contrived by radicals such as Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich to use federalism, state power, as they envision it, to make massive blitzkrieg on legislative policy and governance at the state level and thereby circumvent and handicap the role of national and federal powers in areas where they are at odds. At the state level these burrowing ideologues can utilize their "new found" majorities to terrorize all "enemies" and are being ginned up to do so.
The moment to act on the hatred stoked-up against the role of teachers in their own affairs and the place of teacher influence in education policy-making has come to a volcanic episode of uncontrolled anti-public school legislation. These Know Nothings, whose revisionist efforts would set back the profession of teaching into the 19th Century, know full-well what they are attempting to do. There can be no reasoning with carnal rage as seen in recent committee and floor behavior.
They are attempting exterminating, purging the influence of teachers in every governmental realm they can conceive. As one watches the introduction of anti-teacher bills into the Lansing docket, it is clear that the anger and the vituperative and bitter intent of this out-of-control radical majority, a lockstep cabal of extremists, will continue unabated until the public becomes fully and clearly aware of the vast harm and danger their polices present to our families, our communities, and our children.
A FINAL WORD
Underlying all of this hatred and push to seize control of teacher's rights, compensation, working conditions, and to marginalize their influence is the real reason the Mackinac Center has spent millions to usher in this bitter and resentful moment. In many ways their deep angst and corruption is the source of all that ails the Michigan psyche.
Certain insurance elements invested in the MacCen are backing and infesting the secretive work of Mackinac Center. They are salivating over the prospect of fees and contracts for privatizing educators' insurance. They are the same tight group that wrestled the successful and lucrative Michigan Accident Fund away from the state early in the Engler Era. Multiple millions are there for MacCen competitors of MESSA to harvest and profit from, via the power and the thrust of the present anti-teacher environment headed-up currently and pushed behind the present Capitol scene by former REP. WAYNE KUIPERS, a cunning operative who has a double-edged axe to grind with teachers.
No longer in elective office, yet armed with a seething resentment, KUIPERS soldiers on for himself and for a nasty group of backroom men intent on profitization from Michigan's economic crisis-brought on in part by their own incompetence and inabilities to face the challenges presented business and state government in the 21st Century.
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