Michigan Proposal 2 - News Flashback: Gov Romney Supports Michigan Public Employees Right to Collectively Bargain

A little known fact: Gov. George W. Romney signed into law PERA – The Public Employees Rights Act in 1965 – that protected the right of collective bargaining in Michigan.

Michigan Govenor George W. Romney Signs the PERA Act in 1965 - Michigan Teachers Stand at His Side

The critical question for today on the eve of the 2012 Presidential election is: If you, Mitt Romney, are so committed a Moderate Republican like your father George, and as wife Ann has touted in these last weeks throughout Michigan and Ohio: Why are you not fully in support of your father’s legacy as a Collective Bargaining Rights statesman?

Young Teachers watch Gov. George Romney signs PERA into law (1965)

Representative s of Public Employee Unions look on as Gov. George Romney signs PERA (1965)

For more depth on George W. Romney “an example of ethical leadership” look up: DOCUMENTARY on George W. Romney by BYU-TV October 1, 2008.

PROVO, Utah – Oct 1, 2008 – "The Romney Code: The Life and Ethics of George W. Romney" will premiere on BYU Television Monday, Oct. 6, at 8 p.m. MDT. The premiere will include the 30-minute documentary followed by a special 30-minute discussion with Romney family members. An advanced preview of the documentary will air on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 12:30 p.m. between sessions of general conference.

Airing as part of "LDS Lives", a series on influential Mormons, "The Romney Code: The Life and Ethics of George W. Romney" takes viewers from Romney's childhood through his business and political careers to the volunteerism efforts that capped his life.

Director Ethan Vincent weaves interviews with Romney's children, colleagues and historians with photographs, video and voice recordings of the man to tell a visually compelling story. Vincent says the documentary will help audiences see Romney's diverse influence and unique approach to politics as three-term Michigan Governor.

"What he did supersedes the way politics are done today," Vincent says. "Now you are either a republican or a democrat, but he was able to collaborate effectively on both sides."

Brigham Young University's Romney Institute of Public Management, was named for George W. Romney in 1998. The Romney Institute offers a master's degree in public administration and seeks to prepare young people for careers in public service. (Emphasis added)

Source: “BYU-TV to Premiere George Romney Documentary” Brigham Young University - Marriott School (October 2008)

Reed Larson of the John Birch Society: Long History of Working with the LDS on "Right to Work (for Less)" Laws

   

Church of Latter Day Saints or Mormon Church and the John Birch Society A Perspective: Radical Counterpoint to George Romney: Mormon’s & the Rise of the John Birch Society in America Excerpted from "How Mormon Leaders Built the John Birch Society":

“The Mormon Church has always staked out positions among the political far right. In the 1920's Reed Smoot, the first Mormon senator and the most powerful LDS leader in politics at the time, was good friends with Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. By passing the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, Hoover sent America into the Great Depression. The Mormon hierarchy sided with the most reactionary conservatives to oppose FDR and Democrats trying to pull America out of the economic abyss. Mormon president/prophet Heber J. Grant, "detested the Democrat's New Deal policies." (The Mormon Corporate Empire, p.37)”

(Break)

“When Joseph McCarthy went on his anti-communist crusade claiming communists had infested the State Department, his first stop was Salt Lake City, where he flew in and "participated in a Lincoln Day banquet held at the Newhouse Hotel." Presumably McCarthy met with First Counselor J. Reuben Clark Jr., the staunch anti-communist "whose many years of service in the State Department gave him a broad exposure to world politics." It was (during) his visit to Utah that McCarthy settled on the number 57 as the number of communists in the State Department.”

READ original posting “How Mormon Leaders Built the John Birch Society” by Baracks Backers (DailyKos October 2012)

In 1984 Reed Larson gave an exclusive interview to the John Birch Society publication, Review of the News. The interviewer was John Rees, who had been an editor for Western Goals Foundation publications.

Described as a “Fighter for Worker Rights,” Larson was asked about the power of labor unions. This additional anti-union information from the Mormon backed John Birch radicalism. From the interview of right-winger Reed Larson:

JBS: You are talking about political power.

[Reed] Larson: I think union officials should enjoy the same rights and freedoms as everyone else, but no more. That’s the problem. Today they are specially privileged individuals. In fact, as Nobel-laureate Friedrich Hayek has put it: “We have now reached a state where unions have become uniquely privileged institutions…. It cannot be stressed enough that the coercion that the unions have been permitted to exercise contrary to all principles of freedom under the law is primarily the coercion of fellow workers.” That’s the problem which our National Right to Work Committee is out to solve.

Tremendous political power has been put in the hands of union officials; and that power, almost without exception, is used on the side of collectivism, more government, less individual freedom, and greater control of the individual.

A look at the current positions of the nation’s largest union the National Education Association - shows that the union position in the philosophical spectrum has changed little.
(Emphasis added)

There you have it, a little history.

Related Slates:
George W. Romney’s Franken-Son: Mitt & His ‘Noble’ Lies (October 2012) - Middling Mitt Romney Not of His Fathers'Sterling Civic Michigan Mettle (Gaskell & George Romney) (June 2012) - For Mitt Romney, Billy Graham ‘Sells Out’ His Faith &Jesus for Political Advantage (October 2012) - The Crushing Blow to Mitt’s Quix-Toxic Quest: ‘Good Samaritan’or ‘Corporate Bandit’ (October 2012) or all posts on Mitt Romney or George Romney.

Cross-posted to Kos.

Michigan's John Engler: The Judas who led the Public Away from Public Education and Civility

John Engler’s personal crusade to eliminate public schools has at its heart the weapon of “Faux Public School Academies” better known as “public school charters.” Charter Schools are direct descents of Neo-Jim Crow Segregation academies .  These are schools siphoned off taxpayer dollars for partisan and ideological purposes.

Charters are mainly privately-run , proprietary operations funded with tax dollars taken from traditional public schools funding sources - one clear major steppingstone in the take-down of traditional public education as we have known it.   The yellow pages of the Deep South are crammed with private and religious academies run to provide schooling for white parents’ children - with every intent to support and expand paid segregation via public tax dollars.

What a long awaited dream is being achieved via for-profit “charters!”  Using chartering and vouchers to fund these separatist operations (with public tax dollar creates a separate educational and social apartheid.  Using local and state tax dollars to re-segregate the south (and the entire nation) is a wholly unworthy accomplishment (Much MORE on Engler and Charter Schools below).

Decades Long War on Unions: Protesters hold "Stop Engler at Northwest
(Airlines)" signs and pass out John Engler Flyers in May of 2006

First Some History: Nasty was the virus infused into Michigan Politics by John Engler
No amount of sophistry or interpretation of the present "sorry state" of Michigan politics and/or its immediate future can ever factor out the corrupting cynicism and bone-ugly operations of John Engler.

Engler's revolutionary angst and bitter many years of partisanship has produced a maelstrom of civic negativity in his aftermath. Many "Englerites" (and there are plenty surrounding Rick Snyder) conditioned and trained in the "Englerisque" ways have continued and matured in "bad habits" with regard to how state government is run and how the legislature behaves-late night sessions, straight party voting, and verbal bullying. Engler's part in term limits has come to be a disaster undermining good government. His appointees and friends are still scattered around the workings of this state, unrepentant if not aggressive.

One of Engler's most visible undermining achievements was his part in creating the Mackinac Center for Public Policy - a perpetual negativist voice that has near unlimited access to both the Detroit News but many of the other newspapers and media outlets in the state. Mackinac Center's voice is an echo and a replay/update of that of Engler.

Engler planted this very bitter seeds of divisiveness in this state and also in the nation. It was Engler who, in full support of Newt Gingrich, encouraged the complete shut down of the federal government to embarrass Bill Clinton and the Democrats.

It was "Big John" who royally rewarded Engler cronies with highly placed state jobs and salaries which actually exceeded his income as governor. It was Engler who participated in and surfed off the effects of the 1983 recall efforts in the state.

The cruel and unthinking explosion of 89,000 singles from the welfare rolls and general assistance with one quarter being mentally ill and another quarter "unemployable" under heavy protests from the religious community. It was Engler who attacked the state's mental health programs in search of cost savings. Parents with children suffering with mental disorders had to take their children out of state for treatment because of Engler's revolt and ideology.

The stacking of the Michigan State Supreme Court with highly loyal and politically activist judges, one of whom telegraphed his opinion on a famous case, losing his probity for even-handedness. The amount of money raised and spent to elect the Engler Three to the state supreme court was patiently obscene.

The huge expansion of the Michigan prison system under Engler, as a state industry, has resulted in many of our current corrections imbalances and difficulties. The decline of the state started its momentous downhill, run-away pace under Engler. Jobs were being lost from 1990 on. Engler's replacement jobs, if you recall, were at McDonalds, WalMart, and Menards, hardly the living wage jobs required to live nominally in this great state.

Engler's sops to business were ineffective in building up the US manufacturing base and he was always ready to say more tax cuts would improve what in fact got worse-by projecting blame on some other entity or group.

The propensity of Engler to favor certain corporations and lower their taxes created structural deficits, many of which compounded the huge debt he left - to be covered by his successor, Jennifer Granholm. This was all at a time when the nation had a period of huge deficit reduction and surplus, and a booming economy.

Engler and George W. Bush deliberately and systematically ignored the need to bring General Motors to account for its ineptitude and disregard for sound business practices. Bush's right hand man, Andrew Card, knew the inner workings of the auto industry and was ineffective in making the difference which was required.

No one wants to remember G. W. Bush. Among Republicans is name is trash. Bush's will carry into history the burden of his ineptitude and an uber-cowboy attitude which took this nation and the world to the brink of economic disaster and disrepute. Engler's sticky fingers are all over the tarnished silver platter he used to deliver goodies to his insiders and cronies.

When it came to Engler's legacy, following his governorship, he was deemed unacceptable for a position in the Bush administration. Then as a highly visible and as the overpaid head of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Engler compounded the mistakes John made in Michigan, inflicting them on the entire country.

Engler's part in the demise of Northwest Airlines and his perpetual support of outsourcing and manufacturing in Communist China over and against the pleas from such groups as the tool and die manufacturers in Southeast Michigan, who cry out for regress of such grievances. As one loyal and supportive Engler contemporary has stated, there are those who would like to have the "fat boy" back.

Engler's a mindsticker. Ask the state's teachers about Engler. He's well-remembered and still greatly-disliked. The entire state breathed a sigh of relief when Big John left the state, but he still makes his appearances like his latest visit to CMU.

John Engler as Corporate Thug: Union Bashing in Blood-sport Englerite Politics
(Original Cartoon in the MetroTimes Series on John Engler by Curt Guyette 1999-2002)

Engler dropped his proud proclamation of his Engler Revolution when it became obvious that the public was fed up with that term.  But his undercutting the stability and necessary functions of state and local government by revolutionary means continued to the end of his tenure.  Keep in mind a revolutionary TAKES FORCEFULLY FROM SOME to gift those takings to others he favors, there’s nothing civic-minded or healthy about that.

Engler’s role as a fire-breathing pugilist politician became well-known.  Porcine and in-your-face,  (Engler is literally the model of "Godfather Politics" adopted by Chris Christie of New Jersey)  Engler was side by side with (and devising) Newt Gingrich’s infamous and dangerous total shutdown of the federal government in the 1990’s.

At one point in Engler’s escalation of personal braggadocio, the then governor donned a leather Hell’s Angel-style black leather biker jacket and strutted about; proud of his new and expanding tough bully image.  Engler believed he had achieved his goal as the man who had made Michigan governance the throny nest of those whose mantra was “Death to Public Service.” To this day, John M. Engler is a man with a malevolent, indelible image and remains the perfect archetype for vulture politics.

Back to Charter Schools...

John Engler - Master of Predatory Politics - The Judas Who Led the Public Away From Support for Local Democracy in Education

Central Michigan University’s Center for Charter Schools was recently renamed to honor Engler, by some of the folks he appointed at CMU. At the renaming ceremony in Mt. Pleasant John Engler had this to tout:

"We can announce today charter schools are here to stay" ….“Competition and choice are here to stay."

The Detroit News account of this event noted on May 22, 2012:

“Monday's dedication festivities at CMU reflected on the legal, political and social struggles Engler and charter school proponents have endured while highlighting new laws allowing unlimited charter schools in Michigan after 2015 and an expansion of cyber charter schools.” 

And so the Engler Revolution slogs on!

Engler and Charters
Engler’s ensconcing of Charters at CMU was but one part of his personal “revolutionary” master plan. Engler announced at the Harvard University School of Education, May 3, 1995 (Box 123, Engler Records, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI) and made himself crystal clear as to where his passion was and where his efforts were leading.   In ten years Engler hoped to render the education unions inoperable.  Destroying the professional associations for educators would then give him entre to an entire plethora of destructive legislation and ideological opportunities.  John M. Engler never reached that goal as governor, but his successors (with the ardent help of many Rad Right think tanks and civically subversive groups like the secretive Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Rick Snyder) never relented.

Currently under a CEO/Boss Rick Snyder (who sees himself the “executive hire” in sole command of Michigan) and with the help of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (A.L.E.C. in which Engler is an important, long time operator  and committed proponent /supporter) and the Tea Party Republicans or TeaPartisans (funded by such anti-public education mega bucks as Walmart, Amway / Dick & Betsy DeVos, and the Koch Brothers) the push is on to complete the felonious work of Engler. 

See Also the exhaustive article: "Public Money Finds Back Door to Private schools" in the New York Times on May 22, 2012.

Michigan Was Not the Earliest Leader of the Charter Movement, That Distinction Goes to Minnesota

It was not Engler and Michigan who were the leaders in the origins of the charter movement.  Historically “chartering” was a teacher envisioned concept for real improvement in education and schools utilizing less administration deadweight and over-regulation,  hoping that by ramping up autonomy and innovation they could do great things for kids.   It became apparent to the determined critics of public education that “charters” could be easily co-opted, and so they were.   “Chartering” as a competitive wedge, an anti-neighborhood public school device (incentivized by privatizing and appeal to long sought sectarian goals) could be used to undermine the entire taxpayer funded system.

Undermining public education had taken root in the radicalism of the Cult of Ronald Reagan and was fully expressed in Reagan’s anti-public union action: the PATCO Action - where the aircraft controllers of the nation were summarily fired.

CMU is a poor excuse for a Teacher Training Institution:  Why was it made Engler’s center for Charters?

Such schools as CMU fall into a category where “the schools that train our teachers are known to be "under performing." To illustrate, "fewer than 70 percent of graduates [of our schools of education] meet state licensing requirements.... Sandra Feldman, the [former] president of the American Federation of Teachers...acknowledges that the quality of teachers isn't high enough."

Central Michigan University has had since 1996 an opportunity to retool, become a premier and singularly outstanding teacher prep institution.   Instead, it chose to  take the easy path, accept the 3% management fee offered for overseeing the Englercentric faux public charters (CMU now loosely supervises over 50 charters with 30,000 students receiving the foundation grant at about $7,000 each).  Meanwhile the university remains a sub-standard venue for teacher prep.

For a powerful account of Engler's lachluster history and more on CMU's Charter School initiatives read Michael Hanley, Democratic Michigan State House Leader in 2000, in "The Political Brutality of John Engler Over the Issue of Charter Schools":

"Charter schools may be sponsored by a variety of governmental institutions. Unlike traditional public schools, their boards are not elected by the public (or even the parents of their students). Unlike private schools, they are financed by public tax dollars. Proponents claim that charter schools will make traditional public schools better by creating competition in the educational marketplace. Opponents argue that some Michigan charter schools have been poorly managed and have not delivered results in test scores. These claims are supported by several critical reports authored by Michigan universities and think tanks [Mackinac Center and others].

State law allows any local school district, intermediate school district, and most community colleges to sponsor an unlimited number of charter schools. However, state universities are limited to 150 overall. In his 1999 State-of-the-State message, Governor Engler called on the legislature to eliminate this cap on university charters. A united House Democratic Caucus and about nine House Republicans have resisted this initiative. This bipartisan coalition continues to believe that additional accountability measures, such as a certification requirement for teachers and expanded oversight of how public tax dollars are spent by the schools, should be in place before the university charter cap is raised. Of course, some legislators believe that charter schools are a generally bad idea, and do not support expansion under any circumstances.

It deserves to be noted that one of the reasons the Governor insists on removing the cap is that Central Michigan University - the state's most aggressive charter authorizing institution - has reached its limit for granting charters.

And who appoints the Board of CMU? John Engler."
{emphasis added)

Man Who Did Nothing Else Butt: A life-long Government Employee
and Politician (with 3 government pensions), John Engler Hates Government

John Mathias Engler is a Master at Utilizing Government to Undermine Government

Engler’s gamesmanship with various aspects of tricks and schemes devised to distort or control branches of Michigan government knew no bounds.   He shifted aspects of the Michigan State Board of Education to the State Treasury Department. He purposely under-funded the Michigan Public School Employee Retirement System (MPSER) retirement fund. According Michigan State Senator Glenn Anderson:

“Republicans want to blame our teachers and our school workers for the issues with the current retirement system, but the real problems started 15 years ago when Gov. John Engler made severe changes to how the system was operated. MPSERS had previously been prefunded, but Gov. Engler decided to take the lid off the cookie jar and start stealing money from the fund to fill other budget holes. Now, former, current and future school employees are being unfairly punished for the mistakes and financial mismanagement of their benefits by the state.”

Engler devised many other means to obfusticate and to purposefully undermine programs and organization(s) he wanted to REVOLUTIONIZE.

Source: "GOP's attacks on retirees must stop" by Glenn Anderson on DailyKos (May 2012)

To quote John Engler from his State of the State in 1997:

"Being for public education means making sure that every school, every classroom, every teacher, every student is safe."

"BEING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION MEANS KEEPING EDUCATION OUR TOP PRIORITY!"

"One key to quality education is quality teachers. Proud, passionate -- these professional men and women are making a difference in the lives of students every day. That's why I was outraged to read in the Detroit News that in one high school this year nine teachers have been assaulted."

"When teachers are attacked in their own classrooms, academic performance is also a casualty. I may be old fashioned, but it seems to me, if a student lays a hand on a teacher, that student is gone."

Just words to fill in the time looking back, fake whiskey talk used to gin up support for his major overhaul of not just education financing, but the whole public perception of Public Education.  Perhaps no single individual has done more, going out of their way to make the lives of Public School teachers in Michigan lives more miserable and more publicly attack teaching as a profession, that Johnny Mathias Engler.

NAM and Damn
John M. Engler coming off term limits, and failing at his short-lived, only private sector job at EDS, was hired to run the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) a very right of center, right-wing infested, anti-union amalgamation of interests working against American workers and as an aggressive partner with Communist China.  From its earliest days NAM has been a perfect match for Engler.

Even back in 1903 the then radical NAM President “David MacLean Parry  delivered a speech at its annual convention which argued that unions' goals would result in ‘despotism, tyranny, and slavery.’ Parry advocated the establishment of a great national anti-union federation under the control of the NAM, and NAM responded by initiating such an effort.”   Eight years later, “In an address at its 1911 convention, NAM president John Kirby, Jr. proclaimed, ‘The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is engaged in an open warfare against Jesus Christ and his cause.'”

Engler’s All About Power & Money
John M. Engler is reputed to have received a million dollars a year to pontificate and expound at his NAM post.  Not bad for a “kid from a family farm near Beal City,” a legislative loner who honed his command of government minutiae and insider operations to the point he was once hailed as the “Butcher from Beal City” for his savage and relentless attacks on the mentally ill, the homeless and many other aspects of Michigan’s infrastructure and operations using government-to-destroy government.

Go ahead rebrand Central Michigan’s Center for Charter Schools with the name “Engler,” but know full-well that such a label on the public university’s infrastructure has degraded, not enhanced, the image and mission of that state institution.  The Engler Center for Charter Schools would rather have been a perfect fit for Hillsdale College – well-fit to that rogue institution’s overall mission and purpose.

On the Reader:

• "The Real Engler Revolution" and Engler series by Curt Guyette (MetroTimes 1999-2002) (Note: On-line archive no longer availible - Use Lexis-Nexis to access).
• Read about Engler's Michigan "Virtual High School" history (page 24-25) and history of "Virtual Education" used to create defacto vounders system. 
• Engler as "Public Official of the Year" in right-wing, ALEC funded "Governing" magazine in "Remaking a State through Ideology and Determination" (2001), creating $1.3 Billion "Rainy Day Fund" and... 
• Then read how Engler depleted that fund and hacked State Revenues as he left office in 2002 in "Rick Snyder’s Michigan Data: Reversing Engler Mistakes by Reviving Them (Slash, Burn, Repeat…)" (February 2012).
• More history on the political fights between Dems and John Engler on Public School funding and Engler's appointment of the CMU Charter School Institute board in "The Political Brutality of John Engler Over the Issue of Charter Schools" by then Dem House Leader Michael Hanley in 1999.

Related Slates:
The Ugly History of Engler’s Attempt at What He Praised as “School Reform” During the Engler Revolution in Michigan (April 2011) - Nerd Snyder Goes Engler’s Mississippiafication of Michigan One Better: Rick’s Kicked Michigan’s Future Right Into the Crapper (April 2011) - Before Rick Snyder Removes the Michigan Public School Code, Step Back to the Engler Revolution: What  Will NO CODE Mean? (April 2011) - John Engler presided over the beginnings of the Mississippiafication of Michigan (March 2011) - The Governor (Granholm) Must Lean on the MEA to Accomplish the GOP Senate's Radical Goals (December 2009)

More on Michigan Public Education on the Gazette.

Original.

How very peculiar - TeaPublicans hiding behind the shadow of FDR on collective bargaining for Public Employee Unions!

Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the rights of Federal Employees to collectively bargain versus the TeaPublican insidious lie; another case of the truth cleverly reshaped: "FDR opposed Public Employee Unions."

FDR definitively supported the advent of public employee unions, however FDR DID NOT SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO STRIKE FOR FEDERAL EMPOLYEES, which is a separate matter and distinction. To use FDR to support the usurpation of collective bargaining by Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is in bold error; a purposeful dissimulation of the actual facts.

FDR's Support for Public Employee Unions:

"Reading your letter (Mr. Steward, Federation of Federal Employees) of July 14, 1937, I (FDR) was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades 'has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships.' Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

"The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. ORGANIZATION ON THEIR PART TO PRESENT THEIR VIEWS ON SUCH MATTERS IS BOTH NATURAL AND LOGICAL, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government."

(Break)

"I (FDR) congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees (on) the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful."

(emphasis added)

Who were the National Federation of Federal Employees?

A union representing federal employees since 1917:

"NFFE was officially created at a labor convention in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 1917. It formed as an affiliate of the AFL and was at the time the federal employees union, representing several trades and industries. NFFE and other unions were able to form after 1912, when Congress passed the Lloyd-Lafollette Act to overturn Theodore Roosevelt's previous executive order. Roosevelt's mandate, frequently referred to as the 'gag rule' had previously prevented unionized activity."

Teddy Roosevelt "Gag Rule" Removed by Congress

To wit:

"Congress passed the Lloyd-La Follette Act (§6, 37 Stat. 555, 5 U.S.C. § 7511) on August 24, 1912, declaring that 'the right of persons employed in the civil service of the United States, either individually or collectively, to petition Congress or any member thereof or to furnish information to either House of Congress or to any committee thereof, shall not be denied or interfered with.'

"The Lloyd-La Follette Act provided a significant impetus to the formation federal employees' unions. In 1916, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union. The National Federation of Federal Employees was founded in Washington, D.C., on September 17, 1917. In 1918, it became the first labor union to win the legal right to represent federal workers."

Source: Wikipedia on National Federation of Federal Employees

Original.

No Rights for Teacher Union Organization: Randy Richardville’s TeaPartisan Teacher Rights Libel Legislation

Randy Richardville's crude lawmaking revenge on Teacher's Professional Organizations is based on a specific TeaPartisan Teacher Rights Libel. Don't expect Richardville to accurately represent the role of teacher organizations in the school workplace. He's not well-informed as to the actual conditions in today's education.

Much of the rationale foisted on the public by Richardville libels the real facts and demeans a great profession. If you are a devoted teacher there is NOTHING BETTER YOU WILL EVER DO.

Richardville's vilification of Michigan Teachers en mass, in his high-handed, brutal fashion (faux-right to work regs,) is a complete verification of the untrustworthiness of this TeaPublican dominated Michigan Government-its small mindedness. It's actions fly in the face of the honorable actions of former Governors (e.g. Gov. George Romney - who signed into law the collective bargaining that ushered in a golden age of teaching and professionalism 1965-1990) and legislators; statespeople-who understood and accepted the right of teachers to act as professionals and have a defined voice in their day-to-day classroom efforts, entering the learning place day-after-day to nurture and mentor pupils in their educational journeys and meet their individual/special needs.

Those who demean this sacred vocation are unworthy of credulity or voracity.

Richardville's ongoing Rad Right assault on teachers; discriminates against them with his "Teacher-Right-to-Work" prevented-the-right-and-privileges-of-collective-bargaining-via-organizing-professionally." Richardville's targeted legislation is a frontal assault; summarily, arbitrarily, discriminating against a targeted set of professionals held to be political enemies of the TeaPublican coup. The coup attacks teachers in a spasm of meanspiritedness and unvarnished partisanship.

This anti-union action is the bottom of the loathsome profit-takers' chum bucket: just one of many attacks the TeaParty rabble has brought into the restored peoples' house, Michigan's historic Capitol. This is a dark and foreboding hour in those chambers.

Richard Studley and the tassel loafered lobbyists over at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce are in a state of heightened euphoria. This Richardville action fulfills one of their most coveted goals (SEE "Strategic Union Avoidance - How to Remain Union Free").
:

These malingering TeaPublicans, led by Richardville, are anathema to democracy, fair play, and local control. They are fringe dwellers who are in-fact out of control. They're totally out of step with the majority of the public-running wild in spasms of vituperative spiels and led about by the American Legislative Exchange Council (plug and play) control of the direction lawmaking in Michigan. Specific language is spooned fed to them by corporations, most based outside Michigan. A.L.E.C. members slip it into bill submission and press for its passage into law.

"Nerd" Snyder has, with the aid of over 90 past or present Michigan A.L.E.C. members, moved in a direction dictated by the top 1% of the nation's wealth holders, the mega-rich elites: Koch Bros, Walton Family, DeVos Family, Bradley Family, and a plethora of others - just as rich and influential-determined to profit/privatize at the expense of the middle class; of which TEACHERS are in integral and important part.

Richardville dutifully represents these vast monied interests with vigor. What about his local community? Those local teachers he has demeaned and attacked? How can Richardville claim to represent those who are his constituents?


Richardville Lays Out His Plan of Attack on OFF THE RECORD

HOST TIM SKUBICK TO RICHARDVILLE: Right to work?

RICHARDVILLE: Uh, not Right to Work. No, uh, I'm not a believer that that's going to transition the economy at this point. However, I will look at some other things, maybe a subset of that. If you pay dollars into a public school system, you send your kids there, you want to participate, I don't know that you necessarily need to be a part of a union in order to work or teach in the school district.

SKUBICK: So "Right to Work for Teachers".

RICHARDVILLE: I would call it the "Right to Teach" or "The Right to Participate" in the education system.

SKUBICK : Put that in a practical way. So that means that the MEA wouldn't get members or how would that work?

RICHARDVILLE: Well, they could still offer their membership but it, uh, it wouldn't be a forced membership. They would have to recruit and do their work off-campus.

DETROIT FREE PRESS REPORTER CHRIS CHRISTOFF: Why would single out schools for that? Public schools?

RICHARDVILLE: Well, because right now, the public schools are the one that are in dire straits and I believe that those unions and those workers that are out in the day-to-day, you know the teamsters, the engineers, the carpenters, the building trades, they've already had a significant effect from this economy. They're paying more for their health care, they have less hours, they're getting less pay.

They've had that effect directly.

What's happened in the public schools and, in some cases, the public government in general, is that that economic impact hasn't hit. And so we're making those adjustments for that reason.

SKUBICK: Is this an anti-MEA move?

RICHARDVILLE: No, no, not at all.

SKUBICK: An attempt to get even?

RICHARDVILLE: No, but we do have to "

SKUBICK: You're not trying to take on the MEA, right?

RICHARDVILLE: I don't think taking on any union has anything to do with what our agenda is.

SEE: 1. "Senate Majority Leader Richardville Takes Aim At MEA"

SEE 2. Off the Record, September 9, 2011.

The Off the Record transcript shows the shallow and uninformed mind-set of Richardville. His denial of the TeaPublican's obvious vindictive intent and obfuscation are affirmations of his own true motivation. He's a "tool" of forces so overwhelming, he cannot defend against their influence and survive.

Senator Richardville is a sell-out to the elites who are pulling down Michigan and also America. Cocksure of his devotion to corporate directed radical ideology, Sen. Richardville is profoundly wrong. Richardville will be well-remembered as an anti-education cutout lacking depth and dimension.

This dust-up; a spade of threatening, boorish, and angry anti-teacher legislation polluting the halls of lawmaking; and demeaning our premiere helping profession-those who are mentoring the young-rests with Richardville and his off-the-rails TeaPublican legislature.

Even though Rick Snyder may veto this Teacher/MEA/R2W legislation, if it's put on his desk, the damage done to these politicians will be long-lasting and with direct impact on the ability of these pols to retain or seek further office.

A Republican cannot go against the historic conservative tenets and time-honored standards of the GOP, local community, and the community's finest citizens and not suffer many serious repercussions of its own making.


Original.

Pavlov’s Folly: Proposed Privitzation of the Teaching Profession in Michigan

"Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force... Against folly we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved - indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Under Pavlov Teachers become Indentured Servants of the TeaPublican Rabble

Reports succinctly an informed Kos Michigan source in "The Wal-Mart of Education States: Michigan":

"Michigan's teachers are facing an uphill battle. Besides fighting off right to work legislation, tenure 'reform' and a host of other anti-teacher bills, there is a possibility that MICHIGAN MAY BECOME THE FIRST STATE TO LEGALLY HIRE/FIRE TEACHERS AND REPLACE THEM WITH PRIVATE EMPLOYEES.

"'I look at it as offering options. If there is something out there that can offer school officials the same options at a lower cost, schools need to take a look at that. It needs to part of the conversation on reform.' Senate Education Chair Phil Pavlov (R - St. Clair).

"Senate Bill 618 reported out of Senate Education Committee with a close vote, and was separated from the rest of the GOP 'reform' package.

"SB 618 was reported out of the Senate Education Committee this afternoon and now moves to the full Senate. SB 618 allows the outsourcing of teachers and removes the cap on charter schools.

"Committee members voted 3-2 on the bill and on a substitute amendment that broke the tie-bar between SB 618 and SB 624 which mandates schools of choice.

Advocates against 'schools of choice' rejoiced, but what does this mean for education in Michigan? Apparently Michigan's teachers are about the go the Wal-Mart way. Save Money. Live better. Seriously?"

Sen. Phil Pavlov may have his "moment" in regard to the pull down of the teaching profession, but his moment is limited. Pavlov too will be timed out.

Pavlov will go down as a bullheaded enemy of children, their mentors and instructors, a real destructive force -AN A.L.E.C.'TOOL'- that lowered our communities deeper into the muck of an unfolding and steep decline of a great state into a place called "Michissippi" -a state of broken social contracts and shattered achievements.

Only a gnarled ideologue would covet such a epigram: He did his best to kill the best in Michigan community.


Original.

Snyder's Re-Invention: A Right-to-Kill-Jobs State Called Michissippi (Michigan)

A civic crime has been committed. Extravagant power plays by Rick Snyder and the Union Bashing and Anti-public service reprisalists, now holding power, as in the manner of the TeaPublican SuperMajority; have crippled the state's economy and gutted the very systems that have to power to restore the economy.

Gone are good pay jobs with benefits. The loss is equivalent to the loss of a Michigan city the size of Bay City. Were Bay City swept away by a Joplin, MO type tornado it would be a humongous tragic disaster. It is an economic disaster. One would have to assume that these state workers (38,000) did nothing to support or service the state and that their dismissal is inconsequential. It is not. The loss of health coverage, money to meet the mortgage, food for the table, transportation and a myriad of other essentials, these public servants are in deep trouble. Each of the 30,000 also represent a multiplier effect. It isn't just one person out of a job, it's a direct blow to their domestic units.

Fanatic forces such as the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity and Richard D. McLellan's Mackinac Center major influence have acted quickly and early on in the Snyder tenure to set things in compliant order to further their own cronies' profit-centered agendas. Therefore Snyder has killed positive upward economic trends that were there coming from Granholm's years of pro-active leadership. Jennifer worked to create jobs, Snyder is a JOB KILLER!

Snyder is a jobs killer genius.

Michigan can't wait for things to work themselves out utilizing the results of politics centered on revenge and retribution so endemic to the Mackinac/AFP playbooks. These things don't work out on their own.

Snyder should take an honest look at his regressive, negativist, and anti-jobs Engler-holdover team: Stratified/Highly-paid payrollers with no vision for the positive. They are little more than Corporate favoring saboteurs-who care nothing for the Middle Class and public service and who's "expertise" amounts to taking the State down destructive dead-ends.

Snyder is too mired in his own narrow concept of corporate management details to provide the vision Michigan needs. Rick has actually taken the economy from Critical to Fatal.

The Nerd's relations with massive numbers of Michigan citizen sectors is totally disastrous.

Snyder isn't a political operator who can negotiate with the workers of this state in good faith nor can he build stronger ties to officials in state and county governments-whom he has put under great pressure to do the real dirty work of inflicting suffering and job loss on those who actually run the state and local units of government service day to day.

Snyder is disdainful of other politicians who do not see him as an omnipotent CEO but as a governor with limited constitutional power, and it's cost Rick key allies in the fight to restore the Michigan Economy.

It was a huge mistake on Snyder's part using scare tactics, exaggerating the state's revenue short fall and the condition of pension and health care funds to frighten residents into thinking that cutting a gigantic slice of the business taxes would be the best route to jobs. The loss of over $3 billion dollars of citizen buying power and discretionary spending will even blow back on the joyful business lobby so pleased with their Snyder Bail Out.

A temporary (emergency) rise in the state's income tax of about 1% would have tided the state over and provided the basis of recovery and done so without reducing the state to economic rubble with Snyder's infamous "Atomic Bombing" of state infrastructure and operations, the revenue starvation of local units by the complete cut-off of state provided Revenue Sharing-the give back of local tax dollars to operate local service and maintenance of infrastructure.

By killing roughly 38,000 jobs, encouraging municipal leadership to kill or axe nearly every city service the populace depends on, The Nerd comes off as petty and aloof and MORE PRONE TO "DICTATORSHIP" THAN LEADERSHIP. Top-down state control of every detail of local community life is not sustainable nor advisable.

Reshaping the state's weaken economy is a decades-long process, Michigan residents should have confidence that it's progressing. But that is not the case. THE GOAL IS JOBS, GOOD JOBS, JOBS THAT RESULT IN REAL PROGRESS AND STEADY OUTCOMES ARE THE TARGET.

Doing pro-active things, being collaborative and not combative with public service, would convey the message Michigan has a future. In the same light, killing jobs and therefore putting families off health care (multiply 38,000 by the average size of a state employee household for those dismissed, fired, state employees and realize this is a HUGE ECONOMIC HIT). State employees are summarily out of work in a jobless economy, many will be facing foreclosures, and bleak desperation.

SNYDER HAS JUST CREATED AN ECONOMIC DISASTER OF THE FIRST ORDER. Worse yet, killing state jobs, only to deliver those same jobs to for-profit operators handpicked by Snyder to substitute in lower quality and irresponsible and unnecessary middle management (not directly answerable to the community) is a tragic civic blunder.

All this mistakes one would naturally expect a Certified Nerd to make.


Original Post.

Hatred for Teachers: The Radical Right has created a defining Moment in Michigan; TeaPublicans have institutionalized HATE

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.

Original Post.

In Michassippi; With or Without Unions, TeaPublicans Have Come to Hate Teachers

Response to Ingrid Jacques in "Teachers feel the heat" in the Michigan View, Detroit / Mackinac News on May 20, 2011.

Chirpy Jabberwocky Jacques writes about teaching-stand-alone-outside-a-union- as a right wing, beguiled "teacher" hoping to separate herself from all teachers' unions. Ingrid states that among suspect organizations "teachers unions" are "some of the worst offenders."

Mouthing the "bumper sticker" style slogans of Frank Luntz-speak, via Andrew Coulson, anti-teacher association operative for the infamous Koch Bros.' CATO Institute of hate and dissension, Ingrid makes her assumptions which are fallacious.

Teachers may only be dedicated and pure if they are "STAND ALONE" in relation to their employer, as we may be sure, Ingrid feels she is. ("Teachers feel the heat", Ingrid Jacques,DetNews, 5/20/11)

If teachers, however, choose to associate with other teachers in a "union"; then they summarily may be dismissed from status and vilified as corrupted; such as the Mackinac Center has been so well-known as propagandizing here in Michassippi - the new Snyderesque "state" where teachers are stripped of rights and status, radically reduced in salaries and collaboration; as proposed in pending Michigan Tea-partisan legislation; and as projected by the on-going TeaPublican proto-pogrom (yes, this is becoming the fitting term), a purposeful and vicious, on-going attack on instructors/mentors (as a specific category of persons and professionals) unworthy of public and political support or esteem, subject to being shunned and legislated against.

Teachers, who are targeted for reprisals and revenge for their association together for the betterment of public schools, neighborhood public school children, and for their standing in their professional chosen association, are much maligned and subject to nasty "trash talk." The blogs of the Detroit/Mackinac Center News are a continuous and egregious example.

If we read Jabberwocky Jacques correctly:

• A small business person is degraded and tainted by membership in the Chamber of Commerce-a powerful lobby with overweening influence in government.
• An attorney has less probity if she/he is a member of the State Bar which defends the rights and privileges of lawyers and takes political stances favoring the legal profession.
• A manufacturer is without credibility and stature if it belongs to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-a group set up to collectively defend and promote their forward progress as industries.
• A doctor is discredited and undermined as a reliable professional if she/he belongs to the American Medical Association which lobbies for her/his concerns and the physician's livelihood, working environment, and professional advancement.
• A legislator is to be discounted as dishonest and forthright if they belong to the "union" known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.) which works diligently to convey into the law the wishes of its dominate corporate control structure.
• An Evangelical or Strict Catholic is less credible or endowed with a questionable moral standing by becoming a member and participant in the strict union with individuals and groups known as Right-to-Life - armed with a powerful agenda.
• A Christian Radio operator/owner looses respect and moral high ground simply when she/he joins in with the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in an association/union promoting the goals and objectives, the financial and regularity environment of religious broadcasting.

All this we "just love and admire teachers" comes with a caveat" Just don't let us catch teachers coming together in an association which effects change or promotes laws and legislation that enhances and protects public education, neighborhood schools, and pupils. Should you do that... we will turn on you with a righteous vengeance. Or as one marauding newbie TeaPublican has said, "I don't care if I get don't re-elected, I'm here to do God's work." And oh the strange "god" work he does!

TeaPublicans obviously find it easy to HATE TEACHERS for any variety of reasons-unions being only one of their chosen categories.

If you remember only one thing Ingrid, hating teachers will include you.

Original Post.

The lesson for today is the American pension system: What to look forward to when you retire.

This text is drawn from the government rule book, with its contradictory and often-overlapping laws relating to pensions.

Here are the highlights: 

• For the first time, the percentage of workers who will receive a fixed monthly pension is steadily declining.
• Women who retire from jobs in businesses receive smaller pensions than men.
• The percentage of workers who will receive reduced pension benefits is growing. And half of all workers have no pension plan at all.
• Corporations removed $21 billion from their employees' pension plans during the 1980s. Overall, nearly 2,000 corporations dipped into employee pension funds for at least $1 million each.
• Conscientious workers who establish their own individual retirement accounts - believing them to be insured by the federal government - one day may discover to their dismay that many are not.
• Workers in the private sector receive far smaller pensions than workers in local, state and federal governments, which now employ 17 percent of the American workforce.
• And the people who made all this possible - members of Congress - will continue to receive the best pensions of all.

Label this pension chaos.
Then understand that, barring a massive revision of the rule book by Congress, these conditions will continue to deteriorate.

In the meantime, watch for the coming war between those who work for government and those who don't.
It will come when workers in private industry realize how much power public-employee pension funds wield.

This Analysis by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele


Original Post.

Lies, Lies, and More Lies" Detriot News Op-Ed: "Rick Snyder not Anti-Union / Collective Bargaining" - Oh Yeah?

Response to Detroit News Op-Ed "Snyder hasn't earned anti-union label: Nothing he's done so far infringes on collective bargaining rights" on March 18, 2011.

Just a few points on this News Op-Ed:


1. "(N)obody is losing their collective bargaining rights under the emergency financial manager legislation signed into law this week by Gov. Rick Snyder." The honest track was that of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, do what you do to destroy collective bargaining head "on and then call it "progressive." Snyder's team's temerity is to make the "union busting" process loing and drawn out, bone ugly, and extremely divisive. Snyder, in a word, wants to further destroy this state turning one governmental unit against another. This Snyder does with threats and coercion. But he's attempting to sugar coat it with denials of his end purposes.

2. "(T)he charge just doesn't stick to Snyder." -- - "he's said repeatedly he will not follow the lead of governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, and seek to weaken collective bargaining for public employees." Again, the method chosen by the Snyder team is duplicitous and corrupting. Afraid to take on the issue of collective bargaining in a straight forward manner; Snyder chose to do it with a cruel method. Impose shortfalls and revenue shortages at his discretion: Large cuts to school aid, and cutting off Block Grants to local units via State Government Control; out of Lansing. To this, Snyder adds the threatening provisions of a new and severely harsh EFM/Emergency Finance Manager. These SUPER BUREAUCRATS are being trained and put in place with wide and powerful dictatorial digression to destroy local units in an entire variety of ways. Breaking the contracts is not holding the collective bargaining process inviolate.

3. "And nothing in the emergency financial manager law infringes on collective bargaining" The highly paid agents of the Dillion/Flannagan's newly created Plunkett/Cooney friendly "firm run" Realignment Bureau have an unlimited ceiling to their compensation and powers; such as any boss would envy. Local property rights are about to be trashed. To be added to the trauma of an imposed "emergency" is the potential for huge costs to be levied against the local unit to fund the EFM's, further liquidating whatever taxpayer assets might remain. This is a self-feeding fee frenzy.!

4. "The only thing that changes is that if the governmental unit reaches the point of insolvency, the manager can (do what he deems necessary) to balance the books and avoid default, including breaking or rewriting contracts with unions and vendors." The way this entire anti-union, anti-collective bargaining scheme is structured rests on the fact that Snyder et al can and will use directed political decisions to make discretionary cuts in revenue to be tailored to the specific unit(s) they want to push into "insolvency." If and when the public comes to see the carnage Snyder has imposed on their fire department, their policing, their schools, etc. the reactions will be bitter and long lasting. This Snyder, the stubborn, cannot conceive as possible: he holds to a bumper sticker thought: Simple, Fair and Efficient. Rick feels a little "Chris Christie" bullyboy shove and kick will suffice; a loud outcry and then the struggle will all be over. Not so. If one does not fight for what has been their community, their family civic heritage, then what is there left to fight for. SNYDER'S BIG GOVERNMENT SLAP DOWN ON THE WORKING FOLK IS UNACCEPTABLE.

5. "But even that's not so much of a change" In the past we held our noses because the effected units were 'throwaways' areas the rest of the state had turned its back on. Now it won't be just war-torn Benton Harbor or some inner city satellite governmental unit, it will be "your hometown" your first responders units that are callously trashed for the sake of politics and goals set in motion by the ugly remnants of Englerism and the teapartisans with pitchforks.

6. The EFM law "law does not dissolve the unions." Snyder has said he hopes toughening the law, a version of which has been on the books since the early 1990s, will act as an incentive for local governments and their unions to work out deals at the bargaining table to avoid financial emergencies. There are early signs that the strategy is working." Snyder's "incentives" are direct dictatorial actions that will clearly indicate whose in charge and clearly show that the local sovereignty over local affairs is history. Local government is THEIR GOVERNMENT, TOP-DOWN BIG GOVERNMENT FROM LANSING TO CRUSH LOCAL CONTROL. Folks this isn't the way it was supposed to turn out. Tea Party advocates take clear notice, YOU'VE BEEN HAD.

7. "Democratic legislative leaders are fanning the flames by promising a ballot initiative to enshrine collective bargaining as a right in the state Constitution." That would be mistake. That's not the sort of thing that ought to be protected by the Constitution." Here we see a hint of panic in the minds of the oppressors. If the people rise up and become alert to the dangers in Snyder's massive "shift and shaft" from Republicans gone rogue, and if they can mount a political counter-punch, then the top-down game-plan will change. There are measures that can and will be taken to forestall and suppress the mega-harm this novice governor has rolled over into. Snyder is no longer welcome many places and as his EFM's fan out and begin their "corporate cannibalization " of locally controlled governmental units; Tricky Rick may find himself walled up in his castle-like digs in Ann Arbor, unable to go and come without being confronted with hisses and jeers.

8. "There's no reason for unions or local communities to feel threatened by the emergency financial manager law." We expect that communities will have to comply. "make the hard choices necessary to avoid insolvency" "they'll avoid the financial manager as well. "

This News/Mackinac Center editorial is a great and near classic piece of disinformation and propaganda. 

 "Just stay calm." We, who are now well in the advantage, need for you to go about your business of everyday life and let us do what we want. WE IN BIG GOVERNMENT HERE AT LANSING HAVE CHOSEN OUR WINNERS. YOU, THE LOSERS MUST BE GOOD SPORTS AND TAKE DEFEAT(S) WITH HUMBLE RECOGNITION: TO THE WINNERS GO THE SPOILS.

There is one caveat, one moment of truth: Laura Berman points it out 3.22.11, "The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C., ranks Michigan's business climate 17th in the nation, better than Ohio (46th), Illinois (23rd), Arizona (34th), Wisconsin (40th) or indeed any of its neighbors, but Indiana (10th)."

One has to seriously question: "Just giving $1.8 billion to business brings on insurance that things will improve for the state's budget woes."

"The governor is betting that a proposed $1.7 billion in business tax breaks ("faith-based economics" is what some call it) will right Michigan's sinking fortunes by taxing pensions, cutting state aid to municipalities and putting pressure on public worker benefits."

This novice governor may be dead wrong. What then? Winners may become the biggest losers. Taking $1.8 billion out of the current economic "return-on-the-dollar spent in the local economy pass-around cycle" is a gigantic gamble. Adding $1.7 of it to business, as a reward, does not mean a better economy. It does mean a "fat gift" of short-lived profit for business.

Business may actually be the new "losers"!


Original Post.

Promise Maker Michigan Encouraged to Become a Promise Breaker - Deadbeat Provider

We are wearied by; tired of our obligations to those who have long served us in public ways. We would be so much better off if we could strip state retirees of their benefits and health care to improve our own bottomlines.(Union entitlement is unsustainable, 3/11/11)

Note: Dan Calabrese's posting "Union entitlement is unsustainable" posted to the Michigan View (Detroit / Heritage / Mackinac News) on March 11, 2011 was removed from the Detroit News website.

So we find our Michigan View moralist and anti-public cynic, Dan Calabrese saying:

"When the economic environment changed, they (Many units of government in Michigan) wished they could get out from under these commitments, or better yet, that they had never made them in the first place."

This candid admission shows a lack of support for honest commitment and basic integrity. Moral gives way to business practical. When we encourage these units to use a crisis to accomplish what we know is their contractual and socially committed obligations, (due to disaster capitalism and Snyders flawed budget proposals) we rationalize our firm determination to walk away.

Rick Snyder's self-created finance crisis is built atop a monster Bush created economic collapse due to systemic corruption, fraud, and cleverly designed de-regulation stepped down from Washington, D.C. by no-less than former/ousted one term U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham.

Sen. Abraham presided over the very Senate session that lowered the bar on unique and publically indecipherable investment devices and market gambling that had been previously outlawed. These retreats from market regulation, laws that had made illegal by that same body over 100 years previously.

Libertarians are almost certainly to be practitioners of an amoral code. They are highly individual. The well-being of others is shut out as they pursue the neo-Objectivist code of a dangerous Russian-born radical, Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum), whose virulent atheist, anti-Jesus gospel/tome was published titled "The Virtue of Selfishness."

Many neo-Libertarians infesting the body politic are the Evil Samaritans; who steer completely clear of those of their fellow humans in distress or need. They're not community-minded.

If being a liberal is by definition being: generous and gregarious, with a mind to community and advocates of the New England Town Meeting, collective good; they are not some say even "evil." They know nothing of the true nature of an organization that calls its members, brothers and sisters-the labor associations that have made the middle class prosper and their children attain to a higher level of education and service do to the brotherhood of association. Never forget the corporate evils of the past which were overcome by solidarity!

Dan thinks he's right. And we know he's "right" alright. Dan often here at the MIView, prides himself being "right of right" As he moves toward greed, he will be less and less troubled by "kicking against the pricks" by God and more anesthetized by his own narrow needs to the more complete exclusion of others outside his "tribe" read; mega-church and weekly Christian Businessman's meetings, Tea Party klatch.

This is why we react with skepticism when we learn that Dan's problems with unions and public employees. His reaction is rooted in the fact they represent employees with a right to organize and enjoy due process. So when things went sour for Dan's PR business, as he has revealed on this blog, Dan clearly resents and resists not having the privilege of his simple "pleasure" -freedom to tap a worker on the shoulder at a perfect moment in the work day: giving the employee a cardboard box and showing him/her the door ala his sacred right; the ability to "hire and fire at will."

We also note, Dan goes farther in his pursuit of "autonomous self-interest." Calabrese tells us; "...when you're deluded into thinking you've entered Permanent Fat and Happy Land, you do things - things you sometimes regret. You sign long-term leases on offices and equipment. You agree to generous union contracts. Hey, the numbers look good!" Dan did this, he tells us, then he decided he was being boxed in by his decision to "go under contract" with his provider at the very time his business was floundering. Calabrese's "out"? Who would believe: Violate/break the binding contract.

Dan: "The problem was that more than half my monthly expenses were from long-term leases I HAD FOOLISHLY SIGNED. I couldn't just sit there and say, 'Cut this, cut this, cut that . . .' I had to contact each of the parties involved and see if I could renegotiate. Some were willing. Others were not."

"The bottom line is this: The business survived, and is still operating today, but only because I recognized it had to be radically restructured, with REGRETTABLE AGREEMENTS renegotiated and certain elements eliminated entirely."

How did Dan accomplish survival of his business?
Dan: "In the case of (the lease company) I sent back the copier early, and told them they could try to collect more money from me if they thought it was worth the trouble. They didn't.

Wrote Calabrese:

"You may conclude from all this that I am a horrible businessman. YOU MIGHT NOT BE WRONG. But the point is that I faced problems that many businesses face every day, and I had no choice but to make adjustments and reform my organization in order to survive."

From this self-narrated story Calabrese draws this wider public conclusion: The State should likewise needs to break it's social contract and long-standing commitment to its career retirees and teachers. Dan's wisdom based on his "business experience" is just walk away. Collect if you can.

Calabrese pontificates:

"No one is ever entitled to anything forever. You (the state and business) do the best you can, given the economic realities in which you operate. You can be flexible when circumstances demand it, or you can refuse, in which case people will find a way not to have to deal with you."

In other words take what is given you (public employees) forget that the State as a retirement obligation to you or the state will "find a way not to have to deal with you."

So the promise keeper State is supported to become the promise breaker, the deadbeat manager of obligations clearly integral to the retiree's retirement fund. And all this based on a faulty logic and a contrived and purposefully exaggerated "economic crisis"; presented by Snyder et. al. as a device to target "political enemies."

How moral is that, Dan?



Original Post.

Michigan's "Emergency Financial Manager Reform" is Bogus.

What passes as “emergency financial manager reform” is bogus. Don’t Buy Into It.

The Englerite Snyder strategists have overstepped, they are seeking to destroy collective bargaining by means of the backdoor device: H.B. 4215 is a cleverly designed device to force the cunning perversion of collective bargaining's framework as a cost cutting wedge. At the same time the proposed bill carries in it a threat to smash units that are being intentionally targeted by Snyder-driven cash shortages ($470/student in education, Huge cuts in Block Grants to Firefighters, etc.).

The bill empowers Snyder to strangle those units, vesting anti-democratic powers in the hands of "Emergency Finance Managers) slick attorneys already being trained by State Treasurer Andy Dillon and Pluckett/Cooney (Super High Fee Legal Beagles) to effect radical dictatorial rule and powers; as proposed in H.B. 4215; to effectively use collective bargaining as a weapon against labor and teachers, creating harmful and capricious damage to local government services.

Tricky Rick: Kill Collective Bargaining by the Inch by Inch Tricky Rick wants to see collective bargaining used to blow away opposition to his radical re-organization of Michigan's wealth out of the hands of those whose skills and career training have earned it into the hands of the constant whiners at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the bomb throwers at the Mackinac Centers' bawdy corporatist propaganda mill.

The News Editorial 3/6/11, ("Union attack on emergency financial manager reform is about protecting the status quo") acknowledges one clear fact; H.B. 4215 gives the Emergency Financial Manager "the power to break collective bargaining agreements that are deemed to be contributing to a community's or school district's financial failure."

Snyder Thinks He's Pulled Off A Coup As in the old story: One guy, too cheap to have my dog's tail bobbed as in the tradition vet method, so he fancied saving expense by cutting its tail off half-an-inch-at-a-time; because it's cheaper and so it won't hurt the dog so much, he rationalized. Thus with Snyder: The hurt, the acrimony and dissension inherent under the purview of H.B. 4215 is fiendishly divisive and long lasting its purposeful disunity. It will turn neighbor against neighbor; under government top-down outside pressure from Lansing many bad things will occur.

Remember when we lost local control over school operating costs under Engler's Prop A ? And now we pay the piper.

Tea Partiers Duped: Local Control Smashed - Big Government Smashes the Little Guy 

This not what Tea Party people wanted when they called for local input and protection from excessive and coercive government intervention into how our money at the local level would and could be spent. This not why TPers voted in Legislators to do. They wanted Legislators who would carry out their wishes - protecting local revenues and rights-or so they said.

Wake up Teapartisans! You've been diddled.


Original Post.

Reality is that no Cuts by Gov Rick Snyder Would Be Needed If ...

To pay for Snyder's radical, deliberate revenue shift, along with changes in Michigan's tax law that also reduced K-12 funding, Gov. Snyder's budget is proposing deep cuts in education.

Rick Snyder says that THIS WILL FORCE LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO BECOME MORE EFFICIENT (cut supplies, and curtail all manner of instuction and programs) and lower their costs. School districts would get $300 less per student, on top of a $170 cut this year. (This us un-precidently radical, no other governor set out to do this not even Engler who found more money for education, not hundreds of millions less.

In particular, Snyder wants school boards to extract concessions from unions by getting employees to pay 20 percent of their health care premiums. The governor also asserts that schools can save through consolidation of services and improving purchasing practices. The budget cuts will also make it much more difficult for unions to negotiate pay raises.

Concessions with labor unions are unlikely to come easily. If unions balk, teacher layoffs will be imminent, leading to impacts such as larger class sizes (and statewide acrimony and unnecessary disruption of our children's vital education).

These remarks are interpolated from material presented by The Michigan Truth Squad, Project of the Center for Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder's Proposed Budget Analysis 2.24.11

Original Post.

The Grover Norquist & Newt Gingrich Tag Team Goad The Nerd (Rick Snyder)

Gingrich outlined the program for the National Republican Governors which outlines the radical tack that is being pushed on states as an attempt to enact anti-union legislation nationwide. The purpose is to de-fund the unions and thus "enhance" GOP chances in the 2012.

The Nerd is swept up in this morass.

Michigan is being beset with vicious attempts to sweep unions from their ability to participate in public policy formation and retain their rights to pensions and benefits, and most significantly retain the "right to bargain"-collective bargaining as public unions.

Gov. Scott Walker implicated Snyder as part of a network of governors with whom Walker plots.

Snyder has used legislative trickery to camouflage his earnest efforts to de-certify the role of unions. Certain bills on the fast track through the Legislature contain elements which will accomplish "Walker's Wisconsin Anti-Union crusade."

How is the Gingrich mandate moving in the Nerd's Michigan?

Yesterday, the (Michigan) State House passed a bills package granting emergency financial managers the dictatorial power to toss out union contracts and summarily dismiss (fire) elected officials in cities, counties, townships and school districts operating at a deficit. And barring those officials (in this extreme economic downturn which is the real cause of their budget shortfalls) from the right to hold office for years into the future is troubling. Punitive? That's putting it far too lightly.

Dangerous to democracy? Absolutely.

Karl Rove, soon to come to Livingston Co., has reinforced the Norquist/Newt Gingrich gameplan, both as a point person and a fund raiser. Rove clearly outed his purpose in engaging the unions in "do or die." Karl revealed the GOP national campaign is targeted to undercut the Democratic Party with the unvarnished purpose of achieving partisan homogeny in 2012.

Gingrich told told both the American Enterprise Institute and the National Republican Governor's Association: "The first great laboratory (using the state legislation to attack unions) for replacing the left will not be in Washington. It will be in the states.

As the Walker remarks state: Wisconsin is "the first domino."

Can the Nerd trickery be far behind?

Original Post.

A Political Marrigage from Hell: The Blonde and the Political Godfather

Response and commentary on series of articles on Michigan's being declined for "Ract to the Top" funding in the Oakland Press in "Fingers point over failure of Race to the Top application" which included comments from Republican Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and the MEA and and AP Story "Gov, Granholm ‘disappointed’ at Michigan being shut out in 'Race to the Top' education funds" on March 5, 2010.

A failed Governor and a gnarly power-grabber make one last attempt to achieve their legacy moment-Pin Blame on the State's Teachers.

Nothing short of desperation and the full realization that circumstances created by G.W. Bush's Great Job Killing Recession has forced the shotgun marriage of a marginalized governor (seeking a promising position in politics outside Michigan) and an old grumpy frump of a "public payroller," man with delusions of power and control over his fiefdom of Oakland County (replete with Brook's long history of "shot calling" as the GOP Godfather of Eastern Michigan) would have the power to produce this god-awful blames laying tag team: Brooks and Jenny.

Previously, here's how it was. " L. Brooks Patterson just wants to know: Is Gov. Jennifer Granholm trying to upstage him -- again?

"The 71-year-old Oakland County executive issued a press release Tuesday pointing out that, for the second year in a row, Granholm has scheduled her State of the State address on the same night of his State of the County speech." That highly annoyed Brooks. So what brings about this highly irregular, ugly marriage of pols?

THE GODFATHER’S SLAPDOWN: DEFEAT THE MICHIGAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION'S RIGHT TO DEFEND TRADITIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION
The teachers of Michigan, more exactly the Michigan Education Association, have so far succeeded in getting across the point to current "the powers that be" in Michigan and to the state legislature and also to the now-powerless, lame duck governor, that individuals, parents, local business people, and children are right to defend and protect the traditional public school in their community.

This is a desperate hour. The over-all long term decline of Michigan, first seen as a slight trickle in the earthen dam (Michigan's economic health) which held back the outsourcing and Chinese completion-a flood building behind it-expanded under John Engler indicated big trouble ahead. Engler ignored the distinct warning signs of that small fissure and now the dam is about to breech sweeping away what is left of Michigan's struggling economies.

THE BIG FIGHT: THE LOCAL ECONOMY VERSUS THE SELFISH INTRANSIGENCE OF BOTH  BISHOP AND DILLON
Agriculture now takes a high place as Michigan's economic engine. Tourism is far more than a pastime part of the state's income. The local economic engine in every community across this great state is the public school. Forget the wingnuttery of the past, ignore the meanness of the Engler Revolution and the selfish intransigence of the politically hopeful "pretty boys" Bishop and Dillon. We consistently gain from our investment and returns drawn from traditional public schools' operations and purpose. It's blind economic ignorance to claim otherwise.

Never forget: Traditional education moves the local economy and consumes local supplies, education provides stable and dependable jobs and generates local dollars of great importance to our state's survival,  while at the same time public school delivers the highest hopes we have for our children into a better tomorrow.   It's our present local economic engine and our entire future promise for children. MEA and parents, local businesses, and informed citizenry support this fact. Back in September 2009 the Associated Press survey of the state showed that Michigan supported INCREASED TAXES FOR EDUCATION BY A 2 TO 1 MARGIN.

The deceptive politics and the chicanery connected to Proposition A of 1994 took a big part of the local authority that is needed to sanely run those local neighborhood schools and shipped it on a ladle to a huckster-bound Lansing. In Lansing school operations funding became a shuttle cock for the peacocks of the legislature and a "goodie bag" for the lobby corps.

ENGLER MADE ANTI-PUBLIC SCHOOLS HARANGUES FASHIONABLE : ENGLERISM STUCK.
Under Engler, local control was sold off. Like that biblical birthright local control was traded for a cold bowl of insider pap. This fact and the spirit it spawned is attested to by long-time observer, Tim Skubick: "Beating up on the MEA is a popular in-door sport in this town (Lansing). It was former Gov. John Engler who made it fashionable and others have picked up where he left off." One of those carrying on is Patterson: (Patterson said last Friday. "Of course it (RTTT funding) went under because the MEA opposed it, and one of the things they look for in Washington is collaboration, and we didn't have it here in Michigan... I'm holding the MEA strictly responsible for the loss of that money.") Patterson is senile or well off-his game. "Collaboration?" When did Patterson call for across-the-aisle cooperation during the last round of state budget quarrels? Brook's sentiment and attitude as historically been in line with that of former GOP/U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, who once characterized bipartisanship as a form of "date rape."

Please note, as a commentator on this topic has reported elsewhere: "Those (possible RTTT) funds weren't going to cover the long term costs of the program. The state would have simply spent all the money it got, and then be left funding yet another program.

"Brooks Patterson has addressed this many times, and that's why Oakland County won't fund programs once federal money runs dry. It's hit and run federal spending. They entice states to start programs by giving a large sum of money to get it started.

"Once that money is spent, where does the funding to keep these programs come from? This idea of spending money in order to receive partial funding from D.C. is a joke. It isn't just education either. The light rail system wreaks (sic) of this sort of thing. Wait until fed money runs out on that project."

COMMUNITIES WERE ROBBED OF THEIR RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION
Communities, which would like to have the right to straight-line vote up or down on local operating millage to support and operate the traditional, historical schools in their jurisdiction, as they had for generations, possessed the privilege to decide, by voting, the future of their own schools. Now they stand like mendicants/ beggars, relegated to await the crumbs passed on to them by the panic-laced poppycockery of  Lansing's stupid "political dog and pony show"-late night sessions and shutdowns of the state government- (fueled by a ill-begotten restraint on democracy-term limits-which has stupefied and undermined our state's entire political system).

THE EDUCATION COMMUNITY'S SUCCESS IN RAISING SUPPORT IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS ANGERED THIS ODD COUPLE: BROOKS & JENNY
All this brings us to this moment. The MEA and other education groups have successfully kept the role and importance of traditional education before the people. This obviously has infuriated both Granholm and Brooks Patterson. In reprisal they are willing to come together in an arrangement that defies logic and all recent political standard practice-support of a new Democratic education program. Brooks would never normally commit support, much less advocate and champion, any Democratic device such as the so-called "Race-to-the-Top." RTTT is sponsored and created by Obama's Chicagoman, Erne Duncan. No right-minded Democratic governor would team up with the fire-breathing, super-partisan Patterson, knowing his cunning and ferocity in such MEA sentiments. Brooks is hopelessly addicted to spinning off political shenanigans and puffery-as he has for so long.

SO WHAT GIVES?

Both Brooks and Jenny are desperately needy. Thus all former partisan limitations or regard for former appearances or for either party's devices are canceled. If they can successfully project to the public that not they or theirs have created this funding crisis or hold any responsibility for it, they will succeed in protecting their own self-centered/fleeting ambitions, and those of that failed Lansing ring of duds.

THE "RACE TO THE TOP" IS A FRAUD & A MAJOR FEDERAL POWER GRAB
These two very different, very desperate individuals have married themselves into a relationship to attack one of the most important elements of local economy and an essential function in order to save some part of their own selfish interests. Jenny and Brooks are doing so in light of one of the greatest swindle/schemes of recent political history, the "Race-to-the-Top" lottery device. This Obama sponsored government program has coerced Michigan and other states into making major concessions and surrendering considerable state and local authority/powers of control to the federal government. What a queer arrangement!

There is no certainty in the "vague promise" of any real or "bail-out" cash. All these federally imposed demands (to which a harried Michigan legislature capitulated, which this highly panicked state legislature has rolled over for) are nothing other than a revenue "long shot" -indefinite, dangerous, and administratively garbled paperwork and red tape. As one common sense commenter has said, "Call it sabotage if you want, but I call it safe. It only makes sense to sign on to something if you know what it's going to be."

RTTT is an expensive gamble, hoping against hope. IT'S A PIDDLEY "FEDERAL BRIBE," ladled out arbitrarily as a "possible" source of funds in this time of the state's cash shortfall.

The budget imbroglio is a situation that was created and is already compounded and aggravated by Brooks Patterson's gang of fellow boneheads determined to prevent any new revenue sources.

Brooks will continue to "service starve" the state's richest county into compliance with his narrow idea of economic sanity, while having funded million dollar helicopters and doodads for his buddy Sheriff Bouchard.

So Brooks and Jenny: Do your voodoo dance over MEA's resistance to your political wills and watch your chances for self-aggrandizement and political prospects disappear.


Original Articles in the Oakland Press and AP.