What you need to know about the complete “re-write” or “re-do” of Billions in Public School Funding in Michigan

From a leading national expert on Rick Snyder's Plan for Michigan Public Education:

"Governor Snyder’s plan for education in Michigan sounds just like Romney’s and Bobby Jindal’s. The money should follow the student anywhere and everywhere, to any vendor of education services, regardless of who owns it or manages it.

So, students may take their money to private schools, to hawkers of services, to online courses, whatever. Welcome to anyone who wants to start a school and collect public money.

That is a plan to undermine public education, and the right-wing knows it. That’s their goal."

Nationally and State-by-State, From Mitt Romney to Rick Snyder: "Follow the Student" funding is an attempt to end the long tradition of Public Education and Community Schools across America - Why? For Profit.

What is happening - what are the Facts?

LANSING – Michigan’s school finance system would be reshaped to allow money to more closely follow children and allow for a variety of choices for families under a plan being shaped by a panel assembled by Gov. Rick Snyder. (break) The group, headed by Richard McLellan, a former adviser to Gov. John Engler, promises a transparent process involving educators, lawmakers and union leaders with an eye toward a bill headed to Snyder in early 2013. (break) Speaking to reporters in a Monday conference call, McLellan said the goal is to create a plan replacing the 1979 School Aid Act….”

Source: “Gov. Rick Snyder assembles panel to plan for sweeping changes to school funding” MLive, July 16, 2012.

Back to Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who is an historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, on Snyder's Education Plan:

"Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his own plan to hack away at the foundations of universal, free public education.

He is vying to be one of the national leaders of the education reform movement. Like (Loisianna Governor) Bobby Jindal, his Southern counterpart in the far-right of the Republican Party, Snyder would love to offer vouchers but the Michigan state constitution doesn’t permit it (neither does the Louisiana state constitution, but who cares when you are a reformer?).

Leaving constitutional niceties aside, Snyder wants to promote, encourage, expand, and fund with taxpayer dollars anything that is not a public school.

Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state’s school finance system so that public money “follows the child,” instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the right-wing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology.

The governor has created a panel to figure out how to make this happen."

(Emphasis Added)

Note: The terms "Follow the Child" or "Follow the Student" refer to what is also called "Student-weighted Funding" or other public funding and public education assets diversion schemes to replace voucher and "scholarship" strategies to support private and for-profit schools with both taxpayer financial support and facilities, was referenced to by Mitt Romney in the first Presidential Election Debate of 2012 on October 3, 2012.

What is the (Michigan) State School Aid Act of 1979?
Public Act 94 or the “School Aid Act” is the Michigan Law that controls the allocation and appropriation of all funding (payments, bonds, etc) for “public schools, the intermediate school districts, community colleges, and public universities.”  Under the State Constitution there are certain restrictions and requirements on how and where public funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars) are spent on “public education”, and Act 94 is most recent legislation that determines how those public funds and assets are paid for and maintained.  The School Aid Act also prescribes “the powers and duties of certain state departments, the state board of education, and certain other boards and officials” that control the funding/management of Michigan Public Education.

Education Funding in the Michigan (Snyder/Nixon) State Budget included over $900+ Million in cuts in 2011, and the State School Aid Act, the largest “strategic fund” in the state budget, allocated in HB 5376 ( 2012), is $14.1 Billion.

What is the Oxford Foundation Memo?
In a memorandum sent to “interested parities” entitled “Drafting a ‘Michigan Education Finance Act of 2013’ to Replace the School Aid Act of 1979” the Oxford Study Group provides a rationale to justify radical /revolutionary change is presented outlining a “Work Plan” with numerous goals and objectives to redefine and disenfranchise community public schools via the rewriting of the both the Strategic School Fund parameters and Michigan School Code.

Diane Ravitch has Flipped: a former Reagan education official, turned vocal anti-Privatization and informed defender of American Public Education

Ravitch's informed conclusion on Oxford Project - “it reforms public education by funding everything other than public education.”

What is the Oxford Foundation?
The Oxford Foundation was formed in 1991 by the then new Gov. John Engler to “to lessen the financial burdens of the Government of the State of Michigan”.  More than two dozen individuals have been identified as past and present officers of Oxford, which includes Richard McLellan, also a founder of the anti-union and anti-public education Mackinac Center for Public Policy.  When asked at townhall meeting on his “Public Education Finance Project” on July 18, 2012 about “who is Oxford” and what their funding and membership was, McLellan, a Lansing lawyer/lobbyist, refused to answer. The Oxford Foundation is an IRS 501(c) 3 “charity” and does not disclosure it’s membership or funding sources, donors or recipients. However, internal Oxford documents show that the foundation’s funding has exceeded $1 Million from year to year.

Who is the American Legislative Exchange Council?
ALEC is a corporate funded Heritage Foundation/Mackinac Center associated national organization that has been recently “exposed” as being the organization behind the drafting, lobbying and sponsoring or hundreds of bills or “model legislation” passed in multiple US States including Michigan.  ALEC has been identified as a key political organization behind: anti-union and collective bargaining campaigns and politicians, the support of for-profit education organizations and companies, and facilitator of legislation diverting billions in public education funding to its corporate members and for-profit education management organizations, including those operating in Michigan.

Sources: See the websites ALECexposed.org and VLTP.net for more on ALEC, or read the McGuffey piece "Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan"

Monied interests represented by funders of the Mackinac Center, Heritage and Oxford Foundations, and like-minded organizations (American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos), Students First, Mosiaca, Education Connections, Heritage Academies, etc) seek to “reform” public education for profit state-by-state in FL, TX, NJ, LA, TN, IN, OH, WI and now they want Michigan too.

Michigan politico Tim Skubick on McLellan in FoxDetroit on July 30, 2012:

“Mr. (Dick) McLellan is now one of the governor's (Rick Snyder’s) go-to guys on a variety of issues from the bridge to a re-do of the state's school aid act for education”.

Bottomline:
The current Snyder/McLellan’s “Oxford Project” is part of a well-funded and nationally organized campaign working state-by-state to divert public funding for community schools to for-profit education management businesses and organizations (EMOs) led by ALEC and Koch Brothers supported organizations (i.e. the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and related foundations) to “reform” public education and replace public sector union (Teacher & Employee Unions) and influence on the national debate on public education funding and “reform” from public control to privatized profit.

On the Reader:
READ the Oxford Memo (Alternate LINK) and the ANALYSIS by Diane Ravitch in "Michigan Plan to Defund Public Education" July 18, 2012.

Related Slates:
More on Richard McLellan on the Gazette.

Michigan’s Carnival of Economic Carnality: Who Runs Rick Snyder?

The interlocking overlords of Michigan run the agenda presented by the Detroit News - their main newsprint outlet. The behind the scenes sponsors and originators, controllers of the flow of managed and contrived information and agenda opinion are those who are principals in both the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) add in the untoward influence and direct access to Michigan law making via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Michigan is a generator of ALEC models and has over 100 past or present legislators who are members (including the MI GOP's new national committee man Dave Agema) and you have the lockbox from which the TeaPublican/Snyder/Elites pull the plan that determines the future economy and the range of freedom for most Michiganians.

Take US Rep. Dave Agema, a robotic ALEC lackey:

"MI HB-4305 Sec. 4.1 (PDF) contains language that is pretty much, word for word, cribbed from ALEC model legislation 7K5, Sec. 2 (A) (PDF).  The Michigan legislation was "plug and played" directly into a bill-unedited or lightly amended) was sponsored by Rep. Dave Agema, an ALEC Member."

Brilliant hod-carrying for the corporatocracy statesman Dave!

Foreign Written Sharia Law is Bad, but Multinational Corporations (with foreign ownership) Writing 'Cut & Paste' Laws Good: Michigan US Rep Dave Agema presents his proposed HM 4769 American Laws for American Courts or ALAC bill in Lansing, MI on May 10, 2012 after being introduced by Alan Cropsey from Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's office.

Most of the activity of the overlords is done in secret and sub-rosa. Little is known about who actually contributes to the Mackinac Center. This aggressive and anti-worker propaganda mill was set up by Richard McLellan esq. and John Mathias Engler along with others whose model was drawn from that of the Heritage Foundation which in turn was funded and boosted, early on, by both Richard (Rich) M. DeVos Sr. and Jay Van Andel of Amway.

The programs and opinions of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have had carte blanche to hundreds of pages of local and regional news outlets, their videos, speakers bureau, publications (Capital Confidential, and anti-union Educational Journal sent to all of Michigan's public school teachers) has a wide sphere of influence. Slick brochures and brightly colored booklets promote a wide range of rational intended to promote and achieve their objectives. They have been successful beyond their wildest dreams; they have a complete control/homogeny over the political processes of Michigan.

MichiganVotes.org is Mackinac Center's tracking site on legislation. These business elites hold control over a supine Michigan State Supreme Court as the final rubber stamp/safeguard on their achievements.

Look at these examples of the interlocking roles of Michigan Corporations with the private political power machine that runs Michigan:

• Mackinac Donor: Chase Foundation = BLM Member: Sarah McClelland, President, Michigan Region/Chase Bank
• Mackinac Donor: Hanover Insurance Group Foundation =BLM Member: Frederick Eppinger, President and CEO, Hanover Insurance Group
• Mackinac Donor: Herbert and Grace Dow Foundation = BLM Member: Andrew Liveris, CEO, Dow Chemical
• Mackinac Donor: General Motors Foundation = BLM Member: Daniel Akerson, CEO/Chairman of the Board, General Motors
• Mackinac Donor: Jay and Betty Van Andel Institute = BLM Member: Steve Van Andel, Amway
• Mackinac Donors: Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation = BLM Member: Doug DeVos, Amway

The "Turnaround Plan for Michigan" produced by these principals and others included:

1. Reducing the compensation of state employees
2. Requiring state employees pay more for their health insurance...
3. Encouraging sharing of services between local governments
4. Eliminating binding arbitration for police officers and firefighter
5. Deregulating workplace safety standards
6. Reducing the Michigan Business Tax

This is only the tip of the iceberg of goals or targets included in the radical "reinvention" Snyder hid from the voters in his stealth campaign for governor in 2008.

What did the Holland Sentinel reveal of the nature of the BLM? Read the Holland Sentinel op-ed:

"One of the most influential civic groups that emerged in reaction to our state's tailspin last decade was Business Leaders for Michigan. Comprised of top executives at some of the state's largest companies (among them the locally based Haworth, Herman Miller and Perrigo), BLM took a broader outlook than most other business groups, issuing a wide-ranging Michigan Turnaround Plan in 2010, many elements of which were incorporated into Gov. Rick Snyder's agenda in 2011."

There are many, many other interlocking cronyisms in the engine powering the BLM/ALEC/Mackinac Center cabal:

"Because there's more apparent government tie-in to the BLM-and the Mackinac Policy Center-than just Rick Snyder's obvious channeling of their policies. John Nixon, the State Budget Director, has been a speaker at the BLM's Leadership Conference. So has William (Bill) Schuette... (Michigan's Attorney General) who also happens to be the Trustee of the Rollin M. Gerstaker Foundation-a major Mackinac Center contributor.

"Mark Murray, a BLM member and current president of Meijer, Inc., was formerly the Michigan State Treasurer, the Michigan State Budget Director, and the Director of the Department of Management and Budget."

"Andy Dillon, failed gubernatorial candidate, is "the former vice president of GE Capital and then president of Detroit Steel Company. As Speaker of the Michigan House, he endorsed the BLM turnaround plan. Now, he's Rick Snyder's State Treasurer."

"Doug Rothwell, (well identified cohort with John M. Engler’s long tenure) the current president and CEO of the Business Leaders for Michigan, was appointed in January by Rick Snyder to be Chairman of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. As Progress Michigan noted, "This gives BLM-a private organization-virtual control over an agency that makes decisions regarding tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and sets economic policy for the state."

(Emphasis Added)

These Princes of Corporate Prosperity Are Well-Rewarded for Their Activities
 
The combined income of the "81 members of BLM make $107.5 million a year in salary” (as of 2010), they are the elites that determine, as never before, the life and living conditions of Michigan's children, mentally ill, poor, labor, public employees and all others. Nothing escapes their ability to trump the vital interests of the Middle Class, they rule!

Residents of West Michigan will recognize a lot of these familiar names:

1.    Jim Hackett from Steelcase in office furniture,
2.    Richard Haworth from Haworth another furniture producer,
3.    Mark Bissell, the vacuum-cleaner king,
4.    Dan Gordon of Gordon Food Service, and
5.    Blake Krueger from Wolverine World Wide.

Rick Snyder's campaign outline (Snyder's 10 Point Plan) came directly from the previously published BLM objectives, who runs/controls whom?

If you are upset with the tremendous hit that Michigan families have taken in the last 10 years look to them, these powerful elites have the levers of power and decision-making. They rule, you can suffer.

Source: Quotes drawn from: The Kings of Michigan, from GRIID March 31, 2011.


On the Reader:
Watch US Rep. Dave Agema scaring the radical right and Teapublicans in Lansing concerning the "threat" of foreign Sharia Law, or read an article "Why Rep. Dave Agema wants to stop Sharia by banning 'foreign laws' in Michigan courts" or a little about mini-scandal surrounding a similar meeting in the City of Allegan.

Related Slates:
Nationally popular featured article "Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan" or more on ALEC and the BLM on the Gazette.

The Original Post was CENSORED and DELETED by the editorial staff at the Detroit News and Michigan View.

A.L.E.C. Tool: Randy Richardville announces the next kamikaze attack on public schools

The clearly partisan and aggressive leader of the TeaPublican super majority in the Michigan Senate indicated that he would selectively attack collective bargaining by singling out MEA for a spiteful revenge, the so-called Right-to-Teach design to obfuscate and hinder the teachers from their right to freely associate with one another in a professional association where working conditions, hours, instruction, personal privileges and etc. are negotiated in "good faith" with their local school boards.

TeaPublican Randy Richardville's proclamation was so blunt and out of step with the normal sense of decency and good order that the panelists on Tim Skubick's Off the Record were visibly taken aback and attempted to reason with Richardville.

When the panel attempted to aid Richardville into a more honest, civil concept of what is needed in this present manufactured school funding crisis, to which they openly alluded (it is Gov. Rick Snyder and the TeaPublicans themselves who cut funding, combined the K-12 with higher education to defraud the K-12 system of some $600 million in surplus), Richardville seemed unscathed, he is on a pre-programmed jihad and there is little or nothing short of recall that will stop his radical evisceration of Michigan's public school system.

Nothing.

Absolutely Nothing!

In this same timeframe, Michigan observer and pundit Jack Lessenberry wrote this piece in light of an ongoing and an unrelenting multi-million dollar anti-public education disinformation campaign by Betsy DeVos and the Richard McLellan led hectoring via the Mackinac Center.

Jack Lessenberry:

"Nobody, it seems is happy with public education in the state - how it is working or what it costs. Those trying to run school systems are bitter over continuing state budgets - at the same time they are being held to higher standards and being asked to do more.

"To them, the legislature seems almost in a 'punishment mode,' as one school official put it, seemingly more concerned with reducing teachers' pensions and benefits than in education itself.

"Some school officials honestly believe there is a conspiracy in the legislature to destroy public education and replace it with a system of charter schools and vouchers.

"Lawmakers, or at least the GOP majority, talk as if the schools are in trouble because their employees are still getting "Cadillac benefits" that they can no longer afford in the post-automotive age.

"And members of the public are baffled. "Wasn't Proposal A supposed to fix all this?" asked Janet, a middle-aged woman standing in line at a pizza carry-out in the Detroit suburb of Berkley.

"What happened?"

Richardville Dove Into the Deep Muck
Quick to hop on any opening, former Ann Arbor news hound, Tom Gantert seized on Richardville's targeted vengeance: Right-to-Work-for-Teachers-legislation - designed to further hamper the ability of teachers to act in concert with one another for the good of public education and the children they teach-is vindictive. There will be any number of other "pig pile" legislative bills heaped on public teachers by Richardville and his hate filled TeaPublican legislative Super Majority.

Gantert's report from Capitol Confidential, Mackinac Center's news tabloid stated:

"Richardville also said he didn't support right-to-work for the entire state, saying he didn't think it would "transition the economy."

"Amber McCann, Richardville's spokeswoman, said he was in favor of right-to-work for teachers because teachers unions haven't dealt with the financial problems districts are facing.

"Richardville said any plans to implement right-to-teach was not about taking on the MEA."

"'I don't think taking on any union has anything to do with what our agenda is,' Richardville said.

"Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson called Richardville's comments 'another example of this relentless assault on public education and public educators and teachers' unions that is completely unwarranted.'

"Johnson said it was part of the GOP's strategy to privatize teachers and eliminate the teacher protections unions provide."

Among the comments posted to Gantert's piece "Senate Leader Supports Right to Work for Teachers" on Sept 9, 2011 is this insightful account:

"...(B)ased on my own experience as both a former union member and a former non-union administrator in public service, I strongly disagree with you. Many times I or other union members donated time and/or bent the contract rules because we/they knew the money wasn't there for overtime. Yet, since we/they lived in the community, and were consummate professionals who took pride in their profession, all knew things had to get done and in a timely fashion. As a matter of fact, we used to quip, "I bet you'd never see this in the private sector." Not to mention the active role in problem solving that we/they played that probably saved taxpayers ten of thousands."

Unaffected by schoolhouse reality, the Mackinac Center's Gantert projects and promotes the A.L.E.C./Mackinac Center line:

"Randy Richardville deserves credit for recognizing the damage that forced unionism has done to public schools."

Wholly directed and owned by the Mackinac Center (Heritage Foundation in Michigan) and the American Legislative Exchange Council, Betsy DeVos et. al., just a hapless small time sock puppet, Richardville has no choice.

No choice at all!

Original.

Michissippi’s Shock & Awe: Business Managed Democracy Hangs by a Slender Thread

Snyder's re-invention of Michigan into a northern version of Mississippi is being met with anger and recall activism. Citizens are having a hard time getting real news about what the Business Managed Democracy coming out of Lansing, heavy-handed and top-down, means for them and their children/grandchildren.

Look out! Soon the penetrating light of National Media will be turned, focused on Michigan's large number of recall efforts.

Citizens are increasingly agitated and are vowing not to take it anymore. What they see on the economic horizon, thanks to Nerd Snyder and the Run-Away Train/ Super-Majority of nasty TeaPublicans is totally unacceptable. The loss of over 38,000 jobs will have a thunderous impact on the state.

Snyder has let job creation go by the wayside, while he aids and cheers on the radical agenda of the Koch Bros. et al American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.) and its over 600 corporate/BIG BIZ handlers. Putting off job creation until next year is a dumb and disastrous Nerdcentric policy. If the desperate plight of over 400,000 workers unemployed in Michigan does not motivate the Nerd to action, what ever could?

Snyder knows how to inflict pain, but does he know how to comprehend and share in the terrible pain he has created? Perhaps the recall efforts will be a turning point in this regard.

Think about what is underway. Over two dozen recall petitions are filed or in the works. Subjects of the Recall Efforts are: The governor and a wide range of members of the state house and the State Senate.

An active and rapidly expanding effort to put the nefarious and dangerously out-of-control Super-Majority of uber-radicals out of office is well under way.

What happens in tomorrow's Wisconsin recall elections will be a giant signal to voters in Michigan. Success there will sweep over Michigan like a wind-driven grass fire.

Early on we have heard EFM manager Michael Flanagan say just "stay calm" and Mackinac Center's Godfather, Attorney Richard D. McLellan say "don't worry about the recalls, they'll not succeed."

Now, longtime observer, and astute analyst, Bill Ballenger has put out a new, very revealing and disturbing word (If you are a Rad-Teapublican or Rick Snyder): IF JUST ONE RECALL IN MICHIGAN SUCCEEDS IT WILL SPELL THE END TO THE SNYDER "JUGGERNAUT"!

Business Managed Democracy is anathema to community and to Michigan. We can deal with it now, finally and directly. We have seen what the TeaPublican agenda entails and it is totally unacceptable to average Michigan citizen

We have seen what a willful and ill-advised TeaPublican faction can do to the national economy. Today's precipitous fall in the stock market (worst since 2008) wiped out well over a trillion dollars of invested wealth, touching a wide range of people who are trying to stay afloat, while the little dictator, Grover Norquist, and Tea Party radicals continue to call for no new taxes and no compromise - hamstringing government.

The Wisconsin Recall results will spell a real revelation of the will of the ordinary citizens, if there is recall success there, LOOK OUT Snyder and TP'ers the broom will be probing deep in your dark corners.

Original Post.

The Michissippi Nerd (Michigan Governor Rick Snyder) on Parade

The Snyder led 4th of July parade features a famous icon, not Uncle Sam, but Little Bo Peep. The Nerd and his napoleonic army of TeaPublicans are marching to the tune of independence, NOT with the old guy in bright patriotic colors of Ol' Glory leading the way, but the ideological stooges are towing along behind Little Bo Peep-who has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them.

The real Grand Marshals of Snyder's 4th of July Parade are: Milton Friedman (Freedom to choose/act independently of all others), Ayn Rand (selfishness is a virtue), Grover Norquist (Never raise taxes, Kill government), Newt (Tiffany) Gingrich (the states can go around the Federal Government with extreme measures and should), and Richard D. McLellan (Have I got a 'godfather plan' for Michigan!).

These powerful influences heading up Snyder's Parade are so "with" the Nerd that he's not able to act or think in the real world where the rest of us live are struggling to survive the Great Bush Depression II.


Original Post.

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.

Corporate Supremacy: Michissippi’s Reinvention of Involuntary Servitude and EFM Legislated Privatization of Nearly Every Community Asset - “Profitization”

Corporate profitazation: Under the guise of help for the troubled finances of civic institutions Rick Snyder and cronies have devised a quasi-legal device, the office of Emergency Finance Manager to facilitate the "public profitazation" of everything of value in Michissippian community assets.

This "public-to-private profitization" of assets across Michissippi includes currently real property: Public school facilities and real estate, waste treatment plants e.g. Pontiac, brownfield real estate with high value waterfront development potential, public works facilities and equipment, city buildings and auxiliary operations...the list goes on. It's the replacement of "we the people government with corporatism.

This is just the beginning, the number of high value targets for the privatizing zealots in the Snyder/McLellan/Dillon combine is yet to be unveiled. With clever scheming and with grand opportunism known as "disaster capitalism" these greedy men are taking down the state for money and for profit. They represent a very troubling trend toward "corporate supremacy."

Note carefully how this "illegal community asset grab" is unfolding. The attacks are in predominately minority centers and urban pockets of extreme poverty. Who cares? Snyder believes indifference gives his administration license.

The biggest of the predicable goals is the profitization seizure of Detroit's high value public waterworks, a gem of a coup, if it can be pulled off for surrounding suburban jurisdictions especially Brooks Patterson's Oakland County. Strip majority minority Detroit of its one high value asset, and move on to huge tactical advantage and profit for the Corporate Supremacists.

When the lustful eye of pro-EFM backers took a look at Jackson and saw an opportunity to move in last week, Dillon put a quick kibosh on that recommendation. For the Dillon/Snyder stratagem to work, the stripping of assets and the dictatorial take-overs must be in areas of long-term distress, cities and urban centers long under debit problems and "dysfunction."

As long as the EFM process can be portrayed as an aberrant form of "help" - legislative benevolence - and the public continues its cynical opinion of minority "lack of responsibility" for "their" abandoned and troubled areas such as Benton Harbor, there will be little effective protest elsewhere. So just bide the time.

This does not mean that Jackson city and other predominately "white" areas are not on the short list or at risk it; only means those godfathers who set the pace; such as Richard D. Mclellan, will choose the time to swoop in to pluck the low hanging fruit anywhere he chooses, across Michissippi. After all, if there isn't a massive "corporate supremacist" plan, why has Andy Dillon pre-trained over 300 Emergency Finance Managers?

Snyder led "Corporate Supremacy" has virulent and dangerous elements: bigotry and racial bias. What is being legislated from TeaPublican Lansing, with its irresponsible super-majority drunk and high on power, is the equivalent of pushing minorities back over the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge into Jim Crow Land.

This lingering bias was expressed in the written opine in the Detroit/Mackinac Center News which blamed the recent brown down/blackouts in Detroit on Black political leadership over the past decades. And true to form, the Det/News suggested the solution: Sell off Detroit's Power and Light, municipal power works to the Corporate Supremacists eagerly awaiting another takeover. Never mind that brown outs occurred concurrently in Ann Arbor and in other diversified areas across Michissippi.

All of this fits the Koch Brothers A.L.E.C. plug and play legislation such as has been introduced in Wisconsin. The Kochs want Wisconsin to sell off, privatize, all municipal utilities, let Corporate Supremacists have a profitization monopoly. These same elements are at play here in Michissippi.

In the Holland area, to operate a machine shop inside the service area of the Holland Board of Public Works means getting three phase industrial electric service at a much lower price than that offered by Consumers Energy. Maybe that is because Holland Board of Public Works isn't headed up with a CEO like Consumers Energy's David Joos-who in his last year with Consumers received a salary in excess of $3 million and over his entire tenure, tens of millions in salary and benefits. Consumers customers chipped in for the Joos booty: Every time the lights came on, Joos got his cut!

Oh yes, check out Richard D. McLellan, Mackinac Center's godfather, he has had a turn with ITC Holdings as a board member. ITC is in the power game. ITC is the largest independent electricity transmission company in the nation its holdings includes the Michigan Electric Transmission Company (METC).

On way or the other McLellan is a major player in Michissippi power and how it is supplied. Everywhere you turn in Snyder's Michissippi there's a Nerd business crony, a Corporate Supremacist, getting or planning his accumulating cut.

All this on top of a near $2 billion tax-funded bailout!

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Michigan Gov Rick Snyder's Nerdonomics Gone Wild

It's easy to go loony in Michigan; it's so natural to turn on each other when the Bush induced Depression pulls us all down.

A willful and stubborn Nerdhead governor amplifies our desperation and the hurt.

Apparently this economic trauma is being felt everywhere, but not in the heart of our Novice Nerd Governor. The word is out: Snyder is stubborn, very set in his own ways; beyond reason and not inclined to compromise or collaborate. In a word, Tricky Ricky is not political. So many Michigan voters thought they saw a glimmer of hope that he was our Superman-mild mannered Clark Kent turned powerful helper.

Snyder appeared to be a businessman, a special man who is willing to give of himself, step down from his safe high place as a millionaire; become governor/statesman, let-the-chips-fall-as they-may and lead Michigan out of our troubles. Rick was to do this with a credible/honest set of best practices. It turns out Rick's got a character flaw. He doesn't play by the rules of the public governance game.

Snyder May Not Want to Be Political, But He Must He may hate the world of politics. He may know little or nothing about how to bring about consensus among and between folk over whom he no longer holds the power; that which he once had as an owner/CEO to "hire and fire at will."

Snyder insists he's the CEO of Michigan, "hired" to run Michigan as a business. Rick's vision of himself in this mythical role makes him insist that things run in his mind as a business. Michigan is not a business. The Governor is not a CEO. MICHIGAN HAS NO CEO!

Snyder is given the elected responsibility to oversee the other branches of governance and the departments of Michigan. He has a bully pulpit and very limited power as compared to an actual "CEO" of a corporation, his prior domain.

Snyder's Experience Advisers Can't Get Through to the Stubborn Nerd The word is out that his advisers, many very experienced Engler Men, can't get across to Snyder that he must give a much wider berth to the politics-the gentle art of persuasion. We are in a tough time. This time is made much worse by the battering of ideological, social, and raw "business-first-last-and-always" mindset of so many around Lansing.

The Engler Revolution's negative vibes still reverberate in the rotunda of the Capitol, Engler devotees still hunger for the power of political persuasion they once had when the Engler Revolution legislatively took from one group in order to "gift" those "takings" to cronies and others John Engler chose.

Engler was Devilishly Clever As his sidekick and facilitator, Richard D. McLellen has said his buddy, John M. Engler, was a master at pre-planning, mapping and strategizing his every move; first in political terms, then carried right out to the end of the political and legal process to his end goal. That's why we have a Englercentric State Supreme Court and so many programs stamped with the Engler Revolution empress.

Snyder, by comparison, is a Political Novice, in the Worst of Times, Attempting a Steep Learning Curve The Nerd is in the middle of a huge crisis. His inability, or should we say, willful insistence on his own way or the highway, is an extreme liability at this very time.

Some common sense, some sense of working together with the public needs to temper Snyder's stubbornness and angst.

Keep him in your prayers. Thoughtful people are alarmed. Here's Snyder; unknown in philosophy and intentions; having successfully dodged debate and interviews on his inner workings and real outlook prior to the election; now in command of the governorship a political office. He has been elected to the most difficult period of Michigan history in our memory and we don't know the man!

Snyder's Ability to Lead Successfully Depends Greatly on Consent of the Governed The Nerd insists on doing what "He sees fit;" damn the advice of political advisers and seasoned pundits. We're headed for worse trouble. Snyder is losing the confidence and support of the people of Michigan. His high-handed approach to the budget is but one example.

Tricky Rick has turned one faction against another. The poor are immaterial to his beancounting, just as those 85,000 able bodied but mentally ill and unemployables were "throwaways" whom Engler put on the mean streets in 1991.
Now we learn on radical moves such as the newly legislated "Emergency Finance Manager" (EFM) who is given unparalleled powers, dictatorial unlimited discretion to disband cities, school districts, etc. accountable directly back to Snyder himself.

The theory behind the new EFM fails to ostensibly improve the governmental unit's failed operations and financial conduct as we find corruption and malfeasance under the Detroit EFM headed by Robert Bobb.

More pointedly the EFM proposes to COERCE AND FORCE those units (put concurrently under new specifically Snyder induced revenue shortfalls ($470/student cuts in Foundation Grants, the summary end to Block Grants to local units from Lansing, etc. which exacerbate and compound the existing revenue shortages) into a loosely defined, but deadly "emergency status" leading to a sudden takeover and liquidation of assets and buildings, etc. Government take overs of local functions will be hotly resisted. Mark that down. And those employees targeted for loss of bargaining rights,etc. and those elected officials kicked out of office, and barred for years from future office, won't be taking this dictatorial coup sitting down! The public knows what is the hidden purpose of the EFM's and they aren't buying in.

Folks We Are in Deep Tabasco! 

It's now becoming clear that Snyder is so deep into his independence and (assumed) power, vested in a belief he truly has his former corporate prerogatives, that he has taken from, and undercut, a very subservient Teapartisan Legislature. Snyder makes the Legislature a victim via his big oversight grab: As the A.P. reports: "...Rick Snyder's move to make the state budget 'simple, fair and efficient' may instead be leaving the public in the dark about how its money will be spent." Furthermore, Snyder's "line items for programs and spending wouldn't be binding. That basically could allow UNELECTED DEPARTMENT HEADS RATHER THAN LEGISLATORS TO DECIDE HOW THE MONEY SHOULD BE SPENT, said Craig Thiel, state affairs director for the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council in Lansing.

"The lack of specifics concerns citizen watchdog groups such as Common Cause Michigan. PEOPLE REALLY HAD A SENSE OF WHAT WAS BEING FUNDED when they could see department budgets laid out program by program, said executive director Christina Kuo. DOING IT SNYDER'S WAY 'REALLY GOES AGAINST HIS COMMITMENT TO OPEN GOVERNMENT AND TRANSPARENCY.'"


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Finley's Right Wing anti-teacher Crusade: A man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen

Response to Nolan Finley in "Teacher perks bleed budget dry" in the Detroit News on October 4, 2009.

Nolan Finley, like his most recent predecessors at the News, is a shrewd man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen.

When Finley openly admits, yet again, that his source for facts and projections, concerning anything to do with public education, comes from that corporatist ideological cathouse, the Mackinac Center, so well-known as the far right's animal house for political antics and wild abandon and factual hyperbole, he reveals his bias and lack of credulity.

Can the Michigan teachers match the easy access that the Mackinac Center has to the major papers, the electronic media, the inner sanctum of the Michigan Republican Party, and the GOP legislative crew? NO.

Millions of dollars from tightly sphinctered, vested corporations, ideologues, and miserly trusticants, have fed this group of fact-twisting-ferrets a rich diet of hulls and shells, washed down with a slithering dash of anti-public service/privatization Kool-Aid.

Time and again, it is the threatening pronouncements and entrapping art of Mackinac Center that has carried out the vengeful goals of John Engler and his shrewd legislative tactics henchmen: Richard D. McLellan and Larry Reed, emeritus head of Mackinac.

It was Reed who exposed his tar-pitched bias during the 1993 Republican Senate Hearings on the shutdown of all school operating funding, when he characterized the MEA as "a Leninist organization", his chosen, passionate statement of belief. Larry would later deny, by lying, he ever said such a thing at Hope College in Holland, when he was on a road trip pushing privatization and the decertification of MEA in front of aspiring teachers.

The influence of predigested talking points and prefab legislation in opposition to MEA has been circulating for decades. During that major funding crisis, the summer of 1993, the News had a rollicking field day. They were so close to their so-called Right-to-work nocturnal dream that they were elated and delirious with verbiage and puffery. Nolan is still chained to the bench from which such venom and spite was set to type.

House Speaker Paul Hillegonds was asked during the '93 crisis where the facts and figures source for the kinds of harsh measures he and the radicalized Republicans of that time were espousing, his source: The Heritage Foundation. What a tight little circle! The big player in both the Mackinac Center and in the Heritage Foundation (brought on line in the time of Reagan, well-known for PATCO and much anti-union angst and activity) is the Amway clan.

Young Dick DeVos was put on the board of Mackinac and the Amway crowd has been a generous supporter and funder of its nefarious missions against MEA.

It was the DeVos family, in particular, that pushed ahead with anti-public service campaigns nationwide and harsh political attack activity, spectacular failed efforts, in which they have wasted millions of their billions in profits.

Say again will you, Nolan, who are the real "bullies" and the perennial rock throwers in this classic battle?

We didn't see Mackinac Center backed Dick DeVos chain himself to the exit gates of to any failing manufacturing operation in Michigan, such as Greenville, as Dick frittered away his personal tens of millions on a disastrous gubernatorial campaign, did we? NO.

Have we seen a well-tuned, pro-active program to keep manufacturing alive in Michigan or make the kind of systemic and tax supported efforts to intelligently and wholeheartedly pave the way for new industry in Michigan--in the manner of say, Chattanooga and the state of Tennessee?

Cry over the fact that John Engler killed the concept--proposed by Gov. James Blanchard--to put in place and develop a university anchored high tech corridor in Michigan 19 years ago. Just imagine what an advantage that would have given us and how it could have saved us from our lack of diversification in industry.

So we are left with milquetoast sophistry about how teachers--with 5 years of undergraduate training and apprenticeship and the continuing responsibilities for even more costly post graduate training--should be relegated to what Nolan describes as the wage of "an ordinary worker" because as he states, "teacher perks have bled the budget dry." This is the same device used by Sen. Wayne Kuipers when he led the move to shut down state government exactly two years ago.

Does Finley really see teachers as ordinary workers? Is that how Nolan appreciates--"as a father and father-in-law of public school teachers", (Teacher perks bleed budget dry, Finley Editorial, DN, 10/4/09) the role and work of professional educators, even those in his immediate family circle? If so, how sad.

And as for the benefits Nolan and the Mackinac/Heritage howlers rage on about:  Where are those health dollars spent? In Wisconsin?

What value do MESSA dollars add to the entire medical economy? To what degree do school employees continue to underwrite the under-insured and the uninsured, who seek emergency care in places like the Amway invested medical operation in Grand Rapids--a billion dollar health complex?

How many teachers do you think, holding a MESSA administrated Michigan Blue Cross health package, are turned away from admission by Amway's endorsed and sponsored Spectrum Health? None of course, they are VERY WELCOME. MESSA clients help pay the bills for those unable to pay their way.

The local economies of so many of our communities and towns are greatly enriched and sustained by the local dollars spent and invested by school employees and their ancillary efforts to build other community organizations, volunteer undertakings, and churches.

Nolan, it's time you think for yourself and step up to the plate for Michigan's future in a positive and helpful way.





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