Michigan GOP's Priceless Princess Betsy DeVos Chums Around With Communists

In response to all the communist-baiting hype on the right, a little Michigan history and commentary.

Betsy DeVos has several former-Commie associates and friends, with whom she chums with in her nationwide crusades to radically change and overpower democratic institutions and politics in America.

Robert Laurie, Michigan View contributor wrote wrote a blistering defense of “aging guitar player”  Ted Nugent by bringing in Bill Ayers and connecting Ayers, whom Laurie labels a “Communist", with President Obama.  It is the old guilt-by-association thing. 

In "The Motor City Madman meets Bill Ayers' pal" on the Michigan View April 18, 2012 here is Laurie:

“Ayers was one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters... Far from being mere acquaintances, their relationship lasted years."

Back in Vogue: More with the American Radical-Right than on the Volga
Poster of Vladimir Lenin making a speech with Marxist caption (1920)

Laurie’s article brought to mind another well-known political person, Michigan’s own Elizabeth (Betsy) Prince DeVos, who has more than one relationship or political connection to former Communists.

If  the President is to be “bound-to” and black-brushed by references to Bill Ayers,  let’s go the distance and examine those ex-Communists in Betsy DeVos’circle of friends and influence with the same degree of  intensity and focus Laurie applied to Ayers:

As Chair of the Michigan GOP, Betsy invited David Horowitz to the Michigan Republican Party Mackinac Island Leadership Conference. (Horowitz was raised by parents who were both members of the Communist Party USA. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz, himself is a former communist radical, a self-described “Marxist Revolutionary,” as his autobiography "Radical Son" puts it).

On the Island Horowitz spoke at the traditional Saturday luncheon event where hundreds of leaders heard him accuse all the major journalism schools of America as being “Communist.”  Jointly with Horowitz was Lynn Cheney, together they were outlining their crusade to root out college professors who held ideological or political views of the kind Horowitz did not favor.  Their organization: The Freedom Center/Students for Academic Freedom is designed to hunt “ideological enemies” on college campuses and mount purges.

Betsy and her mother (Elsa Prince) and brother (Erik Prince) are heavily invested in,and advised by Father Bob.  Robert Sirico, founder of the Grand Rapids based Acton Institute, was a Communist.  They have helped to make him a rising “star” on the Rad Right.  Father Bob  is reported to have been one of the first ministers in the country to perform a gay marriage ceremony, and he the “house” vicar to the Prince Family.  Father Bob is council and guide to infamous “kill for hire” Erik Prince of Blackwater infamy (Father Bob married to Erik and his second wife).  Father Bob is a very useful tool in the Prince/DeVos/Amway universe-as a radical supporter and a (beck -&-call) apologist for extreme capitalism-often defending Amway-an entire corporation built on plundering the dreams (and assets) of millions of eager MLM recruits-who rapidly become drop-outs of the scheme. 

Betsy never once spoke out against former commie Marvin Olasky. Olasky has been an honored guest at her mother’s Acton Institute’s Acton Forum (Grand Rapids, MI).  Marvin, self-confessed former Communist, went on to be the architect of George W. Bush’s “appeasement/payback” federal funding scheme for his religious backers/base  called Faith-based Funding. Olasky is a harsh critic of welfare which Olasky calls "The Tragedy of American Compassion."

The conservative Weekly Standard’s Bill  Kristol has never been called out by Betsy for being the son of a self-described former communist (Irving Kristol), she has never questioned Neo-Conservatives and other radical right-wingers who follow in the rut laid out by Bill Buckley.  It was Buckley who worked with Willi Schlamm, ex-communist editor of The Freeman , in the raising up of his “conservative” movement and the establishing of the National Weekly, which became the National Review of today. 

Betsy husband’s family, the Amway (Alticor) Clan, are doing billions in business with the Peoples Republic of China or Communist China. the Reds own/control a substantial part of their Guangzhou plant.   “The company stepped into the Chinese market in 1995.  In 2008, Amway China has already become Amway's largest market” (Shanghai Daily, 2009).

All business in each Chinese Province is directly supervised by a Red Army General.  Amway’s profits are stoking up the power and wealth of the Communist Reds in China.  Look who’s profit-sharing with
the enemy!

How does this all link in with the ebb and flow of Darkside Ideology?

From Bill Moyers and Michael Winship in "Joe McCarthy’s Ghost Slithers Again" on April 27, 2012:

“Right-wing paranoia knows no bounds, as propagandists stoke dark fantasies about President Obama that revive memories of “black helicopters” from the 1990s. But Tea Party favorite, Rep. Allen West reaches back even further to the days of Joe McCarthy…”

“We’ve talked at times about George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, and the amnesia that sets in when we flush events down the memory hole, leaving us at the mercy of only what we know today. Sometimes, though, the past comes back to haunt, like a ghost. It happened recently when we saw Congressman Allen West of Florida on the news. Republican and Tea Party favorite, he was asked at a local gathering how many of his fellow members of Congress are ‘card-carrying Marxists or International Socialists'.”

Statement by Teapublican Allen West:

“I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

Again, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship:

“By now, little of what Allen West says ever surprises. He has called President Barack Obama ‘a low-level Socialist agitator,’ said anyone with an Obama bumper sticker on their car is ‘a threat to the gene pool’ and told liberals like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to “get the hell out of the United States of America.’ Apparently, he gets his talking points from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or the discredited right-wing rocker Ted Nugent.”

“But this time, we shook our heads in disbelief (at Allen West's assertion) ‘78 to 81 Democrats… members of the Communist Party?’ That’s the moment the memory hole opened up and a ghost slithered into the room. The specter stood there, watching the screen, a snickering smile on its stubbled face. Sure enough, it was the ghost of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin farm boy who grew up to become one of the most contemptible thugs in American politics.”

(break)

“Millions of Americans lapped it up, but in the end, Joe McCarthy would be done in by the medium that he had used so effectively to spread his poison: television. In 1954, legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow bravely exposed McCarthy’s tactics on the CBS program, See It Now. Edward R. Murrow:  “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent,” Murrow declared. “We can deny our heritage and history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a Republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”  

Excepted from Moyers & Company show transcript April 26, 2012.

In the end McCarthy was censured  by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 67-22.  Joe faded from the limelight in disgrace.  However, McCarthy is an infamous name, and McCarthyism,  a set of tactics  which live on in infamy. And now Michigan View’s Laurie wants to blacken Obama with his association with Bill Ayers.

Back to Betsy's Buddy
There is no need to blacken Betsy Prince DeVos with her ongoing associations with a smarmy group of self-declared ideologues and operatives who have shifted from Far Left to Far Right (and whose book sales and lecture honorariums  stack up in the process). In their efforts the former Reds have endeared themselves to Betsy, and she to them.  She finds them useful “tools.”   The Red Chinese continue to co-operate with Amway for the time being, and the billions in corporate profits amass,  making a tempting cache of cash with which Betsy and family members can provoke and engender their favorite, private idiocies and ideologies.  It is puzzling why Betsy has such an affinity for former Communists.  What exactly do they have in common?

As Betsy DeVos goes about her merry way tearing down and destroying public institutions and making politics a much more sooty process (American Federation for Children):  Does the radicalism of these commie friends influence her actions or promote her many fights and radical agendas?   It would seem hard to rule out such possibilities.

Way Left of Rad-Right: David Horowitz giving an ex-Leninist anti-Islamist speech
at the UNC where dozens of students walked out on him March 12, 2012.

Let’s Take A Look at David Horowitz: Betsy Prince DeVos’ Ex-Commie Chum Illuminated

So just who is this guy that Betsy had to have keynote up on Mackinac Island to layout new strategies for the Michigan GOP? We get a pretty through description from Justin Raimondo, who is a Ludwig von Mises Institute Adjunct Scholar (remember that Hillsdale/Mackinac Academic Dr. Gary Wolfram is the real von Mises fan among the Michigan rad-right), gives acute insight into Horowitz, the ex-communist and close Betsy DeVos ally.  In "David Horowitz & the Ex-Communist Confessional" in Chronicles, June 1997 this is what Raimondo had to say about David Horowitz, former Communist:

"The literature of recanting radicals has been with us since 1917: from the recollections of Russian Mensheviks, who rued the day they joined with Lenin, to Irving Kristol's "Memoirs of a Trotskyist," in which the neoconservative godfather fondly reminisces about his youthful dalliance with dissident communism. With each successive atrocity and betrayal-Kronstadt, the Moscow Trials, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Khrushchev's admission of Stalin's crimes-library shelves grew heavier with the weight of accumulated mea culpas.

At the height of the Cold War, a new subgenre grew up around the sensational revelations of ex-communists detailed in dozens of books, the most famous being Whittaker Chambers' Witness. This over-praised and overwrought work inspired many imitators, whose works became a staple of the anticommunist arsenal. With their lurid tales of a secret sub-world of subversion, a hidden labyrinth of evil beneath the placid streets of postwar America, THEY THRILLED THEIR READERS WITH A DELICIOUS FEAR.

(break)

With the publication of David Horowitz's book "Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey" (The Free Press, 1997), a memoir detailing the author's involvement with the Black Panthers and the New Left hothouse of Berkeley in the 6O's, we are hearing the last echoes of the ex-radicals' self-abnegation. The twin themes of recantation and retribution dominate these works, from the earliest-Benjamin

Gitlow's, I Confess (1940), This is My Story, by Louis Budenz (1947), Whittaker Chambers' Witness
(1954)) and several other works by lesser-known figures-to their 60's counterparts, Phillp Abbott Luce, author of  The New Left (1966), and Horowitz.

Like disappointed lovers, the authors of these works testify to the cruel seduction they were subjected to: all were innocent idealists led astray by temptation, but redeemed in the end. Budenz, like many of the ex-Stalinists, made a beeline for the Church; others, such as Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, became right-wing Social Democrats and were instrumental in crafting the CIA's penetration of the European labor movement. In time, many - Chambers, Kristol, Luce, Horowitz-would join the conservative movement.

Taking Gitlow and Horowitz-the first, and, likely, the last-as examples, a biographical pattern begins to emerge: both were born into a family of Eoisfieviks, New York Jewish immigrants who instilled their progeny with devotion to the God Who Had Not Yet Failed. Yet the biographical parallels also highlight their vivid contrasts in character, tone, and style.

(break)

Compared to Horowitz, Gitlow the fanatic avenger and consummate opportunist-is a veritable giant. While HOROWITZ WAS ALWAYS A PERIPHERAL FIGURE ON THE LEFT, WITH NO STATUS AS AN ACTIVIST BEYOND THE BERKELEY SCENE, Gitlow was one of the founding leaders of the American Communist Party, whose defection was front-page news all across the world.

(break)

Horowitz, on the other hand, is ambivalent about confronting the mini-Stalin of the Panther New Left milieu, Huey Newton, and he continually worried about the danger to his own safety. Typically, when he discovers that his Black Panther heroes are murderers and thugs, he blames other people: "Anger welled inside me. Why hadn't Noel said anything before? Why hadn't Charles? Or Troy? Why hadn't they warned me? The answer was clear: they did not want to be accused of betraying the Left."

The Panthers had killed their accountant, Betty Van Patter, who had been recommended for the job by Horowitz himself, but he confesses that he "was now ruled by the principle of silence." Although Horowitz knew who had killed Van Patter, and why, it took him years to go public-and he never really does come clean. For nowhere does he directly acknowledge his own complicity in her death, even though it was he who recruited her for the position that was to prove her undoing. He claims that he and other New Left activists were "blind" to the fact that the Panthers were, as Dick Gregory put it, "a bunch of thugs." But this is not very credible: What else is one to think of a group that walks into a session of the California State Assembly armed with rifles and dressed in uniforms? Huey Newton urged his followers to "pick up the gun." What else did Horowitz and friends expect but that, one day, they would pick it up-and use it?

Unlike Gitlow, Chambers, et al., Horowitz was not an activist but a self-styled theoretician, a literary type who held a key post as an editor of RAMPARTS but who deliberately avoided any organizational loyalties except in running the "Learning Center" for the Oakland branch of the Black Panthers. In spite of his best effort to inflate his own importance to the growth of the New Left movement, Horowitz never exercised any appreciable influence over its activities or direction.

When Gitlow was expelled from the Communist Party in the 1930's' along with Jay Lovestone, they took several hundred members with them; when Horowitz, the great New Left guru, announced his support for Ronald Reagan, he took exactly one of his ex-comrades with him: his longtime, friend and literary collaborator Collier.

One striking difference between the ex-commie confessionals of yesterday and Horowitz's tome is stylistic; while Gitlow is concerned with exposing the inner workings of the communist movement, its front groups, strategies, subterfuges, Horowitz is mainly interested in self-revelation.

We learn everything we never needed to know about the messy little ups and downs of his personal life: an affair with a "psychic healer" who "heals" him out of his marriage his relationship with a crack-addicted drifter who left him suddenly after draining him of considerable sums of money and affair with Abbie Rockefeller. Particularly maddening is the fact that the author, in detailing this Bacchanalia, keeps asserting his growing disenchantment with the counter-cultural values an lifestyle of his generation.

(break)

Horowitz... in detailing his own psychosexual peccadilloes at such length-while all the time proclaiming his growing devotion to conservative family values-succeeds only in proving his own hypocrisy. Reflecting the self-absorption so typical of his generation, Radical Son chronicles Horowitz's every mood swing in excruciating detail. To relieve the tedium, the author recalls his brushes with the glitterati: how he hung out with some Kennedy kids as they snorted coke and mingled with the Hollywood crowd, dropping plenty of names along the way.

But the star of this show is the author. IN A PROLOGUE THAT READS LIKE A MARKETING STRATEGY, the tirelessly self-promoting Horowitz declares, "I was like Whittaker Chambers in their generation-a young man, inspired by the high-minded passions of the Left who had broken through to the dark underside of the radical cause. Like Chambers, I had encounters with totalitarian forces that involved betrayal and death. Like him, I had been demonized for my second thoughts. . . Like Chambers, I had become the most hated ex-radical of my generation."

(break)

"HERE IS A NARCISSISM SO INFLATED THAT IT EXPLODES IN A BURST OF PURE ABSURDITY: Picture Chambers, defying the establishment, taking on a man like Hiss, and standing up to the power of the Soviet Empire. Now look at Horowitz: he swims with the tide, not against it, and breathlessly announces, at this late date, that socialism is evil and the Black Panthers were not Boy Scouts. As for comparing the resources and power of the Soviet Union to what is little more than a street gang, Newton was no Stalin, but an ordinary street thug. Horowitz is no Chambers, nor even a Gitlow or a Budenz, but an ordinary disillusioned liberal with nothing of interest to reveal but his own self-obsession.

While Chambers held his audience spellbound with tales of secret papers in the pumpkin patch, and Gitlow mapped the route by which Moscow's gold flowed into communist coffers, all Horowitz has to offer is a couple of friendly dinners with an unnamed Soviet official. These discussions were always held at the best restaurants, and on such occasions Horowitz claims to have argued against Soviet repression...."

(emphasis added)

David Horowitz’s former pro-communist life and current work as a key Hard Right ideologue  is illustrative of any number of Hard Left, former Communists who have found refuge and a paying occupation now in service of the Rad Right.

Their former diehard commitment to the Communist Party has become a strong point in the respect some radical “conservatives” hold for them.

The following excerpt is from "The Apparat: George W. Bush's back-door political machine: It's anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, and is working to create a one-party America" by Jerry M. Landay of Mediatransparency.org, March 18, 2004:

"Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine.

He terms the big 43 the "cohort" -- an "incubator of right-wing, ideological policies that constitute(d )  the (Bush) administration's agenda, and, to the extent that it has one, runs its policy machinery."

He calls the cohort "a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words that have helped shift public opinion rightward." The movement's propulsive energies are largely generated within the cohort.

Stein describes it as movement conservatism's "intellectual infrastructure" -- multiple-issue, non-profit, tax-exempt, and supposedly non-partisan. The apparatus includes think tanks, policy institutes, media-harassment enterprises, as well as litigation firms that file lawsuits to impose their ideological templates on the law.

They mastermind the machinery of radical politics, policy, and regulations. They include campus-based centers of scholarship, student associations, and scores of publications. The shorthand of their faith is well known: less government, generous tax cuts for the privileged, privatization or elimination of Social Security and Medicare, rollbacks of environmental safeguards, major curbs on the public's right to go to court, and a laissez-faire free market system unfettered by regulations or public-interest accountability. Bush campaigns to advance the ideological agenda of the right, and the radical front in turn campaigns for Bush."

Where these folks find their "Roots":

"In the early 1970s, when the movement was spawned, most of the seed funding came from a relative handful of private foundations established by far-right industrialists and inherited wealth.

They included, most notably, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, the John M. Olin Foundation of New York City, the quartet of foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation (Vicks), the Castle Rock Foundation (Coors beer), and the Koch family foundations (energy).

Today, the right's funding base has hugely expanded. The NCRP now identifies a total of 79 private foundations that make grants to right-wing political action groups. The NCRP estimates that those foundations granted some $253 million to the 350 activist organizations between 1999 and 2001 alone.

Scores of for-profit corporations add millions more to the funding stream. These include Time-Warner, Altria (Philip Morris), AT&T, Microsoft, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and other members of the pharmaceutical industry, the two titans of the military-industrial complex Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as telecommunications, banking, real estate, and financial interests. Precise information on corporate contributions to tax exempt organizations is scarce since the IRS does not require their public disclosure.

The NCRP report concludes that the right-wing domain these billions has built has "undoubtedly helped advance, market, and strengthen the conservative agenda in all policy realms," from international relations and so-called "preventive" war-making, to a raft of domestic issues."

(break)

"Political commentator David Gergen has noted that the integrated propaganda organs of the far right have created "a new politics in America," with its "ability to mobilize and interact with core constituencies on issues ranging from immigration to tax policy to welfare reform."

The machine's efforts, which are misperceived by the populace as divorced from the GOP and the Bush White House, allow the President to appear above the fray at photo-ops and fund-raisers, while the unofficial machine augments his firepower and campaign bank accounts."

Note: In Michigan, the DeVos clan helped finance and establish the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which shares funders with the organizations and their associated foundations listed above.

Back to "The Apparat" analysis:

"During the Sixties and early Seventies “Domestic tranquility had been shattered by racial unrest, assassinations, and burning cities. "The glory hath departed," intoned the Rev. Jerry Falwell on CBS, as he organized his Moral Majority to "save" the nation. America, he preached, had lost its power, lost its values, lost its virtues. And he blamed the liberal movement for all the ills. With the Nixon landslide against McGovern in 1972, the right also sensed its moment. The Reagan victory in 1980 confirmed it.

The ultra-conservative William Simon, a financier, Treasury Secretary, and then president of the Olin Foundation, decided it was time to bring conservative wealth, manpower, and organizational ability to bear on the creation of a "counter intelligentsia" to roll back the "despotism" of the "Liberal Establishment."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce widely distributed an influential memo by a Richmond attorney named Lewis Powell (the Powell Memo), who would subsequently become a Supreme Court justice, calling for a conservative assault against what he viewed as the central echelons of liberal power -- the campus, the media, the courts, and politics.

Out of this tempest emerged what Sidney Blumenthal has called the "counter-establishment." A host of right wing intellectuals would staff "new institutes, writing policy papers and newspaper editorials ... serving as political advisers, lending the power of the word" to a movement to lead the counter-charge.

Many of these intellectuals were defectors from Communism, disillusioned by the excesses of the system, their personal quest for status and power unrequited. They were joined by disaffected liberals, ambitious operatives hungry for the power to make things happen. Both were familiar with the byzantine state machinery that ran the former Soviet Union."

(emphasis added)

And so it came to pass conservative tactics and goals become more and more like the tactics and goals of the former communists who sought to hold hegemony and control over everything public:  national, state, and local.

In the end,  personal liberty and true freedom falls victim to these left or right wing tyrants. Some writers have taken up the issue.  What’s the difference between the so-called conservatives / TeaPartisans and the former old style Communist ideology and practices?  Not much they say.

Let’s go ask Betsy about this issue, after all she chums around with a bunch of  former commies.

On the Reader:
Read about David Horowitz's latest escapades in "University of North Carolina students walk out on David Horowitz as he compares Muslims to Nazis" in the Daily Tar Heel and Islamophobia Today.

Related Slates:
“Queen” Elizabeth: Betsy DeVos, nouveau-riche, anti-social queen of mean - Betsy DeVos & The Amway Clan’s Abject Failure to Reach High Moral Ground via “Corporate Social Responsibility” -
Betsy DeVos’ Chum Bucket: Deep Inside - An Agenda & Dangerously Flawed Beliefs

Merged content from a multi-part Part 1 and Part 2 original.

Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan

Behold the Nerd Snyder's brass knuckled attacks on public education and local democracy; they are more brazen and destructive than former Gov. Engler's legendary ham-fisted assaults. Über-Ugly is on the rise, again.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is utilizing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) crib notes, a recall offense. The “Nerd” Governor can't make a move without employing ALEC models & policies and support from Michigan’s long history with ALEC and a long list of ALEC members.

Foremost in his attacks is his beefed up Emergency Manager Law and Emergency Managers in Michigan (EM) through Michigan Republican sponsored (led by the EM controlled Benton Harbor's own Phil Pavlov who championed the bill) EM dictatorial powers given Snyder appointed one-man rule set against the rights of local government under Michigan's long revered and respected "local control".

Also, TeaPublican Snyder continues to lead systemic Republican attacks on teachers and public schools (in all categories) and aggressively seeks to take down the very foundations of Michigan Public Education (rules, operations and imposition of privatization).

Lastly many, many areas of Michigan’s laws, rules and regulations are being “adjusted” at a furious pace to fit the whims of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (spin-off of the national arch-conservative Heritage Foundation), and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) - heavily backed by the Koch Bros. and mega-wealthy families like Michigan's own DeVos & Van Andel clans.

It’s a virtual, spiral corporate feeding frenzy!

Corporate Coups d'état: How ALEC is creating Corporatocracy
across the Nation state-by-state, bill-by-bill, Legislator-by-Legislator

Michigan has become an infamous "Mean TeaPublican" Battleground State

Scott Hagerstrom, the Director of the Koch-funded Michigan Americans for Prosperity (AFP) makes it clear, that it is the Kochs, working directly through ALEC, that have provided the AFP plans to the Michigan Tea Party, to eliminate all organized resistance from the political sphere, and as Scott says, they are aiming to "take the unions out at the knees." This belligerence started in Wisconsin and now it's spreading across the country.

Snyder and crew have sought to make their attacks “below the radar” using methods that accomplish virtually the same things Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker (attempting to raise money in Michigan to fight his recall) has attempted, but doing so in a backhanded way.  Walker’s M.O. has been replacement legislation, Snyder has used "substitution" and "amendments" to settled legislation to accomplish his “re-invention.”

Snyder's in a world of trouble. Snyder's causing the kids of this state, our kids, to go into panic. Their schools, bus transportation, art & music, sports programs, band and field trips, advanced placement classes and/or ability to take a class at a near by college or university (while still in high school) - all this and more, much more is on the cutting table.

The concepts that are the core of the Snyder program (to reinvent by destroying what we have, to rebuild in the mode Rick dictates) use the metrics and formulas of ALEC as found in its fabricated playbook of data and theories in “Rich States, Poor States”.

The American Legislative Executive Council is a heretofore unknown far right, Koch Bros. et. al. think tank - controlled and funded by major corporations which have found a way to force feed the various state legislative bodies with legislation and resolutions championing and directly benefiting their specific needs.

The following is a partial list of ALEC's other corporate backers, those we know of, from Wikipedia:

• Amway
• American Nuclear Energy Council
• American Petroleum Institute
• Coors Brewing Company
• Exxon Mobil
• The National Rifle Association
• Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America
• Philip Morris
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
• Texaco
• VISA
• and others.

Groups critical of ALEC claim that the organization is controlled by the entities that fund it’s operations and confabs, subsequently promote these donors' agendas and goals, along with making carefully crafted attempts to advance legislation which favor and advantage their interests.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a political/ideological powerhouse, second to none. It calls corporate-serving shots nationwide. Most recently the power of ALEC has been laid bare in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, although ALEC subterfuge and "mainlining" of "just-fill-in-the-blanks" corporate written and approve legislation for states has been brought to the public's attention.

Little attention has been paid up until now as to the key early members were, those who set the tone and greased the skids for what has come to follow.

More than 30 years ago, a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision:

“A nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.”

At that meeting, in September 1973, state legislators, including:

• then Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde,
• conservative activist Paul Weyrich, leader of the New Traditionalist movement
• Lou Barnett, a veteran of then Gov. Ronald Reagan’s 1968 presidential campaign

“(These men) together with a handful of others, launched the American Legislative Exchange Council.”

Among those who were involved with ALEC in its formative years were:

• Robert Kasten and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin
• John Engler of Michigan
• Terry Branstad of Iowa
• John Kasich of Ohio

“(A)ll of whom moved on to become governors or members of Congress.”

Congressional members who were active during this same period included:

• Senators John Buckley of New York,
• Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and
• Congressmen Phil Crane of Illinois
• Jack Kemp of New York.

Source: The American Legislative Exchange Council’s home site in “About ALEC”.

Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge about the power and thrust of the Far Right, or what Grand Rapids native former President Jerry Ford called the “Hard Right,” knows the power, impact and influence the above mentioned group of “reactionaries and revolutionaries” on the outer fringe of radical conservatism have had.  Observers also know the great and course-changing impact these men had, and continue to have, on today’s governance.

ALEC's activities are very widespread and endemic to the lawmaking processes of state legislatures across the country, and for that reason, their activities have been accepted through ignorance of the secret and underlying purposes and objectives they promote.  The public finds it hard to believe such a group exists. But they do. Consider: "ALEC has approximately 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states, as well as more than 85 members of Congress and 14 sitting or former Governors who are considered 'ALEC alumni'" (Source: Wikipedia, CMD and VLTP who has reported on ALEC in most levels of US Courts as well).

The ALEC Koch Trade in Michigan
Thus, as Snyder attempts to roll out his jaundiced version of what's good for your child in Michigan's public schools it is only fair that we accelerate  the process of ferreting out who's underwriting these "re-inventive" concepts and in coughing up the statistics of the kind that Snyder uses to make his full-frontal, brutal raid on our neighborhood schools.

If you love outsiders dictating to Michigan (who, what, when and where about your child or grandchild's education) you will want to follow the revelations coming about Snyder's the sources behind Rick's snide attacks on schools and the teachers who teach.

As ALEC purposefully puts Michigan schools in the worst light possible, Snyder accepts that flawed data. His response, "It's a fact." No, governor, it's as filtered and reported by ALEC and staff doing the insidious work of the anti-public schools crowd.

The 2008 ALEC Education Report barked our Michigan public schools, placing them at the near bottom with the right-to-work paradises, the Gulf states, such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These are states with significant minority student populations. ALEC reports highlights states on the boarder with/or closer to Canada to the north: Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Montana, where minority students are far less concentrated; these states are ranked highest. No genus is needed to find an important factor in those findings.

ALEC employed ideological bully William Bennett to head up its annual education report.  (He's the harsh critic of public education, whom Reagan put into the Carter established Department of Education to obfuscate and destroy as much as possible of this far right-hated federal cabinet post). Bennett also runs a for-profit business. K-12 Inc is Bennett's idea of what he would like to do to profit from public education, especially through the means of privatizing as much of its functions as possible. Bennett covets a major economic windfall from the potential passage of Snyder’s radical "Cyber Schools" legislation (through his stake in K-12 Inc.) being interjected into Michigan’s education system.

K-12 Inc. also has had among its shareholders those well-known parochiaid/voucher mavens, Dick & Betsy DeVos.

See also: “The Truth About Cyber Schools” on Blogging for Michigan January 23, 2012 and long history of ALEC and Right-Wing orgs like Heritage involvement in education - “School Choice”, Charter Schools and Public School Privatization.

Michigan Pieces in Place: Snyder as the Pawn of the Kingpin
Koch Bros, Scaife, Olin and DeVos Family ALEC  Corporatocracy

Snyder's vision, informed and directed by The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Wealthy Elite, is another brazened attempt at an radical right-wing coup in Michigan, the same one all Americans are facing across the Nation. 

It isn't the re-invention ideal as Snyder proclaims: it's retro-pursuit of the long-standing disenfranchising goals designed to destroy America's great institution, free public education. In this process the harsh critics have found a willing pawn in Snyder. Combine this too, with the creation Snyder's Jim Crow EM Plantations in multiple Michigan cities, the latest target being Detroit, and the destruction of basic principals of democracy, representation of elected officials, perhaps the pawn, is really "castling" all Michiganders, king to rook.

ALEC's long march goes on, as the public will see
For the DeVos’ and in particular Betsy DeVos, the Koch Brothers (backers and funders of ALEC) and the mom & pop family-business-killers-the Waltons of Wal-Mart - public education is a target of great opportunity for quick profit and power lust.

The next major attack is already underway; again funded and cheered on by Betsy DeVos. It's her dismemberment and undermining of public universities and colleges.

Who would believe anyone, much less today’s radicalized Republicans, would literally stoop so low as to turn government and the taxpayers against our local schools so much a part of our state like in Ovid, White Pine, Monroe and Alpena, communities where and kids matter so much.  Republicans cannot hate teachers and professors and at the same time hold a dishonest honest claim to care about students.

The Michigan TeaPartisan's (Michigan Tea Party Republicans) radical and aggressive punishment attacks on educators are a clear indication of a very low-class mentality, festooned with haranguing diatribes, and the extremely rude conduct on the part of select TeaPartisans during education hearings in Michigan's legislature; all centered on crashing down on education and educators. Such is the sorriest of sights.

Snyder's ALEC centered education plan is a tragic loss - loss for Michigan's kids. And a tragic loss for taxpayers supporting neighborhood public schools. Killing local option and local government via the dictatorial EM regime is just plain evil and unacceptable.

Suppressing the right to vote and taking away the power of elected officials in units confiscated by Snyder can only be described as totalitarian in spirit.

The public must step up and fight back.  Not tomorrow, Today!

On the Reader:
Read a detailed SERIES on Betsy DeVos organizations attacking Public Education across the county by Rachel Tabachnick:
Part One: Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on Public Schools 
Part Two: Pro-Voucher Astroturfing:  Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors 
Part Three: Betsy DeVos Announces PA Governor Tom Corbett Will Keynote Pro-Voucher National Policy Summit

Further reading on the American Legislative Exchange Council:
Investigate more about ALEC and read ALEC model legislation on the ALECexposed.org portal.
Read a Report on ALEC connections to Congress and the Federal Courts.
Read a early series of articles on ALEC in the Nation.
See how many ALEC bills and laws in US States identified so far.
Read a list of US and Multinational ALEC Corporate Members identified.
See what ALEC investigators and researchers have uncovered in State Reports on ALEC:
Arizona (Supplement) - Maine - Missouri - Michigan - New Hampshire - New Jersey - Ohio - Pennsylvania - Texas - Utah - Virginia - Wisconsin or find more information on your State.

Related Slates:
First piece focused on ALEC Disaster Capitalism on the Gazette:
Rick’s Re-Invention: A.L.E.C.’S Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Rise (April 2011)
Piece on Betsy Devos, ALEC and Education on the Gazette:
Betsy DeVos & The Amway Clan’s Abject Failure to Reach High Moral Ground via “Corporate Social Responsibility” (December 2011)

Best of ALEC posts on the American Legislative Exchange Council on the Gazette:
No Brainer Legislation & No Brain Legislators who slavishly deliver for the Corporatocracy (via ALEC) inside Michigan’s Legislature (July 2011)
Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C. (September 2011)
Smart A.L.E.C. in the Michigan: The secret is There is No Secret… But Oh Yes, There Is! (July 2011)
Who needs the Koch Brothers? We’ve Got Rick Snyder, ALEC and his “Buffo” Team of Privatizers! (July 2011)
Michigan ALEC State Chair Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker: A Cheery Face & A Fake Defense  promoting corporatist direct access to Michigan lawmaking (August 2011)

More on the American Legislative Exchange Council (tag) and the Emergency Management issue series in EM Plantation/Jim Crow on the Gazette.

Betsy DeVos & The Amway Clan’s Abject Failure to Reach High Moral Ground via “Corporate Social Responsibility”

Elizabeth Prince DeVos has gone the long distance to rip apart Michigan's public schools, as such, Betsy has shown her moral poverty and disregard for community. She knows noting of "permaculture" the need to protect and promote heart and soul of American Ideals and Institutions.

Perhaps Betsy could be forgiven her narrow minded anti-public bigotry; given her early life; isolated and steeped in a strong ethnic background skeptical of the validity of science and the rest of the religious world-but that was then; her early schooling and her matriculation from hypercalvinist Calvin College - Grand Rapids - and now forgiveness is not an option.

Betsy's religious tradition struggled long, hard, and tragically in holding on to its connections to South Africa's racial Apartheid. At an early-less mature time of muted, yet dangerous ideological commitment; Betsy and her husband, Dick Jr.,  stunningly defeated in his personally financed $34 million bid for Michigan's governorship - were supporting individual "scholarships" for children of color.

With immense deep pockets they could finance hundreds of children lifted by them out poverty and deprivation to attend Cranbrook or wherever they could find elite schools of their personal choice to accept their minority "scholars." Who would object if Dick & Betsy want to help or promote the academic achievement of needy students via their own or organized scholarship charity? But, no, that was not enough!

Betsy took on Michigan's historic institution of public education in a mean-spirited and aggressive manner - An enduring hissy fit.

Betsy's goal: secure taxpayer provided voucher monies for her own Dutch Reformed Christian Schools and parochiaid for any and all religions. Moving through a number of morphed organizations and political efforts with names such as the American Federation for Children she has run a rough and rude campaign to grind to dust any or all opposition - Care not they be Republican or Democrat!

Violations of the campaign finance laws and multimillion dollar fines thereto have not slowed her efforts. Joining with other aggressive elites with agendas intended to rob the public of its public school monies and support, Betsy presses ahead. She has great support from the anti-community/local business prosperity Waltons of Wal-Mart, and the mega-billions Cato creators and A.L.E.C. corporate bullies: Charles and David Koch.

Betsy's The Mega Rich Poster Girl for the Antithesis of CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR) defined on Wikipedia as:

"CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY  is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms.

"The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit."

Note: "CSR" also called corporate conscience, citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business.


The upshot of Betsy's vicious war on the public schools is the denigration and destruction of Michigan's once premiere Public Education Program run and fostered by its premiere/world class public universities. What happened in the Michigan TeaPublican 2011 Legislative session, that insulted, undercut, (Michigan's public schools were legislatively swindled of $1.2 billion due them) and soiled the profession of teaching(dishonest, partisan/ideological attacks on tenure), could NEVER have happened had Betsy disapproved. The blame is Betsy's to bear.

Keen observer and new political straight-shooter, reporter Chris Savage details the situation in Michigan under the dominance and dictates of Betsy DeVos:

"In Benton Harbor, the teachers union, the MEA, delivered a truckload of schools supplies to teachers who didn't even have pencils and paper for their students. School systems across the state face bankruptcy and the prospect of an Emergency Manager. This is blamed on corrupt administrators, greedy, parasitic teachers and budget-breaking unionized workers. It is never blamed on the fact that we are increasingly starving our public schools of the resources they need to exist and flourish.

"When someone tries to tell you that charter schools are the answer to our educational system's problems and that outsourcing the education of our children is going to help bring our most poverty-stricken public schools to the same level as the school systems in wealthy districts, ask them this. Ask them how they expect public school systems to compete after they took one billion dollars away from them during an economic recession."

"Ask them that."

Source: Chris Savage (aka Eclectablog) in "The Republican hypocrisy in Michigan’s charter school debate"  posted December 15, 2011 and also found on BloggingforMichigan.


Original.

Michissippi Madness: Educational Apartheid on the Rise/GOP Monopoly Corporatocracy Replaces Local Democracy

Yesterday's late night vote (December 14, 2011) to uncap profit making charters culminates in defeat A MORE THAN 30 YEAR BATTLE to protect the grand heritage of the publicly-funded, publicly-controlled, publicly-loved neighborhood public schools.

Unlimited Charter loosey-goosey Legislation now replaces that school with a plethora of profit-for-profit-sake wildcat operations designed to siphon off hundreds of millions of your tax dollars into the hands of a wide variety of unsavory and anti-democratic corporations, con men, and swindlers.
WHAT MICHISSIPPIAN SCHOOL DISTRICT WILL BE THE FIRST TO BE CONVERTED TO ALL FOR-PROFIT CHARTERS? HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? THEN WHAT?

Here in Michigan it all began with Dick & Betsy parading academics Chubb and Moe around the state utilizing the Brookings Institution's book: "Politics, Markets, and America's Schools".

Wrote Al Shanker concerning Chubb and Moe:

"...(I)t's too bad that THE ONLY SOLUTION THEY OFFER IS TO END DEMOCRATIC CONTROL AND PUT SCHOOLS IN THE SAME CATEGORY AS TOOTHPASTE --THAT IS, UNDER MARKET CONTROL. But with this important difference " the individual would choose the "product," but the public would still pay."

"Under the scheme that Chubb and Moe favor, schools would be virtually unregulated. THE STATE WOULD ALLOW JUST ABOUT ANY GROUP OF PEOPLE TO START A SCHOOL. THEY WOULD SET THEIR OWN CRITERIA FOR STUDENT ADMISSIONS AND TEACH PRETTY MUCH WHAT THEY WANTED. PARENTS WOULD BE FREE TO CHOOSE THE SCHOOLS THAT ATTRACTED THEM, EACH SCHOOL WOULD RECEIVE PUBLIC MONEY ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER AND KIND OF STUDENTS ENROLLED AND KIDS WHOM NO ONE WANTED WOULD SOMEHOW BE FOUND A PLACE. The idea is that a wide variety of schools filling particular tastes would grow up. The ones that were satisfactory to consumers would flourish; the others would fail."

Original.

Sen. Phil Pavlov is responding like a Pavlovian Dog: Mackinac Center Gollum & Grand Guide Ken Braun delights in the success of political “Puppy Training”

As outlined by Ken Braun, the rad-right has anti-teacher Phil Pavlov by the short hairs. Pavlov is trained to do the destructive work which his handlers have "puppy-trained" him to do. SEE original Mackinac Center article: "Politician Puppy Training"-  What the tea parties can learn from the dog by Ken Braun Dec 24, 2010.

Go out and do something super"nasty for your " control", your TeaPartisan corporate/Chamber handlers/rad-right wingnuts. When the bell rings salivate, bite, and submit destructive legislation just as DeVos's American Federation for Children (AFC), the Waltons, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, and the Koch Brothers (Cato, Americans for Prosperity, etc): demand when they pull an elected official's choke chain.

Doggone if State Senator Phil Pavlov isn't the "best of show", the boneheaded Doberman has an aggressive/negativist attitude; Let's go get a pound of teacher flesh.

In "Michigan Bill To Privatize Public School Teaching Sparks Concerns" on Sept 2, 2011 Joy Resmovits writes:

"Michigan state Republicans said this week they are preparing a package of bills to privatize public school teaching -- eliciting concerns about working conditions and trading academic quality for cost effectiveness.

"The legislation prepared by state Republican Sen. Phil Pavlov, who chairs the state Senate's education committee, would allow private, for-profit companies to compete for teaching jobs in public schools and would limit the power of teachers unions in seeking compensation packages.

"But few specifics are known about the bill package, which has yet to be officially introduced. And Pavlov isn't divulging much more -- for now.

'I don't mean to be vague about this,' Pavlov told The Huffington Post. "I can tell you everything on Wednesday (9/7/11)."

Pavlov did provide a general outline of the plan, but with minimal details.

'This package of bills will increase choice in many facets in Michigan in a way that has been necessary for long,' Pavlov said. 'We want a large comprehensive choice package that includes the expansion of charter schools and dual enrollment, to really put more opportunities in front of parents and students in Michigan.'"

In a one state "depression," Michissippi can hardly wait to find out what "bone of contention" this "puppy trained" Pavlov will trot out to the Michigan Legislature to please his "handlers" and "controllers." The destruction of public education for partisan revenge, and for the purpose of lining the pockets of J.C. Huizenga's Heritage Academies, Michelle Rhee's radical program, et. al.

Taken together this regressive movement constitutes a viral civic evil, it entails the beginning of end for our American Freedoms and way of life. That is freedom from the Koch Bros. American Legislative Exchange Councils coup d'état placing the Corporatocracy in charge of everything public and part elements of the grand "commons" so much a part of American life heretofore.

"A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder."

Wake up Michigan. A corporatist coup d'état is underway. Your way of life, as you know it will be changed forever if the Corporatocracy (Corporate controlled democracy) they represent should succeed. Our moonfaced Nerd, Rick Snyder, is helpless amid this blitzkrieg of reprisals and instructional destruction/devolution.

There are those who get it, and get very well. From Michigan blogger Eclectoblog on Daily Kos:

"When you have done nearly all there is to do to hurt teachers, what remains? It's simple, really. Outsource their jobs. Privatize the actual education of our children."

"School districts could hire school teachers through a private company, expanding a privatization program already allowed for lunch workers and bus drivers, under legislation being prepared by the head of the Senate Education Committee."

"As part of a significant education reform package sponsored by Senator Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), schools could privatize their instructional services, giving district a way to avoid the perceived high-dollar packages pushed by the teacher unions.

"'I look at it as offering options, 'Pavlov said. '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.'"  

Eclectoblog concludes thusly:

"We really are going over a cliff in Michigan. The main questions remaining are whether or not we can hold on long enough to vote these idiots out of office in 2012 and how much damage they can do to our society until we do." 

This posting drew hundreds of comments in support.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy Director Ken Braun details his Puppy Training/political control mechanism:

"Almost everyone loves puppies, at least until they start making messes on the carpet. With every puppy comes the responsibility of training it to become "man's best friend." The same can be said about legislators. WHILE THEY ARE, OF COURSE, NOT DOGS, THEY DO NEED TO BE TRAINED IN ORDER TO BE TURNED IN TO A VOTER'S BEST FRIEND. While most go to Lansing or Washington to do the right thing, MANY WILL END UP MAKING MESSES that result in less liberty."

"Training legislators, as with training puppies, must be done with care and common sense. Puppies don't learn to bark before going outside because their masters have set an example by peeing in the backyard themselves. That type of 'communication' would just confuse a puppy (to say nothing of the neighbors). INSTEAD, AN EXTERNAL SYSTEM OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS IS USED TO GUIDE THE PUPPY TOWARD DOING THE RIGHT THING."

"THERE'S A LESSON IN THIS FOR TEA PARTY GROUPS WHO SEEK TO COMMUNICATE THEIR CONCERNS TO POLITICIANS. YOU DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN THE PRINCIPLES OR SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS. INDEED, THIS IS OFTEN THE LAST THING THAT WILL WORK."

(emphasis added)

Russia's Dr. Pavlov accomplished a number of studies:

"Further work on reflex actions involved involuntary reactions to stress and pain. Pavlov extended the definitions of the four temperament types under study at the time: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic, updating the names to "the strong and impetuous type, the strong equilibrated and quiet type, the strong equilibrated and lively type, and the weak type."
-- Wikipedia

What type of temperament types does Sen. Phil Pavlov represent on Dr. Ivan Pavlov's scale?

Outside Michigan, people are becoming highly aware, and are catching on, as to the drastic anti-American heritage uprising the TeaPublicans are fomenting as ideological/fear-filled Mackinac Center, et. al. "puppy trained" Pavlovian dogs.

Ken Braun, Michigan's "Pavolvian "puppy trainer" and and leader of Michissippi's march into regression advocate, is the MacCen's Gollum: "Where would you be without me, gollum, gollum? I saved us! It was me! We survived because of me!"

Original.

“Queen” Elizabeth: Betsy DeVos, nouveau-riche, anti-social queen of mean

Perhaps Betsy DeVos and the Detroit / Mackinac News would favor Labor Day renamed, to be called: ROBBER BARONS DAY.

Michigan workers are overpaid says mega-wealthy scion ""Queen Betsy" (Elizabeth Prince DeVos). Queenie is the very personification of the havoc and damage which can be done with huge grudge money that is targeted and directed in a heavily ideological manner. A benefactor such as Andrew Carnegie (stately Carnegie neighorhood Libraries across the country; "2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929",  Betsy is not!

Bold Contrast from "The Nouveau Riche and the Noblesse Oblige":

"Bono & Angelina Jolie have refocused the light on the dark areas of the world and are leading us in the charge back to the side of compassion and righteousness."

Betsy DeVos, by contrast, has been moving in a steady anti-righteous, anti-social direction. She has taken the charge from the late Milton Friedman, with whom she is enthralled, into the direction of radical individualism: Free to Choose, was the Friedman bible. "Queen" Elizabeth is hiking the same god-less path as Ayn Rand, who authored that tiny tome, The Virtue of Selfishness.

Queenie Elizabeth would be shocked to learn that her activities to enlarge her wealth by profiting from privatizing public schools and riding her wave of personal power and influence are anti-Jesus:

Jesus spoke this parable:

"The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops."

This I will do: I will pull down my barns and build larger...There will I bestow all my fruits and my goods in enlarged storehouses. Thus the rich man will hoard his goods. Here is the beginning of his folly; to "hoard" his surplus instead of "using it" for the good of men. " 

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' That night his soul was collected by God."
--Luke 12:16-20

THE ROUTE OF THE TRULY COMPASSIONATE AND THOUGHTFUL RICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN 'NOBLESSE OBLIGE"

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests "noble ancestry constrains to honorable behavior; privilege entails to responsibility". Being a noble meant that one had responsibilities to lead, manage and so on. One was not to simply spend one's time in "idle pursuits."

One of the new noble, Betsy's "idle pursuits" are evil and destructive of community and democracy.

Betsy alone is a singular and special threat to the future of our great nation. Like all idle rich, Betsy has far greater responsibilities and societal obligations than she is willing to own.

Emanuele Corso, writes in his piece "Public education and the tentacles of profit":

"Privatizing public education is one potential source of new wealth being explored by the other-reality people. Achieving control of the public education system that has existed, for better or for worse, in the United States for more than a century requires operatives appointed to governmental offices of education willing to carry out the (PRIVATIZING) agenda... Why not start the takeover process with politicians who could use a little financial help with their campaigns provided by "foundations" dedicated to the (mislabeled concept of the) preservation of democracy?"

This take-down of public education is the clearly defined self-appointed task "Queen" Elizabeth has taken on; aided and abetted by unbelievable betrayal and loads of inherited money. To gain power, influence, and control Betsy needs mega-money at her personal disposal to direct and implement the privatization and parochiaid voucher schemes she promotes. Her campaign's successes have the huge potential for a source of "major" new money and profit for her and her ilk to carry on more anti-public/common good warfare.

To augment Betsy's anti-public school goals DeVos is allied with the Waltons, the Bros. Koch, the Chambers of Commerce, and Michigan's Mackinac Center. Here's a partial rundown from the afore mentioned article: Public education and the tentacles of profit:

"The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sponsored model bills aiming to privatize public education, eliminate teacher's unions, and make American universities adhere to the right wing and libertarian viewpoint. From the Nation series on ALEC and the Koch connections:

"The Kochs have given ALEC contributions exceeding $1 million-not including a half-million loaned to ALEC when the group had financial problems. The Kochs' mistrust of public education can be traced to their father, Fred, who ranted and raved that the National Education Association was a communist group and public-school books were filled with 'communist propaganda...."

Interestingly ALEC was behind the scenes in Wisconsin in the education fight. Read this article by Dr. William Cronin.

The contravening truth: Privilege bestowed on Wealth, in a democratic nation, must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege:

"In ethical discussion, (noblesse oblige) is sometimes used to summarize a moral economy wherein privilege must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege or who cannot perform such duty. Finally, it has been used recently primarily to refer to PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE RICH, FAMOUS AND POWERFUL, NOTABLY TO PROVIDE GOOD EXAMPLES OF BEHAVIOUR OR TO EXCEED MINIMAL STANDARDS OF DECENCY."
(emphasis added) -- Wikipedia

Writer John Ralston Saul (particularly known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good) lays the axe to Betsy's platinum sugar plum tree:

"Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the élite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens."

Betsy DeVos views her efforts to champion social, religious, and educational apartheid via her work on her front group The National Federation for Children as a noble and a chartable endeavor. Not so!

"The term Noblesse Oblige also serves as a warning to those taking part that they are not to use their power and influence for selfish personal desires ...lest they be 'removed from the game,'" summarizes Wiki, in a summary which fits completely the parable included above, as told by Jesus.

"Queen" Elizabeth's "charity" always comes with a barbed hook, and a large dead weight. The long trail of incivility, chicanery, misinformation, political dirty tricks, and reprisals in her anti-community efforts belie her "charity" and expand her image as a serious one track ideologue with an anti-public angst and ambition.

The "new man" in "Queen" Elizabeth DeVos' life is N.J. Gov. Chris Christie!


Original.

Greenhills: Snyder, Greenhills, Betsy DeVos & THE GOAL: Universal Vouchers (Part 2 of 3)

If Nerd Snyder and his Tea-partisan crowd in legislative the super majority comply with the American Legislative Exchange Councils' Model Legislation, the anti-public schools Mackinac Center, and the heavy, heavy pressure from Betsy Prince DeVos' AFC, there will be a push to put vouchers in place for private and religious education in Michigan in the very near future as well as a plethora of other damaging legislation/profitization. See the VIDEO with an UW expert here.

Rick Snyder's private academy, Greenhills, would be the perfect private voucher venue. How much easier it would be to fund a student at Greenhills with a hefty taxpayer coupon/voucher to underwrite their high costs.

Elsewhere the voucher push is well under way as part of the GOP State-by-State Legislative (American Legislative Exchange Council - ALEC) coup; this legislative blitzkrieg is characterized in the manner that is being carried out in Utah and many other states-under Republican control. Previously, Betsy's high-buck voucher efforts with a Utah statewide voucher ballot proposal were soundly defeated 2-to-1, and now, using the TeaPublican majority in the Utah legislature, the DeVos backed vouchers are being pushed again in Utah this time in the legislature and in other state legislatures are involved in a massive and coordinated effort cross the nation with Betsy's backing.

Read how Betsy is involved in such brash and damaging acts against public schools as the Sen. Alberta Darling (Wisconsin Recall Election target) backed $800 million dollar cut in state support is hurting kids!

Betsy's front group "The American Federation for Children (AFC) has reportedly spent more than $500,000 in television ads to support Darling and other Republicans facing recall elections because of their support for Walker's anti-labor legislation."

Continues...

Original and Part 1 and Part 3.

Tweetal Dee & Tweetal Dumb: Jacques & Olson - Putting a Strangle Hold on Michigan's Legislative Agenda

Ingrid Jacques & Kyle Olson, Dee and Dumb, are squawking about organized teachers. And what do they know? They're paid hacks for the anti-public school aggressors and the TeaPublican faction now with a stranglehold on the Michissippi legislative agenda.

In "Union Backlash" in the Michigan View on July 6, 2011, Ingrid references EAG ( Kyle Olson’s Education Action Group).Just a few mouths ago, Kyle Olson, kid brother to Dr. Ryan Olson, who headed up Mackinac Center's education division, came out of nowhere and helped form a "front group, EAG"; a not so clever shell operation for the raging ideological and Profitization forces in opposition to local schooling.

The EAG incorporator is closely associated with Betsy Prince DeVos, anti-public schools maven (SEE: EAGTruth.com) :

"EAG is a front group for the Michigan Republican groups that seek to expand the use of publicly funded vouchers for private and religious schools. A closer look reveals broad GOP leadership connections:

Eric Doster, EAG incorporator
"Eric Doster, a Lansing lawyer, has been General Counsel to the Michigan Republican Party for 15 years. Doster served on the advisory board for the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) PAC and his home address is listed as that of the group's treasurer. The GLEP PAC is a creation of Dick DeVos that advocates vouchers and charter schools."

"Doster represented U. S. Rep. Tim Walberg in his recall fight, represented Citizens for the Protection of Marriage in 2004, and was appointed to the Judges' Retirement Board in 1996 by former Governor John Engler. He is a member of the ultra-conservative Federalist Society."

Kyle Olson, EAG sole staff member
"Kyle Olson, a former Lansing lobbyist, was district director and campaign manager for Republican Gerald Van Woerkom's campaign for state Senate in 2002. He is also a member of the Republican State Committee. In September 2007, he joined other prominent Michigan Republican activists at a Grand Rapids airport during a visit with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Olson's brother Ryan is (was) the Director of Education Policy for the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Far from being a group of "citizens and school board leaders," Doster and Olson's passion is working to elect Republicans. That's okay, but don't try to hide behind a "nonpartisan" label."

Provocateur Betsy Prince DeVos apparently has developed an apparent need to show that the anti-public effort was more widespread and active than several others, produced by hundreds of millions spent with such efforts as Capitol Confidential, Ken Bruan, the Education Report, a "faux pro-public schools rag" that is sent to teachers (free of charge ala the MEA Voice-a house publication) in order to communicate a "false and misformation" messages directly to teachers; in hopes of breaking some of the teachers off from their preferred professional organizations-the effort's ultimate goal.

Kyle OIson was recently pictured in the far background at the of the AFP (Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity) rally at the Capitol in Lansing, lonesome and alone, largely unknown. None-the-less Olson was a presenter and a participant a the podium, he also added in with his showing of Kids Aren't Cars video in a nearby meeting room. Kyle is a eager understudy to the nefarious, sex fedish addict-turned big moralizer and trash talker, the Koch' Bros. operative, Dick Morris of FOX fame.

Olson's group (essentially made up of just Olson and a Michigan GOP attorney) made it from secret formation of EAG (Olson's Education Action Group) out of nowhere, to the front pages of Booth papers; The EAG materials were published with Olson's facilitation to "shock" the public with an exhausting listing of salaries for teachers and for their association's staffs derived by efforts of the Mackinac Center, but attributed to EAG for expanded effect.

Undercover Olson: Misrepresenting Himself, as a Student, to Trap a Professor
Kyle Olson was also given to delusion that he could make the national news scene with his "gottcha interview" and video which he procured by going to NY city; falsifying his identity and purpose to a well-known, elderly professor, from whom he hoped to derive "shocking" revelations in the pursuit of his desperate need to rise to fame: utilizing the identical MO of the Acorn video gottcha deceptions and brouhaha of the year before.

EAG lacks transparency and openness according to EAGTruth.com:

"EAG's Thug Watch' is a launching pad for personal attacks against anyone who disagrees with its agenda."

"The EAG's Articles of Incorporation filed by Republican Party General Counsel Eric Doster give only vague details of the EAG's funding sources: 'The corporation is to be financed under the following general plan:CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS AND PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS."
(emphasis added)

More recently, Kyle Olson has been a frequent anti-public school "guest" commentator on Andrew Breitbart's "chop shop" website.

One wonders who really prompts these two, Kyle Olson & Ingrid Jacques. Are the ideas they espouse all their own or are they the convenient, underpaid, younger faces for older muck?

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Déjà vu All Over Again

Great teachers pack up and go somewhere else for the duration of a noxious "silly season"-the era of "teacher bashing," obstructing, and de-funding of public education. It's a radical rightist, pro-profitization agenda that hangs over Michigan like a black cloud of doom.

Hopefully you'll be able to return at a later time, but it will be years before Michigan will be once again ideologically hospitable to "great public school teachers."

Posted earlier in "Great Teachers: Pack-up & Go":

"Great teachers are intelligent, they are caring, and they are insightful. They know that a state legislature such as the TeaPublican radical rabble now in control of Michigan's education funding and legislation (made brazen by a complete majority in all 4 branches of State government) is no friend of theirs. TeaPublicans are highly primed to do harm to public education armed, early on, by the Engler Revolution which seized and destroyed local school control and funding. Militantly marching onward, TeaPublicans have now shown they are bitter and implacable enemies of the mission and goals of a true mentor-teacher of children."

The reality is such that smart college graduates will find a professional life in a more cultured and less-antagonistic and anti-government locale, far away from the provincial taunts hurled in the hostile manner of these Know Nothings of Michigan.

The civic sins of our past are heavy now. The way out and back to what Snyder mocks as the previous "status quo," the healthy normal, is nowhere in sight.

Like Engler, Snyder proudly touts his snide attack on what he derides as the current "status quo"- the peaceful and productive civic order we all depend on.

Now the lesson. What is meant by an attack on the Status Quo? It is an effort to cause trouble, challenge the status quo, disturb the balance, make a stink, upset the apple cart. Further, it is A CONTRIVED EXCUSE TO DO HARM to vital parts of our civic structure and tradition, all for short-term political and ideological gain.

Are these the types of disruptive social attitudes we really need in Michigan at this very critical time? Whatever happened to consensus, co-operation and collaboration between the powers that be and those who teach our children.

Great teachers teach, but perhaps not near so many (will choose to teach) in Michigan, currently under such virulent disrespect and dishonor as displayed by the TeaPublicans now in power in Lansing.

Follow Up: On the program, Hardball, Chris Matthews asked former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, a while back, the all important question. What should school teachers earn? BENNETT REPLIED GOOD TEACHERS SHOULD BE PAID $80-85,000.

Final Note: Excerpt from our Previous Posting (11/21/10) "Coming Michigan Teacher Shortages":

"It will not be long and Michigan will again be desperately seeking new teachers to fill jobs that were passed over by bright and cautious graduates who will take up their careers in other states more teacher friendly and more progressive than the retro-Michigan dominated by muckrakers at the Mackinac Center and those who back their political mud runs."

Meanwhile In Meltdown Michissippi
As the reams of news articles begin to come in, reflect on the terrible social and civic sins of this vengeful Governor and his subservient super-majority of wingnuts, the public will be rightfully repulsed and very angry; ready to back recall various efforts.

What a terrible mistake the TeaPublicans have made! They set out to kill public education to please vicious vixens Michelle Rhee and Betsy DeVos-hyper-critics and nascent profit-takers, intent on harvesting millions of dollars from the implosion of public schools-as we, the public, have loved and supported our cherished neighborhood schools for generations.

As Nietzsche warned: "Beware of those whose urge to punish is strong." The nation is beginning to see the deconstructive dirty work of DeVos/Rhee and understand it is top-loaded with "punishment."

Cry too for our communities that surround and depend on the wonderful public school for local economic and social survival.

Alas, it will be too late for an entire generation of school children, just now being thrown to these selfish wolves. Kids are being unpardonably neglected by those TeaPublican ideologues (led about like sheep by powerful national partisan and corporate forces, such as the Brothers Koch), Neo-antichrists, and tax-haters. The Snyder led TeaPublican Super-Majority have become A.L.E.C. cyborgs who would not, could not, collaborate and work cooperatively with educators to make Michigan whole and good again.

This outrage is unacceptable to informed citizens and local business leaders who care about hometowns and historic institutions in a genuinely conservative, Christian manner.


Original Post.

Betsy DeVos’ Chum Bucket: Deep Inside - An Agenda & Dangerously Flawed Beliefs

Betsy DeVos, Michigan's source of ultra-ugly paid and delivered by her ultra-wealth and unholy zealotry. Betsy's one woman bitter attack on public schools gets media play around the country, but not here. Why?

The Michigan Legislature, endowed with a supermajority, has gone on a rip that can only be compared to the Arizonian raging wildfire-sweeping that state with tornadonic energy and uncontrolled fiery fury. On the topic of Michigan's plunge into public education devolution, the arsonist to blame is Betsy Prince DeVos.

Deep Inside Betsy Is A Dangerously Flawed Belief

Here writer Rachel Tabachnick has nailed it:

"Religious Right groups are often portrayed as only concerned with social issues like opposing gay rights and women's reproductive rights. But "Biblical Capitalism" or the belief that laissez-faire economics is biblically mandated, has been growing in popularity for more than two decades. Although the merry band of libertarians and the dominionists may have little in common, THE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL, ANTI-UNION, ANTI-REGULATORY AGENDA OF EACH IS EMPOWERING THE OTHER. The combined front has become a formidable force for radical free market fundamentalism and the eradication of the public sector."

Betsy has made no bones about wielding her mega-wealth:

"[M]y family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party... I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now, I simply concede the point. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment; we expect a good and honest government. Furthermore, we expect the Republican party to use the money to promote these policies, and yes, to win elections."

Betsy's Heavy Hand In Other States

Returning to Rachel Tabachnick in her comprehensive three part series, in Part 2 "Pro-Voucher Astroturfing: Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors" on April 24, 2011:

"The Indiana state senate passed a sweeping school voucher bill on Thursday, April 21, 2010, following an intensive crusade by the Betsy DeVos-led AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN and affiliated organizations. The blitz campaigns in Indiana and other states are similar to the one in Pennsylvania (described in detail in the previous report). A small core group of donors, ideologically opposed to public education, contribute millions of dollars to the pro-voucher movements in states across the nation. THE MASSIVE FUNDING AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE FUNDS AROUND THE NATION IS A CLASSIC CASE OF ASTROTURFING, CREATING THE ILLUSION THAT THERE IS A SPONTANEOUS WAVE OF GRASS ROOTS AND BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR VOUCHERS. 

(Emphasis added) 

Tabachnick adds:

"In addition to the millions spent in Pennsylvania, over $4.6 million dollars was raised by the Indiana affiliate of the Betsy DeVos-led pro-voucher organizations prior to the 2010 elections, all from 13 mega-donors ($5.8 million for the year). The Indiana PAC money also funded campaigns in Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin and other states."

How does Betsy's scheme work? Again, Rachel Tabachnick:

"Funding comes from a few mega-donors who make contributions in one location. These funds are then moved to non-profits and PACs in other states, obscuring the identity of the small group of original donors. (This report focuses on the affiliated PAC in Indiana which had over $4.6 million in receipts from 13 donors prior to the 2010 election, and sent most of the funds to six other states.) The pro-voucher 501(C)(3) nonprofits across the nation, which do not directly fund candidates, are also largely funded by the DeVos-led entities."

No tactic Is Too Underhanded or Devious for "Christian Zealot" Betsy and Her AFC (American Federation for Children).

Tabachnick:

"The Indiana AFC PAC contributed $63,450 to the Wisconsin AFC PAC. The expenditures for the Wisconsin AFC PAC were primarily for canvassing, and advertising. Additionally, the Wisconsin PAC received $25,000 on 9/03/2010 from Education Reform Now, led by Joel Klein. Media buys in Wisconsin were used to support pro-voucher Democrats running against Democrats not supporting vouchers in the primaries and for support of pro-voucher candidates in the general election. THE AFC FINANCED NUMEROUS ATTACK ADS THAT MENTIONED NOTHING ABOUT VOUCHERS OR SCHOOL CHOICE. THE MAILER SHOWN WAS SPONSORED BY AFC, AS SHOWN ON THE RETURN ADDRESS. THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT SCHOOL CHOICE OR VOUCHERS. THE MAILER ATTACKS THE INCUMBENT STATE SENATOR PAT KREITLOW FOR "KILLING" WISCONSIN JOBS.
(Emphasis added)

Here in Michigan the massive attacks on public schools play directly into and out of Betsy's Playbook. Much credit for the ugly nature of this take down of public school teachers and the attendant hatred stems from her dominate hard right influence and sub-rosa activities.

Long ago Betsy took up with Milton Friedman and Friedman's purpose: ""Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system."

So while vouchers are a state constitutional element and the Herculean effort by Betsy in 1990 to pass a ballot proposal altering the Michigan Constitution to allow vouchers failed, Betsy's persistent and aggressive efforts have not faltered, killing public education is her life's work.

It is difficult to say where Betsy got her "chum bucket" attitude. Raised a poor little rich girl, she inherited a vast fortune. From that fortune and the foundation that administered it came Blackwater, Betsy's brother's mercenary for-profit private army. Betsy, herself, was schooled in the strict doctrines of the reactionary Christian Reformed Church, its elite Christian Schools and Calvin its college. Noteworthy, are the distrust and lingering ethnic feelings of a conservative nature of this splinter religious movement, having separated from the Reformed Church of America, the CRC had distinct ties to its religious counterpart in apartheid South Africa which lingered long after South Africa abandoned its racial separatism and doctrines of white supremacy.

Advocate Mike Klonsky:

Like Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin's Scott Walker ... "refuses to compromise. So beholden is he to political paymasters such as the Koch brothers and the De Vos family, which has steered millions of dollars into the state to promote his extreme proposals to replace on of the nation's strongest public education systems with voucher programs and privatization schemes, that the governor continues to pressure his legislative allies to enact a biennial budget that slashes spending for education and local services."

More from Rachel Tabachnick Series on Betsy DeVos and Public Education agenda - article cited: "Pro-Voucher Astroturfing: Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors" (April 24, 2011).

See ALSO:
Betsy DeVos Announces PA Governor Tom Corbett Will Keynote Pro-Voucher National Policy Summit (April 26, 2011)
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled Out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech (May 3, 2011)
Protesters Object to School Privatization Efforts of DeVos, Michelle Rhee and PA and WI Governors (May 10, 2011)
Vouchers/Tax Credits Funding Creationism, Revisionist History, Hostility Toward Other Religions (May 25, 2011)
Prince and DeVos Families at Intersection of Radical Free Market Privatizers, Religious Right (May 16, 2011)

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