Mackinac Ctr for Publ Pol

43 red/grn links 3/14

NO MERRI

KOCH KOCHADEMIA

OFFSHORE WIND NUKE COAL

flint mfers thus kid killers, snyder et al criminal charges 1/21

also went after Cronin

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EPI LEGIT

‘Man who killed offshore wind’ now pushing fossil fuels and nuclear for Koch-funded Mackinac Center in Michigan - Energy and Policy Institute

David Stevenson, who led a national campaign against offshore wind power for the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, is now fighting land-based solar and wind farms and promoting fossil fuels and nuclear power with the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a group funded by the donor network of petrochemical billionaires Charles and Chase Koch.

The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) and Mackinac Center are both affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN), which serves as the central hub of a 50-state network of right-leaning think tanks. SPN has long sought to derail state clean energy and climate change policies, and is funded by right-wing and corporate donors that include fossil fuel interests.

“The free-market policy approach employed by affiliated state think tanks helps to identify policies that are focused on helping all people to flourish,” SPN states in the FAQ section of its website.

SPN’s approach to energy policy contradicts its claim to promote policies based on free market principles. In 2024, SPN identified preventing states from adopting wind and solar power as one of the network’s legislative priorities. SPN further encourages politicians to pick winners and losers in the electricity sector by favoring coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

Last year, SPN credited years of work by CRI and SPN’s Offshore Wind Working Group with laying the groundwork for the Trump administration’s efforts to halt the nation’s offshore wind boom.

Stevenson has said he resigned from his position at CRI in October over a salary dispute, after spending 14 years as Director of CRI’s Center for Energy & Environmental Policy. Stevenson landed his new job as the Mackinac Center’s Director of Energy and Environmental Policy by December. He replaced Jason Hayes, who left the Mackinac Center for the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.

During his first few months in Michigan, Stevenson has supported the Mackinac Center’s efforts to derail Michigan’s Healthy Climate Plan and 100% by 2040 clean energy standard, and enable fossil fuels and nuclear power to supplant renewable energy sources like wind and solar power as the Great Lakes State’s primary power sources for the future.

At the Mackinac Center, Stevenson will have at his disposal the resources of an SPN group with significantly more funding than CRI and that, unlike CRI, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in publicly reported funding annually from Koch-led groups in recent years.

CRI reported revenue of $463,000 for 2024 in its most recent annual report to the IRS. The Mackinac Center reported revenue of over $11 million for 2024, and its lobbying arm, Mackinac Center Action, reported nearly $1.5 million in revenue.

The Kochs’ Stand Together Trust and Stand Together Fellowship organizations reported contributing close to $1.7 million to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy between 2020 and 2024.* The Koch group Americans for Prosperity contributed $550,000 to Mackinac Center Action in 2023 and 2024.

Stevenson and the Mackinac Center use their opposition to wind and solar power as leverage to push for propping up uneconomic coal plants and increasing gas and nuclear power

“Two news outlets, including Bloomberg News, declared him [Stevenson] to be the man who killed offshore wind,” Jarrett Skorup, the Mackinac Center’s Vice President for Marketing and Communications, said in an article earlier this year announcing Stevenson’s hiring.

The Bloomberg story Skorup referenced was the first to report on a policy proposal prepared by Stevenson that showed how CRI’s anti-offshore wind campaign fit into a broader policy agenda that included using the promise of emerging small modular reactor technology (SMR) as leverage for delaying the planned closure of the coal-fired Indian River power plant in Delaware.

In early January of last year, Stevenson emailedcopies of a “SMR Nuclear proposal” he’d prepared for Delaware’s Governor Matt Meyer to Natalie Magdeburger, the mayor of Fenwick Island, along with a copy of a draft anti-offshore wind executive order intended for then president-elect Donald Trump. The Energy and Policy Institute obtained a copy of Stevenson’s email and the attachments through a records request to the Town of Fenwick Island.

[MANY DOCS]

Under Magdeburger’s leadership, the Town of Fenwick Island contributed $10,000 in taxpayer money to the CRI’s anti-offshore litigation fund, as requested by Stevenson.

“CRI is funded entirely from the voluntary contributions of individuals, foundations and corporations,” CRI says on the FAQ section of its website. “CRI neither solicits nor accepts government funding.”

State think tank affiliates of SPN must “not accept government funding,” according to SPN’s website.

The “SMR Nuclear proposal” Stevenson shared recommended that Meyer initiate a dialogue with Exelon and Delmarva Power about purchasing the Indian River coal-fired power plant in Delaware, which would close the following month. Stevenson’s proposal pointed to “headwinds” facing offshore wind, including from the incoming Trump administration, and recommended Exelon purchase the Indian River plant and eventually convert it to SMR.

“Since there is a long lead time to build SMR’s Exelon would need to operate with coal until the replacement becomes available,” Stevenson said in the proposal, which called for Exelon to sell the power from the plant to Delmarva Power, which is owned by Exelon.

Stevenson’s proposal said Delaware would also need to waive Indian Point’s compliance with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) for the extended period when the plant would continue to burn coal. CRI has long opposed RGGI, the multi-state cap-and-trade program that’s helped reduce power sector greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and generated funding for energy efficiency and clean energy programs that have saved utility customers $2.7 billion as of 2023.

In 2017, Stevenson acknowledged that his consulting firm, Alternative Strategies Consulting, had worked for “utilities and large energy users” while under examination in a lawsuit where he challenged Delaware’s implementation of RGGI. Stevenson said at the time that he was required to keep the names of all of his clients confidential.

Republican state lawmakers in Delaware have since picked up on the idea of restarting the Indian River coal plant, and potentially converting it to SMR or gas. The plant’s owner, NRG, has said it closed the Indian River plant for economic reasons after two straight years of financial losses for the plant.

Earlier this year, Stevenson contributed to a report where the Mackinac Center laid out its 2026 energy policy recommendations for state lawmakers in Michigan, and called for replacing aging coal plants with nuclear, not wind and solar, power.

“… both the JH Campbell and Monroe coal-fired plants may be suitable locations for either large scale or small modular reactor units,” the Mackinac Center report said.

The report claimed that state lawmakers could save millions by delaying power plant closures, and linked to a December blog post by Stevenson defending the Trump administration’s controversial orders delaying the planned closure of the J.H. Campbell coal plant originally scheduled for May of last year. In the blog post, Stevenson pointed to a 2025 report where the Mackinac Center called for keeping the J.H. Campbell and Monroe plants running until 2040, long past their planned closure dates.

Consumers Energy, which owns the J.H. Campbell plant, has reported that the cost of complying with the Trump administration’s orders has reached $400 million. Consumers Energy is passing those costs on to electric utility customers throughout the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regional power grid that includes Michigan. Consumers Energy had previously expected that replacing the J.H. Campbell plant with solar power and energy storage would save Michigan customers $600 million by 2040.

In March, Trump appointees at the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Justice cited Stevenson’s blog post in a legal brief defending the J.H. Campbell plant orders against a legal challenge by Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel. Trump’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has issued multiple orders over the past year requiring Consumers Energy to delay closing the J.H. Campbell plant using emergency powers under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act.

“The Trump Administration is crying wolf over a non-existent energy emergency, while at the same time undermining every effort made to increase the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of domestic energy markets,” Nessel said last month, after Wright issued his fifth order targeting the plant for continued operation.

In his blog post, Stevenson argued that the J.H. Campbell plant should remain open at least until the Michigan Public Service Commission approves a new generation plan for Consumers Energy, and that state utility regulators should consider nuclear and natural gas as options for replacing Campbell.

The Mackinac Center wants to keep a DTE coal plant that buys petroleum coke from Koch Carbon running until 2040, rather than closing it by 2032

The Monroe coal plant is owned by DTE, which currently plans to close two of the plant’s four coal-burning units in 2028, and the remainder in 2032. DTE expects to save customers $1.4 billion by closing the plant.

Fuel receipt data compiled by the Energy Information Administration through Form 923 shows the Monroe plant buys petroleum coke from Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, where Charles Koch is chairman and CEO and his son Chase is an executive vice president. Koch Carbon’s piling of petroleum coke in Detroit drew public scrutiny and protest in 2013, prompting the company to move the piles to Ohio. DTE was listed as one of the recipients of the pet coke stored at the Detroit location in Koch Carbon’s response to a request for information from the EPA’s Air Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Branch.

Stevenson and the Mackinac Center want to repeal Michigan’s landmark clean energy laws

In March, Stevenson delivered testimony in support of Michigan House Energy Committee Chair Pauline Wendzel’s “Project Lighthouse” legislation, House Bills 5710 and 5711, which would repeal Michigan’s landmark [2023 clean energy laws](https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/commission/workgroups/2023-energy-legislation#:_{:text=The%20laws%20also%20include%20three%20one-time%20proceedings:,Increases%20the%20cap%20from%201%25%20to%li%25)}.

The legislation approved by Republicans in the Michigan House would slow down the “build-out of the cheapest, fastest energy, limiting Michigan’s ability to leverage federal investments and pushing the state toward more expensive, long-term fossil fuel infrastructure” if it becomes law, according to the Michigan League of Conservation Voters (LCV).

It would also remove “basic planning and reporting requirements, allowing pollution to go unreported and increasing costs as energy demand grows,” Michigan LCV said.

In his testimony in support of the legislation, Stevenson again pointed to a 2025 report prepared for the Mackinac Center by the Center for the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based SPN affiliate, and Always on Energy Research, a SPN partner. The Lignite Energy Council, a coal industry group that’s opposed 100% clean energy legislation in neighboring Minnesota, paid the Center of the American Experiment $115,000 for electrical grid and reliability modeling in 2023.

The 2025 reportclaimed that powering Michigan with coal, gas, large-scale nuclear, and SMR would be cheaper than transitioning to a mix of wind, solar, nuclear, and energy storage. In addition to postponing the closures of the J.H. Campbell and Monroe plants until 2040, the report called for outfitting the state’s existing coal and gas plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The report also claimed relying on wind, solar, and energy storage “could lead to numerous blackouts throughout the year.”

“Our study might be contested,” Stevenson acknowledged in his testimony.

SMR projects in the U.S. and globally have run into cost overruns, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Multiple high-profile utility projects aimed at demonstrating the commercial viability of CCS for coal plants have devolved into costly economic boondoggles mired in public scandal.

Always on Energy Research has churned out similar reports for other SPN groups, including two reports focused on New England’s power grid prepared for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and SPN groups based in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The Acadia Center, an environmental group working to halve carbon emissions in the Northeast by 2030, has published rebuttals of Always on Energy Research reports on New England.

“Misleading analysis grossly inflates the cost of clean energy, selectively ignores fuel savings, and proposes highly unrealistic alternative scenarios,” the Acadia Center said of Always on Energy Research’s methodology in its latest rebuttalin January.

Stevenson received funding from SPN to lead a nuclear waste discussion group with nuclear industry contacts

Isaac Orr of Always on Energy Research noted in a presentation to state lawmakers in North Dakota in September that Stevenson had joined Always on Energy Research as the group’s Director of Nuclear Development. The presentation included a slide that listed Stevenson’s nuclear industry contacts:

INDUSTRY CONTcts gfx always on

Orr’s presentation also said that Stevenson “currently chairs a discussion team to end the used nuclear fuel problem with key members of the nuclear industry, and states that may host recycling and storage through federal legislation.”

Stevenson said in an article last summer that he received a grant from SPN to form the discussion group, in which he described SPN affiliates’ work with supportive lawmakers to identify potential host-states for nuclear waste.

DonorsTrust contributed $50,000 to Always on Energy Research, $200,000 to CRI, nearly $2.9 million to the Mackinac Center, and over $9.8 million to the State Policy Network in 2024. DonorsTrust does not publicly disclose the names of its donors, but tax-exempt foundations that donate to Donor Trust are required to report those contributions publicly in their annual reports to the IRS.

Right-wing tech investor Peter Thiel’s foundation contributed $426,775 to DonorsTrust in 2024, and $1,276,111 in 2023. Thiel has backed major advanced nuclear and SMR start-ups like Oklo, Helion, and General Matters.

Stoking opposition to wind and solar farms

Last year, Stevenson sent President Trump’s political appointees to the U.S. Department of Interior a barrage of messages recommending actions the agencies could take to fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to halt offshore wind development. EPI obtained copies of the communications through a FOIA request.

Stevenson served on Trump’s first Environmental Protection Agency transition team in 2016. The Mackinac Center has credited Stevenson’s earlier research as having “played a role” in killing the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era EPA’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants nationally for the first time.

“Hi, I have been actively opposing offshore wind for both economic and environmental reasons since 2017, and formed a national coalition, the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, assisting a number of beach community groups organize and grow,” Stevenson said in one email sent to multiple Trump administration officials at DOI in mid-April of 2025.

Stevenson’s anti-offshore wind campaign began in Delaware with the launch of CRI’s Save Our Beach View campaign, which stoked local opposition to offshore wind projects planned off the coasts of Maryland and Delaware.

In 2021, Stevenson and CRI announced the launch of the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP) to raise money for anti-offshore wind litigation through the Ocean Environment Legal Defense Fund. Membership in ACOP included anti-offshore wind groups and SPN think tanks based along the East Coast, plus the Mackinac Center in Michigan.

The Mackinac Center has a history of opposing offshore wind power development in the Great Lakes region, but supports continued operation of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. Tribes, environmentalists, and the State of Michigan have fought for years to shut down Line 5, which runs below the Straits of Mackinac that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, due the risk of a catastrophic spill.

CRI initially served as a fiscal sponsor for the anti-offshore wind group Protect Our Coast NJ.

CRI also offered to serve as a conduit to raise money for anti-offshore wind “Save the Horseshoe Crabs” ads in response to an email from Dianna Harris of Protect Our Coast Delmarva obtained from the Town of Fenwick Island.

“We are planning a zoom call next week with a wider group of about 50 people that have been paying close attention so we may raise some money then,” Stevenson said in one email to Harris.

In 2025, Stevenson and David Wojiick of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow served as the lead signers on a letter that called on Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to revoke federal approvals for eleven offshore wind projects, including four that were already under construction. Cosigners included anti-offshore wind activists from the East and West Coasts, the Great Lakes region, and representatives of multiple SPN affiliate and partner groups.

Stevenson emailed the letter to Burgum to Trump appointees at DOI and BOEM. Laura Keehner Rigas, a White House Liaison to DOI, received a copy of the letter from Stevenson, and forwarded Stevenson’s email to four other political appointees.

“Thank you!” Deidre Kohlrus, a Senior Advisor to Burgum, responded to Rigas.

While operating out of Delaware, Stevenson signaled openness to solar and had solar panels on his roof. Upon arriving at the Mackinac Center, Stevenson quickly got to work attacking solar farms in Michigan.

“The future of electric generation is clearly nuclear, not solar, and state legislation needs to change in recognition of this reality,” Stevenson said in a January blog post for the Mackinac Center.

The Mackinac Center has for years served as a platform for promoting the views of anti-wind and anti-solar activists in Michigan, including Kevon Martis. In 2024, Martis was the public face of the Citizens for Local Choice ballot committee, which aimed to repeal a 2023 Michigan law that streamlined siting of wind and solar farms. Citizens for Local Choice failed to gather enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot, but received a $10,000 contribution from Tom Rastin, a retired gas industry executive who has bankrolled opposition to solar farms in neighboring Ohio.

“Solar projects often face resistance from local governments,” Stevenson wrote in his blog post in January.

“Recognizing local opposition, the Legislature gave the Michigan Public Service Commission authority to override local permit bans,” Stevenson said in the same blog. “Opponents to this law are attempting to repeal it through a ballot initiative.”

Citizens for Local Choice appears to be inactive, but Republican lawmakers in Michigan targeted the 2023 siting law this year as part of Project Lighthouse, as the Mackinac Center noted in another blog post.

Michigan ranked among the top 10 states for new solar additions during the first quarter of this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Stand Together Trust reported contributions to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that totaled $525,000 in 2022 and $400,000 in 2023, both for general operating support, and $421,400 for 2024 for “KAP” (the Koch Associate Program). Stand Together Fellowship contributed $350,000to the Mackinac Center for education in 2020.*}:

Top photo is a screenshot from a Michigan House video of David Stevenson’s testimony before the Energy Committee on April 14, 2026*

Always On Energy ResearchAmerican Coalition for Ocean ProtectionCharles KochChase Kochcitizens for local choiceCommittee for a Constructive TomorrowDavid StevensonDavid WojiickDeidre KohlrusDepartment of InteriorDonald TrumpDoug BurgumEnbridgekevon martisKoch CarbonLaura Keehner RigasLignite Energy CouncilOcean Environment Legal Defense FundProtect Our Coast DelmarvaProtect Our Coast New JerseyStand Together Trusttom rastin

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intercept 121 see snyder

When the criminal team asked Dan Wyant, MDEQ’s director, about a governor’s briefings that mentioned Legionella, he became emotional, according to multiple sources — potentially indicating he had seen the document before. Wyant did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A briefing memo like this would have been unlikely to get past Snyder. He received most materials directly to his iPad and was, according to sources, an information sponge who read everything sent to him.

Seven days later, on October 29, Wyant traveled to Flint to meet with Earley, the emergency manager, and other city officials. Daugherty Johnson, a Flint water plant official, told investigators that Legionella in Flint was discussed in the meeting, according to multiple sources. Johnson also shared that Stephen Busch, an MDEQ drinking water supervisor, went into full-on damage control mode, reportedly warning that the Legionella issue “may blow” and become a public PR nightmare for the Snyder administration.

Two days after the meeting, Earley sent a thank-you email to Wyant for coming to Flint to discuss the city’s water issues. Earley then forwarded the email he sent to Wyant to Snyder’s right-hand man Richard Baird, offering to debrief him on the meeting. Baird responded boisterously, “Very good! Let’s get together after the election. Great work!”

Baird, who allegedly attempted to pay off sick Flint residents in order to silence them, is one of the officials set to be charged by the state attorney general, according to news reports. Baird did not respond to request for comment.

IN APRIL, the Flint water crisis enters its seventh year. Despite news headlines declaring Flint’s water safe to drink, residents who The Intercept has spoken to challenge such proclamations.

Melissa Mays, a Flint resident and leading water activist, challenged the state’s claims that Flint’s water is safe. “As of right now, the damaged City’s distribution mains still remain in the ground and our corroded interior plumbing, fixtures and appliances have not been replaced,” Mays said. “As long as our water flows through these pipes up into our taps, it will continue to be contaminated.”

While charges against former Gov. Rick Snyder, former health director Nick Lyon, Richard Baird, and others appear imminent, the finalizing of a $641 million civil settlement negotiated between Nessel and attorneys representing Flint residents also appears imminent. On Monday, nearly two dozen Flint residents held a press conference to opposethe settlement, believing it is insufficient and won’t be allocated fairly.

In response to news reports that Snyder will be charged with willful neglect of duty, Mays didn’t hold back. “The rumors that former Governor Rick Snyder is only going to be charged with a misdemeanor is BEYOND disgusting and insulting,” Mays wrote. “The Attorney General choosing to charge the man who made himself the unilateral dictator over my City, poison us, lie to us and watch us suffer with a small misdemeanor just proves to us in Flint that if you are a rich white man, it’s not considered an ACTUAL crime to poison poor, black and brown communities for profit, it’s only a minor fine and a slap on the wrist.”

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13064/flint-casualty-right-wing-government-experiment

arn p

Flint Is a Casualty in the Right Wing's War on Local Democracy

Submitted by Arn Pearson on March 31,

This month's hearing in Congress about the crisis in Flint, Michigan shed more heat than light on the decisions that poisoned the water more than 100,000 residents rely on to drink and bathe, including nearly 30,000 children and teens. Democrats focused their ire on Governor Rick Snyder, while Republicans predictably tried to deflect blame onto the Environmental Protection Agency as part of their long-standing campaign to eliminate the agency responsible for regulating polluters.

But two Members of Congress honed in on the real culprit in the debacle: Governor Snyder's "emergency manager" law that stripped Flint of any local democratic control and put its fate in the hands of unaccountable executives hand-picked by Snyder.

"Did that emergency management system fail under your leadership in this matter?" asked Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), demanding a yes or no response from Snyder.

"That would be a fair conclusion," Snyder eventually conceded.

"This is a failure of a philosophy of governance you advocated," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA). "A city in America... is on its knees because of your emergency manager's decision to save $4 million. And now it's going to cost a lot more to clean up."

Is this really happening in the world's leading republic?

Funding the War on Local Democracy

Governor Snyder's controversial emergency manager law is a cornerstone of the Right Wing's war on labor and local democracy in Michigan, which has been orchestrated by a network of "think tanks" and committees backed by the billionaire DeVos family, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Kochs,and other politicos.

Thanks to record spending by outside groups in 2010 and $6 million of Snyder's own fortune, the Republican Party in Michigan joined 11 other states in capturing the governor's mansion from the Democrats and flipped the Michigan House, giving the party a lock on political power for the first time since 2002.

The Republican Governors Association Michigan 2010 PAC dominated the playing field to become the "largest political action committee in the history of Michigan politics," according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

Through an elaborate shell game, 98 percent of the $8.4 million raised and spent by the RGA MI 2010 PAC came from outside Michigan,while Michigan donors gave the national Republican Governors Association (RGA) $8.6 million, including $5.4 million from thestate Chamber of Commerce.

The RGA MI 2010 PAC then contributed $5.3 million to the state Republican Party, and sent off $3 million to back Rick Perry's bid for a third term as governor of Texas, while the national RGA spent $3.6 million on sham issue ads attacking Snyder's Democratic opponent. Still with me?

All in all, the RGA raised and redistributed $114 million to PACs in at least 15 states, helping to elect a slate of right-wing governors, including Wisconsin's Scott Walker, who moved quickly to attack public sector unions.

Right-wing billionaires and their corporations played a big role in raising all that money. Records on Open Secrets show that the DeVos family, Amway, and its parent company, Alticor, pumped $1.9 million into the RGA's 2010 political operation.

David Koch personally gave $1 million, while his brother William chipped in $100,000 and Koch Industries another $50,000. The Kochs have since become RGA's #1 source of cash, bankrolling the RGA to the tune of $5.3 million during the 2014 election cycle.

Paul Singer also ponied up $1.4 million. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson gave a million that year, and News America, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. that owns the pro-Republican outlet Fox News, sprung another $1.3 million.

DeVos Dynasty Targets Michigan

Although Snyder—a business executive and venture capitalist—campaigned as a moderate Republican who promised to run the state like a business and create jobs, the deep pockets driving the Republican surge had more ambitious ideas.

Their goals: break the unions, scrap public sector labor contracts, and privatize government services.

Dick DeVos, son of billionaire businessman and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, took a first crack at this agenda when he spent $35 million of the family fortune to run for governor in 2006. He lost badly, but he didn't let up.

In 2009, DeVos helped his close ally, Ron Weiser, get elected as chair of the Michigan Republican Party, where he was able to coordinate the party's 2010 landslide victory. By 2014, political observers were calling the DeVos family Michigan's "most potent interest group," and their spending on in-state candidates and political committees had increased to $4.9 million.

After Snyder's election, DeVos-backed groups like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy were poised to help move his legislative agenda forward.

Launched in 1987, the Mackinac Center is one of the nation's largest state-based, right-wing pressure groups promoting "free market," pro-business policies. It is an active member of the State Policy Network (SPN) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), two important cogs in the Koch machine.

Mackinac has long been one of the key groups leading the Michigan charge for the big ticket items on DeVos' right-wing wish list, including breaking the back of organized labor.

Ronald Reagan may have once said, "[w]here free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost," but that's just crazy-liberal talk as far as the Mackinac Center is concerned.

As a Mackinac staffer told a state legislator in 2011: "Our goal is [to] outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan."

Mackinac's activities have been fueled by DeVos as well as money from the Koch network of billionaires. Between 2010 and 2012, the Mackinac Center received $1.5 million from the DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, preferred investment vehicles of the Koch donor network, and four DeVos foundations kicked in another $560,000 between 1998 and 2011.

However, those totals public do not reveal how much billionaire cash Mackinac has received through checks from personal trust accounts or from corporations, which are not publicly reported.

Mackinac at the Root of Sweeping Emergency Manager Powers

Once sworn in, Snyder wasted no time in making one of the most audacious power grabs in the country.

On March 16, 2011, while thousands protested outside, he signed Public Act 4 into law, giving him the ability to take near-total control over financially struggling municipalities through appointed "emergency managers."

Few could have been more pleased than the DeVos family and their confederates at the Mackinac Center.

The provision for emergency financial managers dates back to a 1988 Michigan law, but those managers wielded limited power.

Mackinac's Louis Schimmel called for loosening limits and expanding managers' powers as early as 2005, and the group reprinted his article in January 2011. They argued that: "The state's policy prescription for fiscally floundering cities should be to appoint[] far more powerful emergency financial managers than they have in the past."

Mackinac pressed for sweeping authority for emergency managers to assume the powers of elected city councils and mayors, break union contracts, and revise municipal charters, while getting legal immunity from any liability for the results of their actions.

Snyder's emergency manager law included all four of those changes, and the Mackinac bunch patted themselves on the back while singing the law's praises.

Concerned citizens and critics, however, denounced it as "financial martial law."

Other cities around the country have had emergency managers, including New York City in the 1970s, but their powers were limited to financial matters.

The Snyder-Mackinac approach to the law was dramatically, exponentially different. It gave unelected and unaccountable managers chosen by the governor near total control over all city decisions—including things like where a city gets its water.

Snyder's First Emergency "Tyrant"? A Mackinac Guy

Snyder chose the architect of the expanded emergency powers—Mackinac's Louis Schimmel—to be the first person he appointed as an emergency manager, installing him as the potentate for Pontiac, Schimmel's home town.

Within months, Schimmel had fired key city officials and privatized the entire public works department. The Pontiac City Council still held their weekly meetings, packed with angry citizens, but they had no authority to make any decisions.

When asked by a local radio station if the emergency manager law made him a dictator, Schimmel replied: "I guess I'm the tyrant in Pontiac then, if that's the way it is."

Schimmel didn't get any argument from state court judge Rae Lee Chabot, who reversed the manager's action to cut Pontiac's pension board in half, a decision that ignored the legal requirements of Michigan's Open Meetings Act.

"[I]t looks like a dictatorship," Chabot said.

State-Controlled Pontiac Outsources Water to Indicted Corporation

Shortly before Schimmel took control of Pontiac using the law he helped create, his predecessor as emergency manager of Pontiac, Michael Stampfler, flexed his muscles under Snyder's new law and outsourced the city's water treatment to United Water Services.

Watchdog Chris Savage broke the story on Eclectablog.

"This is big news," he wrote, because the giant for-profit water company had just been indicted by a federal grand jury in 2010 on 26 felony counts of conspiracy and Clean Water Act violations for its mishandling of water services in Gary, Indiana. (The company's workers have since been acquitted of criminal charges in the Gary case, but United Water paid $645,000 in civil fines under a consent agreement in 2014.)

Schimmel completed the outsourcing process in November 2011 by firing key public works employees and turning full control over to United Water.

Before long, consumer complaints over water quality, outages, and sewer backups started piling up. It took nearly three years before Oakland County, where Pontiac is situated, announced that it was taking over operations.

All the warning signs were there for Flint.

Savage summed up the problem well:

Emergency Financial Managers are generally good at what they do. They are typically trained as accountants and business optimizers. They know how to trim and cut and lean out organizations to squeeze every last drop of profits out of them. Unfortunately for the residents of Michigan, things like parks, public safety and the protection of natural resources don't produce profits and generally are presented as 'costs'…When we begin to put a price tag on the very things that make our cities, society and state good, safe, livable and lovable, while putting CPA-like EFMs in charge, you can expect that these things will suffer in order to save money, even if it puts our citizens at risk."

Democracy? What Democracy?

Citizens and public employees in Michigan were not having it.

Following extensive protests, opponents sprang into action and quickly gathered more than 200,000 signatures to qualify a voter initiative, Proposal 1, for the November 2012 ballot to repeal Snyder's expanded emergency manager law.

Stand Up for Democracy, the ballot committee backing Proposal 1, received 91 percent of its funding from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Michigan Council 25, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

Opposition to Proposal 1 was led by Bob LaBrant, Senior Counsel at the Sterling Corporation, a leading Republican PR firm, and the former director of political and legal campaigns at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce for 34 years. LaBrant's ballot committee, called Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, focused its strategy on a court fight to bump Proposal 1 off the ballot. That effort ultimately failed, and the group spent little on campaigning against the measure.

On November 6, 2012, 53 percent of Michigan's voters cast ballots to repeal Snyder's emergency manager law. But that didn't stop Governor Snyder and his backers.

Barely one month later, Snyder pushed a slightly revised bill through the lame duck legislature and restored the sweeping powers of his emergency managers.

Only this time, he added an appropriation which, under Michigan law, prevents it from being subject to referendum. Check and mate.

Kevyn Orr, who later became emergency manager for Detroit, sent an email to the Detroit Free Press saying, "Michigan's EM law is a clear end-around the prior initiative that was rejected by the voters in November. ...[A]though the new law provides the thin veneer of a revision it is essentially a redo of the prior rejected law."

The new law did contain what critics call a "choose your poison" provision, allowing municipalities to choose between an emergency manager, bankruptcy, arbitration, or a consent agreement.

Not on the table for cash-strapped cities reeling from the collapse of the auto industry and the impact of free trade agreements: any state largesse like the 86 percent corporate income tax cut that Snyder handed Michigan businesses in 2011, worth an estimated $1.7 billion per year.

The resurrection of Snyder's emergency manager law wasn't even the most dramatic thing to happen in the 2012 lame duck session.

According to Mother Jones, DeVos and his close allies—who led a $23.2 million campaign to defeat another voter initiative, Proposal 2, aimed at enshrining collective bargaining in the state constitution—had devised a plan to ram through "right-to-work" legislation before anyone knew what hit them.

They pitched the plan to legislative leadersand a Snyder aide on November 20, and by earlyDecember unleashed an ad campaign using a new group, the Michigan Freedom Fund, closely tied to Dick DeVos.

Snyder surprised the public by calling the measure to a vote on December 6, and five days later the birthplace of modern industrial unions became a "right-to-work" state.

The following May, at the State Policy Network's annual meeting in Oklahoma City, Dick DeVos and the Mackinac Center were recognized for their leadership in the legislative fight to win passage of the "right-to-work" law in Michigan. As reported by PR Watch, Dick's wife Betsy DeVos personally presented SPN's highest award to Mackinac's president, Joseph Lehman.

Mackinac's blog noted that it had been pushing for "right-to-work" since 1990 and had posted more than 500 "articles, blog posts, special essays and news [clips] generated by Mackinac Center analysts" backing the legislation.

The victory didn't come cheap.

The big players of Michigan's right wing had spent millions to defeat Proposal 2, an attempt to protect union rights in the state.

That funding included $9.2 million from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, $5.5 million from the Michigan Alliance for Business Growth, $2 million from the DeVos family, and $2 million from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.

The Michigan Freedom Fund spent another $1 million on the post-election ad campaign leading up to legislature's adoption of the "right-to-work" law.

The Mackinac Center had an annual budget of $4.4 million as of 2012. Aside from checks to groups that do not disclose their major donors, the DeVos family spent more than $44 million in publicly reported funding on the Republican Party, party committees, and candidates in Michigan between 1997 and 2013.

Expanded Emergency Management Comes to Flint

Plagued by the loss of 90 percent of its industrial workforce, disinvestment, and depopulation, Flint was facing a severe financial crisis by the time Governor Snyder took office.

Since then, Snyder has appointed four emergency managers to seize control of the city's assets and run Flint's local affairs.

Flint voters elected a new mayor on November 8, 2011, but a state review panel declared a "local government financial emergency" the same day, and Snyder had installed his first emergency manager, Michael Brown, by December 1.

The next day, Brown dismissed more than half a dozen key city administrators and Flint's elected officials had their pay and benefits removed.

In January 2012, angry Flint residents joined a protest near Governor Snyder's home. AFSCME filed suit and managed to get a restraining order on Brown, but Brown was back by April in time to unveil his budget, which included cuts in nearly every department and a tax hike.

Jack McHugh at Mackinac claimed in a March 2012 column that municipal budget problems were a "cancerous fiscal malpractice," and he argued that Snyder's emergency manager expansion provided the "rigorous 'chemotherapy'" needed "to sustain the necessary functions of tapped-out school districts and local governments."

In Flint's case, the cure turned out to be worse than the disease.

Frustrated with expensive water service from Detroit and frequent rate increases, Flint and surrounding Genesee County had joined nearby cities in 2010 to form the new Karegnondi Water Authority.The plan was to obtain water directly from Lake Huron once a new pipeline was complete. (That is now projected to be June 2016.)

The Flint City Council voted for the new water source in March 2013, albeit symbolically as it had no power, and the emergency manager and state treasurer approved a plan to switch water supplies a few weeks later.

That's when the trouble started.

"Flint Residents Can Taste History"...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/11/pontiac_mich_can_a_technocrat_succeed_where_democracy_failed_.html

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https://www.**motherjones**.com/politics/:{2012:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/02/michigan-emergency-manager-pontiac-detroit/

updates, 4/26/12: The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has rejected the more than 200,000 signatures collected in support of holding a referendum on the state’s emergency manager law. The board’s two Republican members said the petitions used the incorrect font size.

:{

}:

Updates, 3/30/12: A judge recently ordered Flint’s emergency manager to step aside, finding that he had been appointed without adequate public input. A week later, an appeals court temporarily reversed the decision and put him back in charge while the case is being heard. Governor Rick Snyder has asked Detroit to sign an agreement in which it would renegotiate union contracts and outsource city work in exchange for not receiving an emergency manager. In February, a statewide coalition opposed to the emergency-manager law, submitted signatures to put it up for referendum. If the state validates the signatures in early May, the law will be suspended until voters decide its fate in November.

When the city of Pontiac, Michigan, shut down its fire department last Christmas Eve, city councilman Kermit Williams learned about it in the morning paper. “Nobody reports to me anymore,” Williams says. “It just gets reported in the press.” This was just the latest in a series of radical changes in the city, where elected officials such as Williams have been replaced by a single person with unprecedented control over the city’s operation and budget.

Gov. Rick Snyder put Louis Schimmel in charge of Pontiac last September, invoking Public Act 4, a recent law that lets the governor name appointees to take over financially troubled cities and enact drastic austerity measures. Under the law, passed last March, these emergency managers can nullify labor contracts, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even dismiss elected officials.

Schimmel got to work quickly, firing the city clerk, city attorney, and director of public works and outsourcing several city departments. City fire fighters were told that they would be fired if their department was not absorbed by Waterford Township’s. Schimmel has proposed putting nearly every city property up for sale, including city hall, the police station, fire stations, water-pumping stations, the library, the golf course, and two cemeteries.

Williams and his six colleagues on city council have been stripped of their salary and official powers. “Nearly the whole city has been privatized,” he laments.

Michigan’s emergency-manager law is the centerpiece of the fiscal program enacted by state Republicans after they took over the Legislature and governor’s mansion in early 2011. The law’s supporters say it allows for a more efficient and nimble response to the budget crisis confronting local governments in the wake of the housing crash and near collapse of the auto industry. Critics are seeking to block and repeal what they call an illegal power grab meant to usurp local governments and break up public-sector unions.

"We haven’t seen anything this severe anywhere else in the country,” says Charles Monaco, a spokesman for the Progressive States Network, a New York-based advocacy group. “There’s been nothing in other states where a budget measure overturns the democratic vote.” Williams says emergency managers are able to enact draconian policies that would cost most city officials their jobs: “They couldn’t get elected if they tried.”

Benton Harbor, Ecorse, and Flint are also currently under emergency management. In Flint, the emergency manager has promised to restructure collective bargaining agreements with the city’s police and firefighters unions.Benton Harbor’s emergency manager banned elected officials from appearing at city meetings without his consent. Detroit, which is facing a $197 million budget shortfall, could be next: Mayor Dave Bing has proposed laying off 1,000 city workers and wrung concessions from public-sector unions in hopes of preventing Gov. Snyder from appointing an emergency manager.

Asked if the emergency-manager law hands power over to a “dictator,” Schimmel sighed, “I guess I’m the tyrant in Pontiac, then, if that’s the way it is.”

Schimmel has pursued the most aggressive turnaround plan in the state. He says he’s simply doing what elected officials have been unable to do: execute a plan for balancing the city’s books quickly and efficiently. He’s not there yet: The city of 60,000 is projecting a $7 million deficit for 2012. “One thing we can’t do is print money,” Schimmel says. “We’re always chasing the dropping knife, fixing something here and losing revenue somewhere else.”

With an indefinite term and a city salary of $150,000, Schimmel doesn’t answer to anyone but the governor, at whose pleasure he serves. The city council can no longer make decisions but still calls meetings, which are routinely packed with angry residents. Asked by radio station WJR if the emergency-manager law hands power over to a “dictator,” Schimmel sighed, “I guess I’m the tyrant in Pontiac, then, if that’s the way it is.”

Emergency managers aren’t new in Michigan, which has been in dire financial straits for decades. Public Act 4 (officially titled the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act) beefed up a 1990 lawthat brought in state-appointed managers to several cities in the 2000s, without much success at stemming the flow of population, jobs, and tax revenue. Pontiac has been under some form of state-appointed management since 2009. Schimmel’s predecessor laid off dozens of police officers, hired the county sheriff to patrol the city, and dismissed Mayor Leon Jukowski (whom Schimmel has rehired as a staffer paid $50,000)*. During that time, Pontiac’s credit rating had dropped from B to triple-C. “They aren’t creating revenue,” Williams says of the managers. “You can’t just cut your way out of a deficit.”

Pontiac is not Schimmel’s first clean-up job. In 2000, he was named the emergency manager of Hamtramck, where he served for six years. In 1986, a judge appointed him to oversee Ecorse’s finances after the city landed in state receivership; he stepped in and privatized city services. Today, the city is back in debt, and back under state management. Schimmel concedes that the privatization strategy can backfire, but he blames inept local government. “If you don’t have an overseer of the contractor, privatization can be much more expensive than in-house services,” he explains.

Schimmel is also a former adjunct scholar and director of municipal finance at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank that shares his enthusiasm for privatizing public services. The center has received funding from the foundations of conservative billionaire Charles Koch, the Walton family, and Dick DeVos, the former CEO of Amway who ran as a Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2006.

[pix Pontiac, Michigan emergency manager Louis Schimmel City of Pontiac

In 2005, Mackinac published an essay by Schimmel that called on Michigan’s Legislature to give emergency managers the power to impose contract changes on public-employee unions and “replace and take on the powers of the governing body.” When Republicans gained control over Lansing in 2010, Mackinac reprinted Schimmel’s article. Last March, the center celebrated when the Legislature implemented its prescriptions in Public Act 4.

the Mackinac Center claims that Michigan could save $5.7 billion annually if public employees’ benefits were comparable to those of private-sector workers. Public-employee unions say cuts to public-sector jobs have only worsened the state’s economic woes with foreclosures and intensified reliance on state aid programs in cities like Flint, where the jobless rate was 17.5 percent at the end of 2011. “It’s an acceleration of the downward spiral,” says Brit Satchwell, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association, a teachers’ union. “Our goal is [to] outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan,” wrote Mackinac’s legislative analyst in an email to a Republican state representative last summer. (The message was obtained by the liberal think tank Progress Michigan.)

The Mackinac Center is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a clearinghouse for pro-business state legislation. (Its model bills have been linked to Arizona’s anti-immigration law and Wisconsin and Ohio’s collective bargaining bans.) James Hohman, the center’s assistant director of fiscal policy, was one of 40 private-sector representatives at an ALEC conference in December 2010 where, according to minutes from the closed-door meeting, participants hammered out model legislation that would align public- and private-sector pay and restructure state pensions. (Jonathan Williams, ALEC’s tax and fiscal policy director, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Foundations affiliated with the Koch brothers have funded ALEC’s reports on state fiscal policy. The State Budget Reform Toolkit and Rich States, Poor States both echo elements of Michigan’s emergency-manager law, encouraging state legislators to target public employees and identify privatization opportunities. The most recent *Toolkit* report recommends that states create a “centralized, independent, decision-making body to manage privatization and government efficiency initiatives.” Michigan’s law grants far more sweeping powers to one appointee.

Nearly one year after the passage of the emergency-manager law, its opponents are rallying to blunt its impact. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Detroit-based nonprofit Michigan Forward announced they’ve collected more than the required 160,000 signatures necessary to put the law up for referendum in November; they plan to deliver the signatures to the state on February 29.

Democratic Rep. John Conyers has called on the Department of Justice to review the law in light of the Voting Rights Act and the contract clause of the Constitution. As the state treasurer’s office began a review of Detroit’s finances to determine whether the city is eligible for an emergency manager, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow asked Gov. Snyder not to name any more emergency managers.

The Detroit-based Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice has filed a lawsuit to block the law, claiming it violates the state constitution, including the home rule provision that defines residents’ rights to elect a local government. Tova Perlmutter, the law center’s director, says the suit isn’t just about Michigan: “If we win this case, it will give other state legislatures pause before pursuing similar laws.”

==

douglas anti union

Board of Directors

Hon. Clifford W. Taylor,

Chairman

Retired Chief Justice,

Michigan Supreme Court

Joseph G. Lehman, President

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Daniel J. Graf

Chief Investment Officer

Amerisure Mutual Holdings, Inc.

Dulce M. Fuller

Owner, Woodward and Maple

Richard G. Haworth

Chairman Emeritus,

Haworth, Inc.

Kent B. Herrick

President and CEO, Thermogy

J.C. Huizenga

President, Westwater Group

Edward C. Levy Jr.

President, Edw. C. Levy Co.

Rodney M. Lockwood Jr.

President, Lockwood

Construction Company, Inc.

Joseph P. Maguire

President, Wolverine

Development Corporation (lansing real estate, synder?)

Richard D. McLellan

Attorney, McLellan

Law Offices

D. Joseph Olson

Retired Senior Vice President and

General Counsel, Amerisure

Companies

Board of Scholars

Dr. Donald Alexander

Western Michigan University

Dr. Thomas Bertonneau

SUNY - Owego

Dr. Brad Birzer

Hillsdale College

Dr. Peter Boettke

George Mason University

Dr. Theodore Bolema

Mercatus Center

Dr. Michael Clark

Hillsdale College

Dr. Daniel Crane

University of Michigan

Law School

Dr. Christopher Douglas

University of Michigan-Flint  opposed gov't action on gr recession 2009 : http://www.usu.edu/today/pdf/2009/february/itn0202093.pdf

Dr. Jefferson Edgens

University of Wyoming

Dr. Ross Emmett

Michigan State University

Dr. Sarah Estelle

Hope College

Dr. David Felbeck

University of Michigan (ret.)

Dr. Burton Folsom

Hillsdale College

John Grether

Northwood University

Dr. Michael Heberling

Baker College

Dr. David Hebert

Troy University

Dr. Michael Hicks

Ball State University

Dr. Ormand Hook

Mecosta-Osceola Intermediate

School District

Robert Hunter

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Prof. Harry Hutchison

George Mason University

School of Law

Dr. David Janda

Institute for Preventative

Sports Medicine

Annette Kirk

Russell Kirk Center for

Cultural Renewal

David Littmann

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Dr. Dale Matcheck

Northwood University

Charles Meiser

Lake Superior

State University (ret.)

Dr. Glenn Moots

Northwood University

Dr. George Nastas III

Marketing Consultants

Dr. Todd Nesbit

Ohio State University

Dr. John Pafford

Northwood University

Dr. Mark Perry

University of Michigan-Flint

Lawrence W. Reed

Foundation for

Economic Education

Gregory Rehmke

Economic Thinking/

E Pluribus Unum Films

Dr. Steve Safranek

Private Sector

General Counsel

Dr. Howard Schwartz

Oakland University

Dr. Martha Seger

Federal Reserve Board (ret.)

James Sheehan

SunTrustRobinson Humphrey

Rev. Robert Sirico

Acton Institute for the

Study of Religion and Liberty

Dr. Bradley Smith

Capital University Law School

Dr. Jason Taylor

Central Michigan University

Dr. John Taylor

Wayne State University

Dr. Richard K. Vedder

Ohio University

Prof. Harry Veryser Jr.

University of Detroit Mercy

John Walter Jr.

Dow Corning Corporation (ret.)

Dr. William Wilson

Economic Consultant

Mike Winther

Institute for Principle Studies

Dr. Gary Wolfram

Hillsdale College

==

Betsy DeVos

Trump's Pick for: Education SecretaryCorporate Connections: Amway, Windquest

:{

}:

Betsy DeVos is the daughter of a wealthy western Michigan industrialist and is married to Amway heir Richard Devos. They have an estimated net worth of more than $5 billion. Members of the DeVos family have been among the foremost funders of right-wing politicians and ideological causes since the 1970s. Aside from extensive contributions to candidates and Republican Party committees, they have concentrated their giving to groups promoting free-market economics. Other contributions have gone to groups opposing campaign finance laws or working on social values issues, such as opposing gay marriage. DeVos’ greatest personal focus has been on education, such as seeking to expand charter schools, permit parents to use public funds as vouchers toward private school tuition and advocating related proposals to steer funding away from traditional public schools.

• Betsy DeVos is chair of the Windquest Group, an investment firm in manufacturing, technology, clean energy and in other investment firms. Windquest has indirectly invested in Social Finance Inc. (SoFI), which profits by helping individuals negotiate the terms of their student loans. SoFi’s prospects could be hindered if proposals to lower the rates on federally issued student loans were approved.
• The DeVos family has given an estimated $200 million to conservative causes, Mother Jones estimates. These include gifts to the Heritage Foundation, groups operated by right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, and various groups hostile to campaign finance laws.
• The DeVos-funded Mackinac Public Policy Center teamed with Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council in support of “right to work” legislation that was approved in Michigan in 2012.
• All Children Matter, an advocacy group that DeVos founded, still owes the state of Ohio $5.3 million stemming from a fine for election law violations it was found to have committed in 2008.
• The DeVoses spent $2 million in 2000 on a Michigan referendum that would have permitted students to use public funds a vouchers toward private school tuition. The proposal failed.
• A group financed by DeVos successfully opposed legislation “that would have prevented failing schools from expanding or replicating.” The proposed legislation responded to a federal finding that Michigan suffered from “an unreasonably high” percentage of poorly performing charter schools.
• Financial disclosures released during Richard DeVos’s failed run for governor of Michigan in 2006 revealed that the couple were investors in K12 Inc., a controversial for-profit company that operates online charter schools. The disclosure did not indicate the size of the DeVoses’ investment.
• With respect to the family’s extensive giving to conservative candidates and causes, Betsy DeVos wrote in 1997: "[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."

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/02/13030/koch-fueled-groups-launch-offensive-against-wv-working-families

West Virginia Senate President Bill Cole's spokesman said Monday that Cole "will travel throughout West Virginia and beyond...." to talk about his legislative agenda that limits workers' rights.

And, boy, did he go beyond, according to David Gutman of the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Cole flew to a world far away from West Virginia when he traveled this weekend to the luxurious Esmeralda resort, which describes itself as creating "an atmosphere of luxury and relaxation unmatched" in Palm Springs, California, the winter playground of the rich and powerful like billionaire Charles Koch, who has an estate there.

The entire Esmeralda resort was reserved for the weekend by the billionaire Koch brothers for an exclusive gathering with other billionaires who paid at least $100K to be members of their little club of the super-rich and plot behind closed doors about how to spend nearly half a billion dollarsmore this year, to get what they want in federal, state, and local elections and the changes to our laws that come with victory.

David and Charles Koch's billionaires' club--dubbed the "Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce"-- has already spent nearly $400 million over the past few months to influence 2016, but where most of it has been spent and which of the 500 elite gave how much is being kept secret from the public--at least for now.

(Meanwhile, at the billionaires' event, the Koch PR operation got free press about its new "poverty" initiative, which was trying "to raise" $15 million from attendees. That may sound like a lot, but Koch Industries makes almost that much every single hour of every single day, with more than $115,000,000,000 in estimated annual revenue; the Koch brothers' combined wealth is estimated to be nearly $100 billion. With millions of Americans in poverty, some might call the initiative "greedwashing.")

Anyway, Cole's office says his meeting with the Kochs and other out-of-state billionaires at the luxury spa was not a "political event" because he did no fundraising or campaigning, at that event.

Will the people of West Virginia be told who paid for his travel to sunny Palm Springs in the heart of winter or for his hotel and meals at the posh resort? Did he get a speaker's fee to talk "in his official capacity" to the Kochs and their billionaire buddies? Did club Koch pay him and cover his meals and drinks, under exceptions from gift rules the West Virginia legislature has created for itself?

One thing that is known is Cole "specifically addressed his legislation to make West Virginia the 26th right-to-work state" in his remarks to the "500 high-spending donors," as Gutman noted. Those big spenders are part of what is increasingly known as the "Kochs' secret cabal," despite the efforts of Charles Koch's PR machine to woo select press.

The Right to Work "Fix"--Is the Fix in?

Cole has claimed that "Right to Work" would "fix" West Virginia's economy.

That's one way of putting it.

But as expert economists at the Economic Policy Institute have demonstrated repeatedly:

"Misleadingly named right-to-work (RTW) laws do not, as some unfamiliar with the term may assume, entail any guarantee of employment for people ready and willing to go to work.Rather, by making it harder for workers' organizations to sustain themselves financially, state RTW laws aim to undermine unions' bargaining strength. Because RTW laws lower wages and benefits, weaken workplace protections, and decrease the likelihood that employers will be required to negotiate with their employees, they are advanced as a strategy for attracting new businesses to a state. But EPI research shows that RTW laws do not have any positive impact on job growth."

While the buying power of most American workers has stagnated, the 20 richest people in the country have accumulated more wealth than the combined wealth of 150 million of their fellow citizens, most of whom have worked hard their whole lives--but didn't inherit multi-million dollar trust funds and corporations from their dad, like David and Charles Koch did.

Who could possibly be behind the push for policies that make it harder for workers--in West Virginia and other states--to negotiate for better wages, safer working conditions, and basic benefits to protect their families from bankrupting illnesses?

Good question.

The answer: the Kochs and the operations they help finance to remake state law to fit their hostile view of workers' rights to collectively bargain or to secure measures like prevailing wage.

Welcome to the murky world of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the State Policy Network (SPN), and David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP)—all of which are financially aided by the Kochs' riches along with funding from some of their fellow billionaire travelers.

(SPN, which directs funding to its affiliates, has received funding from Koch-controlled philanthropy and also from secretive donor vehicles connected to the Kochs. SPN has recently stepped into a more prominent role in coordinating the defense of attacks on workers' rights, as with their efforts working with other Koch operatives around the Supreme Court's hearing in the Friedrichs case.)

RTW is backed by that Koch-fueled alliance, groups that front for the interests of corporations and CEOs like the Kochs, whose legislative agenda helps the rich get richer despite their recent PR coup on "addressing" poverty.

How are the groups pushing that legislative agenda?

Through RTW and Prevailing Wage Repeal bills. These are just two of parts of the ALEC agenda, bills that drive down wages of Americans who work for a living. (Let's save discussion of their wage-killing free trade measures for another day.)

RTW severely limits union power and, with it, worker power and pressure for better wages; similarly, the prevailing wage repeal sends construction wages into a race to the bottom.

It's like Goliath lobbying to outlaw slingshots.

The syndicate backing RTW is financed by bully billionaires, led by two brothers raised on hatred of unions by their extremist daddy--who praised the Axis powers led by Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, whom many of our grandfathers later risked their lives or died to defeat, and who belittled the American work ethic, saying in 1938 that "the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard," as Jane Mayer notes in her book "Dark Money."

Here's the Koch-Fueled Playbook Deployed, in State after State

The Koch-fueled alliance of ALEC, SPN, and AFP follows a predictable script:

* a state legislator introduces an ALEC-style Right to Work bill (state Sen. Cole is an ALEC member);

* some think tank experts from SPN or its allies provide "reports" and/or testimony extolling the purported benefits of RTW;

* and the Koch Brothers' phoney "grassroots" group, AFP, throws some small rallies in while making targeted media buys.

That's the formula we saw in Michigan, when an ALEC politician introduced a word-for-word copy of the ALEC RTW bill in late 2012.

The Michigan SPN affiliate, the Mackinac Center, played a key role in making the bill law; it was given the top award by billionaire allies of the Kochs at the next SPN meeting for its role in enacting right to work, despite telling the IRS it did "0" lobbying.

And, David Koch's AFP, through its Michigan operation, orchestrated rallies to back up the ALEC/SPN lobbying agenda.

The Koch cabal's operatives followed the same formula in Wisconsin last year: with the ALEC RTW bill introduced, testimony from a Mackinac Center rep, and a "study" authored by ALEC "scholar" Richard Vedder commissioned by a Wisconsin SPN affiliate. In Wisconsin, AFP not only organized rallies in support of the measure but also spent around $1 million on pro-RTW ads.

A few months after Wisconsin's governor, Scott Walker (an ALEC alum) signed RTW into law, a similar cast of characters took up prevailing wage repeal in the state.

There was an ALEC model bill and backing from the Mackinac Center and the Wisconsin SPN affiliate, and then AFP bought ads to peddle the repeal.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) also weighed in; despite claims that it just represents small businesses, it has received big sums from—you'll never guess—Kochs' Freedom Partners. Koch Industries, which is one of the biggest and richest corporations in the world, is about as far from being a small business as possible.

Will West Virginia Become the Latest Victim of the Koch-Fueled Hit Job on Workers?

The latest showdown, with the Koch Billionaire Cash Machine in one corner and many Working People in the other, is in West Virginia, where team Koch is looking for billionaire-friendly politicians to pack the one-two punch that helped put Wisconsin on the ropes: RTW and prevailing wage repeal.

RTW passed the West Virginia Assembly last year, and was the number one priority of the state Senate, apparently: it was the first bill introduced this session, SB-1.

Guess who the bill's sponsor is?

Bill Cole. The guy who just spent the weekend with the Kochs and their billionaire buddies, in the lap of luxury in Palm Springs.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Cole is a big fan of ALEC's "Rich States Poor States" report, which Koch money has underwritten before. It's part of the Koch game plan.

Now in its 8th edition, Rich States, Poor States is a severely discredited study that ranks the "economic outlook" of states based on--wait for it--whether they've adopted all of the Koch-fueled ALEC's legislative agenda. Like what? Like RTW.

According to ALEC, West Virginia's economic outlook dropped from 30th to 36th among the 50 states. But passing RTW could fix things, when it comes time for the next manufactured rankings of ALEC.

What's the Matter with Kansas? Success in Koch/ALEC World, Not the Real World

Let's take a closer look at those ALEC rankings.

Astonishingly, ALEC ranks Kansas 16th and puts West Virginia at 36. ALEC spent a lot of time in its report trying to defend Kansas. After all, it's the home of Charles Koch and Koch Industries and it's the land of the economic disaster wrought by Koch politicians going almost full Koch on economic policy.

By comparison, Democratic-led Minnesota's economy is so booming that it has been able to increase support for its public university system and invest in its infrastructure, but it is ranked by ALEC as 48th worst out of 50 states.

Welcome to the up-is-down, good-is-bad worldview of ALEC. It's like some sort Bizarro Superman planet.

Under the Koch/ALEC economic analysis, West Virginia should change its laws to be more like Kansas than Minnesota. For the second year in a row, Minnesota is the top state in the nation for residents' confidence in the state's economy while West Virginia's economic confidence has fallen at the highest rate in the nation, according to that annual Gallup poll. 

But, as CMD recently noted, "The biggest benefits of Governor Brownback's tax program went to the top 1% while actually increasing taxes for the bottom 20%. Kansas now has the 9th most unfair tax system of any state in the country, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The poorest 20% of Kansans pay 11.1% of their income in state taxes, while the richest 1% pay just 3.6%. ALEC's supply-side policies are getting a cold reception among Kansas residents."

Adopting the Koch/ALEC agenda in Kansas has been such a disaster that in 2014 more than 100 Republicans--including the former state chairman--endorsed Brownback's Democratic opponent for governor. Although he somehow managed--with help from the Kochs--to keep his seat, a recent poll found that "Governor Brownback is the most disliked governor in the country, with an approval rating of only 26%."

Yet, Cole seems to think ALEC's rankings are worth more than the paper they are written on. Some Republicans in Kansas seem to have seen it differently.

But a Former Politician, a Koch Man from Michigan, Says Go for It

When not hobnobbing in Palm Springs with the Koch brothers and other billionaires, Cole has been busy urging his colleagues in the state Senate to follow the lead of Pete Lund, who used to be the Majority Whip in the Michigan House.

According to information provided to PRWatch, Cole has told West Virginia Republicans that Lund, "who led the charge when Michigan adopted a right-to-work law, urged West Virginia lawmakers to stay the course and be confident that making West Virginia a RTW state is the right thing to do."

He even quoted Lund as saying "Once the bill has passed, the false scare tactics from the opposition will stop all-together as workers begin to celebrate their now freer workplace and the economic boost inherent in RTW states."

Lund says that, but what's the reality, not the ALEC version of it?

A comprehensive examination has shown that "Wages in RTW states are 3.1 percent lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as state macroeconomic indicators. This translates into RTW being associated with $1,558 lower annual wages for a typical full-time, full-year worker."

Why ignore the math that becoming a RTW state is basically like voting to give your constituents a pay cut?

Perhaps you noticed the part about Lund being a former legislator. In 2014, two years after Michigan became a RTW state, Lund decided not to seek re-election.

Where did he go?

To David Koch's AFP. Of course.

As of at least two months ago, Lund was the state director of the Michigan arm of Americans for Prosperity. How much he has been paid to peddle the Kochs' agenda from outside the state legislature is unknown.

So a state legislator pushes through divisive legislation, sought by one of the Kochs' key advocacy/elections groups, that has the effect of making it harder for Michigan workers to make ends meet. And then he gets a sweet gig leading that Koch group in the state. Those are the kind of revolving door politics that most Americans, no matter their political party, despise.

Yet here is Peter Lund--Koch man--telling West Virginians what they should do.

Peter Lund is another voice in the chorus for the ventriloquist Kochs whose money makes it appear as though there is a groundswell of wide public demand to pass billionaire-backed legislation like RTW. It's on their wish list and it meets the ALEC purity test--even if it leaves workers in RTW states with about one mortgage payment less per year than workers in states whose leaders have not drank the Koch Kool-aid.

But ALEC Is already Celebrating that WV May Give It a Win

Meanwhile, the Koch-funded ALEC is already celebrating the prospect of West Virginia becoming the 26th right to work state, and it is cooing about the supposed benefits of the legislation, according to--shocker--its own Rich States Poor States report.

West Virginia has the distinction of having one of its top industries, coal mining, also rank as one of the country's most dangerous professions. Study after study has found that labor unions significantly improve worker safety, as well as better wages and benefits. But the low prices for methane gas, known commercially as natural gas, has led utilities to switch from coal, and the economy of West Virginia and hundreds of small towns have staggered.

In that climate of fear about the future, ALEC's Rich States, Poor States offers an elixir that purports to cure what ails you--like snake oil salesmen in days of yore.

No matter what the problem, to Koch-fueled groups the solution is always trickle down policies that have failed America, like more tax cuts for the rich along with RTW and repealing the prevailing wage--which mean fewer obstacles to prevent managers and CEOs of corporations from paying themselves more by paying workers less.

But "get paid less" is hardly a winning slogan, so the Koch machine peddles the RTW/anti-prevailing wage agenda under the guise of helping worker "freedom."

So again the formula is set in motion: a model bill echoing the ALEC agenda is introduced. Next come the SPN "scholars" making cookie-cutter claims to back ALEC's cookie-cutter legislation.

Enter Vincent Vernuccio of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan who testified in support of the ALEC-SPN legislative agenda in Wisconsin last year.

Apparently, if you are looking for people to testify in favor of RTW, it's a small world.

"Aside from right-to-work states having lower unemployment, higher job growth, higher wage growth, and higher population growth," Vernuccio said in a memo sent to a West Virginia lawmaker, "Right-to-work is really about one thing: freedom."

Sure. Freedom. Freedom for corporations to pay hard-working Americans less.

Also chiming in was Jim Shaffer of the Public Policy Foundation, West Virginia's affiliate of the State Policy Network, reciting that RTW is "a personal choice."

Model bill. Check. SPN think tank supports. Check. Now cue up the marketing blitz for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity.

As the National Journal reported, "Americans for Prosperity is pushing for a right to work bill in West Virginia with mailers and an online ad campaign backed by ‘a strong five figure buy,' according to AFP regional communications director Christian Hertenstein. The group also launched a website dedicated to the issue."

"The two direct mail pieces ... were sent out beginning in December, encourage people to call their state representatives and ask them to support the measure."

AFP even boasted about its PR campaign: "The statewide effort to support right to work will include radio ads, direct mail, door-knocking, phone-banking and direct engagement with legislators." Cue former Rep./current AFP leader Lund.

What is the return on investment for the Koch-fueled playbook so far? The bill passed the House of Delegates on January 27, and the state Senate is about to consider it--now that Cole is back from his fab trip to see the Kochs on the West coast.

Repealing Prevailing Wage Is also in the Queue in West Virginia

West Virginia is also about to take up a repeal of the prevailing wage law, too, even though reputable studies have consistently found that prevailing wage laws do not increase government contracting costs. Independent studies have show that repealing prevailing wage laws does not save taxpayer money, primarily because higher-wage construction workers are much more productive or effective than lower-paid, less skilled workers.

Repealing the prevailing wage does, however, drive down "labor costs" while increasing profits for CEOs and corporations, if that's how worker in West Virginia want to measure success--at the expense of their own wages.

It will come as no surprise that the Koch-funded ALEC has long lobbied for the "Prevailing Wage Repeal Act."

ALEC's fingerprints in West Virginia were also caught on film: last year, as the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on repealing the prevailing wage law, one state lawmaker was seen perusing the ALEC.org website, according to a photo snapped by state Sen. Bob Beach.

Koch funding has planted the seeds for the repeal effort in countless other ways. For example, as far back as 2009, the state SPN affiliate published a report authored by the "Charles G. Koch Doctoral Fellow" at West Virginia University who--guess what--called for the repeal of the state's prevailing wage.

A more recent study--commissioned by the state building trades union--calculated how repealing the prevailing wage would reduce worker pay by tens of millions of dollars each year cumulatively.

Times are tough in West Virginia.

And for those working for a living they could get even tougher--if the ALEC-SPN-AFP playbook goes unchecked and the Koch machine gets its way.

==

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/michigan-snyder-mackinac-center

Behind Michigan's "Financial Martial Law": Corporations and Right-Wing Billionaires

The think tank that inspired Gov. Rick Snyder's budget bill is bankrolled by Koch money and some of the same donors that backed Wisconsin's attack on unions.

By Andy Kroll | Wed Mar. 23, 2011 3:01 AM EDT

[Click here to watch [1] Kroll discuss the following story on MSNBC's "The Ed Show."]

Last week, Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a fiercely contested bill giving unelected "emergency financial managers" unprecedented power to shred union contracts, privatize city services, and consolidate or dissolve local governments, all in the name of saving struggling cities and school districts. Dubbed "financial martial law" by one approving state GOP lawmaker and "disaster capitalism" by critics, Snyder and his bill have become a target for Wisconsin-like protests. Several thousand demonstrators marched [2] on the Michigan Capitol in the days before Snyder signed the bill. But gone unmentioned is a little-known Michigan think tank that for years has been pushing for the most controversial provisions in Snyder's bill—and that's bankrolled by some of the same right-wing millionaires and billionaires that backed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union legislation.

Since 2005, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has urged reforms [3] to Michigan law giving more power and protection to emergency financial managers, state-appointed officials who parachute into ailing cities or school districts and employ drastic measures to fix budgets on the brink of collapse. In January, the free-market-loving center published four recommendations, including granting emergency managers the power to override elected officials (such as a mayor or school board member) and toss out union contracts. All four [4] ended up in Snyder's legislation.

"The Mackinac Center has been tied at the hip with the Republican Party establishment for years," says Doug Pratt, public affairs director at the Michigan Education Association. "It goes to their funding sources; it goes to their ideology."

Mackinac is part of a network of state-based groups associated with the Heritage Foundation, the influential right-wing think tank in Washington. Its past and present board members include Robert Teeter, a GOP strategist and '92 campaign manager for George H.W. Bush; Margaret Rieker, a former vice chairwoman [5] of the Republican National Committee; and Joseph Lehman, a former vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

The Mackinac Center does not disclose its donors. But a review of tax records shows that the group's funders include the charitable foundations of the nation's largest corporations and a host of wealthy conservative and libertarian benefactors. Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center's donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation ($69,151), founded by the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, who, with his brother, David, is a major backer of conservative causes; the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation ($80,000), the charity tied to the son of the co-founder of Amway [6], the multibillion-dollar direct marketing company; the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, established by the parents of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who serves as the foundation's vice president ($195,000); and the Walton Family Foundation ($100,000), established by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen.

Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center's fiscal policy initiative, says the Center is never influenced by its donors: "We are happy to take checks from people who don't agree with us, but they're not the ones sending us money."

Political action committees and non-profit groups linked to some of these same donors also helped fund Scott Walker's gubernatorial campaign and his push to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions. Koch Industries' PAC gave [7] $43,000 to Walker's 2010 campaign, while Wal-Mart's PAC chipped in $15,000. Dick DeVos and his daughter, Elisabeth, also individually donated [8] to Walker's campaign.

The Mackinac Center’s is a fervent advocate of privatization—its scholars support outsourcing everything from public school districts to Amtrak to state prisons—and backs anti-union legislation for Michigan. In 2007, the center published "A Collective Bargaining Primer," advocating against mandatory unionization and automatic dues deductions for public school teachers and other public employees. Collective bargaining for teachers, the Center claims [9], "has become a significant deterrent to educational quality." In other words, if you outsource as much as you can and kneecap the unions, the quality of education—and presumably city services—increases.

That position is in line with the beliefs of its donors. In 2009, Amway and Wal-Mart were among the 3,100 businesses [10] that signed a letter opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would've made it easier for employees to unionize; that same year, Wal-Mart spent $7.4 million [11] on lobbying,much of it [12] to defeat EFCA. (The law failed.) The Koch brothers, meanwhile, fund an array of organizations opposed to unions, including the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. With the Mackinaw Center, it seems, their investment is paying off.

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/michigan-snyder-mackinac-center

Links:

[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42261451#42261451

[2] http://www.freep.com/article/20110314/NEWS15/110314050/Snyder-s-budget-faces-new-wave-Michigan-Capitol-protests-week

[3] http://www.mackinac.org/7451

[4] http://www.mackinac.org/14756

[5] http://www.ourmidland.com/accent/article_87dcf771-c72a-5ec2-8396-d8f128b810e5.html

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway

[7] http://wisdc.org/index.php?module=wisdc.websiteforms&cmd=campaigncontributions&office=G&candidate=102575&year=2010&from=2009-01-01&to=2010-10-18&CTGTZO=-420&CTGTZL=-480#pac&pac_p=2&pac_qty=50

[8] http://wisdc.org/index.php?module=wisdc.websiteforms&cmd=campaigncontributions&candidate=102575&office=G&year=2010&to=1293782400&from=1230796800&p=383

[9] http://www.mackinac.org/8273

[10] http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/05/11/daily64.html

[11] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Wal-Mart+Stores&year=2009

[12] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?lname=Wal-Mart+Stores&year=2009

==

fang; hired kathy hoekstra

FEE:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundation-for-economic-education?trk=prof-following-company-logo

Contributor and Editor

InformationStation.org

January 2014 – Present (1 year 6 months)

Senior Manager, Media Relations

Job Creators Network

2012 – Present (3 years):{

}:

==

http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mackinac_Center_for_Public_Policy

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a state-level conservative policy think tank in Michigan. Founded in 1987, it is the largest state-level think tank in the nation. It was established by the state's leading conservative activists to promote free market, pro-business policies. The Center voices its policy positions though publications and has moved beyond Michigan by helping the leaders of similar conservative institutions to improve their operations in many other states and countries around the world. The organization has drawn fire for its advocacy of right wing positions. Leading academics have criticized the Center, saying that "Mackinac Center research is often of low quality and because of this it should be treated with considerable skepticism by the public, policy makers and political leaders. Much of the work of the Mackinac Center may have caused more confusion than clarity in the public discussion of the issues that it has addressed by systematically ignoring evidence that does not agree with its proposed solutions." ^[1][2]

Freedom Of Information Act Requests

In March 2011, as protests over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposal to effectively end public sector collective bargaining continued to grow in Wisconsin, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy issued Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for three Michigan Universities, the University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Michigan State University. The request targeted any emails containing: “collective bargaining,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” “Scott Walker” or “Maddow.” The requests target labor studies faculty at each school. ^[3] USA Today wrote that Mackinac's "demands for professors' e-mails about Wisconsin's public employee labor strife is causing an uproar among some who suggest the Freedom of Information Act requests aim to intimidate pro-labor dissenters and stifle academic freedom." ^[3]

The FOIA request was very similar to one submitted by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to University of Wisconsin-Madison historian **William J.:{ Cronon:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:** during the same week, after the professor had published a**blog post**questioning the role of the **American Legislative Exchange Council** in Governor Walker's anti-union legislation. ^[4] Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote " there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like." ^[5]

Like the Wisconsin GOP's request for Cronon's emails, Mackinac's request posed some concerns for university professors because the request could be an attempt to quell political opposition. ^[6] In a New York Times article, Director of Academic Freedom for the American Association of University Professors, Greg Scholtz, said, “We think all this will have a chilling effect on academic freedom. We’ve never seen FOIA requests used like this before.”^[7]

Involvement in 2011 Financial Manager Legislation

In 2005, the Center published a paper arguing an emergency financial manager with extremely broad powers should take control of the finances of Detroit, long plagued by budgetary problems. The Center advocated four major policy changes. The policies advocated by the Center included that the manager should "replace and take on the powers of the governing body", have the power to alter the charter of a municipality or district, and be immune from litigation.Binding arbitration for union contracts after failed re-negotiation would also be abolished, allowing the manager the power to opt out of the use of union labor at the end of a union's contract ^[8]. All four of these changes were proposed in controversial legislation introduced by newly elected governor Rick Snyder in 2011.

Creation of the Overton Window

The Overton Window is a tool used to visualize policy positions along the political spectrum. It was invented by Joseph P. Overton, a Mackinac Center scholar and Vice President, in the mid-1990's and has "gained national currency" since 2003. ^[9] In the Center's own description, it is designed to provide a spectrum which visualizes policies acceptable to the public with the various ends of the spectrum representing 'unthinkable' policies and the middle representing a policy that would be widely well received by the public. Any policy which would be deemed acceptable or desirable by the public is "in the window". The concept also holds that legislators can only act within the window out of their duty to constituents. According to the Center, the window is also finite and can be moved. The Center advocates action by think tanks and other non-political figures which would "shift the window", bringing policies that would once be thought of as radical or unthinkable into the realm of possibility, allowing legislators to enact them. Consequently, policies once looked upon acceptable or desirable would move out of favor with the public.^[10]

Education Activism

The Center has focused a great deal of its scholarly efforts on advancing school choice programs in Michigan, drawing great criticism for attacking teachers unions and public schools in the process. A 2002 study authored by three professors in the educational field, two from Columbia and another from Arizona State University, reviewed the Center's previous 11 years of work on education policy and found that "evidence presented in Mackinac Center studies is often weak and at times misleading." Continuing, they added that "it is hoped that this report has been helpful in revealing the shortcomings and the possible dangers inherent on basing public policy on the research of the Mackinac Center," and that the Center "is devoted to privatizing state institutions and to deregulating public education."^[11]

The report analyzed the quality of Mackinac Center studies by employing the numerical scale used to determine whether or scholarly material written and researched by professors in the education field could be published in various scholarly journals in the education field. It adjusted these criteria to allow for the differences between original research, interpretive research, opinion essays and administrative and legislative guides, all of which were genres published in education journals. The report found that only 1 report out of 22 appropriately addressed its topic matter.^[12]

Establishment

The Mackinac Center was founded in 1987 with backing from the Cornerstone Foundation. The insurance industry (primarily Citizen’s) provided initial funding, amounting to $306,382 during this period. Various officials of Dow Cornering and Dow Chemical paid $335,986.

Its creation was driven by the insurance industry’s call for product liability reform, its interest in the Accident Fund, and by Dow Corning’s concern over silicone breast implant liability.

According to documents filed by the Center with the federal government, its activities are tax exempt because it is:

'Conducting policy research on matters affecting Michigan residents and proposing approaches to public policy issues consistent with the traditional American values of free-markets, limited government, and respect for private property...' (IRS Form 990 (2005), page 3)

In order to retain this tax exempt status, the Center states that it has not:

':… attempted to influence national, state, or local legislation, including any attempt to influence public opinion on a legislative matter or referendum.' (IRS Form 990 (2005), Schedule A, page 2)

The Mackinac Center is a member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a network of state-based think tanks patterned after the Heritage Foundation. Mackinac Center President Emeritus Lawrence Reed serves on the SPN Board of Directors.^[13]

Ties to the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity

The Pacific Research Institute is listed as hosting Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity "investigative journalists." ^[14] The Franklin Center funds reporters in over 40 states.^[15] Despite their non-partisan description, many of the websites funded by the Franklin Center have received criticism for their conservative bias.^[16][17] On it's website, the Franklin Center clams that it "provides 10 percent of all daily reporting from state capitals nationwide." ^[18]

Funding

The Franklin Center was launched by the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance (SAM),^[19] a 501(c)(3) devoted to pushing free-market ideals. SAM gets funding from the State Policy Network,^[20] which is partially funded by The Claude R. Lambe Foundation.^[21] Charles Koch, one of the billionaire brothers who co-own Koch Industries, sits on the board of this foundation.^[22] SAM also receives funding from the Rodney Fund. The Franklin Center also receives funding from the Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,^[23] a conservative grant-making organization.^[24]

Personnel

Board of Directors

Current Board members, as of June 2011, are ^[25]:

• Joseph Fitzsimmons
• Dulce Fuller, member, and also chair of the Southeast Michigan Committee of the Heritage Foundation.
• Paul Gadola, Judge, Reagan Campaign Chair, Federalist Society
• Richard Haworth, chairman of the board of Haworth, Inc (furniture)
• Kent Herrick, Vice Chairman, and Tecumseh Engines founder’s great grandson
• Phil Jenkins, CEO of Sweepster Inc
• R. Kinnan, member, and also the Senior Vice President and C.F.O. for Amerisure Insurance.
• Joseph Lehman President, and also on the board of directors of the Sam Adams Alliance and also former Vice president for communications at the Cato Institute.
• Edward Levy, President, Edw. C. Levy Co.
• Rodney Lockwood, member, and also the Chairman/CEO of the Lockwood Companies
• Joseph Maguire, Treasurer, and also president of Wolverine Development Corporation.
• Richard McLellan, Secretary, and also member of McLellan Law Offices.
• D. Joseph Olson, Chairman, and also Senior VP and General Counsel, Amerisure Companies
• Lawrence Reed, President Emeritus

Past board members are:

• Richard D. McLellan , Dykema Gossett, PLLC
• Joseph Lehman, MC President, formerly Dow Chemical, Cato Institute
• Mara M. Letica, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Letica Corp
• D. Joseph Olson, Senior VP and General Counsel, Amerisure Companies
• Gail Torreano, Chief of Staff to Sen. Kevin Engler
• Lawrence W. Reed, Mackinac Center President Emeritus
• Margaret Riecker, **Republican National Committee**, Dow Foundation
• John Riecker Hillsdale College and Comerica Bank, d. 2008
• Linda Rodney, managing partner at LK Rodney Enterprises, LLC.
• James Rodney, Chairman of the Board, Detroit Forming
• William Rosenberg , Bush Presidential Campaign, Reagan, Milliken and Engler administrations
• Robert Teeter,**RNC**Chairman, Pollster for Nixon, Ford, Bush campaign
• Philip Van Dam, US Attorney under Ford
• Gregory Kaza, Former Republican State Representative
• **Dick DeVos**, Amway, Republican Candidate for Governor
• Charles Van Eaton, Hillsdale College
• Peter Cook, Great Lakes Mazda, major Republican campaign donor
• Paul Gadola, Judge, Reagan Campaign Chair, Federalist Society
• Dick Antonini, Foremost Insurance

Other

Craig Rucker of CFACT is a Mackinac Adjunct Scholar.[7]

Funding

The Mackinac Center refuses to disclose who pays for its operations. When asked by Detroit’s Metro Times in 1996, the Center’s then-President Lawrence Reed said: "Our funding sources are primarily foundations … with the rest coming from corporations and individuals," but that "… revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion…"^[26]

In 2009, The Center's revenues totaled $3,310,018, down from 2008 revenue of $3,664,400 ^[27], the majority of that revenue coming from tax-deductible individual contributions. In 2006, the Center’s revenues totaled $2,711,545.^[28] Its funding has grown substantially over the years, "from just over $1.7 million in 1998 to a high of $8 million in 2005 when its $1,790,963 payroll supported a staff of 40 people."^[29]

In that year(2006), the Mackinac Center earned only $2,630 (“program sales”); the rest of its revenues came from tax-deductible contributions. Funding from non-profit foundations can be tracked by an examination of the IRS returns they file. From 2002 to 2006, the following conservative and corporate foundations funded the Center:

Mackinac Center Non-Profit Funders 2002-2009

• Aequus Institute $1,000 Free Market/Christian Science Advocacy
• Beach Foundation $3,000
• Bradley Foundation, Lynde and Harry $472,500 Electronic and radio component heirs
• Brandon Foundation, David A. 2,500 Former Domino's Pizza CEO
• Bretzlaff Foundation, Hilda E. $1,000
• **Eli and Edythe L. Broad Foundation**$27,500 Homebuilding and retirement
• Castle Rock Foundation $50,000 Coors founder's son
• J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation $47,150 JP Morgan banking heirs
• Chrysler Foundation $225,000 Automotive corporation
• Dart Foundation $20,000 Founder of Dart Container Corp
• Daniel and Pamella DeVos Foundation $50,000 Amway founder son, CEO DP Fox Ventures
• Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation $70,000 Gov candidate./former State Rep. Chair
• Douglas & Maria DeVos Foundation $55,000 Current Alticor (Amway) Co-CEO
• Helen & Richard DeVos Foundation $90,000 Amway founder
• William H. :{Donner:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Foundation $20,000 Heirs of Union Steel Co. founder
• Dow Foundation, Herbert H. and Grace A. $2,055,500 Dow Chemical founder widow
• Dunn's Foundation for the :{Advancement of Right Thinking:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: $576,000 Investment company founder William A:{. Dunn:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: (CEI, Frontiers of Freedom etc)
• Earhart Foundation, MI $333,300 White Star Oil heirs
• :{ExxonMobil :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:Foundation, TX $10,000 Oil corporation
• Fisher Foundation, Max M. and Marjorie S. $1,000 Gas stations and real estate
• Gelman Educational Foundation $10,000 Gelman Instrument Company
• General Motors Foundation, Inc. $30,000 Automotive corporation
• Gerstacker Foundation, Rollin M. $150,000 Dow Chemical Chairman (retired)
• Hanover Insurance Group Foundation, Inc. $5,500 Insurance corp. (includes Citizens)
• Hansen Foundation, Robert and Marie $25,000 Cogen Technologies founder
• Heritage Mark Foundation $7,000 Christian causes, emphasis on evangelism
• Herrick Foundation $1,950,000 Tecumseh Engines founder's son
• Hickory Foundation $40,000 Investment company founder's former wife
• Hume Foundation, Jaquelin $375,000 Basic Vegetable company heir
• J. P. Humphreys Foundation $40,000 TAMKO roofing, composite decking founder’s wife
• JM Foundation $45,000 Borden Milk Company heirs
• Kelly Services, Inc. Foundation, MI $3,500 Staffing corporation
• Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation $50,000 Oil corporation heir, founder of Cato Institute
• Merillat Foundation, Orville D. & Ruth A. $195,000 Cabinet manufacturer founder's widow
• Perrigo Company Charitable Foundation $36,000 Over-the-counter drug manufacturer
• Peters Foundation, Ruth and Lovett, OH $525,000 Procter & Gamble heirs
• Pope Foundation, John William $4,500 Variety Wholesalers retail chain founder
• Prince Foundation, Edgar and Elsa $125,000 Prince Automotive founder's widow
• Rodney Fund $744,500 Detroit Forming founder/Mackinac Bd member
• Roe Foundation $150,000 Builder Marts of American / State Policy Network founder
• Sarah Scaife Foundation $50,000 Mellon industrial, oil and banking heirs
• Schiavone Family Foundation $10,000 Construction company investigated for organized crime connections
• Staley Educational Foundation, Richard Seth $1,000
• Strosacker Foundation, Charles J $68,750 Dow Chemical Board member
• Van Andel Foundation, Jay and Betty, $20,000 Amway founder widow
• :{Walton :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:Family Foundation $100,000 Wal-Mart heirs

These contributions total $8,871,200; the remaining revenue for this period (about $20 million) was provided by entities that are not required to file statements with the federal government: individuals and corporations.... Refusing to release corporate financing sources prevents outsiders from drawing connections between the business of these corporations and the research conclusions and opinions the Center reaches."^[30]

In Strategic Grantmaking, Foundations and the School Privatization Movement, Richard Cohen of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy estimates that one-half to two-thirds of all corporate grant-making is “made through the CEO’s office or the marketing department, for which there is no public disclosure requirement.”^[31]

The Media Matters Action Network has identified the organization's all-time biggest funder as the Rodney Foundation, an organization founded by Mackinac Center board member James Rodney.

Staff Compensation

Those working for the Mackinac Center are well compensated. The chart below lists the 2005 ^[32] and 2006^[33] total compensation for officers and highest paid five employees, including benefits contribution and expense accounts:

Projects, publications and related websites

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy runs the following affiliated sites and publications:

• Mackinac Center Legal Foundation - Law Firm
• Michigan Capitol Confidential - News service reporting on public officials
• Students for a Free Economy -
• Michigan Votes.org - database of legislative bills, votes
• Show Michigan the Money -
• Mackinac Media - Interviews and News Reports

Methods of Operation & Messaging

According to the Michigan Education Association, "The Mackinac Center receives attention not because of its objective scholarship but because it showers the media and governmental officials at all levels with publications designed to promote a conservative agenda. It is undoubtedly a very effective conduit for the policy wishes of its sponsors. It has shown great resourcefulness in creating new ways to spread its message. Between its presence in the Michigan Legislature, its many publications, news releases, its web site and conferences it might seem to be spreading its message in every way possible, but it continues to find new outlets"^[34]:

• It recently sponsored a contest to reward a student essay that best “exposes a scientific fallacy in a book, movie, song or other pop culture medium.”^[35]
• A new program “Students for a Free Economy” will visit Michigan colleges and universities “taking policy ideas to students … who may be unfamiliar with the ways that markets affect their lives and the issues they care about.”^[36]
• It’s Freedom in Fiction Prize competition offers $10,000 to the new book author who creates:

• "…characters that demonstrate an appreciation for liberty, free markets and/or explicitly or symbolically oppose government oppression or restraints on their freedom…"

But the book must not:

• "…advance themes or characters who promote government-sponsored solutions; vilify entrepreneurship; degrade personal initiative, self-reliance and responsibility, or regurgitate discredited myths and misconceptions about liberty and free enterprise… "^[37]

Contact Info

140 West Main Street

P.O. Box 568

Midland, Michigan 48640

(989) 631-0900 Voice

(800) 22-IDEAS Voice

(989) 631-0964 Fax

Website: http://www.mackinac.org

References

1. ↑ Cookson, Molnar, Embree.[1]Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice report. Let the Buyer Beware: An Analysis of Social Science Value and Methodological Quality of Educational Studies Published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (1990-2001). September 28, 2011.
2. ↑ Greg Steimel The Truth About the Mackinac Center, Michigan Education Association report, April 21, 2011
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Dawson Bell Wisconsin Email Request USA Today, March 31, 2011
4. ↑ Jon Wiener, The Power of a Simple Fact, The Nation, Mar. 28, 2011.
5. ↑ Paul Krugman, American Thought Police, NYTimes, Mar 27, 2011.
6. ↑ Zane McMillin Request for access to emails from faculty, staff made by think tank State News, March 31, 2011
7. ↑ STEVEN GREENHOUSE Group Seeks Labor E-Mails by Michigan Professors New York Times, March 29, 2011
8. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, [2], Mackinac Center for Public Policy website, accessed September 28 2011.
9. ↑ Joseph P. Overton Biography, Mackinac Center for Public Policy [3] Accessed 28 September 2011
10. ↑ An Introduction to the Overton Window of Political Possibilities [4] Accessed 28 September 2011
11. ↑ Cookson, Molnar, Embree.[5]Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice report. Let the Buyer Beware: An Analysis of Social Science Value and Methodological Quality of Educational Studies Published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (1990-2001). September 28, 2011.
12. ↑ Cookson, Molnar, Embree.[6]Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice report. Let the Buyer Beware: An Analysis of Social Science Value and Methodological Quality of Educational Studies Published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (1990-2001). September 28, 2011.
13. ↑ Greg Steimel The Truth About the Mackinac Center, Michigan Education Association report, April 21, 2011
14. ↑ Statehouse News Bureaus, Source Watch, accessed March 23, 2012
15. ↑ The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Think tank Journalism: The Future of Investigative Journalism. Organizational website. Accessed August 19, 2011.
16. ↑ The Portland Press Herald. 'Watchdog' website puts a new spin on politics'. News website. Accessed August 19, 2011.
17. ↑ Truthout. The Koch Spider Web. News website. Accessed August 19, 2011.
18. ↑ Sara Jerving, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/10/10971/franklin-center-right-wing-funds-state-news-source, PR Watch, October 27, 2011
19. ↑ Sam Adams Alliance. Sam Adams Alliance Media Kit. Organizational PDF. Accessed August 19, 2011.
20. ↑ Media Matters Action Network. Sam Adams Alliance. Conservative Transparency. Accessed August 19, 2011.
21. ↑ Media Matters Action Network. State Policy Network. Conservative Transparency. Accessed August 19, 2011.
22. ↑ Media Matters Action Network. Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. Conservative Transparency. Accessed August 19, 2011.
23. ↑ The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Franklin Center boss wants apology from Democratic staffer. News website. Accessed August 19, 2011.
24. ↑ The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation. Organizational website. Accessed August 19, 2011.
25. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, "Board of Directors", Mackinac Center for Public Policy website, accessed June 2011.
26. ↑ Curt Guyette Behind John Engler: First in a Series, Detroit Metro Times, 1996, accessed May 10, 2011
27. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2009 Form 990 Return
28. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2005 Annual Return, pages 17-18.
29. ↑ Greg Steimel The Truth About the Mackinac Center, Michigan Education Association report, April 21, 2011
30. ↑ Greg Steimel The Truth About the Mackinac Center, Michigan Education Association report, April 21, 2011
31. ↑ Rick Cohen Strategic Grantmaking, Foundations and the School Privatization Movement, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report, November 2007, accessed May 10, 2011
32. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2005 Annual Return, pages 17-18.
33. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2006 Annual Return, page 21.
34. ↑ Greg Steimel The Truth About the Mackinac Center, Michigan Education Association report, April 21, 2011
35. ↑ Bruce Edward Walker Contest Winner Takes on Disney, MichiganScience, Mackinac Center quarterly magazine, August 8, 2007, accessed May 10, 2011
36. ↑ Isaac M. Morehouse Mackinac Center Launches University Campus Project: Students for a Free Economy “to go outside the box” to spread free-market ideas at Michigan colleges and universities, Students for a Free Economy press release, Mackinac Center project, August 23, 2007, accessed May 10, 2011
37. ↑ Mackinac Center for Public Policy Freedom in Fiction Prize, cached Entry Form & Competition Rules, cached February 29, 2008, accessed May 10, 2011

Related SourceWatch Articles

• think tanks

Categories: Think tanks | United States | Conservatives

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"Indeed, just last week a conservative research group in Michigan issued a public records request to the labor studies departments at three public universities in that state. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is seeking any emails involving the Wisconsin labor turmoil from professors at the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State University. This request also is being roundly criticized as an attempt to intimidate academics who may be sympathetic to organized labor."

 Evan McMorris-Santoro March 29, 2011, 

A free enterprise think tank in Michigan — backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles — has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in the study of labor relations, seeking all their emails regarding the union battle in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, TPM has learned.

According to professors subject to the request, filed under Michigan’s version of the Freedom Of Information Act, the request is extremely rare in academic circles. An employee at the think tank requesting the emails tells TPM they’re part of an investigation into what labor studies professors at state schools in Michigan are saying about the situation in Madison, Wisc., the epicenter of the clashes between unions and Republican-run state governments across the Midwest.

One professor subject to the FOIA described it as anti-union advocates “going after folks they don’t agree with.”

The Mackinac Center For Public Policy, based in Midland, Mich., submitted the FOIA requests last Friday and Monday to the Labor Studies Center at the University of Michigan and the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. A third FOIA was directed to Michigan State University, which has a School of Human Resources & Labor Relations.

The requests specifically seek emails from all labor studies faculty at each school.

The Mackinac Center For Public Policy describes itself as a “nonpartisan research and educational institute” focused on providing free market “solutions to state and local policy questions” in Michigan. The center does not disclose its donors but

according to recent reporting by *Mother Jones*, Mackinac “is part of a network of state-based groups associated with the Heritage Foundation.”

Past major donors to Mackinac Center, according to Mother Jones, have included the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation (the Wal-Mart Waltons), and foundations tied to two of Michigan’s best-known and wealthiest conservative political families: the DeVos family of Amway fame and the Prince family of Blackwater fame.

The Mackinac Center has long pushed for several of the controversial proposals put forward by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), including one which would allow state government to step in when local municipalities face financial crises and declare, as one supportive legislator put it, “financial martial law,” including abrogating union contracts.

The think tank is also known for FOIAing state workers, including teachers and professors. In February, it criticized Michigan State for not fully complying with a FOIA request for emails surrounding a plagiarism scandal involving MSU faculty. A recent request was for public school teacher emails that may or may not have mentioned the possibility of a strike. Teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan. That FOIA request was denied, leading to outcry from the Mackinac Center and the Michigan Press Association. [and maddow]...

But where those requests were relatively narrow — looking for emails surrounding a specific incident or specific plans for a strike — the FOIAs sent to state university labor studies faculty are quite broad. The parameters for the request, from a version of the FOIA obtained by TPM and confirmed by Mackinac, cover emails that mention:

“Scott Walker”; “Wisconsin”; “Madison”; “Maddow”; Any other emails dealing with the collective bargaining situation in Wisconsin.

The request covers all faculty emails from “January 1, 2011 to March 25, 2011.”

Read the entire FOIA sent to UM here.

Jarrett Skorup, the Mackinac Center research associate whose name is on the FOIA, told TPM he helped write and then filed the FOIAs at the request of his bosses, but he wasn’t sure what they’d be used for in the end. He suggested the Mackinac Center was looking for chatter about the Wisconsin labor situation from state professors paid to study labor relations.

“I would imagine just to see what the people in the labor studies dept are thinking about stuff in Wisconsin,” Skorup said when asked the purpose of the FOIAs.

His boss, Mackinac Center newsletter managing editor Ken Braun, refused to comment on the FOIAs.

“I’m not going to release what we’re writing about,” he said.

Roland Zullo, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy and subject to the request, suggested the Mackinac Center is trying to catch labor studies professors in illegal political advocacy on state time.

“It sounds like they’re trying to catch us advocating for the recall or the election of a politician,” Zullo said. “Because we’re not supposed to do that, we’re not supposed to use our University of Michigan resources for something like that.”

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/in-michigan-conservative-think-tank-seeks-labor-prof-emails.php

Koch-Funded Mackinac Center Brings Wisconsin Act 10 Provisions to ALEC

by Brendan Fischer — May 1, 2012 - 8:37am

• Topics: Corporations, Labor, Politics

• Projects: ALEC Exposed, Wisconsin Protests

With the recent publication of additional American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) documents, new questions are being raised about the source of certain provisions in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining legislation. Some of those provisions may be adopted by ALEC for introduction in other states.

According to documents posted by good government organization Common Cause, the Koch-funded, Michigan-based think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy will ask :{ALEC:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: at its Spring Task Force Summit on May 11 in Charlotte, North Carolina to adopt as a "model bill" a proposal that strongly resembles sections of Governor Walker's Act 10. Those provisions, requiring that public employee unions recertify with a majority of eligible employees (rather than just a majority of those voting) and do so regularly, were considered some of the most onerous burdens on unions imposed by Act 10, and their source a subject of significant speculation.

The Act 10 provisions that the Mackinac Center will bring to ALEC were recently struck down by a federal court in Wisconsin. That court also rejected the law's prohibition on voluntary union dues deductions, which resembled already-existing ALEC model legislation.

Out-Of-State Influence on Act 10

Many Wisconsin residents were blindsided in February 2011 when Governor Walker introduced his proposal to severely limit public sector collective bargaining. Walker never campaigned on union-busting, and one week before election day he even said he would negotiate with unions.

Walker's Act 10 went beyond requiring employees to contribute more to their healthcare and pensions (which actually was discussed during the election). The law made it nearly impossible for public sector unions to operate in the state by eliminating any opportunities for meaningful collective bargaining, making it more difficult for unions to collect dues, and requiring annual union recertification elections won by an absolute majority of employees, in addition to other changes. "A legislative enactment can always establish mandatory employee contributions for pension and health benefits," said former U.S. Solicitor of Labor and current Wisconsin Law School emeritus professor Carin Clauss, in an interview with CMD last February. "If that is what the governor needs, he can get it without repealing the collective bargaining rights for state and local government employees." Act 10, she said, was "just an excuse to undermine labor relations."

WHO'S TRYING TO SHUT PROFS UP?

By Jim Hightower- Fri., 6/3/11

Out of the blue, three professors at different Michigan universities simultaneously received identical freedom-of-information demands for any and all of their emails that used certain words.

The three are professors of labor studies, and the words in question were: "Scott Walker," the union-busting governor of Wisconsin; "Madison," the capitol city at the center of mass protests against Walker's assault on worker rights; and "Rachel Maddow," the TV talk show host who covered the public rebellion against Walker.

In fact, the demand for emails came not from out of the blue, but from out of far right field, specifically from a ferociously anti-union corporate front group called the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Peek behind the Mackinac curtain, and you'll find piles of money from the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, the Prince family, and the Waltons of Walmart.

Who were the big funders of Scott Walker's gubernatorial run last year? Yes, the Kochs, DeVoses, Princes, and Waltons. Once Walker was elected, the same plutocrats launched their front groups to help the governor push his attack on Wisconsin's public employees. Now the billionaires' Mackinac unit is behind the chilling witch hunt for state university professors. Apparently, the Mackinacers plan to cherry pick some tidbits from the emails to 'prove' that professors of labor were using their public positions to --gasp! --advocate for labor, or even to promote a pro-labor political movement.

As is usual with these supposedly nonpartisan, right-wing fronts, Mackinac officials are denying any polit- ical motives in what obviously is a crude, McCarthyite attempt to intimidate and muzzle people whose opinions they don't like.

United Auto Workers were “blindsided” by Michigan’s new ‘right-to-work’ legislation, union president Bob King told msnbc Tuesday, shortly after Gov. Rick Snydersigned the bills into law. In fact, the union had entered what King described as amicable talks with Snyder only days before, and the governor—who had previously opposed right-to-work—offered no indication that his views had changed.[SAME IN WI]

“We had made a lot of progress, which he and the staff, everybody, felt good about,” said King. “But then all of a sudden, he flipped on us, and we heard that he was going to sign this bill.”

Snyder’s public position on right-to-work turned into a ringing endorsement, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, he was championing right-to-work as “Freedom to Work,” calling it “pro-worker,” and saying it would create “more and better jobs in Michigan.”

To explain the shift, Snyder has said that the issue simply gained “critical mass.” But lately, a well-funded conservative political machine, with ties to the Koch family and other wealthy backers,  as well as to the notorious conservative lobby group ALEC, has been flexing its considerable muscle. What looked like a spontaneous shift in Michigan labor policy had been planned for months—and the success of the right-to-work push could foretell future efforts nationwide.

Rep. Tom Shirkey, a Republican, described the passage of right-to-work to msnbc as a “big team effort.”

“There’s a long list of very public special interest groups and associations that have been advocating for labor freedom for a long time,” Shirkey said in an interview Wednesday. “There’s also a long list of people who would just as soon stay behind the scenes who have been very supportive. And I’m just privileged to be one small piece in this very big puzzle.”

One key piece in the puzzle: The Mackinac Public Policy Center, a Michigan-based non-profit that has been publishing reports about the benefits of right-to-work legislation for more than two decades. The organization is well-connected; its president, Joseph G. Lehman, is a former VP of communications at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. And its director of labor policy, F. Vincent Vernuccio—a former Bush administration official—has been lauded by Fox News’ Stuart Varney as a “top union watchdog.”

Mackinac’s influence is local, but its network is nationwide. The think tank is a member of the State Policy Network, which Mackinac spokesperson Ted O’Neil told msnbc was something of a “sister think tank.” Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll, who has reported extensively on SPN’s activities, has written that it’s behind “one of the largest assaults on American unions in recent history.”

Because of its tax status, Mackinac can’t lobby, but makes its influence felt in other ways.

“What my reporting turned up was other kinds of pressure,” Kroll said on The Ed Show in April 2011. “It comes in policy briefings; some think tanks can lobby lawmakers. So it’s not quite campaign contributions, but it’s similar.”

According to a report inThe Nation,Mackinac spent more than $3 million on its public advocacy budget in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2011, its spending shot up to $5.7 million.

Mackinac also has ties to another, more notorious conservative network with national influence: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the group most famous for pushing the “papers, please” bill in Arizona. Earlier this year, at the ALEC Task Force Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mackinac put three pieces of “model legislation”before ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force. One of those bills was already Michigan state law—all three were anti-union.

Now, model legislation from ALEC’s countrywide network may have found its way back into Michigan. Based on a side-by-side analysis from the Center for Media and Democracy, Salon reported on Tuesday that Michigan’s new right-to-work legislation “appears to pull language directly from ALEC’s model right-to-work bill.”

Mackinac also accomplished another major coup in 2011, when Snyder signed what one supporter called a“financial martial law” bill allowing “emergency financial managers” extensive power to privatize and union-bust.(The Rachel Maddow Show has reported extensively on the the anti-democratic power grab that the law enabled in the town of Benton Harbor.) Kroll wrote that the Mackinac Center had spent years “pushing for the most controversial provisions in Snyder’s bill.”

Who funds Mackinac? In tax records obtained by Kroll, two big names stand out: the Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation. Charles G. Koch is, of course, one half of the influential Koch Brothers. And it’s no surprise that the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) had a major presence rallying support for the bills in Lansing this week.

But among Michigan power brokers, DeVos might well be the bigger name. Dick DeVos is the son of Richard DeVos, the founder of Amway. In 2006, after achieving success in the corporate world, DeVos the younger ran for governor of Michigan as a Republican. He lost—by a rather decisive 14%—to Democrat Jennifer Granholm.

Since then, he’s worked to exert influence from the outside. Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat told msnbc that some of her Republican colleagues complained to her privately that DeVos was twisting their arms over the anti-union legislation.

“I spoke with someone in Republican leadership who was angry because these heavy-handed tactics were being used with the members,” she said. Republicans told her, she said, that DeVos had “threatened primaries, threatened to spend whatever it takes to beat them if they don’t support these bills.”

Whitmer also cited the involvement of real estate mogul Ron Weiser, the former chair of Michigan’s Republican Party and George W. Bush’s ambassador to Slovakia. Salon’sJosh Eidelson dug up video from 2007 in which Weiser describes working on passing right-to-work in Michigan “full-time.” His comrades in the fight, he says in, include the Michigan wing of AFP—and, of course, none other than Dick DeVos.

Shirkey, the GOP legislator, confirmed to msnbc that he had spoken with Weiser about the effort.

“I had a number of conversations with Ron Weiser,” said Shirkey. “Ron, I consider a good friend. He’s a strong advocate for labor freedom, and frankly, he started a pretty significant process a couple years ago on this.” Shirkey said he had not spoken with DeVos.

Both AFP and Mackinac deny any meaningful role in getting right-to-work passed. AFP’s Michigan state director Scott Hagerstrom described himself as “surprised but very pleased” to see the legislation come up.

“Right-to-work has been around for a long time,” said O’Neil. “We certainly didn’t invent it, but certainly we’re glad to see good public policy move forward.”

Watch Ed Schultz and Andy Kroll talk about the conservative network behind right-to-work on the December 11 edition of msnbc’s The Ed Show.

12/12

http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/right-wingers-koch-alec-pushed-michigan-ri

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