RGA2

7/18 stunned at money shuffle, flint, devos (koch)

MONEY LAUNDER FIRSTENERGY DEWINE OHIO NUKE?

SEE MARK ROBINSON BLK NAZI

SEE DARK MONEY 527

see mass deport

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MONEY LAUNDER FIRSTENERGY DEWINE OHIO NUKE?

NOTE MTA NAT’L CORP CHARTER REVOKE FIRSTENERGY? 6 24

An analysis by OpenSecrets revealed in March that "dark money groups are spending at record levels in their efforts to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections."

Ohio Republican Governor Mike Dewine, however, was ahead of the times.

According to Cleveland.com, "newly revealed text messages and other documents suggest" the GOP leader "personally solicited" a portion of dark money he received to boost his gubernatorial campaign in 2018 from FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones, who has since been indicted on bribery charges.

"Chuck. Can u call me?" DeWine wrote Jones on Oct. 13, 2018, according to the report, noting "that a teachers’ union gave a million dollars the day before to a group backing his Democratic rival."

After Jones forwarded the message to Mike Dowling, a FirstEnergy senior vice president, Dowling wrote, "Chuck – go ahead and call Mike DeWine on the $500k. It’s going to RGA’s C(4) called State Solutions. All set."

RGA refers the "pro-DeWine Republican Governor’s Association," according to Cleveland.com.

The news outlet reports, "Records show FirstEnergy had already spent millions backing DeWine, including its subsidiary giving $500,000 to" RGA "just two days prior. By Oct. 16, 2018, the FirstEnergy men agreed to a 'dark money' contribution, which are unlimited in size and not publicly disclosed.'"

Cleveland.com reports:

*When DeWine came looking for a boost with his October 2018 text message to Jones, FirstEnergy’s top executives wondered if they had already done enough. The company had done 'more than anyone,' Dowling told Jones in a text message. Dowling, FirstEnergy’s top lobbying agent, texted Jones that DeWine 'already knows about' the $500,000 contribution that FirstEnergy’s subsidiary provided to the RGA that week. The two mulled how to respond but made up their mind to provide another donation by Oct. 16. Jones told Dowling he’d call DeWine that evening to tell him.

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an 12 24

Details be damned: Nevada gov. pledges full commitment to Trump immigration plans

A mere 48 hours after saying it was “too soon to opine” on the prospect of using the Nevada National Guard to aid the incoming Trump administration in mass deporting immigrants, Gov. Joe Lombardo signed onto a letter stating he stands “ready to utilize every tool at (his) disposal—whether through state law enforcement or the National Guard.”

Lombardo was one of 26 governors to sign a joint statement released Wednesday by the Republican Governors Association. Only one Republican governor, Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, did not sign onto the letter.

“As Republican governors, we stand united in support of President Donald Trump’s unwavering commitment to make America safe again by addressing the illegal immigration crisis and deporting illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities and national security,” begins the letter.

The letter concludes: “Together, we will continue to defend the American people, uphold the rule of law, and ensure our nation remains safe and secure for future generations. We stand ready to utilize every tool at our disposal—whether through state law enforcement or the National Guard—to support President Trump in this vital mission.”

A full-throated expression of support appears to contradict statements Lombardo made two days earlier, on Monday, at the Western Governors’ Association, a separate bipartisan group.

When asked if he would consider authorizing the Nevada National Guard to aid the Trump administration in mass deportations, Lombardo replied that “the devil’s in the details” and that it was “too soon to opine on the nebulous or the unknown.”

Lombardo said “we have to figure out what is the better need” for the state’s National Guard and “whether the mission takes priority within the state or to the federal picture or the federal windows, that’s the best way we can answer.”

The Nevada Current reached out to Lombardo’s office Wednesday asking him to clarify his position on the usage of the Nevada National Guard for mass deportations, and what, if any, details about Trump’s plans came to light between his comments Monday and the RGA’s statement Wednesday. The office did not immediately respond.

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.

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JUDD 9 24 YMAIL

Mark Robinson delivers remarks at a campaign event for Donald Trump on August 14, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina. (Photo by Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)

Even before securing the Republican nomination for Governor of North Carolina in March, Mark Robinson had a long and well-documented record of promoting conspiracy theories, maligning LGBTQ people, using anti-Semitic tropes, and demeaning women. Popular Information reviewed Robinson's record previously:

In June 2021, for example, Robinson called LGBTQ people "filth" and said exposure to LGBTQ people and issues in schools was child abuse. In a sermon later that year, Robinson said "straight" couples were "superior" to same-sex couples and compared being gay to "what the cows leave behind." Robinson has also called LGBTQ people “devil-worshiping child molesters.”

On Facebook, Robinson repeatedly minimized the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. "I am so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were," Robinson wrote on Facebook in 2017. He accused unknown forces of "pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years."

In 2019, Robinson said that abortion rights were "not about protecting the lives of mothers" but "about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down." Robinson said women choose to have an abortion so that they can keep living "on easy street" and "keep running to the club every Friday night.” He favors an abortion ban from the moment of conception.

None of this prevented the Republican Governors Association (RGA) from throwing its support behind Robinson. In a post on X on March 5, the day Robinson won the Republican nomination, RGA chairman Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) congratulated Robinson and said the organization "look[s] forward to supporting him in the general election."

The RGA has followed through. Data from AdImpact, a company that monitors political ad spending, obtained by Popular Information, reveals that the RGA, an affiliated PAC, and an affiliated non-profit have spent more than $17.3 million since June 11, 2024 on ads in support of Robinson. The money has financed over 20,000 ads across North Carolina supporting Robinson's candidacy. The actual expenditure by the RGA is far higher, as the $17.3 million does not include the cost of producing the ads, polling, or any other activities taken on behalf of Robinson.

The amount that the RGA has spent running ads to boost Robinson's candidacy in the last few months exceeds the total that Robinson's campaign has reported raising this campaign cycle ($15,757,019.87).

On Thursday, CNN reported that in a series of posts on a pornographic message board, Robinson referred to himself as a "Black NAZI" and expressed support for reinstating slavery. He also described spying on women in public gym showers and described himself as a "perv." A separate report in the Washington Post revealed that Robinson, using the same message board, praised Hitler's Mein Kampf, calling it a "good read."

Since that bombshell report, the RGA has not made any statement regarding Robinson's candidacy but, according to AdImpact data, the RGA's ads in support of Robinson's gubernatorial campaign have continued to run across North Carolina.

Where does the RGA get all the cash to support Robinson? Much of it comes from major corporations, which can donate unlimited amounts to so-called 527 groups like the RGA. While corporate donations to federal candidates come from voluntary contributions from employees to corporate PACs, corporate donations to 527s come directly from the corporate treasury. In other words, the revenue these companies receive from customers is being diverted to bolster Robinson's candidacy.

During this election cycle, for example, DoorDash has donated $625,000 to the RGA. This money has been used to support Robinson and other Republican gubernatorial candidates. DoorDash's support of Robinson, who has repeatedly maligned LGBTQ people with crude rhetoric, through the RGA, is not consistent with the company's carefully crafted public image.

The company regularly features LGBTQ-owned restaurants that deliver using DoorDash. On June 1, 2024, the company posted a blog post celebrating Pride Month. DoorDash said that it would spend the month "celebrating the diversity and vibrancy within the LGBTQ+ community by emphasizing how race, gender, sexuality, ability, and other aspects intersect to form unique individual identities." The blog post claimed that DoorDash, "will continue to prioritize investing in and advancing opportunities for historically underrepresented people."

On June 4, 2024, the RGA received a $250,000 contribution from DoorDash. These funds, along with other large corporate contributions, helped finance the RGA's ad blitz in support of Robinson that started later in June.

Like many companies that support the RGA, DoorDash also made six-figure contributions to the Democratic Governors Association (DGA). But these contributions are not equivalent. The DGA is not supporting any gubernatorial candidates that have called themselves a Nazi or advocated for the reinstatement of slavery.

DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment.

Other major corporations backing Robinson through the RGA

Many of the most prominent corporations in America are supporting Robinson's candidacy through the RGA. This has been a critical source of funding for Robinson because, due to his long record of extremism, Robinson has struggled to raise funds even before the publication of the CNN story. He has been badly outraised by his opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D). Just as the RGA started its $17 million ad blitz on Robinson's behalf, Robinson's campaign only had about $6.5 million in cash on hand — money that had to be used to cover all the campaign's expenses, including staff and travel.

Top corporate contributors to the RGA this cycle include Google ($585,000), Walmart ($570,000), CVS ($550,000), Microsoft ($550,000), Travelers Insurance ($460,000), Amazon ($450,000), Deloitte ($400,000), Charter Communications ($385,000), Oracle ($325,000), Pfizer ($300,000), Coca-Cola ($250,000), The Motion Picture Association ($250,000), and Wells Fargo ($250,000).

Popular Information contacted each of these companies and asked if they had any concerns that their contributions to the RGA were being used to support a candidate like Robinson.

Wells Fargo declined to comment. The other companies did not respond.

===

rga lte 25 gov signed

On Wednesday afternoon Abbott issued a statement invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” which he claimed is “the supreme law of the land.” Throughout the day, at least nine governors backed Abbott on X, even if they fell short of Kirk’s demand that they travel to the border. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all posted their support for Texas, as did Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

In the same episode, Kirk told his audience that they had “better buy weapons,” and “have a lot of guns at your disposal.”

DAVIS hit ridge rowlands gov ct enron

https://secureservercdn.net/45.40.149.159/i2q.36b.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Enron-Files-Rowland.pdf?time=1612212129

april

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-governors-radical-tax-cut-plan-backfires-exposes-conservative-economics

Republican Governor's Radical Tax Cut Plan Backfires, Exposes Conservative Economics As a Scam

His tax break was a colossal failure.

By Stephen Talbot / Salon April 18, 2018, 8:11 AM GMT

“It’s like shooting adrenaline into the heart of growing the economy.” That’s how Sam Brownback, then governor of Kansas, described his radical tax cut plan in 2012. He was evangelical about it. Slashing corporate and personal income tax rates and completely eliminating taxes on limited liability companies, he promised, would create tens of thousands of jobs and bring prosperity to the state.

It did not work out that way.

This article was originally published at Salon

At first, there were many believers, including the Kansas State Legislature, which passed the governor’s revolutionary tax package in 2012. Some 330,000 independent business owners took advantage of their new tax exemption. Corporations and individuals enjoyed their income tax cuts and refunds. The result was a $700 million loss in revenue for the state the first year the tax plan went into effect.

For the next five years, as revenue continued to tank, the state found itself mired in fiscal crisis, and job growth was anemic compared to the national recovery. Last year, a bi-partisan majority in the legislature essentially repealed the entire Brownback tax package.

Brownback had won a landslide victory in the 2010 gubernatorial race and was re-elected in 2014, though by a thin margin. Early this year, the Trump administration nominated him as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and pushed his confirmation through the Senate. But by the time Brownback resigned as governor at the end of January 2018, his “Kansas experiment” had been shelved.

Filmmakers Melinda Shopsin, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson were curious about what Brownback had left behind. Crisscrossing the heartland state (population just under three million), the crew wanted to hear what ordinary Kansans thought about their state’s experiment in tax policy.

“Our focus was to talk to regular people and get away from the divisive political rhetoric that has been so prevalent in this debate over taxes,” says Shopsin, who directed the video, which you can watch here:

Where better to start then than the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge in Manhattan, Kansas, on bingo night?

“The [tax] policies, in my mind, they were the same old trickle-down theories,” one bingo player opines. “Cut them at the top and it will trickle down to the bottom, and in the past four years that has not worked.”

But what surprised the filmmakers most was how many Kansans they spoke with were unfamiliar with the details of Brownback’s tax plan. “Taxes don’t bother me, unless they raise taxes,” was a common refrain. A lot of people they encountered just hadn’t been paying much attention until state budget cuts delayed highway repairs, threatened hospitals with closure and compelled some schools to close on Fridays.

On the other hand, the filmmakers found that people who did follow the news and were knowledgeable about state tax policies had developed a deep appreciation for the importance of tax revenue.

“When the funding disappeared for things people really cared about, especially public education and medical care, they told me they really began to think about the importance of where their tax dollars went,” Shopsin recalls.

“Yikes!” was fifth grade teacher Sherry Owen’s response to the discovery that the state was drastically reducing funding to the schools in her small town of Caney, Kansas. There were staff cuts, fewer supplies and finally no classes at all on Fridays.

“Our school is our center in our town,” Owen declares. “What are we thinking pulling those resources?”

There are, of course, citizens who benefited from and still believe in the corporate and individual income tax cuts. One company, Wenger Manufacturing, says they saved $18 million from the tax cuts and have re-invested the money in new technology and jobs. But these days, Shopsin reports, it’s not easy to find people willing to defend the cuts. “What we mainly heard from people, even from those who benefited from the cuts personally, was that the overall policy was a failure and how unfair these cuts were in practice.”

For example, says Shopsin, “Many doctors and lawyers were exempted from income tax because of their pass-through businesses, while their secretaries and nurses still had to pay.”

The most poignant segment of the short video is a visit to Stormont Vail Health, a hospital in Topeka, Kansas. On top of his tax cuts, Gov. Brownback had also pushed to privatize the state’s Medicaid program. Budget cuts compounded the problem of providing medical care for low-income residents. Hospitals, especially in rural areas, feared they would have to close. “The healthcare system only works when people have access to it,” says Stormont Vail CEO Randy Peterson. “It’s part of our social responsibility.”

While Brownback pitched his tax cuts as a job-creation strategy, Melissa Hildebrand, a fourth-generation dairy farmer who welcomed the tax cuts, offers one reason why lowering business taxes doesn’t necessarily lead to more employment. She tells Shopsin that on her farm, any increased cash flow from the tax cuts will likely go to the installation of more cost-efficient robotic milkers “which would actually eliminate some labor.”

As the Kansas legislature continues to work to stabilize state funding and improve the state’s credit rating, people like hospital CEO Randy Peterson say, “Quite frankly, I think the experiment failed.” What worries him now is that Congress has enacted similar tax cuts. “I’m a little concerned that we have the same concept at the national level now.”

At a Heritage Foundation panel last month, veteran tax cut advocate Grover Norquist acknowledged that the bad publicity generated by the “Kansas experiment” had been “unhelpful” to the tax reform movement. He recommended that supporters pay more attention to tax cutting efforts in North Carolina and Florida.

But the impact of the tax-slashing experiment in Kansas is still being felt by people in all walks of life across that conservative state, and as the video shows, they remain concerned, even if it’s expressed in a very polite, restrained Midwestern voice.

Caney Valley School District Superintendent Blake Vargas says he’s seen what can happen at the state and local level as a result of severe tax cuts, and he has a word of advice: “If it’s not worth it, if it’s not paying off, don’t be afraid to pull the plug.”

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 the state 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 early December 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"

...