Michigan

promoted to primary on trump recount flint water

se MI tag and MICH 2

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politico

“The distress of Michigan’s cities, starting with Detroit and Flint, is a direct result of policies made in Lansing,” Walling said in an interview at Good Beans, a Flint coffee shop. “The only good news is that policy changes at the state level can help restore Michigan’s once-great cities.”

According to a Michigan State University study, Michigan has the second-most stringent local taxation limits in the country, placing “tremendous pressure on local lawmakers’ ability to generate critical revenue.” On top of that, as Michigan’s economic fortunes began declining in the early 2000s, the state began diverting revenue-sharing money earmarked for cities to cover its own budget shortfalls. Flint lost out on $54 million. Detroit lost $200 million, contributing to its 2013 bankruptcy, and the subsequent appointment of its own emergency manager. Michigan has placed nine cities under emergency management, more than any other state.

On a notepad clipped inside a leather binder, Walling has a list of the new policies he wants to enact as a state representative. Allow cities to charge commuters the same income tax rate as residents, instead of just half. Expand the sales tax—the source of revenue-sharing to cities—to services. Involve the state in meeting retiree costs. Right now, Flint’s residents are paying the pensions of employees who worked for the city when it had 200,000 residents—many of them with high-paying GM jobs. That eats up a quarter of the city’s budget, according to Walling.

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JCN wanted state scotus in WI and MI (koch govs)

The lower court money bomb

While turning, and keeping, the Wisconsin court conservative was a high priority for JCN and others on the right, the group didn’t spend much cash there directly. But the opposite was true in neighboring Michigan, where JCN laid out more than $2 million on two 2012 court races. About half the money went to an effort to keep law professor Bridget McCormack from sitting on the state Supreme Court, including a accusing McCormack of volunteering to represent terrorists, featuring the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. (McCormack did volunteer one of her law school clinics to represent a Guantanamo detainee, though he was released before the students communicated with him.)

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/03/the-jcn-story-building-a-secretive-gop-judicial-machine/

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States falling behind this blue wall generally included those the Democrats had carried since the 1992 election,^[3][4] and included (in order of decreasing population): California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. The last time any of these states cast their votes for the Republican candidate before 2016 was when George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988, and several of them go back to Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1984. One of these states, Minnesota, has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972. (The District of Columbia has voted for the Democratic candidate in every election since it was admitted to the electoral college for the 1964 election.)

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump made major inroads into the wall, winning in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine's 2nd congressional district, giving him victory despite not winning certain swing states such as Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia.

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d ravitz 80% charter school $ public?

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http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/17/how_flint_michigan_saved_money_and

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http://www.alternet.org/magical-mystery-tour-american-austerity-how-one-state-destroying-democracy-and-poisoning-its-people

Something is rotten in the state of Michigan.

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself -- all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

If you’re thinking, "Who cares?" since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state’s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a “legal adviser” to Atlantic City. The Detroit Free Press described the move as “a state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder's state intervention in the Motor City.”

And this spring, amid the hullabaloo of Republicans entering the 2016 presidential race, Governor Snyder launched his own national tour to sell “the Michigan story to the rest of the country.” His trip was funded by a nonprofit (fed, naturally, by undisclosed donations) named “Making Government Accountable: The Michigan Story.”

To many Michiganders, this sounded as ridiculous as Jeb Bush launching a super PAC dubbed "Making Iraq Free: The Bush Family Story.”  Except Snyder wasn’t planning to enter the presidential rat race. Instead, he was attempting to mainstream Michigan’s form of austerity politics and its signature emergency management legislation, which stripped more than halfof the state’s African American residents of their local voting rights in 2013 and 2014.

As the governor jaunted around the country, Ann Arbor-based photographer Eduardo García and I decided to set out on what we thought of as our own two-week Magical Michigan Tour. And while we weren’t driving a specially outfitted psychedelic tour bus -- we spent most of the trip in my grandmother’s 2005 Prius -- our journey was nevertheless remarkably surreal. From the southwest banks of Lake Michigan to the eastern tips of the peninsula, we crisscrossed the state visiting more than half a dozen cities to see if there was another side to the governor’s story and whether Michigan really was, as one Detroit resident put it, “a massive experiment in unraveling U.S. democracy.”

Stop One: Water Wars in Flint

Just as we arrive, the march spills off the sidewalk in front of the city council building.

“Stop poisoning our children!” chants a little girl as the crowd tumbles down South Saginaw Street, the city’s main drag.  We’re in Flint, Michigan, a place that hit the headlines last year for its brown, chemical-laced, possibly toxic water.  A wispy white-haired woman waves a gallon jug filled with pee-colored liquid from her home tap. “They don’t care that they’re killing us!” she cries.

We catch up with Claire McClinton, the formidable if grandmotherly organizer of the Flint Democracy Defense League, as we approach the roiling Flint River.  It’s been a longtime dumping ground for the Ford Motor Company’s riverfront factories and, as of one year ago today, the only source of the city’s drinking water.  On April 25, 2014, on the instruction of the city’s emergency manager, Flint stopped buying its supplies from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and started drawing water directly from the river, which meant a budgetary savings of $12 million a year. The downside: people started getting sick.

==

http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/mi-house-says-burning-tires-clean-energy

Say, What? Michigan Legislators Insist that Burning Tires is 'Clean, Renewable Energy'

December 5, 2014  |

The Michigan state legislature is playing loose with its environmental definitions, passing a bill on Thursday that qualifies the burning of solid waste as "renewable energy." And according to the Michigan news site, MLive.com [3], this includes the burning of tires.

The state's House of Representatives passed the legislation 63-46. It would qualify burning solid waste as a renewable energy fuel source. But environmentalist and other activists are calling the legislation "irresponsible."

The bill, sponsored by state house republican Rep. Aric Nesbit is designed to "remove barriers to  the use of solid waste as a clean energy source."

The bill, HB 5205 [4] if passed by Michigan's senate and signed by Gov. Rick Snyder, would rewrite Michigan's laws regarding what defines clean and renewable energy. It would add fuel manufactured from waste products, which could include discarded car tires. This would allow the state's electrical providers to meet the mandates under the state's Clean, Renewable, and Efficient Energy Act to make 10% of their electricity from renewable energy by next year.

One state representative seemed enthusiastic about the bill. Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican said that "there are piles of tires out of the middle of nowhere... let's do something with them."

The bill drew the support of Michigan-based Dow Chemical, but environmental and children's advocacy groups oppose the new legislation.

"The House should be focused on expanding true clean, renewable energy, not allowing polluters to burn tires and call it 'renewable energy,'" Lisa Wozniak, Executive Director for the state's League of Conservation Voters said in a statement. "House Bill 5205 is nothing more than a dangerous plan to pollute our air, land and water. It sets a dangerous precedent by changing the scientific definition of renewable energy."

“Michiganders from both sides of the aisle want more clean, renewable energy and we should be taking steps to reduce pollution, not encourage more of it,” wrote Wibke Heymach, a spokesperson for Moms Clean Air Force in a statement.  “Encouraging the burning of hazardous waste will create more pollution and more health problems for Michigan kids, families and seniors.”

According to Crain's Detroit Business [5], Michigan's asthma rate is 10% higher than the national average and that Detroit is the 10th worst U.S. city for asthma related problems.

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ALEC

TUE MAR 08, 2011 AT 01:14 PM PST

Gov Rick Snyder Sellout? Prefabricated Corporate Michigan (Government) Courtesy of Koch & ALEC Excl.

byHector Solon

Governor Rick Snyder and the Snyder Team/Policy are about to become the first totally irrelevant 'Republican' Administration in Michigan history.  Armed and on the march with prewritten policy and legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other think-tanks, the Michigan Republican Majorities in both the Michigan Senate and Michigan House of Representatives are steamrolling a right wing agenda -Michigan "Government in a Box".

Using imported 'model legislation' Michigan Legislators have already put up a long list of bills built by special interest led teams outside of Michigan.  The goal: complete rewrite of Michigan's government and policies designed over decades by conservative, right wing / corporate interests to suit their agenda and profits, not the needs of Michigan citizens.

ANALYSIS: Will CEO Rick Snyder just be another rubber stamp signature on scripted ALEC Laws?  How many Smoking Guns have been found in Michigan Legislation so far?

Rick Snyder's path to Nerd nihil ad rem; ALEC's ghostwriting of State laws supplanting State Legislatures; What is ALEC doing in Michigan? Plenty...

Cross-posted to Blogging for Michigan.

Recommended:

REPORT: ALEC and the Extreme Right Wing (CPA 2001)

REPORT: ALEC A Big Business Agenda (Defenders 2002)

REPORT: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America  (Justice.org 2010)

REPORT: Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States: Untold Story Behind the ALEC (NRDC 2002)

SITES: ALECWatch.org - SourceWatch - Common Cause - Progressive States

ARTICLES: Ghostwriting the Law (Mother Jones 2002) - Outing Alec: The most powerful lobby you've never heard of. (American Prospect 2002) - ALEC Meets is Match: State Activists Are Learning How To Fight Back Against The Right's Powerhouse (Nation 2003) - What makes ALEC so Smart (Governing 2003) - Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State (Alternet 2005) - Big Political Player you’ve never heard of (Fortune 2011) - The Power Brokers Behind Health Care Repeal Legislation (Wash. Indep. 2010)- ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts (Campus Progress 2011)

UPDATE: Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin Denies ALEC Membership at Townhall

UPDATE: WI Prof asked to hand over email by GOP immediately following blog on ALEC - Story going viral.

UPDATE: ALEC Issues Press Release "Setting the Record Straight - Much ado about nothing" - FULL Line by Line ANALYSIS

Let's begin...

While watching the events in anti-collective bargaining Wisconsin unfold, the story of the influence of the Koch Brothers (Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch) and Koch Foundations via their front groups, e.g. conservative think tank "Americans for Prosperity" came to national attention in a laser-like exposé.

What got our ATTENTION was THIS:

A report called "Buried in the Bill" from Milwaukee TV Station WTMJ 4 on February 21, 2011:

"Here's something you might not know. Buried inside Walker's 144-page budget repair bill are 10 lines. They don't directly deal with state workers, unions, or contracts. Still, controversy is already heating up over what it could mean for a couple of out-of-state billionaires."

(Break)

"… to save money, the Governor's controversial budget bill would allow the state to "sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without the solicitation of bids."

Corruption in its purest form, but the questions were: 1) How did that happened? and 2) "Is Wisconsin Style GOP Corruption and ALEC manipulation in Michigan Budget Related Legislation too?"

You bet, BIG TIME.

There is no easy way to put this, and it’s a long story, but Michigan isn’t Wisconsin; Michigan is Way Worse off than Wisconsin.

What we have found so far in Michigan… and just getting started:

FOUR Smoking Guns have been quickly identified where ALEC and Corporate special interest influence are being used to right Michigan laws, THREE are suspected and being confirmed, and countless others inferred, including bills in the 35+ pieces of legislation currently being passed or debated concerning Governor Rick Snyder’s Executive Budget Proposal for the 2011-12 Michigan State Budget Supporting Legislation.

State Rep. Tom McMillin #1 and #3 – SMOKED OUT (Twice)

ALEC anti-Invasive Species Act Language – INVESTIGATING

State Senator Tom Casperson #2 – SMOKED OUT

State Senator Wayne Kuipers #4 – SMOKED OUT

Long List on Budget Legislation #5-8, maybe 9? – INVESTIGATING

This is not Reinventing, It’s Renting Michigan.

See Details in the ISSUES and AREA of INTEREST Section below.

Table of Contents (All things ALEC A to Z) see gov scot for links

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/953811/-Gov-Rick-Snyder-Sellout-Prefabricated-Corporate-Michigan-Government-Courtesy-of-Koch-ALEC-Excl

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Just as Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed, Detroit residents now live without basic services which ought to be regarded as the right of every human being. In the United States, a country which boasts of its high level of advancement, residents of a major city must plead to the international community for the right to access water.

In a city already on the brink, the powers that be chose to pressure struggling people to pay increased fees for water. They have also used harsh and sometimes improper methods to deprive even those who have paid their bills. No one can survive at all without water to drink, and one cannot survive very well without water for cooking, cleaning and sanitation. Very powerful people in boardrooms and government offices made decisions that turned Detroit into an Iraq in America’s midst and now sneer at pleas for mercy.

Desperate Detroiters represented by the Blue Planet Project, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Food & Water Watch and the Detroit People’s Water Board, have made their case to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water. They issued a report which outlines the latest scheme to destroy Detroit as a city and as a home to poor and working people. The plan will ultimately privatize the water system and make Detroit another location for prime real estate and riches for the few.

devos  walker

Mother Jones [1] / By Andy Kroll [2]

Meet the Powerful Billionaire Family Hell Bent on Imposing Their Right-Wing Agenda and Defunding the Left

February 26, 2014 |

In the predawn twilight of December 4, 2012, Randy Richardville [4], the Republican majority leader of the Michigan Senate, called an old friend to deliver some grim news. Richardville's two-hour commute to the state capitol in Lansing gave him plenty of time to check in with friends, staff, and colleagues, who were accustomed to his early morning calls. None more so than Mike Jackson.

Jackson and Richardville had grown up in the auto town of Monroe, 40 miles south of Detroit. Jackson now headed Michigan's 14,000-member carpenters and millwrights' union [5], which had endorsed Richardville, a moderate Republican, for 10 of the 12 years he'd served in the state Legislature.

"Guess where I was last night," Richardville said.

Jackson wasn't in a guessing mood—and it wasn't just the early hour. Since the election a few weeks earlier, Republicans had been aiming to use the current lame-duck session to ram through a controversial piece of legislation known as right-to-work [6]. Such laws, already on the books in 23 states, outlawed contracts requiring all employees in a unionized workplace to pay dues for union representation. Jackson and other labor leaders were scrambling to head off the bill, widely regarded as a disaster for unions. Richardville, who had once told a hotel conference room filled with union members that right-to-work would pass "over my dead body," was one of the votes they'd counted on.

Richardville said he'd spent the previous evening at a fundraiser in western Michigan. At one point during the event, he was escorted into a private room where a dozen wealthy business moguls were waiting for him. Some he recognized as heavy hitters in Michigan politics; others had flown in from out of state.

One of the men in the room glared at Richardville. "You gotta grow a set and move this legislation," the man said, referring to right-to-work. Had he ever run for office? Richardville asked. The man said no. "Well, when you grow a set and give that a try," Richardville snapped, "then you can talk about the size of my testicles."

Jackson was wide awake now. "Good for you," he said. "How'd it end?"

"Mike, you're fucked," Richardville said. "They've got all the money they need, they're going up on the air, and they're going to push this freedom-to-work thing."

Wasn't there some way to head off the bill? Jackson asked. "They've got my caucus," Richardville replied. "You can't imagine the pressure I'm under."

The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: **:{Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr.:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:** [7] The 58-year-old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work. After six years of biding their time, DeVos and his allies believed the 2012 lame duck was the time to strike. They had formulated a single, all-encompassing strategy: They had a fusillade of TV, radio, and internet ads in the works. They'd crafted 15 pages of talking points to circulate to Republican lawmakers. They had even reserved the lawn around the state capitol for a month to keep protesters at bay.

A week after Richardville's early morning call to Jackson, it was all over. With a stroke of his pen on December 11, Gov. Rick Snyder—who'd previously said right-to-work was not a priority of his—now made Michigan the 24th state to enact it. The governor marked the occasion by reciting, nearly verbatim, talking points that DeVos and his allies had distributed. "Freedom-to-work," he said, is "pro-worker and pro-Michigan."

The DeVoses sit alongside the Kochs [8], the Bradleys [9], and the Coorses [10] as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. "It's been a generational commitment," Anuzis notes. "I can't start to even think of who would've filled the void without the DeVoses there."

The family fortune flows from 87-year-old Richard DeVos Sr. [11] The son of poor Dutch immigrants, he cofounded the multilevel-marketing giant Amway with Jay Van Andel [12], a high school pal, in 1959. Five decades later, the company now sells $11 billion a year worth of cosmetics, vitamin supplements, kitchenware, air fresheners, and other household products. Amway has earned DeVos Sr. at least $6 billion; in 1991, he expanded his empire by buying the NBA's Orlando Magic[13]. The Koch brothers can usually expect Richard and his wife, Helen, to attend theirbiannual donor meetings [8]. He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children.

Today, his eldest son, Dick [14], is the face of the DeVos political dynasty. Like his father, Dick sees organized labor as an enemy of freedom and union leaders as violent thugs who have "an almost pathological obsession with power." But while DeVos Sr. simply inveighed against unions, Dick took the fight to them directly, orchestrating a major defeat for the unions in the cradle of the modern labor movement.

Passing right-to-work in Michigan was more than a policy victory. It was a major score for Republicans who have long sought to weaken the Democratic Party by attacking its sources of funding and organizing muscle. "Michigan big labor literally controls one of the major political parties," Dick DeVos said last January. "I'm not suggesting they have influence; I'm saying they hold total dominance, command, and control." So DeVos and his allies hit labor—and the Democratic Party—where it hurt: their bank accounts [15]. By attacking their opponents' revenue stream, they could help put Michigan into play for the GOP heading into the 2016 presidential race—as it was more than three decades earlier, when the state's Reagan Democrats were key to winning the White House.

More broadly, the Michigan fight has given hope—and a road map—to conservatives across the country working to cripple organized labor and defund the left. Whereas party activists had for years viewed right-to-work as a pipe dream, a determined and very wealthy family, putting in place all the elements of a classic political campaign, was able to move the needle in a matter of months. "Michigan is Stalingrad, man," one prominent conservative activist told me. "It's where the battle will be won or lost."

Step off the jet bridge at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, and the DeVos imprimatur is everywhere. Leaving the airport you pass the West Michigan Aviation Academy [16], a charter school founded by Dick DeVos in 2010. In Grand Rapids itself, there's the DeVos Place convention center, the DeVos Performance Hall, the DeVos Graduate School of Management, the Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Arts and Worship, the DeVos Communication Center at Calvin College, and the DeVos parking lot at Grand Valley State University.

I grew up not far from Grand Rapids, and the DeVos name was never far from mind. I heard it on the radio and at the dinner table—my parents are both teachers, and the DeVoses' education reform efforts were a topic of discussion. In western Michigan, the DeVoses were the closest thing we had to Carnegies or Rockefellers.

Populated by the descendants of devout Dutch immigrants, Grand Rapids is a deeply Christian enclave that locals call "GRusalem [17]." Once a city of furniture makers, Grand Rapids began to prosper in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks largely to Amway. Launched in an abandoned gas station, the company grew into an empire by enlisting an army of "independent business owners," or IBOs, to peddle Amway's wares, eventually expanding to more than 100 countries and territories. The company formulated the business model now used by the likes of Mary Kay, Avon, and Herbalife, in which salespeople earn money by recruiting others into the business. In 1975, the Federal Trade Commission accused Amway of operating a pyramid scheme, but after a years-long investigation the agency rescinded the charge.

From the start, DeVos and Van Andel infused Amway—short for "American Way"—with their Christian beliefs and free-market principles. The Institute for Free Enterprise, a think tank run out of Amway's headquarters, organized workshops nationwide to help teachers incorporate free-market economics into their lesson plans. During the 1970s, Amway bought ads in major newspapers that railed against taxation and regulation. Together, DeVos and Van Andel also helped to launch the now-defunct Citizen's Choice, a conservative counterweight to the good-government group Common Cause. A smattering of headlines in the centerfold of Amway's 1980 corporate magazine captures the company's institutional philosophy: "Entrepreneur DeVos Preaches Self-Help: GOVERNMENT MEDDLING ASSAILED." "Taxes and Government Rules Destroying Free Enterprise—Van Andel."

Amway's success and its conservative ethos catapulted both the elder DeVos and Van Andel into the highest reaches of Republican politics. Van Andel, who died[18] in 2004, chaired the US Chamber of Commerce in 1979 and 1980, and he gave millions to Republican and conservative organizations in his lifetime. DeVos, meanwhile, was an early member and funder of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of hardline conservative leaders founded by Left Behind[19]author Tim LaHaye [20]. Ahead of the 1980 elections, Ronald Reagan personally asked [21] DeVos to lead the GOP's national fundraising efforts. Short on cash and reeling from Jimmy Carter's election and the aftershocks of the Watergate scandal, the party needed all the help it could get. As the Republican National Committee's finance chairman, DeVos raised $46.5 million ($132 million in today's dollars).

He fit the part of GOP rainmaker-in-chief, wearing a diamond pinkie ring and Gucci loafers, driving a Rolls-Royce, and frequently commuting to his nearby office by helicopter. He once docked Amway's $5 million yacht on the Potomac River in Washington to hold court with Michigan's congressional delegation, RNC staffers, and personnel from 12 embassies representing countries where Amway did business. DeVos was also a strident voice within the party: In an era when Republicans still courted labor, he urged the GOP to ignore union members. "If they want to be represented by somebody else," he once said, "good for them." At a party meeting in 1982, he called the recession that was spiking inflation and unemployment "beneficial" and "a cleansing tonic" for society.

The RNC canned him soon after, but that didn't stop DeVos and his clan from steering hundreds of thousands of dollars into Reagan's 1984 reelection effort and George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign. On the eve of the 1994 elections, Amway made a $2.5 million soft money contribution to the Republican Party; it was the largest corporate donation ever recorded. Amway also galvanized its 500,000-plus sales force into a massive political network, drumming up hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions for favored candidates like Rep. Sue Myrick 22, a former Amway saleswoman and the first female chair of the ultraconservative Republican Study Committee.

In late 1992, Dick succeeded his father as the president and CEO of Amway, aggressively expanding the company into Asian markets like China and Korea, which produce much of Amway's profits today. His wife, Betsy [23], an heiress to a Michigan auto parts fortune, hailed from a conservative dynasty of her own; her father, Edgar Prince [24], was a founder of the Family Research Council. (Betsy's brother is Erik Prince [25], the ex-Navy SEAL who founded the infamous private security company Blackwater.) Together, Dick and Betsy formed Michigan's new Republican power couple.

Betsy, who is 56, is the political junkie in the relationship. She got her start in politics as a "scatter-blitzer" for Gerald Ford's 1976 presidential campaign, which bused eager young volunteers to various cities so they could blanket them with campaign flyers. In the '80s and '90s, Betsy climbed the party ranks to become a Republican National Committeewoman, chair numerous US House and Senate campaigns in Michigan, lead statewide party fundraising, and serve two terms as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. In 2003, she returned at the request of the Bush White House to dig the party out of $1.2 million in debt. A major proponent of education reform, Betsy serves on the boards of the American Federation for Children [26], a leading advocate of school vouchers, and Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education [27], which supports online schools.

Through the '70s and '80s Dick worked his way up at Amway and, like his father, rose to prominence within GOP circles thanks to his prodigious fundraising, generous political contributions, and his perch atop the family's multibillion-dollar company. In 1998, he launched a PAC called Restoring the American Dream, which then-House Majority Leader (and former Amway salesman) Tom DeLay credited with playing "an essential role [28]" in preserving GOP control of the House in 1998 and 2000. DeLay, Myrick, and three other House Republicans who had been Amway salespeople created an informal "Amway caucus [29]."

The DeVos name carried plenty of weight in Washington, but the clan loomed especially large in Michigan, and had opportunities to exert its influence in ways big and small. Once, Betsy complained to her hometown newspaper, theGrand Rapids Press, after an April 2004 story [30] reported that she had blamed "high wages" for Michigan's economic woes—a comment that touched off a statewide controversy. As unhappy as she was, there wasn't much chance she'd been misquoted: The reporter had taken the language out of an official Michigan GOP press release and had even given Betsy a chance to respond to her own words. Mike Lloyd, then thePress' editor, says that while he doesn't recall the details of DeVos' grievance, it's likely he heard her out. Ultimately, the paper ran an unusual mea culpa saying the article had "oversimplified" the remarks while "distorting her original meaning." (In general, Lloyd denies the family ever used its "economic muscle…to attempt to influence or change" the paper's coverage.)

Mike Pumford knows what it's like to be on the wrong side of the DeVoses. A former high school teacher and public school administrator, he was elected to the state House in 1998 as a moderate Republican, and he publicly opposed Dick and Betsy's push to expand charter schools and introduce school vouchers. (In 2000, Dick and Betsy helped underwrite a ballot initiative to expand the use of vouchers and lost badly.)

When Pumford ran for reelection in 2002, a DeVos-funded group called the Great Lakes Education Project [31] blanketed his rural district with glossy flyers calling him a puppet of theMichigan Education Association [32] and a "tax-and-spend Republican" for backing an increase in cigarette taxes. "They just kicked my ass in that election," he says. And though he eked out a victory, the DeVoses got the final word. When Pumford asked for the chairmanship of the subcommittee overseeing public education funding, he says, then-House Speaker Rick Johnson told him there was "no way in hell we can give it to you." Why? It would piss off the DeVoses. (Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.)

In 2004, Pumford quit politics in disgust. "I spent a lot of time fighting bullies," he told me. "Kids tend to bully with their mouths and fists. Billionaires tend to bully with their pocketbooks."

For Dick DeVos, the fight over right-to-work started with a humbling defeat. In 2006, he ran for governor of Michigan, spending $35 million [33] of family money—the most ever spent on a gubernatorial campaign in the state—only to be routed by incumbent Jennifer Granholm [34]. His timing was terrible: Thanks to Iraq War weariness and a series of GOP scandals, not one Republican beat an incumbent Democrat in a congressional or gubernatorial race anywhere in America that year. Postelection, DeVos turned down offers to run the state party and ducked out of the political limelight to ponder his next move.

The following year, he and a close ally, Ron Weiser [35], whose prolific fundraising had earned him the US ambassadorship to Slovakia under George W. Bush, hired Republican pollster Bill McInturff [36] to gauge Michiganders' views on a range of issues. According to Weiser, McInturff came back with a surprising result—his polls showed nearly 70 percent support for right-to-work. DeVos and Weiser shared their findings with donors and operatives statewide, quietly brainstorming about how to capitalize on those numbers.

Despite declining membership, nearly 20 percent [37] of Michigan's workforce belonged to unions and, as in other union-heavy states, right-to-work had long been a right-wing fantasy. For decades, the lone voice on the issue was the Mackinac Center for Public Policy [38], a state-level think tank founded in 1987 to spread free-market ideas and antagonize the unions. (In a June 2011 email [39] obtained byProgress Michigan [40], a Mackinac Center staffer told a state lawmaker: "Our goal is [to] outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.") The DeVoses are among the center's biggest financial backers, and Dick served on its board of directors. Still, despite a flurry of policy briefs and op-eds produced by the Mackinac Center, the issue remained a nonstarter. "We never had the sense that the votes were there to get it done," John Engler, the former governor, told the National Review [41] in 2012. "A lot of Republicans weren't ready to deal with the issue. Labor was too strong."

Studying McInturff's polling numbers, DeVos and Weiser saw a shift in the political winds. Early in 2008, they dined in Washington, DC, with former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating [42], who in 2001 became the first governor in nearly a decade to sign a right-to-work bill into law. He knew just how fierce the fight could be. Keating advised DeVos and Weiser to hold off on right-to-work until they'd elected a Republican governor and, ideally, taken full control of the Legislature. (Democrats controlled the state House at the time.) "That resonated hugely with Dick," says one friend. "He said, 'I'm for this, but until we have a governor who's going to champion it, we need to bide our time.' So it went on the shelf."

In 2009, with DeVos' help, Weiser was elected as the state GOP chair [43], and he led the party to a landslide in 2010, winning every state-level race. But the new Republican governor, Rick Snyder [44], resisted right-to-work, saying repeatedly it was "not on my agenda." Watching his fellow Class of '10 governors—especially Scott Walker in neighboring Wisconsin [45]—clash with organized labor dampened Snyder's enthusiasm for the "very divisive" issue.

But some of the Legislature's Republican members wanted this fight. A small but vocal group of them had campaigned on right-to-work and agitated for the issue as soon as the 2011-12 session convened. "It was kind of like the kid on the way to Disney World saying, 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'" recalled Republican state Sen. Patrick Colbeck [46].

As the chorus grew louder, the unions decided to launch a preemptive strike. In July 2012, they got an amendment on the ballot that would enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution. Known as Proposition 2 [47], the ballot measure sent labor's enemies into overdrive. "The minute that thing got on the ballot, we knew we needed to mobilize quickly," says Greg McNeilly, Dick and Betsy's longtime political adviser.

That summer, a group of GOP lawmakers and business leaders—McNeilly won't say who—asked DeVos and Weiser (who served as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee in 2012) to lead the charge to defeat Proposition 2. They gladly took on the job—DeVos called Prop. 2 "a head-shot at Michigan's recovery"—but they had bigger things in mind: With McNeilly, who managed the anti-Prop. 2 campaign, DeVos and Weiser sketched out a strategy to defeat the measure, then use the political momentum to pass right-to-work immediately afterward. They also strategized about every other possible obstacle: defending the law from a possible legal challenge, beating a constitutional amendment to repeal it, and protecting Republican lawmakers from recall elections.

They began the anti-Prop. 2 effort in September. Polls showed that 60 percent of voters supported the measure, but DeVos and Weiser tapped their national donor networks, hauling in millions from Las Vegas gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson [48], Texas investor Harold Simmons [49], and a slew of Michigan business groups. Ten DeVos family members pitched in with a combined $2 million. The DeVos-backed campaign ran hundreds of ads [50] in the two months before the vote, claiming the measure would give unions far too much power, cost the state more than $1.6 billion [51], and imperil student safety by making it impossible to fire negligent teachers.

By Election Day, the two sides had spent a total of $47 million [52], making it the most expensive ballot measure in Michigan history. Voters defeated Prop. 2 by a 15-point margin [47]. DeVos and Weiser wasted no time moving to the next phase of their plan.

DESPITE THE DEFEAT of Prop. 2, the unions believed all was not lost. Most Republican lawmakers seemed to have no stomach for another battle with organized labor. Days after the November elections, Mike Jackson, the carpenters' union head, dined in Lansing with a handful of Republican state senators who assured him they didn't support right-to-work. Other Republicans worried that a right-to-work push could lead to recalls. "At the time, I thought it was the dumbest thing we could've done politically," says one GOP legislative aide.

In public, Snyder insisted that right-to-work was still not on his agenda. Privately, his aides met with labor and suggested that concessions on other issues would keep the bill off the table. All the while, though, DeVos and his team were furiously whipping the vote. In the weeks before the start of the lame-duck session, DeVos personally called dozens of state lawmakers, pledging his support if the unions threatened recalls or primary challenges.

A week before the lame duck began, on November 20, 2012, DeVos and Weiser met with members of the Republican leadership, business bigwigs, and the top legislative aide to Gov. Snyder to pitch their plan. Snyder and the GOP leadership were still queasy, fearing a Wisconsin-style revolt; where the protesters in Madison had ultimately failed, in Michigan, a labor stronghold, they just might prevail. "There was all this hemming and hawing," says one attendee.

"What do you guys need to hear?" DeVos asked. "What can we do to help?"

A plan, came the reply. A plan showing that they wouldn't be committing political suicide.

McNeilly, DeVos' political adviser, took the floor. He had recently formed a nonprofit group called the Michigan Freedom Fund [53]. It planned to raise millions from the DeVos family and other donors. McNeilly's pollster was testing DeVos' "freedom-to-work" message statewide. And the group was plotting a statewide ad blitz to give air cover to Republican lawmakers. By the time McNeilly finished talking, the mood in the room had shifted from apprehensive to optimistic. "Sitting around that table we felt like a rag-tag grouping of Davids, in the historic Biblical story," DeVos told me in an email. "But we left the table committed to doing our best to change Michigan's future for the better."

By now it was down to a few Republicans on the fence, and the heavy artillery came in. According to labor lobbyists and House and Senate Republican staffers, several undecided GOP lawmakers received threats of primary challenges from Team DeVos if they opposed right-to-work. One House Republican told me that Weiser called him up to suggest he'd have difficulties in the future if he voted no. The message, according to another wavering lawmaker's aide, was clear: "We will run you out of town."

In early December, the Michigan Freedom Fund unleashed itsfreedom-to-work ad campaign [54]. The group also enlisted GOP pollster and communications guru Frank Luntz [55] to help craft a message "bible [56]" that was distributed to every Republican state lawmaker for use during the right-to-work push; it included prepackaged answers to potential questions from constituents and reporters. ("Q. Isn't this really just about trying to break unions? A. Freedom-to-work is about restoring workplace fairness and equality, not curtailing unions.") The Freedom Fund even brought Luntz to Lansing to rally lawmakers. This is your chance to make history, Luntz exhorted them. It's now or never.

On December 6, Snyder shocked the state by announcing [57] that lawmakers would vote on right-to-work that day and that he would sign the legislation when it got to his desk. DeVos worked the phones all the way to the end, even calling several lawmakers on their cellphones as they prepared to cast their votes.

The state legislators who led the right-to-work fight say it was the strategy crafted by DeVos and his allies that convinced hesitant Republicans, not least of them the governor himself, to pull off what DeVos called "the largest shift in public policy in Michigan in a generation."

"[Snyder] needed to see the win plan," recalled Rep. Mike Shirkey—it was what swayed him from "'not on my agenda right now' to 'it just moved to the agenda.'"

IN LATE SEPTEMBER 2013, hundreds of Republican lawmakers, political operatives, and activists gathered at picturesque Mackinac Island in northern Michigan for the state party'sbiannual leadership conference [58]. The gathering is always held at the Grand Hotel, an extravagant, 126-year-old landmark with sweeping views of Lake Huron. The 2013 guest list was packed with prominent names and 2016 hopefuls: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Karl Rove all had keynote speaking slots.

One of the main attractions was a Saturday morning [59]. The panelists included DeVos adviser Greg McNeilly and two Republican lawmakers who were instrumental in the bill's passage. Dick and Betsy DeVos watched from the front row.

State Sen. Patrick Colbeck told the crowd that he'd spoken with allies in Illinois, Missouri, and New Hampshire who were interested in passing right-to-work bills of their own. But, he added, conservatives in those states were waiting to see if Michigan Republicans could hold on to their law—and their majority—in 2014. "If we demonstrate that we can defend the high ground, just like Gov. Scott Walker did in Wisconsin, you give courage pills to every state legislator and every state legislature across the country."

"This is the election that seals the deal," said McNeilly. With a GOP victory, "freedom-to-work becomes the new norm."

DeVos and his allies had long since started working toward that goal. Their Michigan Freedom Fund is now a conglomerate of political vehicles, including a charitable foundation, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group, and a 527 political committee. "We're not the Chamber of Commerce; we're not the Republican Party," he says. The groups, McNeilly notes, will steer clear of social issues like abortion and gay rights, and instead promote a "freedom agenda" of lowering taxes, slashing regulations, and privatizing public education. The fund will recruit and groom candidates and campaign to send those politicians to Lansing.

The ambitious project is more than a state-level power play: DeVos is part of a wave of superwealthy political activists—think the Koch brothers on the right, the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer [60] on the left—who are operating outside the traditional party system. They are financing their own political infrastructure and setting their own agenda.

And it seems to be working. By pulling off the unthinkable, DeVos and his allies have emboldened conservatives around the country to go on the offensive. Following the passage of right-to-work, DeVos has opened his playbook to lawmakers, activists, and donors nationwide who are interested in following Michigan's lead. "As is often the case in politics generally, timing is critical," DeVos told me. "So the lesson to others is: Be prepared. Invest in the infrastructure necessary to leverage an opportunity when it presents itself." He says other conservatives "are hoping for an opportunity to bring freedom-to-work to their home states" and "have voiced their appreciation for the example Michigan provided." As he told an audience at the annual conference of the conservative State Policy Network in September, "If we can do it in Michigan, you can do it anywhere."

See more stories tagged with:

labor [61]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/meet-powerful-billionaire-family-hell-bent-imposing-their-right-wing-agenda-and-defunding-left

==

Michigan

Great Lakes voters have already elected their fair share of climate zombies.  Dave Camp (MI-04) dithers about "a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the scientific evidence regarding climate change," while incumbent is quite sure we've gone through similar cycles in the past. Mike Rogers (MI-08) wants to investigate "alarming reports of altered data" taken from the manufactured "climategate" scandal.  Candice Miller (MI-10)knows that climate has always changed, and Thad McCotter (MI-11) believes it's wrong to look at selected periods of time to prove a manmade global warming.

Likewise, climate zombies are candidates for Congress.  Bill Huizenga (MI-02) decries "global warming doomsayers" being driven by "irrational fascism." Andrew Raczkowski (MI-09)believes that the jury is still out. I'm considering Don Ukrainec (MI-14) a denier based on his response to a VoteSmart questionnaire: THE "GREEN" AGENDA IS A JOKE AND CANNOT SUSTAIN OUR LIFESTYLE (caps in original). Rob Steele (MI-15) sneers at Al Gore when asked about warming.

I presume candidates Dan Benishek (MI-01), Justin Amash (MI-03), and John Kupiec (MI-05) are climate zombies because they've signed the AFP/Koch no climate tax pledge, as has incumbent Fred Upton (MI-06).  I have no information regarding candidate Don Volaric (MI-12). Candidate John Hauler responded to a questionnaire that he supports environmental regulations aimed at reducing the effects of climate change, but has otherwise been silent.  And Rick Snyder (MI-Gov) apparently favors a renewable energy standard but hasn't said anything specifically regarding climate.

Semi-final score: 9 confirmed and 4 presumed climate zombies, 3 without sufficient information.

==

rslc

nick c

The group’s fund-raising shot upward, bolstered by bigger contributions from longtime donors — such as tobacco, pharmaceutical and telecommunications interests — and new money from the growing network of post-Citizens Unitedconservative political groups. By Election Day, the leadership committee would raise$30 million, its biggest two-year haul ever.

The bulk of that money went into a carefully laid assault on Democratic lawmakers in 19 states, planned in tandem with efforts by the Republican Governors Association. In some states, the groups handed cash directly to state parties or candidates. Elsewhere, they spent millions on hard-to-track radio and television advertisements.

The leadership committee’s nationwide base of donors lent candidates distance from the source of the money benefiting them, and allowed the committee to maneuver around varying rules that apply to campaign spending in different states. Instead of spending money where it was raised, the Republican State Leadership Committee could allocate checks to affiliates in other states. Other checks could be pooled into a central fund in Washington and then distributed in large chunks to state Republican Parties, to candidates or to campaigns by independent groups.

Alabama was an obvious target. Long after its voters had become overwhelmingly Republican, Alabama retained Democratic majorities in the Legislature. Mr. Hubbard, himself a state representative, and officials at the leadership committee believed just one well-organized push would send the Democrats into permanent minority status.

Yet state law prohibited corporations from giving more than $500. And other potential donors were unwilling to give to the party at all, in case the takeover effort failed. “There were a lot of people and companies who didn’t want to give to us directly because they feared the Democrats,” Mr. Hubbard said.

Many of those donors were willing, however, to give to a Republican group in Washington. After meeting with leadership committee officials, Mr. Hubbard, along with his finance chairman, State Senator Del Marsh, began raising money for the group. If they did well enough, Mr. Hubbard believed, the leadership committee would make a similar investment in Alabama.

“We had to become players for them,” said Mr. Hubbard. “Their job is to flip legislatures, and we wanted them to help us flip Alabama.”

During the 2010 cycle, the leadership committee took in close to a million dollars from Alabama donors. And over the same period, the group directed about $1.4 million into an Alabama-registered political action committee, all of it from out-of-state corporations. Because the state allowed unlimited transfers between political action committees and parties — a loophole long exploited by Democrats and Republicans alike — the leadership committee could shuffle all of that money to the state party and a pair of committees controlled by Mr. Hubbard and his team.

The arrangement also offered donors a way to help Mr. Hubbard without their checks showing up on the Alabama party’s public filings. One such supporter was the Poarch Band of CreekIndians, which operates several large casinos on tribal land in Alabama.

The tribe was wary of the rapid expansion of non-Indian gambling in the state, particularly the proliferation of small bingo parlors competing with their resort casinos, and stood to benefit if antigambling Republicans took control of the Legislature. But precisely because they opposed gambling, few Republican state lawmakers or candidates would accept the tribe’s contributions.

After meeting with Mr. Marsh and other Republicans, said Robert R. McGhee, director of government affairs for the tribe, the tribe chose a different approach: It donated $350,000 to the leadership committee. When the contributions were later disclosed, critics accused Mr. Hubbard of using the Washington group to launder the money by exchanging it with other contributions.

A spokesman for the leadership committee said that the Poarch Creek contributions had been allocated to the group’s administrative account, to pay for overhead and other expenses, and that the staff members involved in arranging the checks no longer worked at the organization. Mr. Hubbard said there had been no agreement to directly swap cash.

“The conversation was, ‘I’ve got some people in Alabama who are very interested in giving money to help elect Republicans to state legislatures, and I would hope that if we help raise money for you, you will help us win in Alabama,’ ” Mr. Hubbard said.

Launch media viewerGun-rights advocates at the Democratic-controlled State Capitol in Denver on Jan. 9. Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Swap or no swap, public records suggest that many of the contributions the leadership committee raised in Alabama made their way to races in other states.

About $260,000 from Alabama donors, for example, was assigned to a Pennsylvania account originally set up to collect checks from federal political action committees. (Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that allow such contributions to be spent directly on state races.) But none of the money raised was spent in Pennsylvania. Instead, the Alabama contributions were pooled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in political action committee checks and individual contributions from around the country. Beginning in August 2010, the leadership committee transferred $860,000 from the Pennsylvania account to the Republican Party in Iowa to assist its candidates.

The Republican Governors Association made similar transfers. In Michigan, for example, a political action committee set up by the governors association raised $8.4 million. Virtually all of it came from a roster of elite donors outside Michigan, such asBob Perry, the Texas homebuilder, and David Koch, the billionaire industrialist. Most of that money was transferred to the Michigan Republican Party.

While out-of-state donors were funneling millions of dollars into Michigan, Republicans were sending millions of dollars back out to the governors association in Washington. All told, Michigan donors contributed $8.5 million to the association. That is roughly as much as the group spent on independent advertisements to help elect the Republican candidate for governor, Rick Snyder, on top of the money transferred directly for the Michigan party.

Rich Robinson, the head of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a watchdog group, said he believed the transactions were designed in part to allow Michigan businesses, which could not give directly to Mr. Snyder, to exchange their contributions for money from out-of-state individual donors, who could legally donate. “It appeared to be a currency swap to obfuscate the actual sources of money,” Mr. Robinson said. “I had never seen anything like this before, particularly at this scale.”

More than $5 million of the Michigan money raised by the governors association, for example, was a corporate money from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Two million dollars of that went to association affiliates in Maine and Florida, where corporate contributions are legal.

A spokesman for the governors association, Jon Thompson, said that all of its contributions had been disclosed in campaign filings and that the association made sure its transfer stayed within each state’s restrictions on the size and source of contributions. “The R.G.A. raises funds to elect and support Republican governors,” Mr. Thompson said, “and we invest that money in full compliance of the law wherever we see any opportunity to make a difference in accomplishing our objective.”

Only when the dust from the 2010 elections settled did the full scale of the Republicans’ success become clear.

The governors association spent $99 million and ended with Republican control of 29 governorships, up from 23, the highest number for either party in a decade. Republicans controlled 25 legislatures around the country, up from 14, including in pivotal swing states such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Alabama, Republicans won supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. Mr. Hubbard’s colleagues elected him speaker of the Assembly, while Mr. Marsh became Senate leader.

The Alabama Republican Party’s finances during that period have since come under scrutiny: Some of the party’s records have been subpoenaed by the Alabama attorney general, Luther Strange, a Republican, though the scope of his office’s inquiry is unclear, and Mr. Hubbard has denied any wrongdoing.

But the impact of Republican governance in Alabama has been undeniable. In the party’s first year in control, the Legislature passed — and the governor signed — more than 30 major pieces of legislation, including new tax breaks for businesses, ethics overhauls and restrictions on abortion and union organizing.

==

AJP and corkey wellspring really into MI judge scotus

As concerned workers come together across Michigan in protest, partisan politicians are poised to make one of the strongholds for America's blue-collar worker rights into a so-called "Right to Work" (RTW) state -- in accordance with the ALEC [10] blueprint to change to state laws at the behest of some of the biggest corporations in the world. Yet, 42 corporations, including General Motors, have distanced themselves from ALEC this year after ALEC's role in controversial and divisive legislation was exposed.

RTW -- Brought Home to You by ALEC (and the Kochs, of course)

At issue is a bill spearheaded by ALEC legislators so beholden to their corporate benefactors that they think it's legitimate to vote in secret as equals with corporate lobbyists on model bills like RTW through ALEC "task forces," as the Center for Media and Democracy's PRWatch/ALECexposed [10] has previously reported. [11] Key provisions of the Michigan RTW bills (for instance, HB 4054 [12]) are taken almost verbatim from the ALEC template. [13]

That agenda is part of a corporate wish list of Charles and David Koch, the oil billionaires who have spent millions trying to popularize extremist ideas and move them from the fringes into binding law. David Koch's group of political operatives known as "Americans for Prosperity" (AFP) -- which I call "Americans for Greed" -- is backing the divisive legislation in Michigan.

RTW -- Brought to You by Vengeful Partisans and Very Lame Ducks

But the bill rushed through the statehouse for the governor to sign is also poisonous political payback in a state where President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by almost 10% of the vote (nearly half a million votes), despite millions spent by the Kochs and other billionaires in campaign donations as well as dark money operations to get Romney in the White House and to get laws changes to their liking.

Michigan was a landslide loss for Republicans, who also lost seats in the state legislature in Lansing, a loss which will take effect when the next class of legislators is sworn in this January.

The get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort in Michigan was built on workers banding together to knock on doors, make phone calls, and get people to the polls on election day. Volunteers from organized labor unions were not the only ones working to get people to vote. AFP and others backing Republicans knocked on doors too, and Romney won the vote of 50,000 more Michiganians than John McCain did in 2008, but fell far short of winning the state's 16 electoral votes.

When the dust settled from last month's election, a vindictive and diminished majority in the state legislature decided to push through a bill to weaken not just American workers' power to negotiate effectively with corporate managers but also to weaken organized workers as a political force at the ballot box.

It's a sour, petty, reprehensible maneuver.

It's especially arrogant to push it through at the last minute of a "lame duck" legislature whose authority is about to expire, and it is especially deceptive to do so after Governor Rick Snyder assured voters [14] he would not pursue RTW in the state.

RTW -- Whose Prosperity? The Kochs ....

It's also a calculated move that demonstrates a palpable disdain for the will of the people in a state whose prosperity was built on private sector manufacturing jobs, with wages and benefits negotiated by labor unions. Those were good paying jobs that gave hard-working families financial security and a real chance to achieve the American dream and help their children have opportunities to be better off than their parents started off.

But those were the glory days before David Koch's prior group of operatives, dubbed "Citizens for a Sound Economy" (CSE) and his allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, started pushing hard in the 1980s for trade agreements that forced American workers to compete with third world wages and that shipped jobs overseas. And, it was before Koch's CSE launched the inside-the-beltway push in D.C. in the late 1980s to repeal the Depression Era Glass-Steagall protections against banks speculating in the stock market, a repeal that made the Wall Street stock market crash of 2008 possible, if not inevitable. (Koch Industries also lobbied against the modest Dodd-Frank reforms of derivatives trading in the 2009-2010 congressional session.)

(source: International Forum on Globalization)

Koch-backed ideas like these -- along with passing RTW, privatizing Social Security, thwarting efforts to address climate change -- have been very good for the Kochs. Some have already benefitted the Kochs' operations, including their speculation on oil prices and trading of oil derivatives [15]. Such investments have helped make these two billionaires even richer. Since the Wall Street meltdown began in 2008, "the Kochs have exponentially increased their wealth by 58% while median family net worth dropped 40%," according to the research [16] of the International Forum on Globalization.

RTW -- Less Pay, More Job Insecurity

But, such policies are very bad for ordinary Americans.

Wages for workers are lower in RTW states.

People who work in states that have bought the economic snake oil [17], like RTW, sold by the Koch-fueled hucksters from ALEC, along with their buddies at stink tanks like the Mackinac Center, make less than Americans in states that have not embraced this backward thinking.

It should come as no surprise that when private sector unions are weakened that this weakens the negotiating power of unions and also weakens the competitive wages offered by companies that are not unionized.

RTW is like a receding tide that lowers all boats.

Almost 75 years ago, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to help protect American workers' rights to organize and negotiate the terms of employment with corporations, helping to level the playing field between powerful corporations and individual workers with little leverage to get better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The NLRA specifically authorized the contracts collectively negotiated by labor unions to require all workers benefitting from the contract to pay dues to the union that negotiated the contract, a fair procedure called a "union security agreement" that helps protect against freeloading and also keep a union's power to enforce the contract strong.

RTW -- Bringing Some of the Worst of the South to the Northern Refuge

But in 1947, Congress under pressure from corporations amended that law to allow states to opt out of those procedures through what proponents call RTW laws. Other than the heart of the old confederacy -- which enacted RTW laws in the same period that states were trying to suppress the civil rights movement, which included many unions acting in solidarity -- most of the states in the country have not adopted RTW.

In fact, only three states have passed RTW in the past 25 years (Idaho in 1995, Oklahoma in 2001, and Indiana in 2012); the 20 other states that passed such legislation largely make up the deep south and a red swath west of the Mississippi. The 2012 presidential election map of "red" states looks strikingly close to the RTW map.

But the vast majority of blue states, like Michigan, have not embraced the long-standing ALEC agenda item of RTW. And, Oklahoma's experience over the past decade since the law passed has not been a poster child for higher wages and economic security for families.

==

. What happened with the labeling of genetically modified organisms in California, or Michigan’s renewable fuel standard?

LASHOF: Well, on the Michigan standard, the argument that the opposition put in on Michigan wasn’t about the substance, it was an argument that this shouldn’t be done through a Constitutional amendment, and I think that they’re there so… so the answer there is that that mechanism was the wrong mechanism for moving renewable energy forward. The public strongly supports moving renewable energy forward, and so that’s a bit of an anomaly.

And, in California, I think that may be one of the few examples where money really did influence the outcome – Big Ag really did put millions of dollars into defeating that proposition. And propositions are hard to win – there’s kind of a strong bias overall for people to vote ‘no’ and when you have a lop-sided investment of money, it’s very hard to prevail.

Dave Jenkins, Vice President of Government and Political Affairs at ConservAmerica (formerly Republicans for Environmental Protection)

Guided by the Koch brothers, Republicans have installed czars to run Michigan's cities (law repealed?

support of snyder

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/3105

Michigan: Michigan has eight Dirty Air Villains: Reps. Dan Benishek (R-MI1), Bill Huizenga

(R-MI2), Justin Amash (R-MI3), Fred Upton (R-MI6), Tim Walberg (R-MI7), Mike Rogers (RMI8),

Candice Miller (R-MI10) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI11). The state has five Clean Air

Heroes: Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Reps. Hansen Clarke (D-MI13), John Conyers (D-MI14),

Dale Kildee (MI-5) and Sander Levin (D-MI12).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Michigan

After a seven-month investigation, InsideClimate News has published an in-depth series on "the biggest oil spill you've never heard of" -- a million-gallon-plus spill of oil-sands crude near Kalamazoo, Mich., in July 2010. If you like your summer reading on the heavy side, dive right into part one, or download the whole series as an e-book.

mojo:

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...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/michigan-emergency-manager-pontiac-detroit

The Republicans' Dark-Money-Moving Machine

Inside the GOP group that skirts election rules by shuffling millions across state lines and then "wiping the fingerprints off the money."

By Andy Kroll | January/February 2012 Issue

Michigan's 2010 elections had just concluded, and Rich Robinson, the state's leading campaign finance reform advocate, was conducting his usual postmortem. As he tallied the big money behind the conservative groundswell that swept [1] Republican Rick Snyder into the governor's mansion and placed the state Legislature solidly under GOP control, one particular political action committee caught his eye.

**The 20 Biggest Donors of the 2012 Elec**tion

Read more of our coverage of political dark money. [3]

Created in December 2009 and shut down shortly after the election, RGA Michigan 2010 had come out of nowhere to spend [4] nearly $8.4 million—54 percent more than any other PAC had poured into any election in Michigan history. Ninety-six percent of the group's donors lived outside the state, and its top three funders included Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, Koch Industries' David Koch, and New York City hedge fund CEO Paul Singer. On the other side of the ledger, RGA Michigan 2010 had given $5.2 million to the Michigan Republican Party—no surprise there—but, mysteriously, it had also funneled $3 million into the campaign coffers of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Robinson, the executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, began to connect the dots. He remembered the phone calls from reporters in Maine and Florida asking if Robinson knew why money from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce had ended up with PACs in their states. The state's Chamber, which usually spent more than $1 million on TV ads during Michigan elections, officially didn't spend a dime on ads in 2010, according to Robinson. But it had given an unprecedented [4] $5.37 million to a national organization that, Robinson now realized, was at the root of the anomalous spending he'd uncovered: the Washington, DC-based Republican Governors Association.

During the midterms, while many campaign finance observers were fixated on the proliferation of super-PACs and shadow-spending groups, the RGA spent [5] $132 million—more than the five biggest conservative super-PACs and 501(c) groups combined. It was instrumental in electing a slate of GOP governors—Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Ohio's John Kasich, Georgia's Nathan Deal, and Iowa's Terry Branstad, among others—who hastened to crack down on public-sector unions and roll back environmental regulations. These electoral successes were fueled in part by the creative campaign finance strategy that Robinson began to piece together.

Since 2008, he explains, the RGA has used a network of at least 15 state-level PACs to shuffle campaign cash around the country. Doing so serves a couple of purposes. First, it enables the RGA to scrub the identity of a donor to avoid image issues. For instance, Rick Perry taking $3 million from a Texas oil baron might be controversial, but if that baron gives $3 million to the national RGA, which then diverts the money to RGA Michigan PAC and then to Perry? Harmless.

The RGA's cash shuffle also allows it—and its corporate allies—to skirt campaign finance laws. For instance, in Michigan, corporations can't donate directly to candidates or political parties. But the state's Chamber of Commerce donated millions to the national RGA, which then directed some of the money to its PACs in Florida and Maine, where no such corporate-money bans exist. Why would a Michigan group want its money flowing to races in other states? Chamber CEO Rich Studley told [6] Maine Public Radio that its members supported funding "pro-business" candidates outside Michigan.

Robinson has a different theory. During the 2010 election cycle, the Michigan Chamber donated more than $5 million to the RGA. In turn, the RGA's Michigan PAC directed $5.2 million—contributions that largely came from individuals outside the state—to the Michigan Republican Party. Robinson believes that, through this roundabout process, the Chamber's corporate money was swapped out with individual contributions, allowing it to be deployed in Michigan in a more potent form. (The Chamber acknowledges that the RGA called the shots on where its money was spent. Studley says his group's political spending "has been in full compliance with all Michigan and federal laws." The RGA did not respond to a request for comment on this practice.)

Robinson and other campaign finance watchdogs liken the RGA's methods to the corporate-contribution laundering scheme that got former GOP congressman Tom DeLay indicted. "The whole thing," Robinson says of the RGA's tactics, "was about wiping the fingerprints off the money."

An RGA spokesman, Mike Schrimpf, says the group and its network of PACs "aren't really unique," but he declined to respond to specific questions. "The RGA and the [Democratic Governors Association] both have to use state PACs in some states to comply with the state campaign finance laws," he says. The RGA, however, is by far the more powerful of the two, outspending the DGA [7] in the last four election cycles by anywhere from $10 million (2004) to $67 million (2010).

The RGA wasn't always a political juggernaut. Founded in 1963 [8], the group for decades was content to convene meetings and publish the occasional white paper. That began to change in the early 1980s, when Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh became chairman and the RGA started to raise serious money. With the RGA's backing, the GOP netted seven governor's seats in the 1986 election.

In 1994, while Newt Gingrich and Co. took control [9] of Congress and rang in the Republican Revolution, the RGA was instrumental in the election of 11 GOP governors and successfully defended every Republican incumbent. When the dust settled, Republicans controlled 30 governorships, their first majority since 1970. The last time Republicans had performed so well in gubernatorial races was 1867.

Beyond its electoral victories, the RGA established itself as a launching pad for Republicans with presidential aspirations. The group helped to foster alliances between GOP governors and gave them access to deep-pocketed donors and top fundraisers, helping to catapult politicians like Ronald Reagan (an RGA chairman), George W. Bush, Rick Perry (twice chairman), Mitt Romney (2006 chairman), and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie [10] (current vice chair) onto the national stage.

The RGA's rise has been fueled by a close alliance with corporate America—especially tobacco companies and Big Pharma. In the mid-'90s, the organization awarded seats on its board to executives from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, which each donated $40,000 a year. In November 1995, tobacco lobbyists swarmed the RGA's annual meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, pressing governors to write letters opposing pending tobacco regulations from the Food and Drug Administration. In exchange for their support, the tobacco companies pledged financial backing when election time rolled around. They came through: In February 1996, Philip Morris held a Washington, DC, gala for the RGA that raised $2.6 million.

The increasing influence of corporate donors turned off some Republican governors, including Arne Carlson, Minnesota's governor from 1991 to 1999. Carlson recalls attending a few RGA meetings, but he stopped going due to the group's increasingly partisan tenor and insistence that donors be given access to the governors. "It was no longer Republican governors getting together," Carlson says. "It was the moneyed interests getting together with governors. I found it detestable."

In June 2002, the McCain-Feingold Act went into effect [11], banning federal party committees from raising "soft money"—donations from labor unions and corporations outside the scope of federal campaign finance law. So to keep the corporate cash flowing, the RGA officially broke away [12] from the Republican National Committee (of which it had been an affiliate) and established itself as a 527 tax-exempt group. That way it could continue raising soft money from banks, drug companies, and energy companies. (A few years earlier the DGA had parted ways with the Democratic National Committee for the same reasons.)

Today, RGA's donor list [5] reads like a who's who of corporate titans: Koch Industries, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, AT&T, and Pfizer. The organization's largest donor in both the 2008 and 2010 elections was Perry Homes, the homebuilding empire run by Bob Perry, which plunked down $1.15 million in 2008 and $8 million in 2010.

But as the corporate money gushed in, the RGA ran afoul of the law. In 2008, a top official with the North Carolina state elections board testified that the RGA had illegally funneled contributions to its North Carolina PAC. (The elections board ultimately declined to pursue the matter.) Last October, a Vermont judge ruled [13] that the RGA violated state elections law when it ran ads supporting the Republican gubernatorial candidate without registering as a state PAC. (The RGA argued the spots were merely issue ads.)

In 2012, the RGA promises to be a force to be reckoned with. Led by chief [14] fundraiser Fred Malek [15], the finance co-chairman of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, the RGA had by last fall raised $22 million (twice as much as the DGA) for the 2012 election cycle. Don't be surprised if that money starts turning up in odd places again, says Mike McCabe, who tracks money in state politics at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: "It's a deliberate strategy to keep the public in the dark about who is really buying our elections."

Prezi presentation produced by Jaeah Lee [16]

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/republican-governors-association-perry-michigan

Links:

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703506904575592361252289530.html

[2] http://motherjones.com/motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/top-donors-2012-election-romney-obama-gingrich

[3] http://motherjones.com/motherjones.com/category/secondary-tags/dark-money

[4] http://www.mcfn.org/press.php?prId=130

[5] http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail.php?ein=113655877

[6] http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/14987/Default.aspx

[7] http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail.php?ein=521304889

[8] http://www.rga.org/homepage/about/

[9] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/newtchron.html

[10] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62807.html

[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/us/soft-money-ban-goes-into-effect-but-the-effect-is-uncertain.html

[12] http://projects.publicintegrity.org/527/report.aspx?aid=8

[13] http://www.atg.state.vt.us/news/court-finds-violations-of-vermonts-campaign-finance-law1.php

[14] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/does-anyone-have-a-grip-on-the-gop.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

[15] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/09/sarah-palin-too-late-fred-malek-presidential-race-/1

[16] http://motherjones.com/authors/jaeah-lee

http://motherjones.com/print/149261

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/953811/-Gov-Rick-Snyder-Sellout-Prefabricated-Corporate-Michigan-%28Government%29-Courtesy-of-Koch-ALEC-Excl

Gov Rick Snyder Sellout? Prefabricated Corporate Michigan (Government) Courtesy of Koch & ALEC Excl.

by Hector SolonFollow

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and the Snyder Team/Policy are about to become the first totally irrelevant 'Republican' Administration in Michigan history.  Armed and on the march with prewritten policy and legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other think-tanks, the Michigan Republican Majorities in both the Michigan Senate and Michigan House of Representatives are steamrolling a right wing agenda - Michigan "Government in a Box".

Using imported 'model legislation' Michigan Legislators have already put up a long list of bills built by special interest led teams outside of Michigan.  The goal: complete rewrite of Michigan's government and policies designed over decades by conservative, right wing / corporate interests to suit their agenda and profits, not the needs of Michigan citizens.  

ANALYSIS: Will CEO Rick Snyder just be another rubber stamp signature on scripted ALEC Laws?  How many Smoking Guns have been found in Michigan Legislation so far?

Rick Snyder's path to Nerd nihil ad rem; ALEC's ghostwriting of State laws supplanting State Legislatures; What is ALEC doing in Michigan? Plenty...

Cross-posted to Blogging for Michigan.

Recommended:

REPORT: ALEC and the Extreme Right Wing (CPA 2001)

REPORT: ALEC A Big Business Agenda (Defenders 2002)

REPORT: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America  (Justice.org 2010)

REPORT: Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States: Untold Story Behind the ALEC (NRDC 2002)

SITES: ALECWatch.org - SourceWatch - Common Cause - Progressive States

ARTICLES: Ghostwriting the Law (Mother Jones 2002) - Outing Alec: The most powerful lobby you've never heard of. (American Prospect 2002) - ALEC Meets is Match: State Activists Are Learning How To Fight Back Against The Right's Powerhouse (Nation 2003) - What makes ALEC so Smart (Governing 2003) - Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State (Alternet 2005) - Big Political Player you’ve never heard of (Fortune 2011) - The Power Brokers Behind Health Care Repeal Legislation (Wash. Indep. 2010) - ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts (Campus Progress 2011)

UPDATE: Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin Denies ALEC Membership at Townhall

UPDATE: WI Prof asked to hand over email by GOP immediately following blog on ALEC - Story going viral.

UPDATE: ALEC Issues Press Release "Setting the Record Straight - Much ado about nothing" - FULL Line by Line ANALYSIS

Let's begin...

While watching the events in anti-collective bargaining Wisconsin unfold, the story of the influence of the Koch Brothers (Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch) and Koch Foundations via their front groups, e.g. conservative think tank "Americans for Prosperity" came to national attention in a laser-like exposé.

What got our ATTENTION was THIS:

A report called "Buried in the Bill" from Milwaukee TV Station WTMJ 4 on February 21, 2011:

"Here's something you might not know. Buried inside Walker's 144-page budget repair bill are 10 lines. They don't directly deal with state workers, unions, or contracts. Still, controversy is already heating up over what it could mean for a couple of out-of-state billionaires."

(Break)

"… to save money, the Governor's controversial budget bill would allow the state to "sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without the solicitation of bids."

Corruption in its purest form, but the questions were: 1) How did that happened? and 2) "Is Wisconsin Style GOP Corruption and ALEC manipulation in Michigan Budget Related Legislation too?"

You bet, BIG TIME.

There is no easy way to put this, and it’s a long story, but Michigan isn’t Wisconsin; Michigan is Way Worse off than Wisconsin.

What we have found so far in Michigan… and just getting started:

FOUR Smoking Guns have been quickly identified where ALEC and Corporate special interest influence are being used to right Michigan laws, THREE are suspected and being confirmed, and countless others inferred, including bills in the 35+ pieces of legislation currently being passed or debated concerning Governor Rick Snyder’s Executive Budget Proposal for the 2011-12 Michigan State Budget Supporting Legislation.

State Rep. Tom McMillin #1 and #3 – SMOKED OUT (Twice)

ALEC anti-Invasive Species Act Language – INVESTIGATING

State Senator Tom Casperson #2 – SMOKED OUT

State Senator Wayne Kuipers #4 – SMOKED OUT

Long List on Budget Legislation #5-8, maybe 9? – INVESTIGATING

This is not Reinventing, It’s Renting Michigan.

See Details in the ISSUES and AREA of INTEREST Section below.

By April 2012, oil companies signed 167 leases with people in Michigan's Barry County, compared to 81 signed in 2011. The leases give the oil companies permission to frack the land looking for oil. In Barry County, leases typically range from $10 to $80 per acre per month.^[1]

History

Antrim Shale, Michigan

The Antrim Shale of Upper Devonian age produces along a belt across the northern part of the Michigan Basin.^[2] Although the Antrim Shale has produced gas since the 1940s, the play was not active until the late 1980s. During the 1990s, theal drilling is not widely used. Unlike other shale gas plays such as the Barnett Shale, the natural gas from the Antrim appears to be biogenic gas generated by the action of bacteria on the organic-rich rock.[1]

In 2007, the Antrim gas field produced 136 cubic feet of gas, making it the 13th largest source of natural gas in the United States.

Lobbying and donations

The 2011 Common Cause report, "Deep drilling, deep pockets, in Washington and Michigan," found that "from 2001 through June 2011, the fracking industry gave $20.5 million to current members of Congress and spent $726 million on lobbying." For Michigan, Rep. John Dingell was the top recipient with $203,453, followed by Rep. Dave Camp with $154,627, and Rep. Fred Upton with $153,917. Rep. Upton chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where the FRAC Act, which would require drillers to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, has been stalled.

The report also tracked $2.2 million in campaign contributions to Michigan’s state elected officials, and $2.8 million spent on lobbying in Michigan. State Treasurer and former House Speaker Andy Dillon was the leading recipient with $128,500, followed by former Gov. Jennifer Granholm with $98,800, former Attorney General Mike Cox with $76,250, and Gov. Rick Snyder with $61,900.^[3]

Price fixing allegations

In June 2012 Reuters reported that, under the direction of CEO Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy plotted with top executives of competitor EnCana to suppress land prices in the Collingwood Shale formation in Northern Michigan. In emails between Chesapeake and Encana Corp, the rivals discussed dividing up Michigan counties and private landowners to avoid bidding against each other in a 2010 public land auction and in at least nine prospective private deals. Price-fixing between competitors is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Michigan alone, the two companies combined now hold more than 975,000 acres of land - an area about the size of Rhode Island.^[4]

Proposed fracking operations

Encana Oil & Gas intends to frack 13 new wells in Kalkaska County, Michigan in search of natural gas. The operation will require more than 300 million gallons of groundwater for production.

It was reported that the company's new applications for fracking permits — and the amount of proposed groundwater — raised concerns among some local residents.

“It’s pretty astounding,” said Chris Grobbel, a Traverse City-based environmental consultant. “A small-sized municipality is going to use about 100 million gallons annually. It’s three times the quantity … it’s quite a substantial amount.”

Other critics contend that Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials does not adequately regulate drilling wells, given the large volumes of water used, and that public documents show "Encana’s wells all fail a water withdrawal assessment measurement designed to protect the state’s water resources."^[5]

Citizen activism

Legislative issues and regulations

In February 15, 2013 it was reported that Michigan's Board of State Canvassers approved two petitions on fracking, which could go to public vote in November 2013.

Reuters reported that "Voters for Fair Use of Ballot Referendum is proposing a constitutional amendment that would allow voters to use a referendum to repeal any state law. Currently, state laws that include a financial appropriation can't be repealed by a voter referendum. The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan is proposing a voter initiative to amend state law and ban fracking, a form of natural gas extraction. The form of the petitions was approved by the board in 4-0 votes."

Citizen groups

• The Committee to Ban Fracking

Industry groups

Reports

Resources

References

1. ↑ Dave Spencer, "Oil Companies Flocking to Frack in Barry County: Some are calling it a win-win others raise health concerns over fracking," Fox, April 30, 2012.
2. ↑ Michigan DEQ map: *Antrim*, PDF file, downloaded 12 February 2009.
3. ↑ James Browning & Alex Kaplan, "Deep drilling, deep pockets, in Washington and Michigan," Common Cause, 2011.
4. ↑ Brian Grow, Joshua Schneyer, and Janet Roberts, "Special Report: Chesapeake and rival EnCana plotted to suppress land prices," Reuters, June 25, 2012.
5. ↑ "More fracking wells planned" Glenn Puit, Record-Eagle, March 24, 2013.

ocuments obtained by Progress Missouri indicate that the Republican leaders in Jefferson City are working directly with national, extreme front groups to silence Missouri workers and increase corporate power. Leaders from the the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Western Michigan Policy Forum and National Tax Limitation Committeeare scheduled to speak at tonight’s strategy session at 8pm in Hearing Room 3, per House leadership communications.

Further demonstrating the involvement of extreme corporate front groups, the so-called “right to work” legislation introduced byRep. Eric Burlison and co-sponsored bySpeaker Tim Jones comes directly from the**American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)**, a Progress Missouri analysis has shown.

“Our legislators need to be listening to Missourians and solving Missouri problems, not following the orders of extreme billionaires and their secretive front groups,” said Sean Soendker Nicholson, Executive Director of Progress Missouri. “These bills are all about limiting the political voices of workers and the middle class on behalf of CEOs and corporations.”

“As Martin Luther King said in 1961: ‘In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.’”

BACKGROUND:

Corporate supporters of RTW laws claim that they ensure a more business-friendly climate and lead to economic growth, but recent studies show that these laws actually suppress wages and reduce the standard of living. In fact, a state’s RTW law has no impact on economic growth, has no influence on employment, has no influence on business capital formation, and is actually correlated with a decrease in wages. Source:[“New Research Counters Arguments for ‘Right-to-Work’ Laws,” American Rights at Work, 03/11]

On theNational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation:

• National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund and National Right to Work Committee Have Goal of Weakening Unions, Not Protecting Workers

According to the Chicago Tribune, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is "associated" with the National Right to Work Committee, which is an "organization that lobbies for so-called right-to-work laws that let workers refrain from paying union dues, thus weakening unions' power." [Chicago Tribune, 2/1/2013]

• The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has direct ties to the Koch Brothers’ network of extreme organizations.Mark Mix, President of the National Right To Work Committee and President of the National Right To Work Legal Defense Fun, is directly connected to the Koch network.
  • Mix was a presenter at a Koch Conference in Aspen, Colorado, where he discussed coordinated electoral strategies. His organization, National Right to Work, receives free summer employees from the Koch summer fellows program.
  • Mix attended the 2010 Koch Conference in Aspen, Colorado.
  • Mix presented a session entitled “Mobilizing Citizens for November,” on the topic: “Is there a chance this fall to elect leaders who are strongly committed to liberty and prosperity?” alongside Sean Noble and Tim Phillips of the Koch Funded Americans for Prosperity.
  • Mix is a Speaker for the Leadership Institute, an organization that received over$100,000 from Koch-funded foundations. Source: [People for the American Way]

• National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Backed by "Reactionary" Coors Foundation

According to The Center for Media and Democracy publication Sourcewatch.com, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is backed by the Castle Rock Foundation. According to Salon.com, the Castle Rock Foundation is an "obscure but reactionary" foundation started by the Coors family. [The Center for Media and Democracy, Link; Salon.com, 10/22/2004]

On theNational Tax Limitation Committee:

• NTLC Behind Secretly Funded Effort To Restrict Union Political Activity

Lew Uhler is the activist behind a California measure to force the unions to get written employee consent before they can spend dues money for political purposes. “While Uhler is the author of the measure, it is a Laguna Niguel- based campaign committee called the Coalition for Employee Rights that is paying for the effort. Identities of the committee's financial backers, however, remain a mystery. Committee treasurer James V. Lacy said he'll disclose his donors when it's required.” [Sacramento Bee, 3/20/05]

On the West Michigan Policy Forum:

• West Michigan Policy Forum is Run By GOP Super Donor DevosFamily

According to Salon.com, the West Michigan Policy Forum is headed by former Amway CEO and one time Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick Devos. They wrote, "Dick Devos, a former Amway CEO, was the GOP’s self-funded (failed) gubernatorial nominee in 2006. During that campaign, he said he had no interest in right-to-work. But like Snyder, he’s had an apparent change of heart. The business group West Michigan Policy Forum, which Devos chairs, recently announced that it was prepared to get a right-to-work law on the ballot if legislators didn’t send one to the governor’s desk." [Salon.com, 12/11/2012]

• Jared Rodriguez of the Western Michigan Policy Forum has a long history of working with extreme anti-worker organizations. Rodriguez is a former senior vice president of the west-Michigan Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, and was the treasurer for a campaign funded by right-wing ideologues, including Missouri’s Ethelmae Humphreys, [koch aspen]to stop a pro-worker a ballot initative in Michigan in 2012. Source: [Public Integrity, September 24, 2012; FactCheck.org, 10/26/12]