Kochs fund shameful attacks on public workers in MI

Michigan's new Gov. Rick Snyder released an extremely dishonest "Citizens' Guide" yesterday. It's a report that pretends to show government workers earn twice as much as their counterparts in the private sector. The report of course is supposed to provide a rationale for deep cuts to government workers' salaries and benefits.

(Note to Gov. Snyder: It wasn't government workers who caused the state budget problems. It was the recession caused by Wall Street's recklessness and collapse. If you think government workers make too much money, what's your opinion of those investment bankers that wrecked the economy?)

TeamsterNation was not surprised to learn that the "report" echoes work by a researcher at the Mackinac Center. That's according to a nasty little screed, "Government is not a jobs bank," written by one Jared Skorup at the Mackinac Center.

The Mackinac Center is the largest state-based free-market corporate predator think-tank and it receives funding from two Koch foundations, the Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Charles R. Lambe Foundation. For a quick tutorial on the Kochs, click here.

The Economic Policy Institute (which is not funded by the Kochs) put the record straight: Michigan's government workers are actually underpaid by 5.3 percent. Read the EPI's report here.